Hello! This is AquaHeaven. And my friends from TXC
We're happy to present you with the new demo version of Project Liminal 2 and tell you about the major changes in the demo, how my friends improved their Nuclear Engine and helped me port my game to it.
Performance:
Initially when I published the demo on Steam, I made it on stock Unreal 5.6 Because of this, many users, particularly people who don't have powerful PCs, had serious performance issues.
My friends from TXC solved this problem and now the game runs even on crappy PCs with a 1050 Ti 2GB on ultra settings.
The engine's renderer was heavily modified, and the post-processing shaders were rewritten, while we tried to preserve the game's original style as much as possible and it seems like we managed to do it!
Bug fixes:
I fixed bugs with the barrels - before they made annoying noises and worked clunkily and were picked up incorrectly, now that's gone
Barrel sounds depend on the impact force and which side it falls on WOW!
Also I completely rewrote the barrel physics logic and now it's picked up just like in HL2 OH YES!
Physics Engine:
For barrel physics and other props, we used the old ODE physics engine, however my friends from TXC were able to modify it so this old workhorse could run on multiple threads, which means now if there are many physical objects in the scene, your PC will handle them. They renamed the engine to NODE.
P.S. Actually there are tons of technologies in the engine right now that are being refined in real time, but for now we decided to let you try playing with NODE physics.
New menu and gamepad controls:
In the previous demo version, many people complained that the settings worked incorrectly, the screen position wasn't saved properly, and some people even had black bars on widescreen monitors - now this is fixed, and my style that I came up with for my game had to be cut because I'm still a beginner and haven't fully learned to work with UI. My friends told me a lot about working with UI, however I think I'll focus on the 4:3 style in my other projects since this topic really interests me.
However, now I've prepared a new menu for you, for the console version - later we plan to release on Xbox and Nintendo Switch, so the menu design was reworked for consoles, and it looks truly stunning!
Post-processing:
The post-processing was heavily changed and reworked - unfortunately we had to abandon the Digicam that TXC made themselves for their games because the asset developer made it too resource-intensive. Yes, it still looks beautiful, however for FPS this won't do - it consumed way too many resources, so we had to switch to a simpler post-process inspired by HL2, written completely in HLSL code. This allowed us to free up a bunch of PC resources and run the game on ultra settings on a 1050 Ti.
Basically, to sum up, Project Liminal 2 is the first game on Nuclear Engine that runs on weak PCs with stable FPS. Also my friends are now working on an improved version of Digicam RealBloom which will allow us to add style to the game that you'll see at release.
I'm also thinking now about new locations, mechanics, etc.
The game's release is scheduled for March 20, 2026.
Everything will depend on the guy in Steam support - if he manages to review the game by release, I'm thinking of finishing development on February 15th to give Steam support the opportunity to review the game as early as possible so as not to be late for the scheduled date.
Thanks for reading
AquaHeaven Studios and TXC.