Performance
- significantly improved game performance at maximum graphic settings (i.e. graphics as they have always been)
- added options to modify graphic settings
- an option to disable lighting
- an option to disable playfield border textures
The optimizations resulted in a performance increase of nearly 50% on an onboard Intel HD 4600 graphics adapter, which now runs the game at just around the magical 60 FPS threshold at maximum settings - compared to around 40 FPS before optimization. Lighting has still a big impact on performance, and turning lighting off boosts the framerate to above 100 FPS (an additional ~70% increase). Turning border drawing off (trees, giant fungi, ice, ...) gives another 40% increase (due to the dynamically generated shadows). This means that with both lighting and borders turned off, a HD 4600 can run the game at around 140 FPS. You won't see this happening in the release version because it runs with a fixed timestep at 60 FPS. Anyways, these numbers show that you will be able to play ULR smoothly even on your aged low budget PC!