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The Forest – Now Powered by Unity 5, Supports Sub Surface Scattering & Physical Based Rendering

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Endnight Games has announced that its first person survival horror simulator, The Forest, is now powered by the Unity 5 Engine. Endnight Games has released a patch that switches The Forest over to Unity 5, implementing a number of new graphical features. This new version of The Forest support physical based rendering, bendable plants, sub surface scattering for plant shaders, as well as various visual tweaks and improvements.

Endnight Games has also replaced almost all its tree models, has rewritten its skin shaders, implemented a new billboarding system, and put in a first version of its new ocean shader.

In addition, the team has included new graphical options in order to further tweak the game’s performance and visuals:

“Some new graphics options should help those with slower computers get the game running faster, including a new level of detail setting which will allow you to raise or lower the view distance of most elements from Ultra all the way down to Ultra low. Across the board everyone should see some performance improvements.”

And if that wasn’t enough, the team has added some additional optimizations and memory tweaks for 32bit machines that have less than 4GB of usable RAM.

This new update will be auto-downloaded next time you start the Steam client.

Kudos to our reader ‘Major_Snake’ for informing us.

Here is the changelog for The Forest’s 0.16 patch (a hotfix has been released that fixes missing volumetric lighting on windows 32bit machines, the missing underwater blur swimming effect and a few other small tweaks):

  • New options menu setting ‘Render Type’ will allow you to switch between new deferred renderer(recommended for modern computers) and Legacy renderer (recommended for older computers)
  • Full pbr shaders on all items. Reworked most textures to fit new lighting.
  • Reflection probes added.
  • New ocean shader (work in progress)
  • Better bow aiming – sight added to bow. bow tracks better with camera view when aiming up and down. Looks better now when viewed by another player
  • Animals will now attempt to dodge trees, obstacles and other animals
  • Fixed rebreather’s air resetting to 0 after loading a saved game
  • (Multiplayer) Reworked the network prioritization algorithm to provide more relevant updates of remote entities to players (Smoother, less jittery enemies)
  • Upgrade balance: Inverted bonus curve, it now goes from small (10%) to big (100%)
  • Fixed booze upgrades still not showing up for some weapons
  • Added a small outline to chat text to make it visible in bright lighting conditions
  • Fixed issue preventing to lock floors/roofs on multiple walls on the same height level
  • Grabber system now turned off when in in inventory/book/pause menu or while placing a building (ie, placing a building near water will no longer trigger drinking)
  • New snapping grid gizmo to help with manual placing of experimental floors & roofs (tip shows the current lock position and is big enough to be seen from either side of a wall)
  • Experimental Roofs now snap back to closest edge on current support (ie the wall you’re putting it on)
  • Goose simulator added. Geese will now fly between lakes and swim around acting like geese
  • Fixed Bon Fire not lightable
  • Fixed flying food on rock fire pit
  • Fixed burn lizard scale
  • Added generic meat burnt
  • Fixed drying generic meat
  • Fixed Treehouse + Treehouse Chalet floor not buildable
  • Deer will now drink at lakes
  • Fixed issue where deer would run right through trees!
  • Dead birds now have a chance of spawning feathers when hit
  • Revamped cooking to allow eating burnt food but with far lesser gain
  • Player will now see himself briefly dragged away into a cave when knocked out but not killed.
  • New art added: Improved airline foodcart
  • Fixed bug where climbing rope for first time would sometimes cause it to release right after climbing
  • New trees! New bark and leaf types.
  • New billboard system with lit billboards and rotation
  • Unity 5 reflection probe system added
  • New clouds/sky
  • All shaders switched to use new unity pbr
  • Dirtied up and improved regular enemy textures
  • New pbr skin shader!
  • In game controls remapping, both in Title & Main scene options
  • Falling particle leaves now accumulate on ground
  • Fixed logs flying up into air when trees were cut
  • Fixed physics on some trees not colliding with terrain when falling
  • New art added: dead small trunk
  • Graphics options: added rendering patch selection
  • Graphics options: added new setting to turn off sunshine occlusion
  • Graphics options: added new setting to tune Level of Detail
  • Graphics options: SSAO setting now also changes sample count
  • Graphics Settings now properly show the saved preset name after restarting the game
  • Graphics Settings: Renamed “Laptop” level to “Ultra Low”
  • Fixed survival book entries not clickable on occasion
  • New art added: new version of plane food! plane tray, styrofoam cups and trays
  • New bushes- replaced 2 of the worst looking bushes with new type
  • New lake shader added! reflective and with murkiness
  • New dead trees! Better textures and models, and now all cuttable!
  • Better shark ragdoll
  • Jump animation added to player
  • New combat move – Flying axe attack. Attack downwards with axe while jumping to perform a powerful ground chop.
  • When falling from high up, player will briefly stumble to his hands and knees
  • You can now cook arms and legs (and … eat them – but you probably shouldnt)
  • Dead trees replaced and now cuttable!
  • New log type for buildings that matches carried log
  • (audio) New player sounds!
  • (audio) New female skinny audio!
  • New blueberry bushes!
  • New multiplayer octree based priority calculation
  • New art: Re-done plane seats
  • Fish and sharks are now also in multiplayer games!
  • Touch bending grass added! enemies, rabbits, animals and player will now slightly rustle the grass as they move through it (this is a first pass at this, next version will include better bending)
  • You can now climb fishing stands
  • Experimental Walls now block AIs (mutant & animals) from going through it
  • Fixed fire particles staying up after cutting down a burning tree
  • New world art: cliff wall variations.
  • Lighter now stays equipped when exiting/entering ropes
  • Added some additional optimizations and memory tweaks for 32bit machines that have less than 4gigs of usable ram
  • Fixed molotov fire never shutting down