Performance in Hunt: Showdown gets a big boost this month with the release of Update 2.4, which focuses on performance-related additions and changes to the multiplayer FPS bounty hunting game from Crytek. Additionally, the new solo mode, which proved to be highly popular during the game’s recent Solo Event, is here to stay.
Performance upgrades in 2.4 are manifold, and in a new video interview Level Design Director Chris Auty and Technical Director Sebastien Laurent discuss the performance updates in 2.4 in detail, while Senior Game Designer Andreas Liebeskind and Junior Technical Designer Bence Kovacs weigh in on the new weapons, content updates, and game fixes. Many details are covered in the eight-minute video, which can be viewed here.
Changes to the game's graphics settings offer one of the biggest potential improvements to performance, as rendering has been split out into different quality settings, allowing players to make choices about things like shadow quality or particle quality fitting to their specific machine. Players with limited GPU performance should see the biggest benefits from this change. Resolution scaling is another big feature now available with 2.4. Originally introduced in Crytek's Ryse: Son of Rome, resolution scaling decouples display resolution with rendering resolution, significantly improving performance on the GPU level. CPU optimizations were also made on the game code side, and this should result in significantly less stalling. Level loading times should also improve.
Three new weapons are also packed into Update 2.4. The new Nagant Officer M1895 Carbine pistol has a long barrel and a stock, which means it behaves more like a rifle than a pistol. The new Specter 1882 Compact Shotgun has a sawn off barrel, foregrip, and wider spread (if shorter range). The Crossbow Shotbolt mixes the characteristics of a shotgun with those of a crossbow, utilizing bolts tipped with shotgun shells that detonate on impact setting off a cone of shotgun pellets.
About Hunt: Showdown
Hunt: Showdown is a competitive first-person bounty hunting game with heavy PvE elements, from the makers of Crysis. Set in the darkest corners of the world, it packs the thrill of survival games into a match-based format. Hunt’s competitive, match-based gameplay mixes PvP and PvE elements to create a uniquely tense experience. Each match pits up to ten players—playing solo or in teams of two—against each other as they fight for bounty by taking out gruesome monsters in the swamps of Louisiana. Once they’ve found and defeated one of these they will receive a bounty—and instantly become a target for every other Hunter left on the map. The higher the risk, the higher the reward–but a single mistake could cost everything. Hunt is available now on Steam. For more information, visit https://www.huntshowdown.com/.