The Talos Principle - Update 243054 (public beta)

[Robert]

Build 243054 for The Talos Principle is now available in beta "publicbeta", which does not require a password.

To install the beta, do this:
- locate the game in the Steam's "Library" panel
- right click and invoke "Properties"
- select the "Betas" tab
- choose "publicbeta"

NOTE: If you want to later change back from publicbeta to default, savegames may be lost! We test for forward upgrades, but not in the other direction.

Here are the changes:

New features:
- Prepared for Road To Gehenna DLC.
- SteamVR is now officially supported. To enable it, right click on The Talos Principle in your Steam Library, then click on Properties / Set Launch Options, and add the following parameter: +vr 1
- Added support for the newest ATI GPUs.

Gameplay/visual improvements:
- Improved behavior of wide plasma walls: players will no longer be pushed to the original point of entry, and touch effects should sound more natural.
- Improved the appearance of soft shadows on vegetation.
- Added support for viewer-facing cloud particles, which should look more natural.
- Deliberate glitching will no longer occur while player is using a terminal.

Bug fixes:
- Fixed several cases where connectors would lose their connections when using time recorder.
- Fixed SSAO artifacts on certain resolutions and buffer scales.
- Fixed an issue causing some crumbs to be rendered black (e.g. black grass).
- Fixed artifacts along object edges lit by fast lights when using MSAA.
- Shader caching and texture loading progress screen will now render correctly on triple screen setups.

Optimizations:
- Major overhaul of crumbs rendering. There should be a noticable increase in performance on lower-end PCs.
- Optimized visibility system for distant lights, which improves performance on lower-end CPUs.
- Improved performance of plasma wall rendering on ATI cards.

[Solais]

Ah, Robert, you forgot the important part about Custom Maps!

ATTENTION MODDERS/MAP CREATORS!

Due to optimization of the engine to better handle the puzzle items and mechanics, there have been a large change made to the engine. THIS CHANGE WILL MAKE EVERY CUSTOM MAP TO CRASH WHEN PLAYED IN THE GAME.

To fix it, please follow these easy steps:

1. Load your map/maps.

2. In the console below (local), write the following: edtConvertGenericItemsToItems() and hit enter.

3. After a small bit of loading, it should mention that a number of items are converted. Save your maps, and upload a patch to the workshop.

4. IF YOUR EDITOR CRASHES DURING CONVERSION, IT MEANS THAT YOU CREATED CUSTOM ITEMS (like custom connectors or jammers or hexahedrons). YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THOSE MANUALLY TO THE NEW "Carriable Item", "Connector", "Fan Item", "Jammer", "Platform Item", "Axe" entities!

Please do this before this version goes live!

[checkers_warfare_increased]

I believe the wondrous A4 change is not mentioned either :D

[kwahoo]

Is SteamVR support crossplatform?

Edit: yes, it is!

18:34:55 INF:  [OpenGL] Detected GLSL 4.50
18:34:56 LOG:  Loaded "libopenvr_api.so".
18:34:56 ERR:  VR initialization failed - Hmd Not Found (108)

[chrix]

I haven't played for a while so maybe this isn't from the beta (I use linux):

INF:  Value of gfx_ulVideoMemoryMB changed from '512' to '2048'

Very nice, finally someone uses GLX_MESA_query_renderer. (I assume you do?)

WRN:  0:734(18): error: no matching function for call to `pow(vec3, float)'; candidates are:
WRN:  0:734(18): error:    float pow(float, float)
WRN:  0:734(18): error:    vec2 pow(vec2, vec2)
WRN:  0:734(18): error:    vec3 pow(vec3, vec3)
WRN:  0:734(18): error:    vec4 pow(vec4, vec4)

This might be a mesa bug. I'll find out which shader causes it and ask the mesa people.

ERR:  VR compositor initialization failed - Connect to VR Server Failed (301)

This is Valve's fault. They only have their Compositor on windows and they do not have documentation about that fact (at least as far as I have seen).
https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/613956964603712981/#c615085406672704681

In the hellovr sample application they have a parameter -nocompositor:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/blob/d4849a0f950e3c16f77916a6ba6fc4c144ed65d4/samples/hellovr_opengl/hellovr_opengl_main.cpp#L289-L294
Can you add something like that to The Talos Principle, until Valve decides to develop Software for SteamOS?

[hookman]

Hopefully this is going to get some VR optimisations...
I just bought it to give it a go with the DK2. Right now I can only just reach 75fps with an i5 and a GTX980. I have to turn off all AA and set draw distance to almost minimum to achieve that!

[chrix]

Hm, doesn't look like a mesa bug, I think. I tried

#version 330
void main(void) {
   vec3 a = pow(vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0));
   vec3 b = pow(vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 0.0);
}

and mesa's glsl compiler says

Info log for pow.frag:
0:4(11): error: no matching function for call to `pow(vec3, float)'; candidates are:
0:4(11): error:    vec3 pow(vec3, vec3)
0:4(11): error:    float pow(float, float)
0:4(11): error:    vec2 pow(vec2, vec2)
0:4(11): error:    vec3 pow(vec3, vec3)
0:4(11): error:    vec4 pow(vec4, vec4)

and glslangValidator says

ERROR: 0:4: 'pow' : no matching overloaded function found
ERROR: 0:4: '=' :  cannot convert from 'const float' to 'temp 3-component vector of float'
ERROR: 2 compilation errors.  No code generated.

[Nakamura RTS]

Originally posted by main_gi:

I believe the wondrous A4 change is not mentioned either :D

What's that?

[keks]

The shader compile error will be fixed in the next update, thanks for letting us know.

As for the compositor, we can only hope that Valve implements it for linux soon.

[Cosmic Penguin]

I think Valve is waiting Vulkan to release the VR Compositor for linux for performance reasons.

[checkers_warfare_increased]

Originally posted by DoDNakamura:

Originally posted by main_gi:

I believe the wondrous A4 change is not mentioned either :D

What's that?

The star was made a lot less frustrating. One less problem in the game! :D

[5Star]

Any chance of supporting the Vive controllers? Even if it's just the trackpad for locomotion. I've owned, but have been holding off playing this, for a year or so until it worked in VR but I don't own a gamepad.

[Stedios]

How do you get this to run in VR? I put in the +VR 1 but when in Vive menu it only gives option to run Talos in big screen mode? cheers

[R3qL]

I put the game in beta but I get nothing with the Vive ... How to do ?

[Stedios]

Originally posted by Reall FR:

I put the game in beta but I get nothing with the Vive ... How to do ?

Once you put in +vr 1 in launch options start steam vr but launch it from your desktop pc (not in the vive) it gives an error that its not a vr game, but ignore and run, and it looks ok in vive but you can see the screen door a lot, If you have a gtx 980 ti I run it on the supersampled setting which makes it look a lot better.

[Grey Area]

Are there any setting s that can be tinkered with to improve the +vr 1 performance on a Vive? Optimal resolution?