Crytek just added a massive patch to Hunt: Showdown with the 1.2 update. As a note, included in this update is the charity DLC pack to support the Australian wildfire relief efforts, which you can read more about here.
The DLC pack is a fantastic effort both content-wise and for charity, but it’s far from the only thing being added in. Crytek is making a huge number of changes and additions with this patch, from more realistic AI to a variety of ways to kill them. We’ll get into the weaponry in an update later today, as the new arsenal being added in deserves its own spotlight. For now, we’ll focus on the gameplay and mechanical changes.
Starting with the AI, Crytek has made the following changes:
- AI located inside a structure now less likely to react to stimuli outside of the structure.
- Collisions between Hunters and AI have been improved, with AI no longer blocking players running at them.
- Improvements made to the behavior of the Meathead enemy with no spawned leeches to ensure more consistent reactions to players.
- Improvements made to the Leeches’ perception of players when the player is unreachable, as well as to how the Armored handles iron and sliding doors.
In terms of the Butcher, he’s had his resistance to explosive damage decreased. This allows him to be killed with a single Big dynamite bundle, making downing him a much, much easier task.
There have also been an array of audio improvements, including an improvement to “ear-ringing” audio to be less intrusive for those that have a tinnitus condition. Reverb has been modified to increase realism, performance, and consistency, and the pianos in-game now include a version of the songs from the Hunt soundtrack.
The client has also received an update to help it focus on relieving performance issues on machines with a low core count. The responsive times when opening and closing the in-game map have been improved, and there’s been some general optimization of the scripting virtual machine. There will be fewer animations being processed for a handful of entities “that didn’t require such frequent updates,” as well as an improved synchronization of animation jobs. Finally, there have been some general CPU optimization and AI-related performance improvements as well.
All in all, patch 1.2 is an enormous patch that brings a lot to the table. We highly suggest you read the full patch notes here to get the whole picture, but this tl;dr should be sufficient if you just wanted to catch up on the more mechanical changes.