Firewatch PS4 patch 1.02 improves framerate and draw distance
Dev planning to upgrade to upcoming version of Unity.
Firewatch has received a new 1.02 patch on PS4 after many criticisms about its performance on Sony's console.
According to developer Campo Santo's patch notes, things like draw distance, framerate, glitches, and hanging during loading screens have been ironed out.
There's still no way to lock the framerate at 30fps, however, so it's unclear exactly how smooth this update makes the game. "We're still not done supporting Firewatch!" the developer stated on its official blog. "We're currently working with Unity on further improving the game by upgrading to an upcoming version of their engine. We're also planning to add subtitles for other languages to the PS4 version."
In the meantime, here's the patch notes:
- Draw distance and shadow render distance have been improved, which should remove significant texture popping.
- Streaming loading and unloading has been significantly adjusted with extra safeties so you should no longer see loading happen right in front of you.
- We got Unity to fix a very rare hang that could occur when loading and unloading scenes.
- Many instances of unstable framerate have been improved.
- Auto-saves are now far less frequent, as they were causing the worst framerate hitches we have been seeing.
- Several places where people were escaping the world or getting stuck in collision have been refined. Also, if you are stuck in an endlessly falling state, the game will attempt to put you back, either through loading the last save or respawning Henry aboveground.
- Various cases where you were able to interrupt or break your current quest have been safeguarded.
Technical flaws aside, we were big fans of Campo Santo's debut with our Chris Donlan calling it "a triumph of craft" in his Firewatch review. It's also very pretty in pictures.
