There’s a new 1.4.0 patch at large for Dying Light on the PC, which aims to bring a bit more performance optimisation and stability to the game. I can’t speak for everyone, but having just tested it out by running around the slums map for a bit, it does seem to have brought me some performance boosts.
Frame-rates are still highly variable (sometimes depending on where I’m looking, sometimes … not,) but now seem to dip from the 50s into the mid-30s, instead of regularly dropping into mid-20s or even below. I even saw a frame-rate above 70 in the outside regions, which I definitely didn’t encounter before this patch. Even if I looked at nothing but a blank wall.
For reference, my PC is an i3-2100, 8GB RAM and a 2GB 7870. I’ve got Dying Light graphics options set to medium across the board, with most of the other stuff (V-sync, all the Nvidia stuff, SSAO) turned off. AA is on. My view distance is at about 20%.
Might well be possible to squeeze out more consistent performance by tinkering with a few of those things, but I’ve not tried that yet. The under-spec CPU and AMD card are probably not helping me here.
Still, better performance than before, so it’s worth booting Dying Light up again if you gave up due to rubbish frame-rates. There’s also a film-grain toggle now (nothing for chromatic aberration though.)
[Edit]: So, inevitably, it’s not all good news. The word is that shadow maps are now limited to 2048, and various reflections may also have been removed from the game. I was already using lower quality shadow maps, so that alone wouldn’t account for my own frame-rate boosts; but the reflections thing might. I’m not entirely sure why Techland keeps stripping away the higher-end graphic options with patches. It would surely make more sense to just expand the range, giving people more lower-end options and leaving the higher stuff alone. Option variety is good!
Here’s the changelog:
Hardware, performance & stability issues
• Resolved various stability issues
• Numerous general performance optimizations
• Significantly reduced RAM memory usage
Gameplay issues
• Added option to disable film grain video effect.
• Fixed the issue with reaching Survivor Rank 25
• Optimized video memory management to eliminate “ResizeBuffers failed 0x887a0005” error message
• Fixed extremely long load times that some users were experiencing
• Resolved issues with unlocking certain achievements
• Fixed the issue with ammo disappearing from player’s inventory when attempting shooting challenges
• Resolved issues with Personal Statistics menu
• Fixed problems with using keys assigned to gameplay features during chat
• Fixed duplicating weapons exploit
Be-the-Zombie mode
• Fixed the ‘infinite spit’ exploit in Be-the-Zombie mode
• Fixed several issues with connecting to games when playing as the zombie
• Added additional tools for tracking network issues
Game data integrity (modding)
• Games can be modded
• Modded games will not work online with original unchanged versions
• Modded games will work with other identically modded games
Graphical Bugs
• Resolved extremely low resolution textures on certain objects regardless of texture quality settings
