Eternal Return
1.0.0c Hotfix
*Some changes may not be applied to tooltips or Practice modes.
Check out the details on our Website.
1.0.0b Hotfix
*Some changes may not be applied to tooltips or Practice modes.
[Fixes]
- You will now be able to invite your friends to a team within the FriendsUI.
- The team invitation pop-up will not appear during the start of the game and in-game.
- When the game crashes the screen will not continue loading indefinitely anymore.
- The team invitation pop-up will not appear on the strategy map anymore.
- The game will no longer load indefinitely when entering the lobby intermittently after a date reset.
- Today’s missions reset time will be changed to 8:00 (PT)
- Areas will now be displayed correctly.
- You will now get Death Challenger Jan's skin normally after achieving the corresponding level on the FREE ER PASS.
- We'll be soon sending Death Challenger Jan to the players that didn't get this reward through the in-game mailbox.
- Items that were not supposed to be up for sale will be removed from Research Center Data Boxes.
Additionally, certain items that should not be included in the Research Center Data Box have been confirmed and will no longer be in the boxes as of the 1.0.0b Hotfix.
[Items excluded from Research Center Data Box (Complete Items/Designs)]
- Season 8 Lumia Marathoner
- Season 9 Lumia Marathoner
- Collegiate Emblem
- I love Boogi Spray
- Cheer up Boogi Spray
- I love Boogi Emote
- Cheer up Boogi Emote
If you have obtained any of the items excluded from the Research Center Data Box, we will retrieve them all during the next maintenance and send you [Research Center Data Boxes] and [Data Keys] instead, including the previously excluded items.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.
ALERT! Secret Coupons have been detected!
Eternal Return 1.0 was finally launched yesterday! To commemorate the beginning of a new experiment, we'll be releasing 3 limited time Secret Coupons!!
Get ready for some Top Secret rewards and enjoy them with your friends during the weekend!
[Eternal Return 1.0 Secret Weekend Coupons]
* Event Notes
- How to Redeem: Go to [Settings] → [Support] → [Use Coupon]
- Secret Weekend Coupons are only valid for the timeframe shown on the schedule above.
- Only one usage per account is allowed.
Grab Bag Drops 1.0 Event Rewards
Today we started our Official Launch Celebration Drops event but it seems like there was something we didn't foresee.
Currently, when you watch a stream on Eternal Return's Twitch category, you cannot see how much A-Coin or Event NP you'll get from Grab Bag Drops which could be a little frustrating.
We're so sorry about that.
Therefore, as a measure to fix this unwanted uncertainty we'd like to give you a fixed amount of A-Coin and NP when you get a Grab Bag Drops.
This will be applied from today July 20th at 6 AM (PT) until the end of the event on August 2nd 7:59 AM (PT).
Grab Bag Drops:
- 1,500 A-Coin or 300 Event NP (3 Days)
Remember:
* You will receive Drops rewards once you fulfill the reward conditions.
* You must claim the 1 hour reward in your Twitch inventory before receiving the next 1 hour reward.
* Drops obtained during this event will remain in your Twitch inventory for 3 days after receiving them. After claiming them from your Twitch inventory, you can redeem them in-game (Store -> Twitch Drops). Drops remain in your in-game store for 7 days before expiring.
*To receive Drop rewards, you need to connect your Twitch account to the Drops channel (https://twitch.playeternalreturn.com/).
* Make sure to check the Event NP valid thru date.
*The cumulative watch time is updated daily at 7:59 AM (PT).
UI Improvements Plan
We've gotten a lot of great feedback about the UI in Eternal Return 1.0. It's always great to hear your input since it helps us a lot when working on improvements.
After making such big changes on the game, it's always hard to know what the reaction would be on them, and we are sorry if we couldn't meet your expectations. There are many things that will need further improvements and polishing. The reason is that some of these were either things that we got so used to while working on them for so long or things that were pointed out during the testing period but that we weren't able to adjust on time. And especially, some things related to optimization had to be pushed aside since we didn't have the resources to focus on them.
However, based on the rigorous feedback we've received from you, we're prioritizing UI improvements and moving forward in a way that will allow us to improve the current situation faster.
Fixing the UI is not something that can be done in a day or two, as there are a lot of interrelated features and it requires a lot of code modifications and testing as well as design work.
There are also a lot of issues related to the optimization structure of the UI, so we don't think a rollback would be the fastest alternative, as it would require much more time than focusing on making further improvements.
We've summarized some of the feedback we've received from all of you and how we're acting in response to it.
Crafting Guide & VPad are our top priority concern to address.
- Feedback 1: It's hard to see materials in the Crafting Guide.
- Feedback 2: Remote Drones are no longer available in the Crafting Guide.
- These two feedbacks will be addressed by displaying materials under the Crafting Guide and adding Remote Drones to it.
- Feedback 3: Crafting Guides don't disappear when completed, making it inconvenient to add new items.
We're going to fix this by allowing you to left-click on a crafted piece of equipment and turn it into a Legendary item directly in the guide. The current inconvenience will be mitigated, and a feature that allows it to disappear automatically will be added later in the future as this is currently connected to many other aspects in the game.
Inconvenient Aspects of Equipment, Inventory and Skills will be next on the list.
- Feedback 4: Inventory has become too small.
- Feedback 5: The empty space between the skill icons and the HP bar is annoying.
- Feedback 6: Equipment looks too small.
Of these, feedback 4 and 5 are relatively straightforward, but we think we need to tackle them sequentially, as there's a high risk of running into code issues if we tackle them at the same time as feedback 1 to 3. After taking all into consideration, we've decided that the functional issues with the Crafting Guide are more pressing, so we'll tackle them first and then move on to this part of the project.
We're aiming to solve 1 to 3 before the end of Preseason. And if time allows it, we may even be able to do 5. However, number 6 is going to take a little more time because it's going to require some bigger changes.
We will also look into how to proceed with the inconvenience related to Overlay (F8).
Issue 7: Show enemy weapon masteries and tactical skills when enabling F8 Overlay.
This was excluded because the existing feature had a fatal optimization problem: dynamic UIs with information that needs to be updated in real-time are the most difficult to optimize, so it can have a huge impact on optimization immediately. We will try to find a technical way to reduce the optimization load and keep you updated.
We apologize once again for the inconveniences caused with the new UI and we'll try our best address all your feedback as quickly as possible.
As always thank you for your patience!
1.0.0a Hotfix
*Some changes may not be applied to tooltips or Practice modes.
[Fixes]
- Some items that should not be included in the Research Center Data Box will no longer be obtained.
Items excluded from Research Center Data Box (finished product/design)
- Elena's Not Pleased!
- Elena in Charge
- Sneaky Nicky
- Go for it, Nicky!
- Bloody Good!
- Fang-tastic Student Bianca
- Pop Quiz Problems
- Quiz Cutie Hyejin
- Second Place Hyejin
If you've acquired an item excluded from the Research Center Data Box, we will retrieve the item and give you Research Center Data Boxes and Data Keys instead.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
PATCH NOTES 1.0.0 - July 20th 2023
21th Dev Journal
Hello Lumia Island survivors!
Today's Dev Journal will cover the Frame Report.
There's a saying in the game industry that you should never make optimization promises. There's a lot of variation in player experience because the overall optimization improvements don't apply equally to everyone, and even if the overall optimization improves, there's always a chance that one particular operation will pop up that causes problems, so it becomes a never-ending process. So we’re going to be very careful about bringing up optimization in this Dev Journal.
Optimization was a top priority internally as we prepared for Eternal Return 1.0.
Squad Mode in particular had the most frequent framerate issues, and with 24 players, we were concerned that if we didn't optimize it, the game might not even be viable.
So the optimization work went ahead with the intention of redesigning a lot of the invisible “Back End”. In terms of workload, this was by far the biggest thing we've ever introduced in the Dev Journals.
Here's a quick overview of the main things we worked on.
First, a Light Map was applied to Lumia Island. Previously, light sources were calculated in real time, but Light Map converts pre-calculated lighting effects and shadows into textures (image files of the surface of objects) through a process called baking. While this slightly increases VRAM usage due to the large amount of lighting information stored in textures, it greatly reduces computation while still allowing for colorful lighting effects that are difficult to express in real-time lighting.
A Grid Map is a conversion from the in-game coordinate system to the coordinate system of a virtual plane, rather than using the actual objects placed on the island. This can greatly reduce the amount of computation in the physics engine, as it simplifies things by not having to calculate every object directly, but it also requires a lot of detailed calibration, as switching back and forth between the two coordinate systems can introduce perceived inconsistencies.
Addressable Assets, which allow you to address game resources (models, textures, animations, effects, etc.) to streamline loading, was one of our goals, but unfortunately fell by the wayside in this iteration and will have to wait for another time.
One of the biggest tasks we faced was optimizing the UI and Information Management. Eternal Return is a game with a lot of information that is updated in real time. Unlike first-person games, where you can abbreviate a lot of information about distant enemies, the information of all participants can be seen at any time, and the amount of information represented by the UI is large, so information management was an area where we had a lot of work to do and caught a lot of leaks.
We also focused on reusability of all resources used in the game. Not only did the number of players increase, but the number of Wild Animals and objects also increased to accommodate the larger map, and to optimize this, we implemented a system where resources are loaded first and reused in the game as much as possible.
Also, character skills are often heavy effects that use a lot of computation and memory, so we put a lot of effort into optimizing the effects. Some of these were introduced in the character side, but there were many other cases as well.
Towards the end of our Dev period, the latest stable version of Unity, the engine on which the game is based, was released as Unity 2022, which meant an engine update. Updates to the underlying engine can fix a lot of issues that our code can't reach in the long run, but they can also cause a lot of short-term issues, making them difficult to do during live service. But, we had scaled back our live updates for Eternal Return 1.0, so we could be a little more aggressive.
In addition, many other improvements were made, and we wanted to measure their impact.
Frame Drops was the most frequent frustrating issue during gameplay, so Frame Protection was the most important goal.
We set up about 30 different environments with different graphic cards, option settings, and in-game situations, and measured frames 11 times for both the Early Access version and the Official Launch version. Here's a comparison of the most recent frames from the Early Access version (0.87, blue line) and the Official Launch version (1.0.5, red line). The higher the frames, the smoother the movement.
In addition to the combat 6-player test, we also had non-combat tests, such as moving around Lumia Island, and stress tests, in which 18 people were constantly fighting.
In almost all of the 30 environments, frames were noticeably improved, and even after version 1.0.5, which is shown in red, there were further optimizations, so the improvements went beyond the graph.
In addition to frames, we also measured changes in CPU, GPU, and memory utilization, of which the goal was to maintain the status quo, and we saw a slight increase in CPU and GPU utilization, but wasn't a significant change.
But, memory utilization increased relatively.
CPU and GPU, but especially memory utilization, have a Trade-Off with frames. Loading more resources into memory, make frames to hold up better. But, we tend to be much more cautious, as increased CPU and GPU utilization can lead to other problems, including crashes.
The increase in memory utilization is not a problem when the RAM requirement is 8GB or more, but in a 4GB environment, it becomes virtually impossible to run due to the default usage of the operating system. As a result, we're raising the minimum memory requirement to 8GB to ensure a better playing experience.
Game loading times have also been significantly reduced. There was a particularly long loading problem when the PC was turned on and the game was run for the first time. While depending on the environment, we were able to see that loading times dropped from an average of 2 minutes to around 30 seconds on some PC. We also saw a significant improvement in the loading time of Lumia Island when starting the game.
Improving overall loading time also has a Trade-Off. The size of the update per patch is now larger than before, and instead of the easy solution of bundling chunks to load to speed up the process, it's more of a concept of having to patch the whole bundle every time you patch.
We've given you a bunch of figures, but at the end of the day, the experience of optimization can vary from player to player. The dilemma with optimization is always that it may not be fair to everyone, and it can have unexpected behavior, especially in untested environments.
"I didn't experience any lag during gameplay."
When I played with the number of frames unlocked, I didn't notice any frame drop.
"Steam's own framerate hovered between 100 and 140, so I didn't have any issues playing."
"When I was doing the test internally, I was last in the rankings, so when I played live, I felt a lot of optimization backlash."
While a few pieces of feedback are by no means representative of the entire experience, and everyone's experience will be different, we've gotten a lot of feedback that it's much better than the old experience, so we're hoping to see a more pleasant Eternal Return.
This concludes the Dev Journals for Eternal Return 1.0.
We are now 3 days away from the Official Launch. And no matter how much we prepared, we still feel like we didn't do enough for all the players who have been patiently waiting for us.
We've made it to 1.0 after three long years of Early Access, and we owe it all to you, our players.
We'll keep working hard to bring you a more fun game over the next three days and beyond!
As always, thank you!
Eternal Return 1.0 Animation Intro (Full Ver.)
A few weeks earlier we released the teaser for a special animation project. If you liked that, then you're gonna love this!
The full-length video of Eternal Return 1.0's Animation Intro has been released on our Official YouTube Channel!
Watch it now!
Eternal Return 1.0 Animation Intro (Full Ver.)
✨✨Eternal Return 1.0 Official Launch on Thurs, July 20th 2023✨✨
◆ Sign up to participate in Eternal Return 1.0's Official Launch Experiment and get rewards!
- 4 Emotes
- Midnight Aurora Rio Skin
- Dr. Nadja Background, Border, and 2 Icons: CHUG! / Need... Caffeine...
▶▶ Eternal Return 1.0 Official Launch Experiment: [See More]
◆ Participate in Battle Royale Mini-games and win prizes!
- Enter to win a total of 26 prizes, including an Eternal Return custom PC, gaming monitor, and more!
▶▶ Battle Royale Mini-game: [See More]
◆ You can also earn a variety of rewards through ER LAB Attendance Event!
- Singer-songwriter Priya (Emote, Profile Icon, Spray)
- Singer-songwriter Priya Skin
- OP.GG Felix Skin
▶▶ ER LAB Website: [See More]
Eternal Return 1.0 [ER Pass: VACANCE] Preview
Get a sneak peek at Eternal Return 1.0's ER PASS: VACANCE Skins!
Eternal Return 1.0's ER Pass: VACANCE Preview