Hi everyone,
I bet you didn't expect an Ys IX performance patch!
Some background: while working on the upcoming release of Trails from Zero, and specifically looking to keep it at a solid 60 FPS on all maps on the Nintendo Switch, I implemented an optimization which I thought might also be helpful for Ys IX.
So I ported it over, and depending on the hardware and in-game scenario, some testers saw improvements of 25% in CPU limited scenarios. As such, it seems worth releasing publicly.
Note that this improvement requires Direct3D feature level 11_1. If you are using some very old hardware or operating system version which does not support this, the game will automatically fall back to the previous rendering path.
We also included a few other minor changes in this update. Here are the full patch notes:
While we do not expect this patch to introduce any regressions, with the great variety of hardware and software configurations available on PC this is not always guaranteed in all circumstances. As such, you can return to previous versions of the game by selecting any of the public “version_*” branches on Steam.
Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3
It has been a while, but today we are very happy to announce a major update to Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. The most important new feature this update introduces is local co-op. Two players can join together to not only fight monsters and explore dungeons (as in Ys VIII), but also explore the city of Balduq. Beyond co-op, this update also brings support for aspect ratios narrower than 16:9 and a number of more minor bug fixes which we have accumulated since the release. These will be detailed at the end of this announcement.
The local co-op feature allows two players to play Ys IX together, at every point in the story where more than one character is available.
Note that there is an in-game co-op setting which you need to enable in order for co-op to be available. Once this setting is enabled, the co-op player can drop in and out of the game using the "Start" (or equivalent) button on any non-primary controller, while the "Select" button on the secondary controller toggles the player ID indicators ("P1" and "P2") on and off.
Unlike Ys VIII, where co-op was mostly limited to combat, the second player is largely equivalent to the primary player in terms of capabilities in Ys IX, including movement and combat abilities, using Monstrum Gifts, discovering and triggering landmarks, enemies and events, opening chests, picking up collectibles, and initiating dialogue. Only interacting with menus and the map is restricted to player one. Another significant improvement over the co-op feature in Ys VIII is that character switching is implemented individually for each player: that is, if there are 3 characters in the current party, players one and two can both independently switch to the currently-unused character without affecting each other.
Of course, given the experimental nature of this feature, there are some constraints and restrictions to keep in mind:
Previous versions of Ys IX used letterboxing for any resolution aspect ratio narrower than 16:9. In this version, all 3D scenes render at full resolution for aspect ratios such as 16:10 (even down to 4:3). 2D elements such as the menu or map screens will still be letterboxed as, just like for ultrawide, the effort to redesign all of these to be aspect-ratio-independent is prohibitive.
I am personally very much a fan of local co-op in games, and feel like too few RPGs in particular offer the option to play their main campaign in co-op. I hope this update brightens the day of my fellow co-op aficionados out there, as well as anyone playing on a 16:10 monitor.
Peter "Durante" Thoman, PH3
Hi everyone,
we have fixed various minor issues with Ys 9 and implemented some new features:
Note: Due to the additional graphics improvements now associated with the draw distance setting, higher levels will have a somewhat higher performance impact than on the previous version. Also, the "Lunatic" setting is strictly intended for very high-end systems and future proofing.
Hi everyone,
there were several reported issues which could be fixed quickly, so we pushed out a minor patch:
