* They did not make the HD textures themselves - they are AI upscaled by SrRaul (with his permission) and can be found here on ModDB. They used version 4.3 of his mod, which had errors in it, instead of 4.4 that was already out by the time they released the update.
* Textures now use .ktx format, which is overall a good thing, as it's highly optimized for 3D renderers. Unfortunately, they force extremely aggressive compression, which, while severely reduces file size and loading times, very noticeably affects the visual quality, especially on the HUD elements.
* Changed the logic of loading 3D assets, which causes visual errors in certain areas and as can be seen by the traitor knights - do not even load the correct 3D mesh. The latter can be fixed, but requires modifying a game file to never load the incorrect mesh, which in turn will break if any mod tries to load it after all.
* Basically none of the gameplay-affecting annoyances have been fixed.
* Water reflections do not have the ripple effect anymore. It is applied only to entities like characters and items, but not the actual map geometry. The water ends up looking like a mirror and some areas look incredibly surreal as a result.
* The newly introduced bloom, motion blur, ambient occlusion, etc. effects are not only disproportionately performance heavy, just look awful in most cases. Third party solutions like SweetFX look better.
* The new reworked camera addresses the issue of shaking while being locked on. Unfortunately, while not locked on, the control method is changed and feels incredibly unresponsive. Thankfully it can be turned off.
* Sky is completely unaffected by fog and looks atrocious in fog-heavy levels like Orlok and Tel Halaf.
* Multiple users (including myself) report microstuttering and input lag even if the game is running at 200+ fps.
* Bow aiming is extremely jittery. Ironically enough, this issue was present in all versions prior to v94, where it was fixed. They somehow broke it AGAIN.
* Animated textures (called AutoGen textures in script files) are broken. Lava is subsequently not animated and looks awful because of the aforementioned compression.
* Completely undocumented engine changes that break mod compatibility.
* English translation now has errors in places that previously didn't.
* Screenshots are not saved properly. Their RGB channels are incorrect, resolution is capped at 160x120.
It's not unplayable and there are some legitimately good changes in there, but some of the good parts have already been done by modders better while the bad parts stick out. It's a wasted potential of an update. The community is tiny and nobody is interested in re-writing all of the mods to be compatible with this version when there is no guarantee that they don't release another update half a year down the line with no patch notes that breaks compatibility again.
TheLeadHead
joined
Amateur modder. 90's - early 2000's game enthusiast.