Carzy Zarx’s PC Gaming Emporium - Catch Up on All the Latest PC Gaming Related News

[JEMC]

The Thursday news:

SALES /PLAYER COUNT & DEALS

This week, the Epic Store gives away two games:

• Call of the Wild: The Angler: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/call-of-the-wild-the-angler
• Invincible Presents: Atom Eve: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/atom-eve-ff090d

Next week, the free game will be Islets.

Humble Bundle features the new Earth Defense Force UNITED Bundle, with up to 23 items to get during the next 20 days: https://www.humblebundle.com/games/earth-defense-force-friends-unite.

Fanatical ha anew Star Deal: Metro Exodus - Gold Edition will be 86% off during 48 hours: https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/metro-exodus-gold-edition.

SOFTWARE & DRIVERS

AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 24.3.1 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/amd-radeon-software-adrenalin-24-3-1
Highlights

• New Game Support
  • Dragon’s Dogma 2
  • Horizon Forbidden West™ Complete Edition
  • Outpost: Infinity Siege
• Expanded HYPR-Tune Support
  • Dragon’s Dogma 2
  • Diablo® IV
  • Ghostrunner 2
  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Fixed Issues

• Excessive micro stutter may be intermittently experienced after enabling AMD Fluid Motion Frames for select games.
• Improvement to intermittent driver timeout or application crash experienced while playing HELLDIVERS™ 2 on AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 series GPUs.
• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while playing Starcraft II™ on Radeon™ RX 7000 series GPUs.
• Improvements to reduce initial loading times while playing World of Warcraft with DirectX 12 API on some AMD Graphics Products, such as the Radeon™ RX 6800.
• Purple corruption may be observed while playing Dying Light 2 Stay Human: Reloaded Edition with Radeon™ Boost and Raytracing enabled.
• Some characters may appear invisible or have missing textures while playing Cossacks 3.
• Flickering lights may be observed while playing Space Engineers in certain indoor environments.
• The maximum memory tuning limit may be incorrectly reported on AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 GRE graphics products.
• Shader caching may fail for Windows usernames containing accented characters.
• FPS performance metric may incorrectly report values while a game is minimized.
• GPU Acceleration may be missing/greyed out in Adobe Premiere Pro on some hybrid graphics systems.
• Performance drop may be observed while using some DirectML workloads in Topaz AI.

AMD has just announced FSR 3.1 with Improved Upscaling Quality
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-has-just-announced-fsr-3-1-with-improved-upscaling-quality/
AMD has just announced FSR 3.1 which will come with improved upscaling quality. This new version of FSR promises to improve image stability and reduce ghosting. And below, you can find some examples of these improvements.
(...)
AMD says FSR 3.1 will make games more stable when you’re still or moving. That means fewer flickers and shimmers, and less weirdness when things are in motion. Plus, it’ll reduce ghosting and preserve more details than before.
AMD FSR 3.1 also has another cool feature. With this new version, Frame Generation will work with all other upscaling techs. Finally, PC gamers will be able to use NVIDIA DLSS 2 or Intel XeSS alongside AMD FSR 3.1 Frame Generation.
>> The article has the gifs that AMD has provided to show the improvements.

INTEL Arc Graphics 31.0.101.5379 driver
https://videocardz.com/driver/intel-arc-graphics-31-0-101-5379
Highlights
GAMING HIGHLIGHTS
Intel® Game On Driver support on Intel® Arc™ A-series Graphics GPUs for:

• Diablo IV Ray Tracing Update 
• Dragon’s Dogma 2 
• Horizon Forbidden West 
• The Legend of the Condor Heroes 

Fixed Issues
Intel Arc A-Series Graphics Products:

• Counter Strike 2 (VK) may experience an application crash while launching game
• DOTA 2 (VK) may experience an application crash while launching game

Intel Core Ultra with built-in Intel Arc GPUs:

• Serif Affinity Photo 2 may experience an application crash while running benchmark.
• Alan Wake 2 (DX12) may experience corruption while turning off global reflection settings.

>> The article also has the average % fps improvement this driver brings in 9 games.

'You name it, we made it faster'—The State of Unreal keynote didn't just show off Unreal Engine 5.4 graphical goodies, but major performance optimisations too
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/game-development/you-name-it-we-made-it-fasterthe-state-of-unreal-keynote-didnt-just-show-off-unreal-engine-54-graphical-goodies-but-major-performance-optimisations-too/
Epic has delivered its annual keynote at this years GDC 2024, the "State of Unreal" address, and while there were plenty of demos showing off the expected graphical improvements and the addition of new tools and features to the latest version of Unreal Engine 5, some performance improvements were also announced to help our poor, ailing machines deal with all that fidelity.
(...)
This included faster Lumen, shadows and ray tracing effects, improved instance culling, improved parallelism in the renderer, and variable rate shading for Nanite.
This should come as good news for those of us with less than top-tier systems, as while UE5 has certainly shown off a lot of impressive visual features since its release, it can be remarkably demanding on your hardware.
Torangeau gave an example of the city sample from The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 demo, which on UE5.4 was said to, on console at least, reduce the render thread time by 50%, and reduce the GPU render time by 25%. Given the demanding nature of the demo and the use of console hardware, that bodes well for potential major performance gains in games making use of the new version of UE5 running on PC.

MODS, EMULATORS & FAN PROJECTS

New Skyrim Mods Add Subsurface Scattering, Dynamic Cubemaps, Water Caustics & Parallax Mapping
https://www.dsogaming.com/mods/new-skyrim-mods-add-subsurface-scattering-dynamic-cubemaps-water-caustics-parallax-mapping/
Modder ‘doodlez’ has released a few must-have mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition. These mods add to the game Subsurface Scattering, Dynamic Cubemaps, Water Caustics, Rain Wet Effects, and Water Parallax Mapping. So, let’s take a closer look at them.
>> The article has several gifs that show the changes.

Crusader Kings 2 modding peaks with 'Leper Roulette,' which gives members of your dynasty a chance of winning red, black and green all at once
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/strategy/crusader-kings-2-modding-peaks-with-leper-roulette-which-gives-members-of-your-dynasty-a-chance-of-winning-red-black-and-green-all-at-once/
Even in the wake of its sequel, Crusader Kings 2 remains my most-played game on Steam, having swallowed a full 585 hours of my life since it released all the way back in 2012. To be honest? It's a bit of a cakewalk these days. I'm so familiar with the game and all its systems that it's not long in any campaign before I'm ruling over all of Europe with some kind of semi-immortal dynasty of genetically perfect demigods. 
Is there anyone out there who can help add some challenge back into one of my favourite games of all time? Can anything be done to make the trials and travails of ruling Europe a bit more trialling and travailing?
Introducing Leper Roulette, a crime from CK2 modder Gembleton. 
Gembleton is relatively taciturn in the description for Leper Roulette on Nexus Mods, gnomically describing it as a mod "in which a random dynasty member is given leprosy every ~7 years." Perhaps this is what happened to Baldwin IV.
Much like real life, finding a loved one arbitrarily struck down by a Biblical plague of the flesh really makes it difficult to focus on your various admin tasks, layering on the challenge to a game that's long-since been broken over players' knees in its decade-plus on the market.
"No particular reason," says Gembleton of what compelled them to make the mod, "It just has a chance to really ruin your game." A quick glance at our hero's Nexus files page reveals a penchant for mods in this vein. One of them—a mod called GL's Negative Start—has an even more laconic description than Leper Roulette. It simply reads "I want die."
Gembleton does mention a figure named "Lybon" in the author credits and description for Leper Roulette, so it's probably all their fault. For purposes of drama, I am choosing to imagine Lybon as a figure like Twin Peaks' Killer Bob, a malignant spiritual presence that occasionally drives Gembleton to evil.
>> His most played game and has less than 600 hours in it? Pfff. Pathetic. Anyway, there are no videos or screenshots of the mod in the article.

GAMING NEWS

DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO gets first raw gameplay video
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/dragon-ball-sparking-zero-raw-gameplay-video/
Bandai Namco has released a new video, showcasing raw gameplay footage from its upcoming Dragon Ball game, DRAGON BALL: Sparking! ZERO. As such, this video will give you a pretty good idea of what this new DB game is all about.

Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra will be powered by Unreal Engine 5.4, gets first in-engine trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/marvel-1943-rise-of-hydra-will-be-powered-by-unreal-engine-5-4-gets-first-in-engine-trailer/
Marvel Games has just released a story trailer for its upcoming narrative-driven action-adventure game, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra. This trailer will give you a sneak peek into an original story that takes players on a WWII-era adventure.

Next-Generation Action MMORPG, Chrono Odyssey, Gets Stunning In-Engine GDC 2024 Trailer
https://www.dsogaming.com/videotrailer-news/next-generation-action-mmorpg-chrono-odyssey-gets-stunning-in-engine-gdc-2024-trailer/
Chrono Studio has shared a new in-engine GDC 2024 trailer for its upcoming next-generation action MMORPG, Chrono Odyssey. Chrono Odyssey will be powered by Unreal Engine 5, and promises to feature amazing graphics. So, be sure to watch the trailer after the jump.