Cloudbuilt Update — Mod Compatibility Status & Broken Mods List

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]Today’s update brings a highly requested fix for the game, as well as new features and fixes. Read on to learn more and remember to share your thoughts in the comments to make sure we get your feedback for future patches. Some of the technology and insights from this work will also carry forward into the Super Cloudbuilt re-release. [/p][p]This update’s goal was to fix Cloudbuilt’s final long-standing stability problem, but it became much more than that. With this patch, the game looks better, loads much faster and runs more reliably. Even more, we’ve added a new Records System that makes competing much more interesting and accessible to more players. To achieve these improvements, we tested the game on various devices, integrated graphics, Steam Deck and performed automated stress tests that continuously load levels. Custom levels were particularly useful because they can push the engine far beyond what the regular levels usually require. [/p][p align="center"][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/fadd1325d2c801579b9dc86abb19ea06153b2cf9.png"][/img][/p][h2]Lighting and Atmosphere[/h2][p]This is one of the biggest visual upgrades Cloudbuilt has received, and it makes the game both better looking and easier to read while playing. [/p][p]Cloudbuilt now has pencil sketched Ambient Occlusion, similar to Super Cloudbuilt. AO adds shading where surfaces meet, under overhangs, and between nearby structures. This gives environments more natural depth, and makes distances and overlapping geometry easier to judge while moving quickly. [/p][p]The AO technique itself is more advanced than the one currently used in Super Cloudbuilt, maintaining more stable shadows and details. The SCB's rendering pipeline was designed around AO from the start, so it integrates it a bit better, but the effect on Cloudbuilt is still quite impactful like you can see. We will continue to work on this technology and improve SCB even further in future patches. [i](Settings lets you select between 3 different quality settings or toggle it off entirely)[/i] [/p][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/6564b624bf5d545ca64a572c43f63a88afb45739.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/66f1ac2ad932c73a68855404a4f13b3400c6c62c.png"][/img][/carousel][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/e2e1f50d41c9cfd9d589cccbba6ed81679b0438e.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/8888033b4a93ddf06b89d37b478e80ec1c8daa38.png"][/img][/carousel][p]Fog has also received a substantial improvement with more nuances and directionality. Distant structures now fit much more naturally into the sky while conveying far more of their depth and shape. Previously, a lot of that detail could become completely lost in the fog. [/p][p]Some additional shading also helps distant geometry retain definition without moving too far away from the original style. [/p][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/fad572ed20ff255dcd2042b1f7ee4feeb25a0722.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/06fa457d670b99fc6fe81a13565a8bb6a660e5ee.png"][/img][/carousel][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/8e2bb17e9e65a35169bf0d096ba40861715b157b.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/0ed3a039114f6ec204151446ca2e5d5932f37681.png"][/img][/carousel][p]I also made smaller lighting changes to reduce visible banding and other artifacts in subtle light gradients.[/p][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/5cffd1bd9acfb590cf4c593c87b56d51301a1eb5.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/d96652d8aeeb0fb0771244680902c9d2231e2e24.png"][/img][/carousel][p][/p][carousel][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/bb8f97524381906c6b44862e4978ac62acb2d604.png"][/img][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/a037468edca32ad9910ab4684ec92310fd0ba6c2.png"][/img][/carousel][p]The AO, fog, and lighting work here will also feed into the Super Cloudbuilt re-release, where I plan to push the rendering further again. [/p][h2]Records and Score Distribution[/h2][p]Records now give your times much more context, which makes improving and competing fun for a much wider range of players. [/p][p]The new score distribution shows where your result sits across the player base instead of only showing you who is at the top, reflecting your progress compared to the other players as a whole.[/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/c18635b032bfaae5ab754a9871e6d1eef15b7612.png"][/img][/p][p]Existing Steam leaderboards and historical scores remain intact, but this score distribution view has become the new default. [/p][p]We wanted a system like this for a long time, and we’re thrilled to finally add it to the game. A similar system is also planned for Super Cloudbuilt, so the work and feedback here will help shape that further. Please let us know what you think![/p][p][/p][h2]Faster Loading and a Major Memory Rework[/h2][p]This is where most of the under-the-hood work went, and the payoff is substantial: significantly faster loading and dramatically better stability in long sessions and demanding levels. [/p][p]Across the levels we tested, the time from selecting a level until the scene was ready was almost halved compared with the previous build. Startup to the main menu was also roughly a quarter faster in all the tests.[/p][p][/p][p]Textures are now compiled into a game-specific format so the engine can access the data it needs directly, wasting less memory and loading faster. Small texture snapshots can also restore known boot, menu, and gameplay states in bulk, with far fewer individual file accesses. All of this contributes to the faster bootup times.[/p][p][/p][p]Two substantial runtime dependencies were removed entirely in the process. The old image-decoding library is no longer needed during gameplay, and the remaining C# scripts for triggers and sound callbacks have been converted to native C++. That means less memory overhead, faster execution, and fewer things that can go wrong.[/p][p][/p][p]The original stability problem was memory fragmentation. Cloudbuilt is still a 32-bit application and is thus limited to a very small memory budget. Repeated memory allocations could gradually split its already limited available address space into smaller spread out pieces. Eventually a large allocation could critically fail even though plenty of memory was technically still free. On some systems, this could cause a crash after only around 30 to 50 consecutive level loads.[/p][p][/p][p]With the new systems in place, an overnight test on even an Intel integrated-graphics laptop completed more than 700 level loads, still running strong in the morning while remaining below 2 GB of process memory, with no signs of the steady growth seen before.[/p][p][/p][table equalcells="1" colwidth=""][tr][td][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/769cc50f83cdb29274d9e5aea17016d73ee4db06.jpg"][/img][/p][/td][/tr][tr][td][p]We had no screenshot of the 700 levels run, but here is an example of the stress test at 61 levels on the integrated graphics laptop.[/p][/td][/tr][/table][p][/p][p]For you, tech-savvy players, the previous general-purpose allocation used throughout the game has been replaced with a custom allocation system designed around Cloudbuilt's actual workloads. It is faster, reduces fragmentation, and can completely remove per-allocation overhead in many places. Data is also separated based on life time now. For example, temporary data is kept separate from memory that needs to survive for an entire level or session.[/p][p][/p][p]Model storage received a large rework too. Data is packed much more efficiently, smaller index and data formats are used where possible, memory layouts have been improved on the CPU, and batching can allocate combined geometry directly and use more compact representations where safe.[/p][p][/p][p]Models that only need their geometry on the GPU can now release the CPU copy after upload.[/p][p][/p][p]Level blocks also avoid creating large numbers of temporary GPU resources before batching determines what is actually needed. Since almost all normal block faces end up batched, this removes a lot of unnecessary resource creation and driver memory churn. [/p][p]Detailed allocation tracking and debugging tools were built alongside the new system so its behaviour could be inspected and verified during real play and extended stress tests.[/p][table equalcells="1" colwidth=""][tr][td][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/5695993/3a096fc100931ccc60d63dae7433f723dcc7f66b.png"][/img][/p][/td][/tr][tr][td][p]An WIP view of the dedicated PhysX allocators debugging. Purple means small memory blocks that has overflown into the main pool area, which should be fixed. Red means fragmented small free blocks. The isolated section in the middle there is a dedicated overflow buffer, intended for if the dedicated pools spill over, it avoid fragmenting the main pool from small spills. In this image there were a lot. This was sometime late last year. All of these issues has since been resolved.[/p][/td][/tr][/table][p][/p][p]We have put a lot of effort into this update, and wanted to share some of the details with you![/p][p][/p][h2]Performance and the Steam Deck [/h2][p]The nice part is that all the new graphical work did not come at the cost of performance as we’ve been optimizing the engine along the way too. In the scenes we tested, Cloudbuilt is at least as fast as it used to be, but oftentimes, it’s even faster. [/p][p]Even with the High AO settings enabled, average performance was similar to or better than the older build across the scenes we profiled. With AO disabled, those same scenes were faster still.[/p][p][/p][p]Steam Deck saw an especially large practical improvement.[/p][p][/p][p]The regular campaign already ran well, but the old memory and driver behaviour would often cause problems after several level loads. Some very large community levels could also push it far enough to consistently fail during even its first loading. [/p][p]That is now all fixed! [/p][