Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is receiving a pretty big update that, among other things, will introduce support for Vulkan, a low-level cross-platform API. In doing so, Vulkan continues to grow its street cred among developers.
This comes just a few months after Cloud Imperium Games developer Ali Brown decided to drop DirectX support in Star Citizen in favor of Vulkan, which is maintained by the Khronos Group, the same industry group in charge of the older OpenGL API. In that case, Brown made the decision because Vulkan enables single-API support for older versions of Windows (and Linux) without sacrificing performance and features.
The same motivation is likely behind Oxide Games and Stardock deciding to bring Vulkan support to Escalation. That and a desire to lead the charge by bringing new technology to its players—Ashes of the Singularity was one of the first DX12 games.
According to Guru3D, this is not a one-and-done affair. The latest v2.4 update is just the first step, with further optimizations and better compatibility planned with future updates.
To enable Vulkan, you need to right-click on Escalation in your Steam library, select properties, and then select the 2.4 opt-in under the betas tab.
Here are the full highlights for the 2.4 update:
- UI—A full menu reworking makes the game more accessible with new orbital ability icons, improved chat displays, and more.
- Campaign and Scenarios—Several scenarios and all three campaigns have been updated to refine difficulty levels, adjust to the changes of previous updates, and improve the user experience.
- Modding—Modders have access to more parts of the game and will benefit from several changes that makes modding more intuitive.
- Balance—Changes to air units, anti-air, drones, and dreadnoughts will improve strategic diversity. The Substrate receives some additional changes in order to differentiate themselves from the PHC.
- Vulkan Support—This graphics-rendering API offers enhanced OS compatibility and performance.
- Updated Benchmark—The benchmark has been updated so that players can see how well their PC runs under Vulkan.
There are a total of nine maps included in the free co-op map pack DLC. This is all due out on August 24.
