Somehow, MindsEye is not dead: A new update promises to improve performance by removing 'ambient rubbish'

I had pretty much written off MindsEye as a dead issue. The first third-party game to be published by IO Interactive, it was such a mess at launch that it might also be the last; concurrent player counts on Steam have crashed to a dozen or so a day, and there's been literally no sign of life from the game or developer Build a Rocket Boy since mid-July. By all reasonable measures, it was over.

And yet, it was not over. Build a Rocket Boy punched out a new patch today, with the workmanlike name of Update 4, which it says ushers in more bug fixes, performance enhancements, and "a range of UX improvements." Interestingly, it also promises that Update 5 is in the works, with "major performance, combat and Enemy AI system improvement."

There's no marquee change here that I can see. "Trailer Tanks in Free Roam now explode when shot at," which I suppose is good—explosions are fun—and it disables "ambient rubbish" to improve performance, which leads to an obvious joke that, out of respect for the difficulty of making games, I will not make.

"NPCs that are aiming and in-cover now look more natural" is another potentially notable fix: If you recall PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde's time with MindsEye, NPCs looking natural in combat were in awfully short supply.

Yeah, that's pretty bad, alright.

Making the patch even more of a surprise is the way the whole MindsEye situation has been so bizarre. Ahead of the game's launch, Build a Rocket Boy co-CEO accused unnamed parties of "a concerted effort to trash the game and the studio," and instead of disavowing the statement, studio founder (and former Rockstar stalwart) Leslie Benzies made essentially the same claim after MindsEye launched and tanked.

Benzies also reportedly said the studio planned to "relaunch" the game at some point, even though a significant portion of the studio was laid off after MindsEye bombed. Oh, and Build a Rocket Boy's chief financial officer and chief legal officer both quit less than two weeks before the game was set to launch. So yeah, it's been a weird one.

The obvious question now is, can MindsEye be saved? I'm not a naturally negative kind of guy, but to borrow a phrase, that's gonna be a "no" from me. The concurrent player count on Steam (via SteamDB), as I noted earlier, is vanishingly small: The release of the patch does seem to have sparked a bump—to a 24-hour peak of 26, the highest it's been since mid-August, when MindsEye briefly surged to 31 players at the same time. That's not exactly throwing off big 'Redemption Tour' vibes.

Even if MindsEye's technical problems are eventually addressed, the general consensus among players is that the game just isn't very good, and you can't patch that. And Build a Rocket Boy has done itself no favors throughout any of this: Aside from patch notes and a mid-July post on X, the studio has remained steadfastly silent, giving its community nothing to hold onto except a sense that they've been strung along and left hanging.

So yeah, it's definitely grim—but on the other hand, there is a new patch out today. Anything's possible, right? The full patch notes are below.

IMPROVEMENTS

Environment

• Trailer Tanks in Free Roam now explode when shot at
• Several improvements have been made to architecture and assets to help with performance
• Improved weather change when player leaves the Factory at the start of Robin Hood Mission
• Improved traversal on A New Job and Loose Ends missions where player may get stuck in certain assets

Visual Effects

• Cutscene VFX performance improvements 
• Cutscene VFX management changes and Niagara system updates to reduce CPU spikes and overall frame rate 
• Disabled ambient rubbish to improve performance 

NPC

• Small performance improvement on Robots
• NPCs that are aiming and in-cover now look more natural 

Art

• General performance improvements: shaders, assets, collisions

UI

• Resolved inconsistent dropdown menu behaviour in graphics settings, ensuring reliable input response 
• Added the ability to skip cinematics

Audio

• Audio Optimisation regarding Mass Vehicles
• Music adjustments throughout MindsEye missions
• Added Destruction SFX on Glass Bottle Props

Missions

• Conditional dialogue now triggers with more natural pacing
• The companion drone torch is now automatically enabled when entering or starting in dark areas

Animation

• Optimised the ambient and civilian animations. 
• Exit/entry animations no longer play for driverless vehicles 

Gameplay

• Aim assist will focus on enemies in vehicle turrets over the driver 

BUG FIXES

• Various Mission flow bug fixes 
• Fixed pixelated reflection in Rocket Transporter window 
• Fixed Industrial vent asset to help with performance 
• Resolved an issue where players transitioning from Meeting Marco Silva to Executive Paranoia could drive through objects and fall through the map
• Fixed ambient animation glitches in Welcome to Redrock City
• Fixed an issue where camera rotation was lost after cutscenes
• Several lighting LOD pop issues fixed in cutscenes  
• Fixed a bug where burning vehicles wouldn’t transition to destroyed state
• Fixed several traversal issues in world where the player may get stuck
• Fixed an issue in The Ziggurat where a hole in wall allowed players to climb through and trap themselves
• Fixed an issue in Oh Lily! where players could get stuck in Morrison's Silo without a way to get back out
• Fixed collision on glass roof of Silva Factory
• Fixed a number of Character Model issues in cutscenes that made them look deformed and stretched for a few frames
• Resolved Silva’s teeth looking too bright on medium/ lower settings on PC
• NPCs no longer freeze when interacting with certain objects 
• Weapon Wheel hover SFX is now triggered correctly, without delays

PC only

• The character Red Sand Male 25 is now available for use in Build.MindsEye
• Fixed a UI issue where backing out of a submenu in 'Build' caused the second-last selected tile to remain highlighted 
• Fixed a bug where the ‘effects’ tile would remain highlighted after returning to Build mode from Play mode 
• Fixed an issue where the placement header text overlapped UI elements in the asset settings menu when playing in French 
• Fixed a bug causing specific Korean characters to appear invisible in vehicle spawner labels 
• Fixed a localization issue where the French translation of “Total PI” overlapped with the performance impact number in the top toolbar 
• Replaced the incorrect icon used for the MindsEye menu button in Play/ Build with a proper menu icon 
• [Min Spec Performance Improvement]: Disabled Nanite compute materials as it has a negative effect on GPU rendering time in our game, especially on older Nvidia Graphics Cards
• [Min Spec Performance Improvement]: Fixed an issue where our Nanite render pipeline always used the Hardware Rasterizer path rather than correctly splitting between Hardware Rasterizer and Software Rasterizer

BUILD.MINDSEYE PATCH NOTES – PC ONLY

HIGHLIGHTS

• Added a new “Player Content” Tile to the MindsEye Play Menu where all Builders published content will be immediately available to browse and play
• Updated UGC Moderation flow from Pre-Moderation to Post-Moderation 
• Player made content will now be automatically accessible in the new “Player Content” Tile 
• A new Tile for “Curated Content” has been added, that will highlight player content picked by Build A Rocket Boy

IMPROVEMENTS

Publishing UGC Content

• Added a toggle to enable or disable Logic Nodes from being captured in the thumbnail capture of UGC Content 

Logic Nodes 

• Timer Nodes improved; you can update or refresh their value at any time through multiple other logic nodes, and can now be refreshed infinitely 
• Timer Logic Nodes now support decimal places up to .000 
• Custom UI Nodes updated to always be set to “Node Active” = True, by default 

Attributes Menu, Catalogue & Versioning 

• Minor QoL & screen position improvements to the Creator HUD, Attributes Menu & Tools 
• Minor QoL improvements to naming, duplicated items, missing thumbnails or icons in the Assets Catalogue 
• Updated the search functionality in Assets Catalogue to take into account both object name and the tags
• Added a warning when the player reaches the maximum number of allowed versions when creating new versions 
• Added missing hotkeys to the Controls Panel for Inserting Path Points 

Featured Stamps Updates 

• Multiple fixes and QoL improvements to existing set of Featured Stamps 
• Added more Stamps to the Featured Stamps tile 

BUG FIXES

• Removed EVERYWHERE vehicles from Build.MindsEye – those vehicles were made accessible unofficially, and we will bring them to MindsEye when they are ready
• Fixed an issue where the AI Spawner Spawn limits and Performance Scores of spawners were not correctly calculated
• New Performance Score applied to AI Spawners as follows: 
  • AI Spawner – Performance Score: 10 / Max Quantity Allowed: 10 
  • Individual AI NPC - Performance Score: 6 / Max Quantity Allowed: 100
• Fixed an incorrect controls description for Build Collision Control List Keys; now correctly displayed as (B) instead of (P)
• Improved camera behaviour in Build.MindsEye: your last position is now saved more frequently for a more reliable creation experience
• Fixed an issue with erratic camera behaviour when using the Group Macro Node 
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to like Stamps with long names
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from editing Stamp Descriptions that exceed the 220 character limit 
• Fixed an issue that caused vehicles to move very slowly, or not at all, when using Custom Speed on the Drive To Node 
• Grid snapping is now enabled on the XY Plane by default
• Fixed an issue with Destructible Assets not being selectable 
• Fixed issues with Filtering in the Assets Catalogue 
• Fixed various issues with the Vehicle Selection UI Node 
• Fixed multiple issues with the Transform Variable Node and Advanced Transform Node parsing incorrect values into the Location and Scale Overrides
• Stamp Attributes now display the correct Thumbnail based on the current Version selected 
• Fixed various issues with spawn-points and spawning in Build.MindsEye 
• Fixed various issues with the Physics Force Node causing objects to disappear 
• Fixed an issue where Foliage Assets were not searchable in the Catalogue 
• Fixed a crash caused when attempting to ungroup a group within a group 
• Fixed a crash caused by undoing creation and deletion of large Stamps
• Fixed an issue with some deprecated assets being displayed in the library – which were discernible by having "DONOTUSE" in their name 
• Fixed texture issues on a number of assets in the Build.MindsEye Catalogue
• Fixed an issue with missing Localisations for the Light Effects in Build.MindsEye