With much performance improvements under our belt, we are at a phase now where testing takes front seat, which means making random levels until something bad happens.
This is something I ended up with while trying to trip up the engine, and thought I would take a holiday snap while I was standing there thinking.
Some great fixes today, including a physics fix, the player no longer hurts performance after a death and restart, other small improvements related to performance and final visuals. You can once again take snapshots with F10 and it seems to run very well on a variety of low end systems now. Phew!
On the IDE side, we have been working hard on getting the Store download system complete, so you can sync your purchased assets with the local library and start using Store based artwork. We have pretty much re-written the store front-end and have tried to make the client side back end as seamless as possible. Right now you just click DOWNLOAD from the FILE menu, press another button and wait. Minutes later you have all your store items on your computer :) We're putting the finishing touches to that this week.
Of all our internal alpha testers reported in so far on the latest version, only one had any remaining issues with stutter (or sluggish frames) and I am awaiting a better description or hopefully a video showing the issue. It does appear though that we have crossed over into a sweet spot and the trick now is to keep that intact while expanding the software further.
Plan for Thursday and Friday is test like it's going out of fashion. Only small tweaks now, no feature additions and plenty of paranoia as we click every button and try every combination to seek out those pesky show stoppers.
excellent excellent excellent!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteCant wait Lee,good work everyone.
ReplyDeleteSo, Does this mean we may be looking at the release of 1.006 by the end of the day Friday? : )
ReplyDeleteGreat work! That wee Eastern house looks so out of place in that environment :)
ReplyDeleteJust what I was thinking the building looks out in the lovely picture postcard setting.
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ReplyDeleteExcellent! My suggestion for the testing process would be to use the product. Open Reloaded and start working on a full game as though you're a beta-user desperate to actually begin making games. In the process of actually using Reloaded you'll find more bugs than just randomly pressing stuff and making random levels.
ReplyDeleteI only have 1 building in 21 flavors. The idea is that once we have solidified our plans around how buildings will use optimized physics bounds for faster collision, optimized AI obstacle edges for faster character mesh navigation, LOD transitions and QUAD transitions, material assignments and entity attachments then we can provide a comprehensive guidebook for artists to use in order to create more buildings that conform to the best practices of the engine. If we created a lot of buildings now, there would be a LOT of changes and angry artists three months from now as they 'WERE' forced to amend their originals, or abandon them altogether. I suppose I could have used a building from the legacy or horror pack, but the level was only a quick test to push performance when lots of veg is in the scene.
ReplyDeleteI thought the scene looked quite good, at least until you open full res and see how blurry it is because of the supersampling fake-AA ;)
ReplyDeleteOr the fact it's a JPG ;)
ReplyDeleteThat too ;)
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