AVWW Beta 0.920 "Thog No Like Jurassic Bugs" Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/avww-beta-0920-thog-no-like-jurassic.html

This one has got to be about the least fun sort of release to be working on, for everyone involved (players and developers).  There was still a memory leak in the prior version, and it was harming performance as well because of all the garbage collections it was causing.

So all day today for Keith, myself, and Josh has been spent on this one issue.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that we found all the issues (knock on wood) and the game is running more memory-efficiently than it ever has before.

Some of the "recent" bugs withe memory leaks were actually just us having cleaned up some code that then revealed an older and longer-standing bug.  There were multiple bugs that we fixed today that dated back to when this game was from the top-down perspective.

What essentially happened was some more recent bugs (as well as some more recent fixes) combined with the older bugs to create major problems.  But we've been through this thing backwards and forwards today, Keith added memory profiling capabilities into the game engine itself, and it's now incredibly lean.  If you hit F3 and look at the managed memory usage, it's absolutely through the floor.

Unfortunately this means we didn't get anything else done today, but this evening hopefully I'll have time to get a little more done.  As well as fix any new bugs that might crop up if you guys find something.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

[Bluddy]

Nice job. Looks like the problem's gone.

[x4000]

Sweet!  That's always good to hear.  I always wind up with my fingers majorly crossed after something like this.

On the bright side, we cut out a LOT of old cruft, so we're that much cleaner/more-stable for 1.0, and that much less likely to have something like this recur again.  Not that the chance has dropped to zero, but it went down pretty drastically at least.

[TechSY730]

So, you only got, let's see, only 2 and half weeks. Wow! You're making great progress, but it's gotta be a little nerve wracking. (I most certainly would be nervous)

Actually, a little less than that, as you got to submit the full build and full installer to the distributors a few days ahead of time, right?

[x4000]

It's actually less than that, because I'm at PAX East next Thursday through the following Tuesday.  So for me it's like a week and a half, and two and a half weeks for Keith.

It feels like things are coming together, though, last couple of days notwithstanding.  There's more content I want to get in there, but bugfixes and polish really come first at this point, and we'll be adding more content after 1.0 anyhow so it makes relatively little difference in the end, I expect. 

There's a lot of content as it is, but I still think we can double the number of spells and enemies in the remaining time while still maintaining the bugfixes and balance.  We just can't be adding mechanics that require too many risky code changes; but at this point the codebase is mature enough (and broad enough) that there are a lot of enemies and spells that we can add that are "safe" and fit into those categories.

[c4sc4]

Huzzah! I'm able to load my world now.

I did find a bug, I'm not sure if this is new or not though, anyway I put it on mantis.

[Penumbra]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/03/avww-beta-0920-thog-no-like-jurassic.html

least fun sort of release to be working on, for everyone involved (players and developers).

Least fun, maybe. But I bet it was really rewarding and satisfying. 

[x4000]

Least fun, maybe. But I bet it was really rewarding and satisfying. 

Ummm.... usually that's the case.  Not so today.  I'd say more "scary" today.  And "relieved" is more my mental state at the moment, rather than satisfied.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10161.0.html

[KDR_11k]

I think Jurassic has too many syllables for Thog, I think he had a limit of one or two per word (don't remember which it was).

[Mánagarmr]

I think Jurassic has too many syllables for Thog, I think he had a limit of one or two per word (don't remember which it was).

I was just gonna say that too. Thog isn't exactly the eloquent speaker. "Thog smash" and "Thog no like talky man" is more his

[KDR_11k]

One of the comic comments outright states that Thog does not use words with more than a certain number of syllables and that it can be hard to write that.

[x4000]

One of the comic comments outright states that Thog does not use words with more than a certain number of syllables and that it can be hard to write that.

I'm still only up to #372, so I haven't encountered that one yet.  That is a challenge, for sure!