No tier 4 mage class

[keith.lamothe]

Just did a quick search and apparently borderless support for the unity engine came with version 3.4, but that was quite a while ago, it could have been removed since then or you could simply be using a different version?

Iirc we were not able to update to that version due to bugs introduced that broke our sound handling.  We haven't been able to updated to 4.x because of weirdly (and inconsistently, across various machines) long load-times when loading png files at runtime.

Anyway, from what I'm able to tell you can run a 3.4 (or later) unity-generated standalone with the -popupwindow argument and that will generate a borderless window.  But this only works on windows, not mac.

[Pattoe]

Ah, I see! It's actually really interesting to learn what goes on behind the scenes in game development.

Could a borderless windowed option become available in AVWW2 if a stable version of unity is released which supports it on both windows and mac? If so, let's hope it comes out soon!

From what I've seen, a lot of developers are asking the development team of unity to come up with a solution.

[x4000]

The sound crashing issue on 3.4 was something I worked around by changing our sound handling to a kid the issue. However, the unity editor is extremely crash prone in 3.4 to 3.5, and I didn't know what other problems there might be -- there were some reports of deadlocks on client machines because of the multithreaded rendering they added, so we opted to stay on the rock solid 3.3.

We have since bought version 4.0, but as Keith said the asset loading is mysteriously slow on some but not all machines. As in, 30 seconds to load valley 2 instead of 2-4. I never saw that on either of my machines, but Keith and josh both did. I've not had time to stop and send a bug report, and when I tried to make a super simple game that did nothing but load some small assets, it did not exhibit the problem. So it's clearly some really odd mix of issues, which is the worst kind to actually find. For the time being, since 3.3 is so solid and we actually have to get products out rather than helping unity fix bugs (that, in our past experience submitting 4 bugs, never were addressed anyhow), it's been a low priority for us. If I knew they would fix it that would be different, but they never addressed the other four bugs in two years. Sigh.

[Pattoe]

Sounds like you really need to get them to step up their game, or at least someone does. You're a paying customer and they should be striving to offer you the services you desire and need. Their product should be fit for purpose, afterall, that's the law (In the U.K. at least).

But I know how busy game developers are too, it must be easy for engine developers to ignore them or give them meaningless lip service.

I do hope you get the issues sorted and Unity gets it's act together.

[x4000]

Well, they are quite excellent, really, and I don't meant to paint them in a bad light. But the job they are up against is incredibly complex, and unfortunately the way we use their engine is on he outskirts of what their normal use cases are. They have paid support options where we could get them to look at things more directly, but last time we tried that -- again 2 years ago -- we got no response at all. That was odd, but their sales staff assures me that was a strange unusual outlier event. I haven't tested again since to see, so they might well be right.

The main point for me is that their 3.3 version is so incredibly stable and good that I just haven't had sufficient reason yet to push the issue with them. At some point that will change, and I look forward to getting the new features at that time. But in the meantime hose remain nice to have features where the juice isn't worth he squeeze; and if it's not worth it to me, I can see why it's not worth it to them, you know?

I wish things were different there, and I get frustrated with them sometimes, but I also understand he realities of their business. All told, they're doing phenomenally at something that is incredibly difficult (all those crazy numbers of platforms with that many features? Goodness.)

[Pattoe]

That's a great way of looking at it actually!

A lot of the time it's easy to get so annoyed at a small number of things that you forget about all of the awesome things available to you. I see it's not only playing games where that's the issue but also developing games.

I can relate to it entirely though, because when I think "Ah, it sucks that I can't have AVWW2 borderless windowed" I also think "but it's such an awesome game in so many ways, it doesn't matter!"

I'd rather play AVWW2 in windowed and enjoy my time then play another game that has the option but isn't as enjoyable.


The Unity engine is cool, though, I've liked the few games I've played on the engine, but now as more and more "Core games" (Not sure what other wording to use) are coming to the engine, such as Dungeon Land and Rochard. I hope that unity will have the ability to continue to reach the needs of the developers.

[x4000]

Cheers! More big boys using the engine can only be a good thing, in my opinion -- the more money that gets pumped toward unity, the better it will be.

By the way, sorry for the crazy typos in my last post. Posted from my phone...

[Pattoe]

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Hey x4000, I want to ask something else, thought I'd ask here to save creating a new topic and spamming

I just finished the game (I think).

I killed the overlord, demonicai (Sp?), and the elder told me to get to his remains to here the truth so I did...

His remains did fall into a really deep pit of lava so I swum down into it, reaching the remains with under a heart of health left... and then I got a cut scene with the elder talking to me. but it did look very odd... I'll attach a screenshot.

Anyway, I read all that, that it was a very cool dialogue and experience... and I was expecting maybe credits to roll? But I was put into the game and I think some text appeared but I immediately died due to being submerged in a burning hot bath of lava (It was good for my pores, I'm sure!). So I revived and ended up back in my little place with the training dummy tree and whatnot... Went to the world map and the strategic advisor still tells me to beware of the (now dead) demonicai and I'm not really sure what's happening now...

Did I mess up the ending?

[x4000]

Nab, you're okay -- the credits roll at the start of the game, not the end. The dying while in that cutscene thing is a known bug, but it doesn't affect anything. At this point it lets you keep playing in case you want to kill the other henchmen except Elder.

[Cham]

As for the doors, you could probably reduce confusion by specifying which way doors lead in the bottom left corner tooltip.  ie "Leads further in" or something.

[Pattoe]

Ah I see, thanks for the reply x4000.

Loved the game and I will definitely be playing it through more times, different difficulty settings and whatnot and maybe mods depending on what  the community makes for it.

However, the ending seemed a bit... underwhelming? I'm not sure if I missed anything because I died immediately after the cutscene but:

The cutscene seemed weird, the small pictures off to the side seemed like they should have been full pictures of the characters which the elder was talking about, especially since most of the screen was just black, and after the cut scene there was no information on why the game simply continued.

Perhaps a little "Congratulations! You have defeated the overlord, you can continue to fight if you want!" (Something along those lines) and credits rolling would help to make the ending feel a bit... epic.

I do definitely love how the elder gave a lot more context to the characters which added nicely to what you found out about them through levelling up. (I especially enjoyed the fallen paladin's storyline).

I'm not sure what to suggest but something more grandiose, maybe a more embellished credits with rolling scenes of the different areas you've been through (You've got an awesome aesthetic, showing all the different environments and enemies through the cutscene would be an awesome way to show the player what they've been through to get to the end.) You could add some quotes from the development team to it too?

It might seem to be a lot of work to go through for something at the end of the game which maybe not all of your customers will experience but the ending credits are something which will encourage players to think "Wow, that was AWESOME! I've definitely got to tell my friends about this now!"

You've also got some awesome soundtracks in this game for the different environments aswell, those could be used really well in an ending sequence alongside the aesthetics.

I guess to sum up my points, I thought the ending was very blunt and sudden, and left me thinking "Did I finish this?".

[x4000]

In terms of the images being cut off to the side, that seems to be something based on large screen resolutions, and is on my list to look into.

[Pattoe]

In terms of the images being cut off to the side, that seems to be something based on large screen resolutions, and is on my list to look into.

ah okie! I knew it looked a bit odd!

If it helps, I have two monitors (1920x1080 and 1440x900) and I run the game in 1920x1080 windowed mode, using a nvidia GeForce GTX 460 with up to date drivers.

If you want any more info feel free to ask.

[x4000]

Awesome, thanks. I have the same size dual monitors as you actually, but I've been running windowed mode smaller lately to test to make sure small screens see it ok. Probably why that slipped past.