Author Topic: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)  (Read 7576 times)

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« on: June 08, 2015, 03:07:33 pm »
Notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Stars_Beyond_Reach_Beta_Phase_2_Release_Notes#Version_0.877

This is mainly a variety of fixes and clarity improvements.  Nothing incredibly radical there in the main, but lots of stuff that needed to get done.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Cinth

  • Core Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,527
  • Resident Zombie
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2015, 11:45:14 pm »
Quote
Not only that, this is something that made for visual problems because when you zoom out all the way to try to get a view of one of these huge maps, the buildings become impossible to distinguish. The land can be told apart, but there's so much empty space land all over the place and then buildings just hard to see. Either that or there are people spamming buildings like crazy into giant unsightly blobs. It creates problems either way, because players should be able to feel like they are "building big" without having to place 60 residential buildings all in one blob. That doesn't look good, and isn't fun. Also, if you're going to have a city of 100k people, it feels like a sacrifice should have to be made... by one of your neighbors...

Or a developer  :P
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2015, 08:59:28 am »
 :P
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline nas1m

  • Master Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,268
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2015, 09:09:23 am »
How are things going?
Do you have an ETA for the first version featuring territories yet?
Craving some more color and variety in your next Bionic run? Grab a boost and a couple of custom floors!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2015, 09:29:58 am »
Things are going well...

Overall there's been a lot of me tuning things to really get them feeling right, and that's slowed me up quite a bit.  Getting performance in an area that I felt was acceptable, with the new borders and whatnot, has been a huge time sink.  I've gotten that to the point where it doesn't cause all that dramatic a slowdown while still looking awesome (and we're only talking slowdown of any note when you're at max zoom, incidentally -- zoomed-in this thing still flew from moment one).  There are a couple of more optimizations that I have planned for the borders in the next few weeks, and those will really make a 10+ fps difference on the largest maps at max zoom on a midrange rig.  Right now on the new largest maps I'm still getting 60+ fps on the furthest zoom, though, so I'm pleased about that.  The map size shifts were not remotely all due to performance.

Anyway, also just trying to get the feel of the territories the way that I wanted took a lot of time earlier this week, and then more recently I just couldn't put my finger on why they still didn't feel right in terms of my need to capture them and the way that they affect attack adjacency, etc.  Turns out that the territories were just vastly too large, and that having them be about a third the size I previously stated is a lot more fun.  And I don't mean "fun" as in more difficult, but literally it feels more interesting and there feels like it's a good balance of goals for me to capture and buffers between me and the AIs, etc.

Pulling out the districts was surprisingly time consuming, and I did some other performance improvements while I was at it (unrelated to graphics; all CPU-side, and hopefully to help with RAM turnover a bit), and so that ate up a lot of time, too.

I actually ported the game to Unity 5 briefly to see how that would affect things performance-wise and if that made any difference in terms of garbage collection in mono, but no benefit on either side.

I also lost a fair bit of time to researching stuff about a specific kind of cancer that we now know one of my uncles has.  It's a less common sort, so I had to do some digging around for figuring out much.  That's had me in a down mood the last couple of weeks in general, but only in the last few days did we really find out any details about it (biopsy results), and there's still a lot to be found out later.  So anyway, I was trying to I guess get ahead of that process and see what I could guesstimate about what his prognosis might be.  From doing that with my mother in law, who also had (even more) unusual cancer, I did a really accurate job of that, actually.  Her situation turned out super well and against the norm, and she's now in remission, which is awesome.

Anyway, between some depression at that, and anxiety about the summer sale coming up and the time schedule here (I'm not going to have the usual volume of time to work this weekend, and then I'm going to be out next Friday through the middle of the following Tuesday) and just in general what I'm doing, I don't feel like I've been at top mental form this week.  I really thought I'd have all this wrapped up by yesterday, and really I should have in most respects.  But things are getting done, and coming out really well; it's just in slower motion compared to my usual pace with it, which is another source of fairly deep frustration for me.

So basically the work itself is going really well, but I've been getting in the way of myself when it comes to actually getting it all done.  I'm not sure on an ETA.  I might be able to do a release tonight, and we'll see what all breaks for you over the weekend. ;)  Or I might have too many unfinished things and need to do it Sunday afternoon.  If I'm overlooking more than I think, it might be Monday -- hopefully no later than that.

Anyway, I'm heading back to it now.  A lot of the biggest variables have been properly figured out now (region size was a huge sticking point),so that's good.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline nas1m

  • Master Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,268
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2015, 09:56:27 am »
Thanks for the heads-up and all the best to your uncle!
Craving some more color and variety in your next Bionic run? Grab a boost and a couple of custom floors!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2015, 10:08:42 am »
You bet, and I appreciate it.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline kasnavada

  • Hero Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 986
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2015, 10:18:40 am »
Same as Nas1m, but don't consider looking into what your uncle has "lost time".

Most important things go first.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2015, 10:31:53 am »
I appreciate it.  In terms of looking into what he has, it's fairly much lost time because it's me being impatient to learn about what is going on rather than just waiting for the actual doctors to say something.  It gives me some personal comfort in terms of understanding the size of what we might be talking about here, but beyond that it's not productive in any fashion.  I'm allowed to be human, but at the same time I am on a deadline here in the short term in particular.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Elijah

  • Newbie Mark III
  • *
  • Posts: 32
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2015, 04:24:33 pm »
Yeah, man, all the best to your uncle!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2015, 04:44:26 pm »
Thanks guys -- it looks reasonably possibly-positive, so there is that.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline crazyroosterman

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,558
  • Cluck.
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #11 on: June 12, 2015, 05:29:32 pm »
Thanks guys -- it looks reasonably possibly-positive, so there is that.
good luck to your uncle and not to sound insensitive also it sucks that something this stressful had to happen while you've got so much already to deal with.
c.r

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #12 on: June 12, 2015, 08:21:59 pm »
Yep, "when it rains," eh?
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline crazyroosterman

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,558
  • Cluck.
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #13 on: June 12, 2015, 08:25:07 pm »
or sods law.
c.r

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Beta 0.877 now out (Citybuilding Smoothness)
« Reply #14 on: June 12, 2015, 09:16:32 pm »
or sods law.

You must be British -- I had to look that one up.  That's even better than Murphy's Law.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk