HELLSEED News

Hi guys,

Finally the new HELLSEED is OUT!
In the last year we have made a lot of improvements and fixes.

[h2]PERFORMANCES[/h2]
- As anticipated in the latest announcements In-game performances are now almost doubled
- loading times are many times faster

[h2]FIXES[/h2]
- Audio glitches have been fixed
- Player movement on the stairs has been fixed
- Improved stability when loading saved games

[h2]GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS[/h2]
- Improved some horror sequences
- Weapons are now visible when picked up
- Improved Inventory usability

[h2]OTHER BUG FIXES[/h2]
Many blocking bugs have been fixed.

[h2]CONCLUSIONS[/h2]
With this last update the game seems to work pretty well.
As anticipated this update has been produced exclusively to fix and improve what was already in the game.
In the next updates we'll start to add new elements and/or features.

[h3]We remember that all the game sessions saved before this update will be lost.
Contact us if you want a specific saved game file.[/h3]

We know that things can be improved further but they are satisfying just now.

Enjoy and stay tuned.
PROFENIX STUDIO

Hi guys,

[h3]Good news,[/h3]
We are going to update HELLSEED in the next days.
As anticipated in the last announcement the game has been completely restructured and a big performance improvement of the engine has been made.
IMPORTANT: No new content has been included in this update, only improvements. Next chapters will be included in successive updates.

[h3]Bad news,[/h3]
This will come to a cost: saved games will be completely lost.

We know how important are saved games for a player,
so we propose a solution:
HELLSEED has been designed to have fixed checkpoints so it is easy for us to produce saved games and provide them to you if you need.
So, please, if you want to recover saved games after the next update write us at: [email protected] specifying the point in the game you have reached.

PROFENIX STUDIO

Hi guys,

It is a lot of time we don't post anything related to HELLSEED.
There is a reason for that:
In the last year we have worked A LOT to improve the game performances, loading times and fix some audio problems.

[h2]RESTRUCTURED GAME [/h2]
We have completely restructured the game.
The current online version is built as a single HUGE level.

This implies a lot of problems:
From memory consuption to long loading times and finally in-game performances.
Managing the WHOLE game in a single stage is surely much more heavy than managing small stages at a time.

This is why we have separated the single game level in 5 small levels, and now every level is a CHAPTER.
The improvement is perceivable.

In addition this restructuring allowed us to better control the memory consuption and eventual leaks also on GPU memory. The result is that, now the game fits completely in 3 GB of CPU memory and in 4 GB of GPU memory.
Clever GPU memory consuption is really important for avoiding memory swaps between system RAM and video memory that cause huge framerate dropdowns.

Following is a video comparing the old vs the new loading times
(All tests have been made on an INTEL i5 8600K with an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB).
(P.S. occasional game freezes in the NEW version are due to screen capture, in reality the game is perfect):
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Also in-game perfomances benefited from that restructuring, but, as I'll explain later, it was not sufficient, expecially on NVIDIA cards.

[h2]AUDIO FIX[/h2]
The game currently online has a lot of audio problems.
Sometimes sounds are intermittent and crackling, sometimes they jump from a ear to another if you use headphones.

It is due to a wrong computation of the sound sources currently playing and, in part, to unused extensions of the audio driver.
We have fixed all these problems, now sounds are always clear.
These fixes have also increased a bit the audio system performances.

[h2]PERFORMANCE BOOST[/h2]
After restructuring the game it seemed that all performance problems gone away, but it was not true.
Expecially on NVIDIA cards the framerate was still too low, on my Geforce GTX 1060 the FPS still slow down close to 40 in some cases.
So I decided to better investigate the problem and finally I decided to radically change the engine rendering system, see a related post here for more info: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/443970/view/4190111862541206008?l=english)
The results are INCREDIBLE!
it was one of the best performance improvement I've experienced during the whole engine development.
Following are some in-game comparing screenshots (don't care about the different screen aberration and the strange numbers on the new version screenshots, it is a w.i.p. version)
(All tests have been made on an INTEL i5 8600K with an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB):

As you can see the boost is incredible and I was impressed by myself the first time I saw it :).

[h2]COMING SOON[/h2]
Currently we are continuing to test this new version and we planned to make some additional corrections (to gameplay and other) before publishing it.
We hope to be able to publish this new version in about a month (so next month probably it should be ready).

From the releasing of this new version we'll finally be able to finish the game by adding the prologue and the remaining 2 chapters.

Stay tuned,
PROFENIX STUDIO

Hi guys,

We know, a long time passed from the releasing of the early access.
Currently we are working on a new location that should represent a kind of small prologue to the story.
it will be set a few years before the main events of the game.
The location will be also useful as training for some game mechanics and as introduction to the game atmosphere.

I leave you to imagine what kind of location it could be from the new screenshots :). I apologize for the screenshots quality and remember this is a work in progress...




P.S.
The next update will be related to game structure refactoring: the game will be divided in smaller areas in order to decrease loading times (less to load per area) and increase in-game performances (less things to manage per area). ONLY AFTER THIS UPDATE THE NEW LOCATION WILL BE ADDED TO THE GAME AS PROLOGUE CHAPTER.

More info as soon as possible.
Stay tuned!

PROFENIX STUDIO

Some small improvements:
- Code recompilation with maximum optimizations option enabled.
- Rearranged physical setup to prevent the player and other characters from getting stuck by physical objects such as stools

Stay tuned
PROFENIX STUDIO