Soulstone Survivors News

[h3]Feel the Embrace of Chaos as our 13th major update lands with a new character! Not only that but it also comes with new Artifact Powers and huge performance improvements![/h3]



[h3]New Character - The Demon Hunter[/h3]

• The Demon Hunter has arrived, a master of ranged combat and chaos itself. Armed with dual crossbows, they bring a new level of lethality to the Void Hunters. Their swift, critical strikes are as unpredictable as they are devastating, making them the ultimate predator of the void.
  
  You can now craft his new weapons and use the new unique skills, runes and of course try his powerful new Ascension!
  

[h3]New Artifact Powers[/h3]

• You can now unlock the Artifact Powers for the Demon Hunter, Hound Master and Spellblade by upgrading their weapons to the Artifact rarity!
  

[h3]Major Performance reworks[/h3]
While last update saw a few localized performance improvements, this time around we have a few major system refactors that were in the works for a long time making their way into the game. These should considerably improve the FPS of the game in most scenarios, especially very late game such as high Endless and Overlord. Here’s a quick summary of those changes:

• Negative effects almost entirely refactored to use every last bit of performance possible. Should make a big difference for builds that rely heavily on them;
  
• New collision detection system for almost every skill in the game. Should provide major improvements in very hectic scenarios. Will have close to no affect for projectile heavy skills, like Storm of Arrows, but all others should be considerably faster;
  
• Considerably reduced the disc size of the game for faster download;
  
• Considerably reduced amount of memory used by the game, which not only should make it overall faster but more stable especially in late game scenarios;
  

[h3]General changes and fixes:[/h3]

• Changed how Brittle is calculated under the hood. It no longer benefits from your stats and skill modifiers twice, being now more in line with all other damage increasing negative effects in the game;
  
• New intro animation for the existing hidden bosses;
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the negative effect Wound to not work (currently applied only by one of the Hound Master’s dogs);
  
• Fixed Spinning Staff tooltip which was scaling incorrectly;
  
• Player target areas (blue circles) no longer show in Endless and Overlord cycles, to reduce the visual clutter;
  
• Added a counter of the number of summoned units to the Artifact Power interface;
  
• Fixed an issue where in a very specific scenario the Endless/Overlord completion percentage would not be saved properly in your player profile;
  
• Fixed a pathfinding issue for enemies in the Dungeon of Despair;
  
• Fixed an issue where Lord of the Void statues could be “lying down”;
  
• Fixed an issue where if your health went negative in the Unholy Cathedral with unique power ups, the display could bug and end up showing a very high number instead;
  
• Fixed an issue where the Assassin mission text was not being localized;
  
• Fixed an issue in the Unholy Cathedral where buffs from the previous cycle would not be reset when starting a new cycle;
  
• Fixed an issue where Chaos Golems would not be able to move in the second stage of the Unholy Cathedral;
  
• Fixed an issue where skills that had “sub projectiles” like Surprise Gift or Noxious Shot would count as more than 1 source of their respective negative effects;
  
• Fixed an issue were in very specific scenarios skills like Icy Veins would not work at all, leading to strange errors;
  
• Multiple small fixes and improvements in the UI;
  

We hope you will enjoy this update as we are already working hard on new content for the next one! Performance has been a big focus for us but there is still a bunch of stuff coming! We will update our roadmap shortly after this update, where we will discuss in more detail what is coming, what plans changed and the path forward, so if you would like to check it out keep an eye out for our announcements here!

[h3]Community Event: Big Damage[/h3]

To celebrate the new update we will also be running an old favourite in our Discord community, the Big Damage event! Come up with the build that deals the most damage possible in 10 minutes, send your results and win gift cards and game keys! If you want to learn more head over to our Discord!

Finally, if you would like to receive updates like this one via email, we would also like to invite you to our new mailing list! We are still to send our first email, but that will be a great way to get news about the game and overall studio if you are interested in what we might have store in the future!

As always we wanted to thank you all very much for your support!

Have a great day!



~Soulstone Team

Welcome to the sixth Soulstone Survivors devlog!! You are about to witness some work in progress of a new skill, performance improvements and some changes to how the crafting UI looks.

[h3]Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released![/h3]

[h2]Performance Improvements - XP Crystals[/h2]
Before we get to the good stuff, lets get the usual performance update out of the way. This time around we are going to be looking at changes made to the XP crystals. During a match, players can sometimes accumulate many hundreds or even thousands of XP crystals laying around on the map and this can lead to significant performance degradation.

Luckily, the XP crystals have a very well defined behavior which is very suitable for some pretty neat optimizations. Check out the results we got from said optimizations:

[h3]Before[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]After[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
In these videos you can see me spawning 100k XP crystals on a 50 meter radius around the player. Before the changes, my machine could barely handle it, running the game at single-digit FPS whereas after the changes it has no problem at all, reaching over 100 FPS.

Now for the nerds in all of us, a big, but not the only reason why these crystals are so much lighter now is the rendering. Before we were using vanilla Unity rendering techniques (i.e.: mesh renderers). But now, put it a different way, we tell the GPU: “here, render 100k copies of this object”, as opposed to “render some here, some other here, another there…”.

Now, we manually render all of the crystals using GPU instancing, which allows us to render every crystal at once, reducing the overhead. Check out these visual examples below:

[h3]Unity Vanilla Rendering[/h3]

[h3]The New Approach [/h3]

The top version is Unity’s vanilla rendering: it takes 3 draw-calls to render the crystals; where the bottom gif with the new approach only takes 1 draw-call to render all of them.

[h2]New Upcoming Skill[/h2]
We have also been working on some new skills recently and our artists have been doing an awesome job on those and we often need new 3D models for them. Check out this 3D model for an upcoming new skill:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Visual Changes in the Blacksmith UI[/h2]
Lucas, one of our programmers has been working on how the crafting tab currently looks, to improve its readability. Check out the screenshot below to see how that is going:

And this was all we had to show for this Devlog! We have been hard at work to improve performance, UI visibility and new skills. But keep an eye out for news because we have some really cool stuff coming... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next!

We hope you all have a lovely day or night,



~Soulstone Team

Welcome to the fifth Soulstone Survivors Devlog! Today we are breaking the rules!! We are always working on quite a few things at the same time, and we usually avoid showing stuff that is still very early or experimental or super placeholder, but today in addition to the usual stuff, we wanted to share a little something we have been working on in the background, so if you are interested in learning more, this devlog is for you!

[h3]Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released![/h3]

[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
But first… let’s talk a bit about the boring but crucial stuff! As you might know we have been putting a lot of effort into improving the game’s overall performance and we believe most of you will notice a considerable difference with the next update! Let’s take a look at the numbers we got so far.

[h3]Build sizes[/h3]
Improving the memory footprint of the game has been a big focus for us. It helps the game run faster, prevents crashes related to memory, and has one extra benefit: much smaller build sizes! Here is a comparison of what Update 11 vs Update 13 (the next update) looks like:



As you can see, a zipped build of our game went from 3.46GB to 1.44GB. This means that downloading the game is faster and it takes less space on your machine. And this includes a bunch of new content we’ve added to the game since!

[h3]Memory footprint[/h3]
Now lets take a look at the actual memory being used shall we? All of the data was captured running at native 4k, all graphics maxed out:

Before: After:

The images above show a profile capture of 2 runs. These captures show 2000 frames worth of data captured at around the 10 min mark into a curse 62 run with the Engineer. The total memory usage went down from 3.09GB to 2.55GB, approximately 20% less memory than before. As the match progresses deeper and deeper into endless, that difference is greater and greater since a lot of the optimizations have been made with crazy scenarios in mind.

[h3]Frame-time performance[/h3]
We have also made some frame-time improvements that will hopefully make a noticeable different when we release the next update. Here’s a comparison of what’ve accomplished so far on the perf side:

Capture 1 Specs: i9-14900HX (32 cpus) 2.2ghz, 64gb ram | RTX 4090 Laptop 16gb vrm

Capture 2 Specs: Ryzen 9 3900XT 8 CPUs 3.8ghz, 32gb ram | RX 7900 XT 20gb vram

To read the data above, Left Median represents the median time in milliseconds per frame on the previous update, and Right Median the time on the next update. Each image represents the comparison between two runs with the same build, in very similar gameplay scenarios.

As you can see from the data, in a very high end spec PC the game ran 13.06% faster, while in another, still very good PC, the game ran 38.75% faster. Since the game can be very taxing on your CPU, the improvements you will see will depend a lot on your specs, especially on your processor, and will also vary between characters and builds, but you can expect to see double-digit frame-time improvements in general.

Once Update 13 is live, we’d love to hear your experience regarding performance, so if you see improvements — or lack thereof — we’d love to hear from you on steam forums or discord.

[h3]Player skill target area[/h3]
A new quality of life improvement that has been requested many, many times is also making it’s way into the game. We now hide the player’s skill target areas (the blue circles) in endless and overlord cycles. While these markers are useful in the beginning of a match when you are trying to make the most of your skills, they get redundant later on when you are pretty much blowing the whole map at once, so this change should improve overall visibility. Check out this comparison clip down below:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]And finally…[/h2]
… the new, experimental and STILL IN DEVELOPMENT thing we are working on! As you may know from our previous videos and devlogs, new game modes are something we have been working on for a while, with the Unholy Cathedral being the first one to appear… but definitely not the only one in the works!

The clip below doesn’t show much and might look a bit boring haha, but don’t be fooled by its simplicity! What we are developing is essentially a tool that allows us to create structured, hand made content, not just for one, but possibly different game modes in the future.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
It’s still VERY EARLY and in an experimental stage, changing a little every day as we develop new maps and challenges, but if you pay attention to the little details in the video you might get some ideas of the type of stuff that is in the works. We often say there is still a lot coming to the game, and trust me when I say its not just characters and skills! We are excited about all the possibilities that this system is already opening up, and who knows, maybe we will share some more sneak peeks at a later date of the sort of stuff we are creating with it!

This was all we had to show for today’s Devlog! Performance has been a big priority for us recently, but we also have been working on some pretty cool new stuff... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next and what you are currently excited to get your hands on!

We hope you all have a lovely day or night,



~Soulstone Team

Welcome to our fourth Soulstone Survivors Devlog! As we continue to work on delivering the next major update, In this devlog you are going to catch a glimpse of some exciting sneak peeks and some stuff we have been working on.

[h3]Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released![/h3]

[h2]Sneak Peek: New character[/h2]
Alex, one of our artists has been working on some pretty amazing new concept art for our next upcoming character… we don't want to spoil the surprise too much at this stage but... check these new weapons out! What do you reckon this character could be?

[h2]Sneak Peek: New projectile skill behavior[/h2]
Fellipe just finished creating some new projectile behaviors, that you may or may not see soon with some new content that is coming... PS, visuals are placeholder!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Performance: Stuttering and fps issues[/h2]
Our last update brought with it a few performance improvements specially around memory, but some players noticed a decrease in performance. We have been hard at work using every tool at our disposal to investigate, replicate and fix these issues, and for the next update we already have a few major changes that should bring considerable performance improvements, we will talk more about those in the next devlog!

However, one curious issue we finally addressed that could cause a bit of "random" stuttering, is related to the destructible objects in the scenario and minerals. To alleviate this, we considerably simplified their colliders and fragments, and made the code controlling those parts a lot simpler, making those essentially free during gameplay. Here is a before and after image of what this looks like.

Here you can check out a video of how it was before and how it is now in-game.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Quality of life: Locked power ups[/h2]
Lucas has been working on something that the players have been asking for. Your locked skills and power ups will no longer be consumed by replacing your choices with passive power-ups (but will still be consumed in every other scenario, like rerolls, etc). You can check that out in the video below:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]The Unholy Cathedral soundtrack[/h2]
Now that the Unholy Cathedral is released, Gama, our sound expert, wanted to share a few more details about everything that went into its creation, so here are a few words directly from Gama:

"The Cathedral music theme was defined to be an obscure kind of “church music”, filled with organs and voices. Here is a little video to illustrate these:"
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
"As we have 5 different cycles before facing the final boss, we created 5 different music arrangements. With each cycle the music grows in complexity, to try and help convey the idea that the stakes are getting higher. Here’s a small sample of the dynamic music for the normal music working:"
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
"For the first time we also played with a spacial soundtrack, with an extra organ layer which is attached to the actual organ located inside the cathedral, so if you walk around the scenario and into the altar, you will hear more and more of this layer."
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
"We got plenty of other ideas to explore for the new content we are developing and Im excited to see how those will turn out!"

Pssss, too soon to be sharing stuff about that Gama! Ahem... I guess it's better we finish this devlog here! Is there anything you would like us to talk about? Let us know in the comments below! There is still a ton of exciting stuff coming and I personally think it's going to be legendary!

We hope you all have a lovely day or night,

~Soulstone Team

Hey everyone!

We just released EA Update 12h, which should address any remaining crashing issues. As you may imagine by now, these are not trivial issues and not easy to detect, as they do not affect most of the player base and we ourselves are not able to reproduce them consistently, so we would appreciate the continued feedback if you are still experiencing crashes with the latest build.

[h3]If you do still have problems, please contact us at [email protected] or directly on our Discord, as we will need more details such as log and save files to try and reproduce these problems locally.[/h3]

We appreciate the help and the patience and apologise for the repeated updated, trust me when I say it is not a pleasant experience for us either haha but we will keep working until we root out any remaining problems.

Hope you have a great day,



~Soulstone Team