Solace Crafting News

I fixed the map going white bug with this patch, and actually rewrote a good chunk of the map generation removing the need for generating new sprites in runtime. This is a decent boost to map performance, but still only half of the picture. I ran some tests and have a good idea how to implement a further boost that should further remove the need to generate sprites for the icons generated by resource scanners, etc. Not yet implemented in this patch, but I'm hoping it will smooth the map out a lot as some users have reported real problems with opening and closing the map as it currently works, depending on your world settings.

We've also setup a bug tracker on bitbucket, mostly because it allows anonymous logins, and/or Google/Microsoft account logins, so it's a lot easier to post to/comment on when compared to having to make a whole new account on another website. Giving it kind of a trial run right now, but I'll post a link and a sticky here if it looks like a good solution.

v 0.6.4.45 2020.10.29
- Improved map performance (1/2)
- Increased pause between dedicated server memory purges to 5 minutes
- Fixed the map not refreshing properly
- Fixed an error stopping resources from getting put into the town storehouse properly

(Beta)
v 0.7.0.4 2020.10.29
- Improved map performance (1/2)
- Increased pause between dedicated server memory purges to 5 minutes
- Fixed the map not refreshing properly
- Fixed an error stopping resources from getting put into the town storehouse properly

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord! Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Small patch to address some of the memory leaks issues that weren't properly coded to work as well on dedicated servers.

I've got some bug reports that the map is acting up. I actually got really sick yesterday and haven't gotten much done besides this patch yesterday/today after working all weekend to fix the memory leaks. Sorry this is happening on both Live and Beta simultaneously. I try to keep these kinds of quick changes on beta, but these were problems that needed immediate attention and I've have to mess with some things like the map to make sure that everything is being managed properly. It's midnight Wednesday here now, but I'll be back on bug fixes in the morning.

This patched is being applied to both the Live and Beta branches simultaneously.

v 0.6.4.44 2020.10.28
- Disabled several unnecessary functions when in dedicated server mode
- Improved dedicated server memory management

v 0.7.0.4 2020.10.28
- Disabled several unnecessary functions when in dedicated server mode
- Improved dedicated server memory management

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord! Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

As I mentioned on Saturday, a series of memory leaks came to my attention last week that ended up being quite elusive. This patch addresses 99% of those leaks and some problems with the game hanging in the event of an attempted multi-player connection timing out.

A memory leak is when a section of memory gets allocated for use but then doesn't get properly unallocated, leaving it in limbo and unrecoverable. Unity games are primarily written in C# which is a modern programming language that has a wonderful tool called a garbage collector that watches objects in memory and automatically unallocates them when it can tell that no one is using it anymore. The internal workings of Unity however operate using C++ which is another similar programming language that does not use a garbage collector. This means that certain types of objects being handled internally have to be managed manually.

Unfortunately, Unity's tools for monitoring memory usage are convoluted at best. I ended up making my own tools after almost 20 hours of struggle with little progress to show for it all. After finally figuring out what types of objects were lingering around in memory it was only a matter of time before I squashed them, one by one. There are still some tiny leaks, 100kb's when you return to the main menu kind of small things, but nothing compared to the problems that were crashing the BKG California dedicated server almost daily most of last week.

What initially got me looking deeper into the problem was actually measuring the performance of a number of different operations to see what the main cause of the lagg spikes that can cause the mouse to spin are. I have some strong leads on 2-3 different systems that I can improve and spread out over time to decrease those spikes that I plan to work on in the near future.

With the BKG server crashing due to the memory leaks there were also instances where I would try to connect to it through the game client and the connection would time out, but the "unable to connect" warning wasn't triggering, leaving the client stuck in "connecting". I've improved that code to be more informational about what's going on, and not get stuck any longer.

I've applied this patch to both beta and live simultaneously.

v 0.6.4.43 2020.10.26
- Fixed several memory leaks causing the game to slow down over time
- Fixed multi-player connection issues causing the game to get stuck "loading"

(beta)
v 0.7.0.3 2020.10.26
- Fixed several memory leaks causing the game to slow down over time
- Fixed multi-player connection issues causing the game to get stuck "loading"

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord! Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Sad but true, I've spent all of yesterday and today tracking down a memory leak that has been crashing dedicated servers and causing the game to slow down over time. Memory can be a tricky subject as there are different scopes, or levels, of memory, not all of which you can see and track as "managed" objects. I've identified the majority of the problems and am working on implementing fixes, but wanted to get the word out there first as I know some people have been having the server go up and down frequently this past week as well as the game slowing down when traveling long distances.

Should you be experiencing the game slowing down over time, returning to the main menu is not the way to reset the memory, you need to save and close the game completely. Sorry if this has caused anyone trouble, and hope to have a fix up tomorrow!

An error in harvesting exp math was brought to my attention that could result in zero exp rewards so I jumped on it as it was something a lot of people would run into very easily. Likewise, boats had a number of problems post 0.6.4 that were never properly addressed. This patch fixes these two problems on both the default live branch and the beta branch simultaneously.

v 0.6.4.42 2020.10.22
- Fixed a math error in harvesting exp
- Fixed a number of problems with picking up, saving, loading, and covering long distances with boats

(Beta)
v 0.7.0.2 2020.10.22
- Fixed a math error in harvesting exp
- Fixed a number of problems with picking up, saving, loading, and covering long distances with boats

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord! Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!