Patch Merging Part 7!
Dev-Com
Welcome, members of the Accord!
We want to thank all of our community testers that were testing over 12 patches in the last 15 days to find bugs in the current version of the game, and most of all helping me find problems with the autosave system. Once again thank you.
Now let's move on to patch notes.
Beside a massive amount of bug fixes, we are happy to showcase a lot of features added to the game, which some of them will drastically make Penkura development easier.
The first new feature we want to present is Bot Attachment system.
This system allows the player to attach new/improved components to the bot itself.
Changing bot statistics, and visual appearance. This is an important new feature, as it's only one step away from allowing players to build bots from scratch using dozens of components found in the game world by the player in their "Foundry".
This system will allow the player in the future to perfectly adjust the bot to specific assignments, such as: transportation, base protection, base maintenance, bot maintenance, full combat and more.
With this, we are also adding improvements to the overall Bot Statistical view. The player will now have access to information on what systems are currently installed in the bot software, what is his base home, and more.
The second new feature is a physics based object throw system, with this system we are adding flares to the game, with the entire logic of activating them, storing, object change when used, and dozens of other standard features that are well-known in other games. But in this case, we are proud to showcase that we have achieved a full object transition from the player skeletal animation into the game object spawning, creating a perfect blend from an item that is being shown in the player hand, to an object that interacts with the game world.
This feature is only one step away from introducing explosives in the game, or throwing weapons.
A third new feature is something requested by players, a personal fully savable journal. With unlimited amount of entries (well depending on the player disk space of course).
And again, as we like to create features that can be used later on in other system, this feature is only one step away from an "Event Log" something we will be working on in the upcoming patch, that will record/store all the messages player receive outside of dialogs, all tutorials, messages from in-game characters and so on.
Before we go to the main game development improvement, and something that opens gates to much more exciting content, we want to showcase two additional images. One of which is the requested improvement to our Console Command System.
We're adding a "help" command that will show all available commands, the console will also print a feedback message if the command was properly used.
Second image is a small showcase of the improved Metos Royal Guard a massive Metos that hunts the forests of Karenos, rather than using an older version of metos that was scaled up, Royal Guard will now have its dedicated 3d mesh.
Now to the main change.
For the last nearly 9 months, we were dedicating some of the time to drastically improve the optimization of characters in the game. We notice that when player enters the Ancient Ruins, and gets himself surrounded by over 30 metoses, the game frame rate drops drastically. That is of course a normal thing, that happens in many games, we did our best to improve the mesh rendering, texture rendering and even change the enemy behavior just to save some milliseconds. We did improve performance drastically, but it was still not enough if we want to fill the world with NPCs that roam the world, have their own schedules, interactions, basically their own "life".
Our worst case scenario that we created on our test level was 300 metoses, all fully animated, with movement commands and active AI. In the previous version of the game that scenario ended with only on average 12 FPS on our test machine.
Even though 300 fully animated AI characters near the player proximity is extremely exaggerated, nevertheless we didn't want to accept such performance. Especially when we want Penkura to run on older machines.
Basic Specifications of the test machines:
GTX 1080 G1 Gaming 8GB GDDR5X
16 GB of Ram 2400 MHz CL15
Intel i7-6700K 4.00 Ghz 8MB
Last two months we used the opportunity to finally be able to normally work on the project, and we did our best to improve all the system we could think off, from distance AI logic scaling, through distance scaling AI navmesh precision, to even how collision interacts with overlap events outside of the player view. It took a massive amount of work, but we are happy to finally showcase the result.
We jumped from an average 12 FPS to an Average of 50 FPS. This is a great achievement as it will allow us to finally work on NPCs, player base invasion and more. This is months of planing and work that is finally finished and added to the game this patch! Players when near a large amount of enemy characters should see a drastic improvement in frame rate, especially on weaker machines.
We will observe the feedback reports and of course bug reports after this patch, to make sure everything works as it should. After which we will release the new level with even more content.
Once again thank you to all the community testers, and every player that send us the bug report, feedback report, or even came to our steam forum/discord to chat!
Work is not done, more is coming!
As always, for more information regarding the latest technical support, patches, and updates, please join our Discord Community.
LINK ----> https://discord.gg/2ukYHQm
Till the next Dev-Com over and out.
Penkura Main Branch Adjustment
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⊞ Bugs/Errors ⊞
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◈ Autosave fix (needs last batch of testing just in-case).
◈ Blufloir seedling, and maturing, couldn't be picked up from Growbed.
◈ Subincar seedling, and maturing, couldn't be picked up from Growbed.
◈ Enhanced Growbed could stop effecting the growth of last row of plants.
◈ Oculus bot was unable to be unstuck using the unstuck command.
◈ Player was able to rise his bio-ring while in Main Menu.
◈ Possible fix to MMC not setting the camera position correctly if player never change any graphical settings.
◈ Player was accidentally punching the bot whenever going back in command lines.
◈ Player was able to pick up items while in the Main Menu.
◈ If the bot was set to pick up all items in the area, and player took one of the items while the bot tried to take it, the bot was unable to reset to the next item on the list.
◈ On the Bot Command User Interface, the object list didn't properly scroll.
◈ Oculus bot model, printed "no functional hands" while sprinting.
◈ Oculus hologram was not visible in the CCC.
◈ Player was able to duplicate items when using "split" function and "transfer all" at the same time.
◈ Player was able to receive messages from Sara, while already talking with Sara (message duplication).
◈ Metoses sound effect reactivates after death if the player returns to the body after triggering the visibility change.
◈ If player closed Command Console in other way than using the same input, it would prevent him from using the "use" button unless clicking ESC.
◈ Bots list in the CCC didn't properly update the Power status.
◈ Fixed reported holes in the landscape.
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⊞ Improvements / changes / additions ⊞
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◈ Added "Help" Command to the in-game Console.
◈ Added four new sound effects:
- Installing mod.
- Uninstalling mod.
- Installing Attachment.
- Uninstalling Attachment.
- Flare activated
- Flare activating (work in progress)
◈ Added 4 new items
- Flare
- Flare Used
- Data Storage MPB Storage T2
- Attachment MPT Storage T2
◈ Improved the 3d model and texture of Dynka to make it more visible (matured).
◈ Created new model for Metos (Royal Gourd)
◈ Added Personal Journal to the game.
◈ Added Bot attachment system to the game.
◈ Added Bot systems check to the game.
◈ Added object throwing mechanic to the game.
◈ Improved AI navigation system (performance boost)
◈ Increase spawn rate of Metos (Royal Guard)
◈ Added distance based animation optimization (performance boost)
◈ Added distance based AI logic optimization (performance boost)
◈ Added Skeletal mesh distance based quality change (performance boost)
◈ Added navigation mesh distance based scaling (performance boost)
◈ Improved Bot rendering hologram in CCC (performance boost)
◈ Improved player holographic render in character view (performance boost)
◈ Console key binding is now visible in the Options settings.
◈ Improved foliage deleting when placing a building.
◈ Drinking Expired DMC, will now provide a proper trash item.
◈ Improved Main Menu options to make some of the options settings clearer to understand.
◈ Player will now create a ripple effect on the water.
◈ Removed word Matured, from Flora item naming.
◈ Improved audio balance in some sound effects.
◈ Improved inventory calculation (performance boost)
◈ Improved storage/inventory item refresh logic, fixing few visual errors. (performance boost)
◈ Improved entire code related to overburden calculation, storage content calculation, movement limitation calculation. (minor performance boost).
◈ Improved rendering of bot representation on CCC screen (major performance boost when near CCC with active bot representation).
◈ When using any command in the Console Command window, it will now provide a feedback if the command was activated or not.
◈ Improved character view 3d hologram rendering. (minor performance boost when Character Window is open).
◈ Added ability to the bot brain, to auto adjust the list of items to interact if the list changed while completing the order.
◈ Improved Visual Effect of Bot Command User Interface.
◈ When creating a new save, it will automatically lock the keyboard on naming space.
◈ Bot Command User Interface will now scale with player field of view.
◈ When creating the new save slot, the game will now autofocus player keyboard on the save slot name.
◈ From now on Eating Corporate Meal, will spawn an empty dish to the player inventory.
◈ Change the name of Key Input from "Move Item" to "Grab Item" to make it more clear.
◈ Change the name of Key Inputs (Effect X, Y, Z, and Distance) to use the word Change from Effect, and Grabbed from Moved.