Development Digest November 3rd - 24th
Happy Friday Friends!
First off, we hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving or if you aren't in the states, a fabulous Thursday.
We've been crazy busy over here! Michael (Kindred) has been streaming on both YouTube and Twitch at least twice a week for a while now. He's been working on Delver's Pass, Steam Achievements, and various performance updates. I've got a lot to cover for the last three weeks!
First some fine tuning was done on the last update. We've added an in-game option to change your difficulty. However, you cannot change to or from the hardcore permadeath mode. That can only be selected from a brand new character. This gives you more options while playing! We also added a text popup to show that a player in game has died.
While away from your friends, you can still call them out for falling to their death. Where was your glider, friend?
Next we added some functionality to the minor's cap. Which means we can add some more options for caves and dungeons that need light. We did add another light option, but you'll need to stay tuned to the patch notes for that one!
Then came Steam Achievements! I believe 7 achievements were made on stream. Then a few more were added after. All achievements have been tested by testers with only 1 reported as not working. Now to set them up on Steam and get them to you all! We'll add more after the first batch goes out!
Then there is performance.... The one thing that isn't cut and dry. For a while we've known that performance was becoming a problem with each new update, slowly tanking your FPS over time. We're getting some help from a fellow unreal dev who really knows his stuff to get things under control. Of course much of the problem stems from old code that happens to be connected to practically EVERYTHING in the game, which means a lot of other things broke in the process. We're almost finished fixing these things up, but here is some of the fun we went through:
And then came that sweet, sweet fps check:
I know these numbers are probably looking insane right now, and compared to what they were two weeks ago, they kind of are. But results may vary depending on your hardware. Just know that our target hardware is now, finally, hovering right around 60 frames per second, which has been our goal since the beginning. And more importantly, our graphics settings can finally be adjusted to improve your framerate even further.
In the past the game has been bottlenecked by the cpu thanks to all the complicated calculations we were doing with some old, rusty code. Now that that stuff has been cleaned up, now our bottleneck is, finally, coming from the game's graphics. Luckily we have sliders that can be adjusted to tune some of these to get your optimal experience. We couldn't be more excited!
That's not to say there isn't more to do, but we're taking steps in the right direction for sure.
We've partnered with CreatorPlush to create a one of a kind chicken plush! This is a limited one time run of these guys! They're super soft and cuddly! This partnership comes in the form of a timed funding campaign though, which means these guys will only be made if we reach 200 sales before the timer runs out. Go check it out here before it's too late:
https://www.creatorplush.com/products/chicken-plush-by-kindred-games
Lastly, the game's on sale right now! Be sure to pick it up during the Autumn sale and grab a copy for a friend!
See you all next Friday OR with the next update! (whichever comes first)
Janna & Michael/Kindred Games
P.S. Check out this AMAZING build from some of our community members, Cass & Meat:
First off, we hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving or if you aren't in the states, a fabulous Thursday.
We've been crazy busy over here! Michael (Kindred) has been streaming on both YouTube and Twitch at least twice a week for a while now. He's been working on Delver's Pass, Steam Achievements, and various performance updates. I've got a lot to cover for the last three weeks!
First some fine tuning was done on the last update. We've added an in-game option to change your difficulty. However, you cannot change to or from the hardcore permadeath mode. That can only be selected from a brand new character. This gives you more options while playing! We also added a text popup to show that a player in game has died.
While away from your friends, you can still call them out for falling to their death. Where was your glider, friend?
Next we added some functionality to the minor's cap. Which means we can add some more options for caves and dungeons that need light. We did add another light option, but you'll need to stay tuned to the patch notes for that one!
Then came Steam Achievements! I believe 7 achievements were made on stream. Then a few more were added after. All achievements have been tested by testers with only 1 reported as not working. Now to set them up on Steam and get them to you all! We'll add more after the first batch goes out!
Then there is performance.... The one thing that isn't cut and dry. For a while we've known that performance was becoming a problem with each new update, slowly tanking your FPS over time. We're getting some help from a fellow unreal dev who really knows his stuff to get things under control. Of course much of the problem stems from old code that happens to be connected to practically EVERYTHING in the game, which means a lot of other things broke in the process. We're almost finished fixing these things up, but here is some of the fun we went through:
And then came that sweet, sweet fps check:
I know these numbers are probably looking insane right now, and compared to what they were two weeks ago, they kind of are. But results may vary depending on your hardware. Just know that our target hardware is now, finally, hovering right around 60 frames per second, which has been our goal since the beginning. And more importantly, our graphics settings can finally be adjusted to improve your framerate even further.
In the past the game has been bottlenecked by the cpu thanks to all the complicated calculations we were doing with some old, rusty code. Now that that stuff has been cleaned up, now our bottleneck is, finally, coming from the game's graphics. Luckily we have sliders that can be adjusted to tune some of these to get your optimal experience. We couldn't be more excited!
That's not to say there isn't more to do, but we're taking steps in the right direction for sure.
But wait! There's more!
We've partnered with CreatorPlush to create a one of a kind chicken plush! This is a limited one time run of these guys! They're super soft and cuddly! This partnership comes in the form of a timed funding campaign though, which means these guys will only be made if we reach 200 sales before the timer runs out. Go check it out here before it's too late:
https://www.creatorplush.com/products/chicken-plush-by-kindred-games
Lastly, the game's on sale right now! Be sure to pick it up during the Autumn sale and grab a copy for a friend!
See you all next Friday OR with the next update! (whichever comes first)
Janna & Michael/Kindred Games
P.S. Check out this AMAZING build from some of our community members, Cass & Meat: