another update
big news is that Abnessor is now also helping with testing
myself I'm mostly dealing with boring stuff like fixing bugs
like getting the framerate stable on as much machines as possible
now the game itself doesn't consume much resources
it should run about 60fps on an Intel UHD 600 GPU
(which has the extravagant 3DMark score of 134 https://www.3dmark.com/fs/23399206)
the funny part is that it only does it in windowed mode (according to tests on my potato win10 laptop)
and it all falls apart on fullscreen (vsync goes haywire and sometimes waits more than 1 frame worth )
according to my research it's some sort of driver bug
that affects all of these cards - so I'm trying to figure out a workaround
also I thought it would be a good idea to target 60fps
now there are hardcore folks who demand more (with gaming PCs)
and there are many people for whom 60 is too much (causes nausea and motion sickness)
so in the end 60 is a framerate that is not only difficult to achieve by all the driver and OS shenanigans
but also makes everyone disappointed in the end
now I know why most devs just go for 30 max and leave it at that 🤔
in other news a few new features were added that I believe I forgot to mention:
the game now checks if you did a save on the level and asks if you want to restore after defeat
(feature was suggested by FreeHawk)
of course not everyone found out about that you can save in ZortchTest so also there is a help page now:
hopefully it will clear a few things up
also as you see the default keys were changed so they are more common FPS controls
my default setup of course was combining Reload and Use - but this met with negative feedback
(it's still possible with setting both keys to the same key - probably I will be the only one playing this way)
also I preferred to use R to jump and F to crouch - the world was not ready for this either
there was also a bug with spidermines not giving clues about their whereabouts
for testing this I made their clues more subtle first - explosions above the ground
I found out their ground position was not reset properly after loading a save
and they were spawning the clues (little smoke effect) in the air
I'm also putting together maps for the demo
and cannot decide on which ones to use
so not much excitement..
until next time!
"Who knew making games is so boring?"