itch.io

Hi Edquarters,

Thanks for your interest in the game, and for making a video of your playthrough. It's always fascinating and very enjoyable to see the game from a new point of view, as everyone takes something slightly different away from the experience. I especially liked the fact that you didn't take any of it too seriously! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

That's great! Thanks for letting me know the source of the problem. Yes, unfortunately the game is not optimised well (I'm not a programmer) which restricts the hardware it can run on. Hopefully you'll have better luck on the desktop and can enjoy the game! :)

Hi there,

I'm glad you were able to solve your issue, I'll repackage and re-upload the game when I get a chance. Thanks for the info!

Thanks for your interest in Halcyon and I hope you enjoy the game.

No problem! Good luck with your game :)

Hi and thanks for you interest in Halcyon.

The whole project was created in Unreal Engine 4. The islands level (the one all the screenshots are from) uses very simple techniques. Models are low-poly with each polygon's normals set to 90 degrees to create hard edges. Shaders in this level are mostly very simple, no supporting maps or textures - everything defined in UE4. The exception is the grass, which uses an alpha-masked texture with a slight gradient to it. The mask was painted in Photoshop with individual brushstrokes, to give the grass a less realistic and more painterly look. UE4 has some great post-processing effects which really help to tie the scene together.

Other areas of the game use more complex shaders with detailed diffuse, roughness and normal maps to create a more realistic look.

If you like my work, I'm currently working on asset packs to release on itch.io at some point in the future (I don't get much time to work on that stuff).

Hope I answered your question and thanks again for the interest. :)

Hi Again,

Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce your problem on my Windows 10 machine.

All I can suggest is the usual steps, updating graphics card drivers etc. I have uploaded a new version of the game with all third-party pre-requisites included. Perhaps running this version will prompt your machine to install something which is currently missing.

Sorry I can't give you a more specific solution.

Hi again, thank you for the information.

I have a feeling the issue might be windows 10 related, purely because my development machine was windows 7. I have a laptop with win10 on it so will do some investigating with that.

As far as I know, only one video has been made so far. You can find a link in the other discussion topic. I may consider doing a full playthrough video for people if this problem persists.

Thanks again for your interest in Halcyon!

Hi domportera, I'm very sorry to hear that. The game was designed for a very specific use and so isn't optimised for a very wide range of systems. Still, it sounds like your system should be able to run the game at a decent frame rate.

Can you let me know more about your issue? Is it a case of low frame rate, a crash, a failure to launch for example? I can't promise a fix but any info would be appreciated.

Thanks for your interest in the game and again, I'm sorry you've had this problem.