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Forager (Demo)

Base Building, Crafting, Adventure & Secrets! · By HopFrog

Teasing Email!

A topic by ZodiacGaming02 created Apr 25, 2018 Views: 606 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(+1)

So i was just chilling out, then suddenly BAM! an email from hopfrog saying forager is on steam! so i rushed to steam and nope.. it was the exact same email i received ages ago saying its on steam to add to your wishlist. Boy not alot of games i want to play the moment i can, but this is one of them so freaking hyped!

Developer(+1)

Omg so sorry for the tease lol. I think that was a jerk move on my part...

But jokes aside, the game is almost done! :) After I finish working on this the folks at Humble are going to localize it to several languages, do some testing and QA and port it to Switch. We can then release during the Fall!

haha honestly it could've been my bad as well i think i subscribed on two different emails by accident when i first contacted you about the game haha, god damn that means waiting and bleh so impatient. Can't wait honestly though, any future of pre-ordering?

HopFrog, btw, I REALLY hope you implemented the coin system I suggested a while back. I attempted to sell 10,000 diamonds on the demo.... well... to say the least.... it crashed.... and burned.... jk on the last part. lol Also, I bought all of the islands the game will allow and the game lags really bad. Possibly too many entities needing to be rendered? Please update me on how the game dev is coming along. I would love to buy the game AS SOON as it comes out. I'm totally pumped. I haven't felt this excited since I found out Minecraft was a thing. lol. I can't wait to stream this game. Keep up the good work! :D

(1 edit)

Never really got as far as you did but i noticed the lack of optimization, however without trying to speak on behalf of him or take his fun job away hahaha. But after asking him on twitter he did he let me know that the optimization will be better on final release (:

I noticed you said "port it to Switch" there. Is that going to happen so you release the Steam version and Switch at the same time or is the Switch version coming later?

Developer

We are looking to do a simultaneous release (both Steam & Switch at the same time)

Developer(+3)

Hey guys! The game has been VASTLY improved optimization-wise. I rewrote the entire code base so it should work much much better now. Some more info on this:


  • When there are a lot of the same item in the ground, they just "group up" to reduce lag. So instead of 100 Coins you only see one coin sprite but it's bigger and it has the number "100" at the bottom to represent the higher value.

  • Buying lands is not a problem at all anymore. This is one of the first things I fixed! Not only the final release contains MORE lands but also there is always something special in each land you buy. Ruins to explore, enemies to kill, NPCs to interact with, etc. There is ALWAYS something different in each land, and you can buy them all without lagging the game.

  • The only problem I still have is when I place a lot of buildings and have them all be crafting things at the same time. Say I build 1000 furnaces and they are all making different items. I still get a few hundred item drops on the floor that start to lag the game a bit (drops about 10-15 fps, so it's still very much playable). I am going to experiment some more on how to optimize this as well!



Thanks for the support, by the way! :D

"The only problem I still have is when I place a lot of buildings and have them all be crafting things at the same time. Say I build 1000 furnaces and they are all making different items. I still get a few hundred item drops on the floor that start to lag the game a bit (drops about 10-15 fps, so it's still very much playable). I am going to experiment some more on how to optimize this as well!"

You probably solved this issue already but a common way games handle it is to have local storage in the production item. Eg Factorio. These storage can fill up but you could set the max high. Mousing over the storage bin could pick it up until you get the upgrade that automatically moves the item to your inventory. That perk could also teleport the item instead of showing an animation to help reduce lag.

You could also have storage collector boxes that are generic that just suck the items out of the furnaces every n seconds. These could have a radius effect just like the generators. You could then periodically go to the storage as a player and grab what you wanted.

When selling giant piles of things it seems like a sound is generated for each thing. This causes some crazy sounds and in the demo it actually causes the music to stop playing. 

ps: I LOVE this game :)

That's a good solution. I assume items are already using the observer pattern so there's only one observer looking over a k-d tree of item locations rather than each item periodically checking if the mouse or player is close.