Hey everyone! I'm super excited to finally announce the beta for Bulwark of the Abyss! With Beta 3, the build is much more optimized and SHOULD run on more iOS devices than ever before. But please, the more testers the better. I have to continue working on the game proper, but I want to make sure it scales appropriately Bulwark of the Abyss Beta Page I want to thank everyone in advance for testing the game. I've been looking at it for so long alone that I need new eyes on it to make sure I'm on the right track and that people will have fun playing it. Cheers! See you in the Abyss! UPDATE 4.5: Okay, even better: I can no longer crash the game on my 2GB RAM having iPad Pro. Hopefully this is a sign of good things! I will have an updated beta tonight if everything continues to be good. Thank you for your patience AGAIN, over and over. UPDATE 4: Okay! So I fixed Windows / MacOS builds, something somewhere wasn't up to date. As for iOS optimization I have the game running on my iPad Pro 9.7" (2016) and it has 2GB of RAM. It will occasionally crash when the player rests. I think there's a memory leak in here somewhere. But we're edging closer and closer to further device compatibility! Hang in there. UPDATE 3: Back to the drawing board. For some reason, something somewhere in the game is crashing Windows builds consistently and MacOS sometimes. It’s throwing no errors or logs to track either, so that’s... interesting. This may delay things a bit! UPDATE 2: Okay, development is moving along. I’ve made an updated windows/Mac build on the website that has fixed the PC platform issues that weren’t Present in mobile. As for iOS, I’ve been hard at work on the RAM management bottleneck as well as overall performance optimizations + various device exclusive resolutions (I overlooked that so I’m sure IPhone 8 Plus users are like “why is this so stretch?” Answer: I’m a doofus.) Anyways! Hoping to have a new build for testing tomorrow. Thank you all again for testing Bulwark of the Abyss. And to clarify: yes, there will be a story. There will be lore. This game has a lot going on it, but the beta is specifically for breaking and fixing to find the technical limitations and exploits. Don’t worry! UPDATE: I just want everyone to know that the ram is definitely priority #1 to the Nth degree. Truth is, I didn’t notice the impact various additions to the game were having on the RAM situation until literally 24 hours before the beta went live. I’m hoping to have some sort of progress on this by next week. Fingers crossed. But I hate alienating so many people. Like an iPad 6th gen from 2018 has 2Gb of ram... I can’t keep people from playing the game.
Some of us who actually deciphered your cryptic message in the trailer already knew the beta is coming today, February 14th.. Unfortunately for me, I won’t be able to participate in the beta as my 6th gen iPad doesn’t have 3GB RAM. So, yeah. It still isn’t gonna hold me back to check the thread from time to time to see the progress. Good luck!
Arrrgghhh and you were the mastermind who knew it was coming and I can't even do anything to make you able to enjoy it... I'll give you a free code when the game launches for your efforts. Quote me on that and don't let me forget. I genuinely didn't notice the ram implications until some last minute changes and now I know I have to go deep into optimization in the coming weeks / months. I appreciate you! <3
Hey everyone, if anyone is feeling squirrelly and testing the MacOS and Windows versions, please let me know if the game is crashing upon entering new zones or the abyss... I've gotten a report that there's a frequent crash and it seems repeatable easily on Windows, I don't have a windows machine to test myself so any input will help tremendously. In other news, I've been going hard on optimizations because there are tons of failure to launch crashes on devices even as new as 2018, which is crazy. I didn't realize the memory usage bottleneck until I had already set up the beta and everything 24 hours before the launch. I'm hoping to have an update this week to improve it significantly. I try to always remain as transparent as possible in my development and updates, so please bare with me. I don't want to sour the taste of any players going forward. I am available for any questions or concerns you may have. Cheers, and thank you to all the testers and various devices and feedback I've been receiving, it's helping me focus on the major issues!
Thanks man! I’ve got a ways to go to make sure it’s ready for prime time (clearly) but it will be worth it!
More progress added in the original post. TL;DR- hopeful for a fresh new build for testing tomorrow! Cheers!
Optimization continues and the game plays on devices with 2GB of RAM now, but at some point during saving, whether its the 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th, time, at some point, it will crash. There has to be a memory leak somewhere, but I'm working hard to get this on as many Apple devices as possible. Thank you for your patience. If anyone is reading these updates haha. Cheers! EDIT: I think I've got it running solid on 2GB devices. The update is processing on Apple's end. When it's finished... PLEASE TEST THIS AND PROVE ME RIGHT! Haha, but for real, been working my ass off to clean this memory issue up.
