Okay ... I know the level. It's the one where a Necromancer is summoning a powerful Skeleton King and you have to try and kill her and her bodyguard before it arrives through the summoning portal. I'll check that level and see if there's something screwed up with it.
Hi guys ... another quick update. I've done the credits page so the game is technically ready for submission. However, I still want to run through and do some more testing and quality control before I do that. I've given a shout out to those on this great forum that have given feedback in the credits. In case I forgot someone ... send me a quick PM and I'll be sure you to add you as well. I'm working on a proper training level that teaches the player how to play the game and gives them a chance to beat up some wooden training dummies and a couple of unarmed ratmen prisoners.
Finger might tired as I still have create the trailer video and then wait for Apple to review and approve it. However, here's a picture of the new tutorial level to tie you over. It shows the Dwarf King for the first time. He'll eventually be a playable NPC in later chapters but for now is just the paying you to scout out the ruins. In this training level, there is a tool tip window that appears and explains how to do stuff. To finish the level, players have to destroy the 3 wooden training dummies in the corner and then open the prison gate using a lever and kill the 2 unarmed Ratmen inside. Screen Shot 2015-07-02 at 10.14.54 AM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
Found the level and I believe I fixed the bug. Actually it led to identify two other bugs that could exist in other levels due to the recent changes I made. Therefore, you may run into this kind of bug for quite a few of the patrol levels. However, I think they're fixed in my version. I'll likely submit another playlets build today.
Have submitted a new build to Apple today that includes bug fixes, some new units, some new patrol levels (up to 40), credits, How to Play section and Tutorial level completed. Not much else really ... just play throughs and minor polish. Will do that this weekend and will then work on the video trailer next week. Please look around for any bugs and let me know what you find.
Hey guys, Quick update ... I'm going through the long list of minor fixes before launch. I redid the Samurai so he no longer looks like the weird offspring of a human and bull dog! So no need for the Samurai mask I had given him before. Actually, the interesting thing is that I'm noticing a huge performance increase from going back and re-doing that character with my new optimization tools so I'm very tempted to go back and fix all the other characters in the same way. I may do it now or put that as something post release.
Better do that post-release, you never know what doing all 24 might screw up... What I've seen other devs do is to include something like this in the app description on the Appstore. E.g. "Plans for version 1.1: Improve looks of character models, ETA: 4 weeks"
That's a cool idea. You're right ... there is no way of knowing what it might screw up until its heavily tested. Seriously though, the performance improvements are huge. The main thing on mobile is # of draw calls ... and I switched over 6 heroes this morning and the draw calls on a scene showing them went from around 125 to around 50. That should seriously reduce the battery consumption and heat generated on the phone by around 50%, I think.
The thing with the number of drawcalls sounds really familiar. But of course I cannot find or remember where it came up before. The only thing I could find is this http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=3350929&postcount=490 (Epic's Metal demo, listed at ~4000 drawcalls), but that's not what I had in mind. And reduced battery usage sounds very good. DH was bleeding my poor iThingie dry in no time
Yeah, it may not have as much impact on devices running metal. However, every little bit helps regardless. I've done 8 characters and I'm going to do a build and play through with 6 of them and look for any issues. I have to do the testing anyway to catch other bugs that exist in the various levels so this will be a good way to test this process on a real device and also see what difference it makes in the real world.
How many drawcalls do you have now? I couldn't find anything in my link collection. And can only vaguely remember that there's a pretty harsh limit without Metal (my brain keeps alternating between ~300, and ~125) , after which performance really went down the drain, and battery use skyrocketed. As for Metal: as far as I can recall, you need to build specifically for Metal, which automatically leaves all older devices by the wayside.
It really varies depending on how many characters are visible on the screen and how complex those characters are. Sometimes a goblin with lots of fiddly little bits of armour or equipment might be 15 draw calls by himself while a massive giant might only be 2. So with the extra character detail option switched off, the game usually hovers around 75 to 150 but thats with lots of extra stuff stripped off the characters. Without that option, it'll be around 100 to 200, depending on how busy the scene is. Now with the new optimizations, 6 heroes with full equipment stuff showing is only 40 - 50 draw calls. Basically each character is going from 5 - 15 draw calls to 2 - 3. It's a big difference when you consider that if the player zooms out, he might be showing 30 characters on the screen at one time. What I've found is that there are some characters that are a lot of draw calls and some that don't really benefit from the new optimization as they were already only 4 or 5 draw calls. So I think what I'll do is optimize only the really heavy draw call characters for the release and then do the rest later. My testing is showing no adverse effects to the new method so I suspect it's pretty safe ... but if it isn't, I can just switch back to my previous characters as I'm not actually deleting the old ones. For Metal, Unity3D automatically builds a Metal version as well as a non-Metal version and the metal version of the code only kicks in on devices that support it. So essentially, I can build for both and just automatically get the benefits on a Metal device.
Had a marathon optimization session today and have optimized almost all of the heavy draw call characters. Tested a couple of the busier, big battle levels and what used to be 100 - 150 draw calls now renders in around 60 - 80 ... with all details on characters shown! Will go back now to finishing up other bits of the game and testing.
Thanks very much! Should be all done and submitted by the end of this week. Apple approved the next play test build that I submitted last week so I've sent out invites to it. It has some bug fixes and a few more patrol levels and a tutorial section. If anyone wants to give the game a shot now, just send me your apple ID and I'll add you to the public beta. I'll submit another version today that has some of the optimizations and the full tutorial level done today for review.
Okay gents, I think I can say the game is DONE! Managed to get the optimizations I wanted done as well so now the game runs much better. So for the initial release, we will have: - 24 playable character classes and 9 playable NPC classes (in the patrol levels). - 67 full levels. - 4 main enemy factions (undead, goblins, demons, and ratmen). - More than 250 unique spells / abilities used by player characters and enemy AI. - Approximately 200 base magic items that are used to create thousands of unique items by the system. - A full tutorial to help players learn the game mechanics After release, I'll add more characters, one more enemy faction and approximately 30 more levels, more magic items and an epic boss battle that you will bore your future grand children with. So gotta spend a few days building the video trailer, take screen shots and do whatever other red tape things I have to do and will then submit to the store. Assuming there are no surprises from Apple's review process, I'm planning an August 1st release date.
Hear ye, hear ye! Fantastic job, Wavelight! Really good to hear that everything is wrapping up now. Good luck with the red tape, fingers crossed for a great launch.
Hey guys .... here's the first draft of the App Preview video. 30 seconds is just not enough to highlight everything in this game. Let us know what you think. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
