Thanks for responding, Robert! I didn't want to wipe my save without being sure first what I'd be missing. But sounds like that's the best route, so I'll do that tonight and give it another go.
Android Update the good news is i have a playable build on android ready for testing The bad news is the Play store has a 100mb limit. Ive tried figuring out how to work with the expansion files neccessary to circumvent this, but the technicalities of it are beyond me. So for the time being i have to suspend development of the android version. I'm going to focus on update 4 for IOS and the Mac and PC versions. If i can figure out the Android issue, i will have a closed or open beta for everyone then
Good good, that saves me some digging, knowing that you can load in more via expansions. Didn't see the post before I sent you the PM Does anyone here know already how to do it, and - more importantly - can walk Robert through it? If not ... well, looks like I have to educate myself on Android deployment
the main part is straightforward. Google apps over 100mb need to be uploaded with an expansion file. So you upload the APK main app, and then an obb file that contains all the heavy assets. Unity can do a split build which will create the obb and the APK. The tricky part comes if someone's device, for whatever reason cannot download or loses the associated obb file then i have to include code inside my app that will locate and download this obb file as a backup. I actually made BrightRidge in javascript mostly and most of the tutorials for this are in C#, which i write from time to time but am no expert. there is also a lot to do with signing the app and editing the files to make this extra download possible. I spent 2 days converting BrightRidge for android which went really well, but its been more than a few days trying to figure the android obb situation out and as a solo developer it is just killing me Anyways i am glad because i learned that it will work on android, and i am integrating the android specific elements intp the main project file, so when the time comes to release the android build the project file will be ready to go
I'm definitely looking forward to the Mac version! Can't wait to see that world on huge monitors! Good luck with the Android issue. I know you'll get it. I'm curious how much work is involved with porting to Mac. Drives me crazy that Square-Enix completely ignore us Mac users who'd rather game without dual booting or using wrappers.
I don't know what engine Square is using, but Im using the Unity engine, which makes porting pretty easy. For example i was able to get the android build mostly working in about 2 days (my difficulty is with the play store expansion files, not the android port itself). The Mac/PC version basically just needs controller support, and keyboard support for checking the options, and an increase in texture quality. I'm hoping it will be as straightforward as the android port was In fact i actually play teh mac/pc version everyday inside the unity editor essentially, so ive already added muse control and arrow/wasd/attack/jump keyboard support. What's nice is i can also use the Mifi controller support in the next IOS update too.
Whenever I upgrade my device, this will most definitely be the first thing I buy. Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much Anonomation I appreciate the support - it's what keeps me going! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdqECk0nF4M&feature=youtu.be
Finally had some time to start Nulzon's journey through the changed Brightridge, now I just need to get around to writing it down @Robert, detail questions for you: What's the dating method in Nimia? E.g. do people have names for the months? How do they count the years? Example "Third day of the month of the Sun, in the 12th year of the reign of Emperor Karl Franz, the year of the Dancing Pig" . Is the founding date of Bresk known? If yes, which date is that? E.g. first recorded mention of a settlement there, grant of town privileges. How common is paper, parchment, other writing materials? Going by the posters in the browsergame, I assume they have printing presses already. If that's correct, how widespread are those? And on which technological level? How many people can actually read and write?
ooooo cool Welcome to Nimia. A verdant world broken free from a centuries long icy grip - blooming once more and unearthing the dangerous beasts and alien artifacts once frozen beneath the ice. The current year is 1848. There will be a great celebration in 1850. The level of technology is similar to that in similar years on earth but advanced by about 3 generations. Advanced societies have electricity, steam and other relatively advanced technology. Some have more advanced bits and pieces based on technology found in the towers that dot the continents. The level of advancement varies wildly across the continent, from medieval living to about the 1920s in advanced cities like Ookstergot. Towers are seen as religious symbols and used as such by dominant religious centers like the glistening (but crumbling) Towers of Vandgels inTiviscus (a highly religious nation). Printing presses have been around since about 1368 in Nimia. Other continents have varying levels of technology. All continents have towers on them. There are also many towers still in orbit around the Planet Ril. You can see a map of all the continents here: http://nimianlegends.com/empires/ Basic reading is quite common, and the universal language is Niji. Basic education is generally encoraged. Advanced reading and language is held closely by the elite. Nimia was an Empire but was recently divided when the south seceded and abolished slavery. The North is currently ruled by Emperoro Mortelle, and the East by the aggressive Empress Suvika. Bresk is the name of the first permanent building on the site, a castle which the Impror Suvika ordered constructed in the year 808 The general vibe is a focus on nature vs technology, with a quirky vibe. People and places are often strange, off balance, independent. Another tenet is the Behemoos: the arrival of the towers brought genetic modifications - of native animals into unique, giant sized beasts. Also of the native humanoids merged into the Kyndi, enigmatic descendents of the Tower's original inhabitants and outcasts in modern society. The true originas of the towers are not generally known. and a few items grabbed from my huge trove of documents- i pretty much built a whole world behind here 4 seasons, 90 days each, no months (in Nimia) - Spring: Spring Summer: Midsummer Fall : Harvest Winter: Winter Some Niji words: Good Bok Night Soi Me Nocho Are Ok/ is-ke It Tu Not Ne Work Mak You Vi Know Onat Thief Olot Speak Tar O.K. Bejna Pot Opo Name Nojo My/ Mine 'n Lamguage Nanjo On/ In Un Planet Orbe I On Clever Bie Many/ Lots Raj Who Nui Traveller Oyag Hello Onjo, Injo, Onji Scholar Larcho Similar/ Same Mim Goodbye Bokji Day Ji Bye Ji Failure Ilu Explain Iqui Nacha: The concept of good/evil doing evil/good's bidding that creates imbalance. P.S. Nullzone in Niji is Rinjio
Thanks, Robert! That's a great start. I asked for the timecounting and the Bresk founding date for a specific reason: When I strolled around yesterday, at some point I lost my bearings flying in thick fog. Landed somewhere and saw 2 of the huge statues in the distance. At first I didn't realise they are the ones guarding the road to Bresk, and wrote them down as "Wardens" due to their posture. When I figured it out, I still liked the name So I got the idea that in old documents they are called "Wardens of the Way" without any mention of Bresk - which would make them older than Bresk, obviously. Thus, lots of questions, and one thing led to another Hhmm ... no months implies either no moon(s), or static / very slow-moving ones. Which one is it? Now that I think of it, I cannot recall seeing a moon at night in BR, but then I didn't always pay attention to the sky. Need to check that. And are the 4 seasons just treated as equally long for timecounting, or are they really? Because the latter means a perfectly circular orbit around the sun, and no planetary axis tilt (not 100% sure about the last part). Would it work with your backstory ideas to have Giska/Rando do something with the Terrapin in the story be the cause of real massive changes to the landscape? Personally, I like that idea as in-universe explanation why things look so different than earlier versions of BR
Wow you are detail oriented I love it! There's 2 moons, i cant remember their names though. The seasons are roughly 90 days each but it varies i guess (im running off your suggestion here) I like the wardens better than the sentinels, especially since now the sentinels are teh giant robots you tackle in the game. Cities are about 1000 years old, warden statues almost usually a lot younger, a lot of them replaced even older statues that used to be there with 'official' empire ones, but the oldest are the towers which appeared about 4000 years ago and were 'rediscovered' about 1800 years ago (thats when everyone started having an opinion on them, peasants distrust them, religious leaders use them as testaments to their glory, scientists such as they are covet their secrets and elite political groups use them and their technologywhen possible) I dont think i understand what you mean about giska / rando but id like to hear more about it, are you talking about changes to teh quests? or more backstory/flavor? I am making GREAT progress with the next Beta 4b2- it has gamepad support (which prepares it for the soon ready mac, pc and apple TV versions), improved shadow handling, an updated backend to the newest Unity Engine, hopefully fixes a problem with iPhone 6plus and 6Splus where it is loading in Ultra resolution by default (the 6+ crashes and the 6s+ surprisingly can actually play it half decent in ultra as you can see in the gameplay video by rrvirus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6oJ-Ms7rlc , but it should start in default) and importantly a new disable high quality option in the splash screen, that loads the game with about half the memory use to prevent crashes - which usually happen as a result of too much memory pressure from too many textures. If all goes well id like to do another beta 4b3 that would add newly generated vegetation in a more natural way. Ive tested it in a prototype and it looks great, and is made possible by the update to the new unity version.
For kicks here is the old Nimian Legends site, it talks about the history a bit on the legends page http://nimianlegends.com/old/ The timeline is all over the place, but it does accurately talk about the general origins of teh towers and some of nimias species. (ex Geogineer corp develops Terrapins - self-replicating terraforming technology. this is the origin of the towers)
Just a quick update. I had a few whirlwind days adding gamepad support and more fixes + upgraded to the latest version of Unity 5.4.1. But in the end the latest update runs too unstable on the earlier devices. I love that they have introduced a bunch of new features, but i think some of them (forced shadows, motion vectors, reflection probes) are now default and are pushing BrightRidge over the edge I am pretty dissapointed to have added all that for 'nothing' but i learned from it, and i think i have to acknowledge more that i'm just one guy, and i dont have the technical or marketing resources to REALLY achieve what i'm trying to. Anyways i decided to go back to the earlier version of Unity that I know works well. The worry there is that eventually (and already i see it) the earlier version wont be able to deliver things (like Apple TV etc), but im not going to worry about that to much. Im going to backport some of the new things i learned to the original version - like an iPhone 6+ resolution fix and the gamepad support (which actually worked amazingly well!) and just focus on un-sexy polish and bug fixes for BrightRidge, and the Mac version, which is very straightforward. It' just as well I ramp down because i also have to find work to pay the bills. I like doing design, and it will be a good time to focus on updating my portfolio and looking for contracts. I'm still working on BrightRidge, but just less tentpole additions and more simple items. Im really happy with how the game has turned out given my resources, and im pretty grateful for all the kind people, especially in the Touch Arcade forums, who have been so supportive that it lifts up my faith in people
Wow, someone in Japan posted a really in depth review of BrightRidge. Their screenshots look amazing: http://www.gamecast-blog.com/archives/65874783.html or translated into English https://translate.google.ca/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamecast-blog.com%2Farchives%2F65874783.html&edit-text=&act=url I have to admit after a very rocky week it makes my heart soar to see people from different cultures able to find something fun in the game. What they really liked were the options and how you could push the graphics to the limit on new devices - im glad to see that paying off. Anyways it is just a really wonderful end ti the night and i wanted to share
Hey guys, I downloaded the game and been fooling around with it for some time, the world is really amazingly crafted, really beautiful work. After a while I found out that the game had graphic settings, so I obviously cranked up every setting and checked every special fx box to see what it looked like, unfortunately I got a lot of stutters and fps in the tens or lower with this. So my question is what would you sugest to uncheck or lower ti get the best possible visuals? I'm using an iPad pro 9.7 256gb on the last ios 9 version. Also, when I go to the resolution change menu, my device is listed as an ipad mini 4, don't know if this has any effect whatsoever. Congrats Protopop, I read some pages of the thread and I can see you've poured your soul in this game and created a mesmerizing world while at it.
Thanks for trying BrightRidge MeanTuna It's interesting to hear some iPad Pro feedback. Im very interested in knowing how it performs on iPad Pros and iPhone 7. One of the forum users rrvirus played the whole game on an iPhone 6S+ and it was able to play 70% or so of the game on Ultra resolution smoothly(which i didnt think was possible) so newer devices are capable of pushing the settings up quite a lot compared to earlier ones. I'm using an earlier version of Unity for the game that cant detect ipad pros, so it just recognizes it as a regular ipad and sets the resolution at 1024x768 i think (from memory) The things that slow down the frame rate most are: Reflections in water Depth of Field Motion Blur (a bit) Anisotropic Filtering Shadow resolution: high and ultra are slower, low and medium can run very quick Screen Resolution: medium is usually very smooth, high and ultra close in on 1500p and are only recommended for newer devices. I havent tried it on an ipad pro, but given how powerful theipad air 2 is, im guessing MAYBE it could run the game smoothly on high resolution. Either way, changing the resolution has probably the biggest effect on frames per second Also grass is very heavy, and it can hamper the game in two ways: very dense grass can slow things down (although usually only when its in the ultra density) and too much grass can crash 1gb systems, but i find 2gb systems can handle a lot of grass. But like resolution, its another cpu user that can save on frames. If i were to suggest something that looked great and performed well id do something like: No depth of field Medium Water no reflect High desnity grass (high grass enhances the look of the terrain a lot) medium or high resolution shadows far shadow distance (looks great) far grass distance (looks great) Medium Resolution Screen Anything but the highest terrain quality. usually the second to last or middle one look almost as good as the highest setting (from memory cant remember what they are called) but perform a lot faster. I am also trying to add saving your settings from session to session. Unfortunately right now the game uses defaults each time it has to restart. Thanks for the kind words about the game. It has been very long time working on this, and it has changed quite a bit since it's first inception (the now free version). People in the Touch Arcade forum have been very helpful with encouragement, help and suggestions, so there is a part of TA's DNA in the game too i'm very glad some people are enjoying it,and im very glad to hear you like it too. If you feel like leaving a review or a rating i always appreciate that It helps get the word out about BrightRidge.
Wow, thanks for the speedy response! I tried the settings you suggested, this is what im using so far: Left occlusion on (it was already checked) Screen resolution high shadow quality high Shadow distance far Tree distance far Terrain quality high Draw distance high Grass density high Grass distance far Effects: only water particles, fx and show birds checked water medium waves. With this build the game looks great and runs at 30 fps with the only dips being only to 29.5, tomorrow ill try to see at what point do the performance starts to drop. Having fun cruising around this world, haven't started the campaign yet, again kudos for an excelent job and for the amazingly fast response!
Getting a Pro 12.9 today. How far can I push the graphics on this? I already own the game, but put aside since I have an iPad Air, wanted to save for the higher graphics settings. Anyone played on the iPad Pro? FYI.. i haven't read the whole thread, so if asked/answered already...apologies. Edit: just read posts above mine. Please disregard
Thats very helpful to know about those settings and the close to 30fps. This is good because i think every device that is less than a year old will run BrightRidge very well (my most powerful device is an ipad air 2). I actually this i may add a new "nextgen" setting above ultra to accommodate these new devices (like nextgen grass, extreme distances etc...) All the water that has "waves" is kind of a funny thing. I just included it for fun - it makes the actual geometry of the water go slightly up and down. i didnt include it as a default because i havent figured out how to fix the wave sometimes going above the camera but nt setting off the underwater visuals because they are based on a set height, while the wave geometry height varies depending where you are swimming. it doesnt really affect you but its just some background info incase you discover this as you swim. For the 'safest' visual results using a non-wave version is best (it will still have waves of foam, light and water on the surface) Occlusion is funny because i cant figure out of it runs faster or slower without it - but i left it in just in case. my goal is to eventually give you really deep control over EVERY aspect of the game settings. I find its kind of like a game in itself
