Thank you - yeah I'd love to take a look at that. Would you post it here? Or is there a link to it online? Or you could email me at robert at protopop dot com. If you're interested i joining the beta list i can add you to that too Your games look CRAZY detailed. It's amazing to see what devs can come up with, and you are obviously passionate about game design too
Thank you - i love developer tips and tricks. Have you tried Archimatix? Its a procedural object generator, teh devloper is very friendly and it is insane what you can create in it. Check out the overviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7NhIE2Tx_I As for the post processing stack, I want to try it (and time line and cinemachine) , but unfortunately I havent been able to get BrightRidge to run stable using Unity 5.3 or 5.4. I actually build things in 5.3 and port it back to 5.2 - it's crazy. The memory use increased in 5.3+ and BrightRidge is a pretty intense Open World game so it just crashes on 1gb devices. Early on when BrightRodge was a lot less optimized, i had a ot of angry emails - and rightfully so - from people who were upset about the game crashing. Now that i have a quite stable build (at reasonable quality levels) I think it would be too damaging to introduce a upgraded Unity version that looks better but would be more unstable. Im looking into a few solutions, but for now 5.2 is very stable and great with memory in my case, so i am working to optimize and modular-ize (is that a word?) and simplify the game so that when i am forced to upgrade ill have a better understanding of every area of the game, and can hopefully get it working on newer versions of Unity. Its actually not bad - the only downside is i am not able to use most of teh asset store items because of version requirements, but ive also found you can still import a lot of assets that say they require a higher version if they are simple ones. But i am soooooo drooling at a lot of the newer Unity features and I admit I havent tried using Unity 5.5 or higher yet, so maybe those will have better memory use on older mobiles. Its funny because when i started game design i was just like "lets build games!" and now i have learned that there are a lot of moving pieces to take into consideration. With something like Photoshop ou just upgrade and its the same, but with game design there is so much memory and cpu and crashes and more so its been a real learning curve. Its stressful at times, but I enjoy it immensely and i have loved making worlds since i was a kid playing dungeons and dragons (i was always the dungeon master
Im not sure what the best settings are for a 6S but i can tell you some of the settings that affect the performance most. These are all on Options> settings > quality Things that affect memory/crashes (although if 6S has 2gb it should only crash on ultra settings) Grass desnity and distance Water: choose a non-reflective one - as soon as reflections are enabled the frame rate takes a huge hit. Choose BASIC for best performance Things that affect FPS most Terrain quality: leave it on low Resolution: leave it on low You can try to unlimit the frame rate under resolution and try Forward rendering Shadows: Low quality Effects: Dont use anisotropic filtering or depth of field I dont have a 6s so if you or anyone find an optimal setting set, please let me know. The last update 7.6 finally recognizes every IOS device, so i can set different quality levels per device from the start. Shining Jade helped me a few posts back to find good settings for iPad Pros, and so the next update will automatically start them in a higher quality level. Right now MOST of them start at a basic quality level, but i think (i dont remember) i MAY have upped the starting quality a bit for iPhone 6s in the last update based on my best guesses. I optimize the game with each update a little bit and its seen increased performance in general, so please keep a lookout for updates as i simplify it - you may get some extra performance And thank you for trying the game. I'm a solo dev and all profits from BrightRidge go towards the game itself, and hopefully the ability to work on these games full time eventually.
Naaah, just look at the postcount some of the really active folks have A minute here, a minute there. Wish I had more time these things, e.g. I have a guide for Code of Victory lying around for weeks and don't get around to polish and post it. Psssst, don't tell anyone, have a reputation to uphold. I mean get off my lawn! Now, what I really wanted to say: If you can reproduce the crashes in 5.3/5.4, report a bug with Unity. Include - your 5.3/4 project, 5.2 project - instructions how to backport some examples features - instructions how to reproduce the crashes - If you have any crashlogs, include those as well of course. Memory leaks and crashes can be really hard to troubleshoot, quite often they happen under rather arcane circumstances. So having a reproducable example sure does help.
Here's my quality manager script: Code: using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class QualityManager : MonoBehaviour { // Use this for initialization void Start () { if (PlayerPrefs.GetString ("EnableHighPoly") == "true") { #if !UNITY_STANDALONE && !UNITY_STANDALONE_OSX QualitySettings.SetQualityLevel (3); #endif #if UNITY_STANDALONE || UNITY_STANDALONE_OSX QualitySettings.SetQualityLevel (4); #endif } else { #if !UNITY_STANDALONE && !UNITY_STANDALONE_OSX QualitySettings.SetQualityLevel(1); #endif } #if !UNITY_ANDROID if (SystemInfo.systemMemorySize < 1100 || PlayerPrefs.GetString("LowRAMMode") == "true") { #else if (SystemInfo.systemMemorySize < 2100 || PlayerPrefs.GetString("LowRAMMode") == "true") { #endif QualitySettings.SetQualityLevel (0); PlayerPrefs.SetFloat ("GraphicsValue", 0); // PlayerPrefs.SetString("GraphicsText", "Max Battery"); } // Recent Additions if (PlayerPrefs.GetString("MusicText") == "") { PlayerPrefs.SetFloat("MusicValue", 0.5f); PlayerPrefs.SetString("MusicText", "50%"); } if (PlayerPrefs.GetString("SFXText") == "") { PlayerPrefs.SetFloat("SFXValue", 0.5f); PlayerPrefs.SetString("SFXText", "50%"); } if (PlayerPrefs.GetString("Player Speak Frequency Text") == "") { PlayerPrefs.SetFloat("Player Speak Frequency", 1.0f); PlayerPrefs.SetString("Player Speak Frequency Text", "Set"); } } } It's a little messy because I check the memory available on the device and then set various playerprefs that decide different graphics settings.
Thanks for the tips. I would check out Unity 5.6. It's very stable for me and has decent memory usage.
Getting 20-40 now. Set initially to max thinking 6s can handle it Hope more success for you dev! Cool game
Yeah - the project itself runs unchanged after the upgrade in the unity editor, but when i put it on a 1gb device like iPAd Air it crashes very quickly using unity 5.3. And it doesnt even run when i build it in unity 5.4 It does run in 2gb devices, which leads me to think that Unity just isnt managing its mobile memory as well in newer versions, an idea that is corroborated by what im reading in the forums. Anyways for now it is ok because i have found workarounds to build Vandgels in 5.2, and i will test Unity 5.5 and higher as WaveLightGames mentioned. At some point i will ahve to learn to run the profiler when i am actually hooked up to a real device, and not just in the Unity editor. its hard to explain, but all that stuff scares me Im such an artists and all this coding has been a HUGE learning curve
Oh wow - thank you! I didnt know about SystemInfo.systemMemorySize. Icould use this for quite a few troubleshooting things. Maybe even put it in the game itself with the framerate display option. BrightRdge is 99% written in JavaScript (well, unityscript) but i am learning basic c# enough to write it if i have too, and i would like to start working with c# scripts whenever possible so this is very good. in my experience c3 in Unity compiles WAAAYYYYYY faster than JavaScript - although i do like Jabascript because I am a web designer and use it all day so its easier for me. Anyways this is a really cool addition to my tool kit. BrightRidge players will thank you
Thank you - I will do that Ive heard that memory management might eb getting a bit better. Honestly the most terrifying thing about all this development has been upgrading Unity. From 4 to 5 was so much work - it took like almost 8 months for me to get things working, but eventually they did, so it might be hard but i am sure with enough work i will find a way
Oh good Honestly, most people go right to Max and it crashes, but i just included them for future proofing. ive found that devloping for mobile is much different than developing for traditional consoles. COnsoles are very standardized and last for almost a decade (or half that now with ps4 pro etc...) but mobile changes yearly. 8 years ago there was like 2 iphones and now there is like 30 IOS devices all with vastly differing power. So having these options was a must for me, but its hard to sell the idea that most devices cant us the max settings. But i still think it was important to leave them all in, because some people will for example increase the resolution and drop everything else, or use lots of effects but dont mind a lower framerate, or want framerate the most so drop the visual quality elsewhere. My mom has a 6S and i just took screenshots of it running around 30fps and will have new defaults for it in the next version set automatically on game start. But its good that you remind me about the fps so i will probably err on the side of being conservative a bot just to be safe. But i think it can at teh very least run with the default settings and use resolution medium instead of low and still perform well. Thanks so much for taking the time to leave this feedback - i learn a lot more form players than i could ever learn on my own
By the way, i made 72$ today which is the most ive ever made on BrightRidge, and its thanks to Touch Arcade mentioning the game on their home page. A huge thank you to everyone who is here
Congrats on that . Personally when i saw frequent updates + responsive dev on forums + $2 price , just bought and dived in.
Consistently getting 40-60 fps now (water still basic; terrain / shadows 2nd lowest; resolution 2nd highest ; grass middle ; full textures) Oops drained like 20% battery in a few minutes.
any tips for the huge battery drain? (any specific options with big impact on battery drain but won't affect visuals that much) or this is how it is if we want to enjoy the cool visuals?
One of the people who bought it yesterday after seeing the touch arcade article, surprised I hadn't come across it before! I came across this exact thing when I first loaded it up on my iPad Pro 9.7” – basically immediately flipped all the quality settings to highest and was stunned to see how amazing it looked but also how slow and chuggy it got, the first time that the iPad Pro had been brought to its knees by a game! Its great to see an app stretch the capabilities of ios devices, I am hoping more and more AAA style games with top end graphics come out on the iPad I note as well that mfi is listed as “experimental”, is there a reason for that? If you need help in fully integrating I would recommend reaching out to Gamevice as they are keen to work with developers to add mfi support to more games, I have their controller and it really adds to the gaming experience on the iphone/ipad EDIT: I noticed that the app isn't on the Gamevice Live site (basically the site they maintain with all the apps that have MFI support) - although its only experimental at this point it is in there so i have tweeted them to make them aware to add it to their site and help more people stumble across it like I did
Congrats! I'm just continually blown away more so with every new update. It's definitely one of the first titles that I point anyone to whenever I'm asked for recommendations from people, especially if their iPad is of the higher end when it comes to powerI.
Personally I think the price was a bit of a steal for the game from what I have seen so far. Some apps have a "pay what you want" type option, or even an in game purchase addition, and for the amount of work that's clearly gone into the game id personally be happy to put some more towards its continued development and (reading the thread) the eventual overall vision of multiple apps/games - anything to continue to support Dev's who focus on premium apps/games rather than Free to Play
Just bought the game. Will let you know my thoughts once I've given it a spin. If you don't mind some design feedback, I think the very low-polygon characters in your promo art does not gel with the rest of the game, which is photorealism. It just feels very jarring to have low-poly characters in a realistic environment. Have you considered using something like Fuse to make high polygon character designs? Regarding setting graphic options, I'd suggest using the iPhone model identifier to automatically set graphics by device. Set up maybe 5 or 6 quality settings in Unity and then just have it set automatically by the iPhone device generation. Probably just remove the options to change it from the user so you don't have users complain about crashes. If you need code help to do this, let me know.
Thanks Xcxc It's good to know that some people see me and the game that way. The updates are in part because I'm a solo dev, so it's kind of like this long protracted 2 year development time, but i see it as kind of an evolving artwork that i can continue to update and bring it c;loser and closer to my real vision. Whats nice is ive set up the project so that any improvements i make to the next game Vandgels will automatically be applied to this game BrightRidge. this way I can develop two worlds as one guy without getting overwhelmed. And i like speaking with players as much as possible because lets face it there would not be a game withoput anyone to play it And i get so much really helpful feedback from you guys. On android there are like 100 people who download the cracked version for every person who pays for it, but even then ive gotten valuable feedback about how it performs on all the different android devices from them that i never would have been able to get on my own, and i get some free marketing from their reviews and You tube videos so there's always value when anyone in any circumstance tries the game
