So I figured now I have a bit of an audience I could start writing dev logs again.
First off I'd to thank everyone who has played so far. I've managed to get the game's net code to exceed my expectations and I can start adding new content right away.
I'd also like to schedule a gather. While we're in Early Access, we still need to get a playerbase going. If you don't know what a gather is, it's where we all play together at a set time on the same server, so theres actual humans to play against, at least until the game gains a little traction.
The next gather is October 29th, Sunday at 12PM MST. I'm not going to make events anymore, so just keep that in mind yourself. I'll make another update a little bit beforehand to try to remind people.
The next content I'd like to work on is making Espionage mode better. Right now its pretty bland, and games end far too quickly if the defenders aren't organized. So I'd like to think of some mechanics that could take pressure off of the defenders from enemies just throwing themselves at the super computer.
The idea of multiple super computers came to mind (which the game mode actually supports right now, to some degree) but then it feels like its not enough because you're just padding time onto the problem instead of making it more fun.
So I thought of resource collecting, where defenders would have to venture away from the objective and try to kill players to earn points to upgrade their defenses or something. It's something I'm gonna try out this weekend, so let me know your thoughts on that.
Yes yes I know, you're all Ice Frog himself. But doesn't your competition seem a little stiff to really determine a meta? IS there a meta? Who knows, we're all new at this game.
I DO see glaring balance problems, and they will be addressed. But why the rush? You're not some eSports big shot competiting for milions, just have fun with the crazy weapons. These early days will be the best time of this game's lifespan, so enjoy it.
With that being said, after seeing a gather or two, then I will start playing around with some changes. Just bring your best loadout and show everybody how gosh darn broken <INSERTWEAPON> is.
These past two weeks I've been trying a new method of optimization I always wanted to do, which was generating a static, large collision mesh. I applied the method this week and it's been working very well.
If you noticed in an increase in performance, it was probably that. So before (and Boring Man as well), when you would place "blocks" in the map editor, each block would exist as its own entity in the game. This was not a good idea.
If you have a big map, you'd need a lot of ground and walls made up in objects. Most of which wouldn't do anything else except block players and.. exist. That takes up a lot of resources!
So what I did was merge all the objects into fewer, bigger objects. There were enough functionality in Game Maker to do that surprisingly and I think it works well. Its sort of like trading GPU for CPU.
I made a doodle if you still don't understand: https://i.imgur.com/EBDscbO.png
27 block objects exist on the map before the optimization, then only 2 block objects exist after, because the blocks were able to merge their sprites into 1 and exist as one object performing one function.
It actually works slightly different then that (the whole map is cut up into a grid) but this is the same end result and I thought it'd be easier to understand.
ANYWAYS, thats it from me for now. You should see a big update in the next week or so.
- S