It’s been a week of brutally hot temperatures here in Wales. Some have been complaining about the heat, whilst others have been getting drunk and sun burnt on the beach. Us? We stayed in, surviving largely on popsicles and desk fans, and continued working. Fortunately, Wales is back to its usual rainy weather, which makes sitting in front of a PC making games slightly easier for us!
Since the release of the Hollows update, we’ve been a little quiet. Well, publicly. That’s because we’ve been focused on memory optimizations and bugs with memory usage before we move onto improving other aspects of the game.
Whilst that may not sound as exciting as a new content update, this work is equally as important. It’s also quite involved, requiring us to move all the game assets to an addressable asset system that allows asynchronous loading and unloading of assets when we need them.
We’ve also had a few bugs where assets were not correctly unloaded, which caused a gradual increase in memory usage. The memory issues had negative effects on stability and performance, so it was important for us to focus on these first, get them sorted, and not rush out a quick fix.
In addition to this, we are reducing the size of some bigger islands to cut down on the number of objects for memory and performance reasons. Whilst doing this, we also want to reduce the attritional feel of having to carry objects a massive distance to extraction portals. We are currently working on Garm and Asena and moving onto some later islands to review these.
That said, new content is also in the works! Progress continues on the Hollows as we add one for each island, and flesh out some visual differences between them, such as adding an icier feel to Freki and Sunken.
We are also starting to outfit them with hazards, such as vents and mechanical grinders and drills, and will be introducing barriers, such as destroyable gates soon. In addition to the already existing Hollows visuals, we are working on the assets for a more “god manufactured” feel for the God Islands. So, there will be less carved rock and more metal corridors.
Again, we would like to thank everyone who has provided feedback and reported bugs. We really appreciate this, and whilst we realize that these updates are taking time, we assure you that we are hard at work, and continue to listen.
We hope to have a new update soon containing the memory improvements and fixes to loading issues, and from there we will move onto other areas that need improvement, like optimizing multiplayer which will reduce desync and connection issues.
Expect to hear updates from us more frequently going forward. Until then, stay Almighty, Alphas!