Patch 1.3.0 - Game Stability and Shader Batching

Greetings, mighty adventurers!

Let us speak plainly, I know there aren't that many people playing Gorgon Shield anymore - it wasn't the hit game I'd hoped it would be. This is 100% on me. This was my first attempt at making a 3D game in Godot ( and only the second 3D game I'd ever made, the first being a pretty awful marble maze game called Dark Rolls over a decade ago!) ... and I have to say I was a bit out of my depth.

There was a real steep learning curve just in trying to make the game performant while also learning 3D modelling, texturing, lighting and the rest. Now, technically the game is 2.5D because I used 2D billboard sprites in a 3D environment, but still, you get the point...

The vast experience of my game dev has been in 2D and I think I never quite got this game right. The game since launch has been plagued by crashes, and the maddening thing is they're so inconsistent in where it happens. I could play the game for 45 minutes, no problem, another player might play for 5 minutes and crash. I found it so hard to replicate where the issues were and despite my best efforts, I just could never solve these issues.

So what's this patch for, you may ask? With the release of Godot 4.5, there's a great new error tracker built in and I've implemented that into the game - this will allow me to ( in theory ) better pinpoint where crashes might be coming from, right down to the function that called them.

If your game crashes during this patch, you can send me your crash logs to info at whiskeybarrelstudios dot com and I can use them to iron out any remaining issues. You can find these logs here:

C:\\Users\\User\\AppData\\Roaming\\GorgonShieldData\\logs

Okay, so also in this patch - batch shading improvements, so the game will load slowly the very first time you run it ( particularly noticable when you first enter the tower ) but on repeat plays, it will be smooth and fast. What this is doing is compiling, batching and caching all shaders so they don't cause jitters and stutters.

There's also a few small bugfixes in the game and some other performance improvements that came with the release of Godot 4.5. I played the game solidly for 2 hours straight yesterday with multiple runs, getting all the way to the mid 40s tower levels several times - not a single crash. That's not to say the game will never crash, I just hope it should be less frequent for players.

I've capped the framerate to 60fps and removed the unlimited FPS option because I think that has been causing some real weirdness.

Thanks so much to all those who played and enjoyed this game despite its flaws and issues - it was made at a very difficult time in my life personally and it was just a bit of a labyrinthine hell to get launched. I think at the heart of it, there's still a good game in there for those who are patient and brave (haha) - and having played it again extensively yesterday, I'm actually proud of it despite its flaws.

Cheers all, Oliver Joyce

Whiskeybarrel Studios