Steam News3 October 20232y ago

Big update coming for Asfalia

Hello, everyone! It's been a while since Asfalia: Anger was launched, and we've been hard at work on the next episode Asfalia: Fear, but in the mean time we've also worked on addressing some of the feedback we've receiv

In this update7

Full notes

Full Asfalia: The Cranky Volcano update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

Repeated intro

Hello, everyone!

What changed

1 fix3 additions5 changes0 removals

Performance
UI and audio
Gameplay
Balance

changedBetter performanceThe biggest thing we wanted to work on was a performance overhaul. Most players didn't really notice but Asfalia: Anger was more ressource hungry than it should be, mostly due to how Charlie's pathfinding was handled and how we save things in the game.

changedBetter performanceThe former was causing unnecessary CPU usage, while the latter was bloating memory with textures and sounds, eventually resulting in the entirety of all sounds and textures of the game being loaded in memory.

fixedBetter performanceSo we fixed all that for Asfalia: Fear and ported Asfalia: Anger entirely on our new codebase, which took a lot of time.

changedBetter performanceThis change to the save system comes with a caveat unfortunately. We had to drastically review the way the game data is saved, which means the game saves that predate the update will unfortunately be lost. We understand it is a high price to pay for some of our players, but we had to do this for the good of the game.

changedPause in dialoguesWe also looked into the possibility to skip dialogues, but we haven't found a solution that works for us yet. The main issue being to ensure that after dialogues are skipped every state in the game is properly updated. So this will unfortunately have to wait.

addedPause in dialoguesFor those who like complete immersion we also added an option to remove the speech bubbles.

Asfalia: The Cranky Volcano changes

changedThe biggest thing we wanted to work on was a performance overhaul. Most players didn't really notice but Asfalia: Anger was more ressource hungry than it should be, mostly due to how Charlie's pathfinding was handled and how we save things in the game.

changedThe former was causing unnecessary CPU usage, while the latter was bloating memory with textures and sounds, eventually resulting in the entirety of all sounds and textures of the game being loaded in memory.

fixedSo we fixed all that for Asfalia: Fear and ported Asfalia: Anger entirely on our new codebase, which took a lot of time.

changedThis change to the save system comes with a caveat unfortunately. We had to drastically review the way the game data is saved, which means the game saves that predate the update will unfortunately be lost. We understand it is a high price to pay for some of our players, but we had to do this for the good of the game.

changedWe also looked into the possibility to skip dialogues, but we haven't found a solution that works for us yet. The main issue being to ensure that after dialogues are skipped every state in the game is properly updated. So this will unfortunately have to wait.

It's been a while since Asfalia: Anger was launched, and we've been hard at work on the next episode Asfalia: Fear, but in the mean time we've also worked on addressing some of the feedback we've received from reviewers, because your feedback matters to us.

Better performance

The biggest thing we wanted to work on was a performance overhaul. Most players didn't really notice but Asfalia: Anger was more ressource hungry than it should be, mostly due to how Charlie's pathfinding was handled and how we save things in the game.

The former was causing unnecessary CPU usage, while the latter was bloating memory with textures and sounds, eventually resulting in the entirety of all sounds and textures of the game being loaded in memory.

So we fixed all that for Asfalia: Fear and ported Asfalia: Anger entirely on our new codebase, which took a lot of time.

This change to the save system comes with a caveat unfortunately. We had to drastically review the way the game data is saved, which means the game saves that predate the update will unfortunately be lost. We understand it is a high price to pay for some of our players, but we had to do this for the good of the game.

A new ending

The most common feedback we were receiving was that the ending of the game was not a real end, and thus made the story incomplete for our players, leaving a feeling of incompleteness. Our intention with that ending was to make all episodes of Asfalia into a big journey, but that missed the mark because of how long it takes for us to create each chapter.

Moreover, it left the impression that you we were arm-wresting players into buying the other episodes, which was definitely not our intention.

We listened to that feedback, thought about it a lot, and decided that we wanted to give a true ending to the story. Rest assured, the old ending is still there, if you liked it... but you'll have to find it :-)

Pause in dialogues

Another common feedback was that the dialogues were too fast for some, and that players should be able to progress through them at their own pace.

Our intention is to make the dialogues as cinematic as possible, so we initially didn't allow for pauses because in some cases it made no sense to leave the cinematics hanging while waiting for the next line of dialogue.

We had to find a solution for this that would not hurt the cinematic experience, but provided an overall improvement for players. And the solution was to provide an option that would pause dialogues outside of the more action-packed moments.

We also looked into the possibility to skip dialogues, but we haven't found a solution that works for us yet. The main issue being to ensure that after dialogues are skipped every state in the game is properly updated. So this will unfortunately have to wait.

For those who like complete immersion we also added an option to remove the speech bubbles.

More dynamic mouth animations

Along with the port to our Asfalia: Fear codebase, comes a dynamic lip sync system to animate character mouths in real time. This system allows us to give characters much more dynamic mouths (previously we had to animate mouths manually, which was taking a lot of time). So most characters have received more mouth animations giving them more life as well.

A sticker gauge

You'll notice that the game menu now features a sticker gauge, and you can expect some sweet sweet surprise if you manage to fill it all the way.

We won't spoil the surprise, but we think you'll like it.

New pricing

The game's price was also something we received remarks about, and while we thought it was an adequate price reflecting the quality and effort we put into the game, our goal is for the game to be played by many people, and the current price is an obvious barrier to that. So along with the new release we will substantially lower the game's pricing.

When is it coming ?

We're currently heavily testing the latest build. The game is fully playable, but there's still some bugs here and there that require fixing. If you already own the game and are interested in playtesting this new version and giving us your feedback, let us know. It would mean a lot to us.

We hope to release the update next week if all goes well.

If you have any questions regarding this upcoming update, let us know.

Take care

Jean-Gobert de Coster Funtomata CEO and founder

Source

Steam News / 3 October 2023

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