Dev Blog #88: Development Update

Happy Monday! It's been awhile since our last update so we wanted to share what we've been working on, and why we haven't been able to push any updates in the last little while. We've been quite busy on a few fronts lately! First up is Optimization & Porting to Unity 2018.3.

Optimization and Unity Version Porting

We've been pushing for some time now to port the game forward to the latest version of Unity, which we've largely finished, but are unfortunately being held back by waiting for some custom engine features to be ported forward alongside PAMELA. Long story short - the folks at Unity added some extra bells and whistles to help us bring PAMELA to life on the previous version we were using (2017.2) and now those changes need to be brought forward to 2018.3 What this means, sadly, as that we can't launch an update using a "standard" version of Unity, and are waiting on Unity for these fixes to be ported forward. We could have stayed on 2017.2, but we REALLY needed access to some new engine features and optimizations to address performance concerns; we were stuck between a rock and a hard place, so to speak. The good news is we've done most of the hard work and are just waiting an a stable release version from Unity. On the optimization front, we've also worked on reducing the amount of memory item spawning took up, as well as some music memory optimizations. Along with texture streaming (a new feature of Unity 2018.3) you should see some pretty significant memory improvements on the GPU and CPU.

NPC Abilities

The Widow and Reaper have received some love, gaining some nasty new abilities and attribute tweaks. Widows will soon have very poor eyesight but excellent hearing, as well as a deadly lifesteal attack. Reaper are gaining a Roar attack, which will drain stamina if caught in the blast. This ability makes them an even more fearsome melee combatant!

Balancing

We've done a wave of item spawn balancing, including readjusting the game's economy to encourage exploration of higher-level areas to find rare items.

Story Mode

Last but definitely not least is Story Mode (which will be the default option when we hit 1.0 release). We've been working on a ton of foundations behind the scenes, as well as designing new items and areas. We're moving full steam ahead on this and are aiming to be getting it out into the wild later this summer. That's it for now! As soon as we're able to resolve the Unity engine blockers we mentioned above, you'll be getting a pretty meaty update. We can't wait for that to happen, and want to say thank you for the patience while this gets ironed out behind the scenes.