The Other Me Devlog #07

It's been a long time since we released the demo, and we carefully evaluated the feedback we received both from the demo and about our game. Based on this feedback, we made extensive improvements to the main game. The experiences we gained during and before the demo process have taught us valuable lessons in the development of the game. Today, we can proudly say that the game is at a completely different level compared to its initial state.

To summarize the key points: we aim to provide a much more immersive and fluid gaming experience with story-based changes, deepened content, gameplay and user interface improvements, new mechanics, and performance optimizations. We promise our players a richer world, more dynamic gameplay, and flawless technical performance.

For those who want more detailed information, we have listed everything below.

On the UI side, we now offer a much more user-friendly structure. In-game menus have been simplified and redesigned with a minimalist approach. We removed many settings that caused unnecessary time loss for users; we realized that most of them were unnecessary. As for the HUD, in-game directions and story presentations have been made more effective. We also added tips and pop-up notifications to make the gameplay experience smoother.

On the story side, we made significant additions without straying from the main theme. We enriched our world with new creatures, characters, and their stories. With these changes, we aim to create more confusion in the game, and we believe this will make the players enjoy it even more. Additionally, we improved the overall aesthetic of the game by fixing simple and disjointed elements. Regarding translations, we corrected missing languages and mistranslated sentences, providing a more seamless experience for the global player base.

To create a more cinematic atmosphere, we revamped the environment and vegetation. This made the game's world more aligned with the theme and provided a more fluid gameplay experience.

On the performance side, we made significant improvements. By making all lighting static, we achieved a considerable performance boost. We optimized LOD and HLOD settings, fixed physics-based processes and AI coding that strained the CPU, and reduced unnecessary VFX usage, replacing them with more logical and optimized options.

We also reworked the sounds in both 2D and 3D, aiming to provide a more immersive experience. From ambient sounds to character footsteps, all sounds now work in harmony, offering a deeper atmosphere.

Cutscene transitions have also been overhauled, with scenes continuing smoothly without breaking away from the story. Moreover, it’s now possible to pause cutscenes, as we disabled the active keys in previous cutscenes to prevent accidental skipping.

As we progressed in the development process, we did our best to fix the bugs and errors we encountered. We also addressed story-based logic errors, ensuring a more consistent experience. The frequently encountered quest system issues during the demo were resolved as well. Quests are now linked in a chain and update at each stage.

We noticed that Post Process settings caused millisecond delays. As playability is just as important to us as visual appeal, we optimized the Post Process settings to provide a smoother experience. Speaking of performance, we should also mention the game's file size. As we continue to learn new things with the development of Unreal Engine 5, we have significantly reduced the game's file size. We cleaned up everything that caused file bloat, such as unnecessary collision data, unused items, and meshes we forgot during testing. We also updated and optimized existing assets.

As we tried different things, we occasionally experienced system malfunctions, which led to flickering issues on the screen. Fortunately, we resolved this problem, providing a more stable and error-free visual experience.

We also fixed echo issues in areas with 3D sound. Now, sounds will reverberate more realistically and logically according to physical barriers, creating a more immersive ambiance.

We also integrated the Save system, which was one of the most mentioned issues in feedback and something we seriously felt the lack of during the demo. This system will work in full harmony with the game. Since we didn’t want to force players to use a menu that would disrupt their focus during the game, we developed a different solution. We hope you like this new approach!

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