Patch (v1.2.2): Performance Optimizations

Spent the week learning more about Unity optimization, and how I can apply best practices to Those Who Rule. I think we've got some great improvements in this patch that should help everyone have a smoother experience, but especially those who are playing on less powerful hardware. The game is also currently 20% off!

Changelog

• AddedOptimizationAdded a 30 FPS option. This will help extremely cut down on GPU usage for lower spec systems. NOTE: FPS is overwritten by enabling "vsync" so if you want to see the performance gains from reducing the frame rate, you need to disable "vsync" in settings.

• Optimization: Every 2D texture is now compressed, resulting in an average ~550 MB reduction in GPU VRAM usage in-game.

• AdjustedOptimizationCompression of various assets has also reduced the download size down from 925 MB to 750 MB. Size in storage reduced from 4.1 GB to 3.4 GB.
• RemovedOptimizationUnity defaults to loading all audio clips to disk on startup. I have disabled this setting for background music, and am now streaming audio as needed. Basically loading/unloading a clip as it is used, saving ~1.2 GIGABYTES of memory as you play. The streaming method has a bit of overhead to "warm up" audio files so you don't notice a delay, but the memory savings will heavily offset any overhead costs.

• Optimization: Loading times across the board, but especially on startup, are now slashed due to not loading all audio assets at all times and smaller asset sizes.

• Fix: An issue with the Agile ability on controllers where it would sometimes leave the "focus" on the enemy unit, not allowing controllers to pick the Agile movement slots.

Hoping these changes allow more of you to play the game on less powerful machines. There is a lot of I've learned about proper optimization the past week. This has been an extremely useful exercise for my growth as a developer, and I'll be taking any learnings here and using them from the very beginning for any new titles.

The game still isn't perfectly optimized, and there were a lot of other changes I could have made, but ultimately decided not to for the stability of the game and getting to other roadmap items. Some changes would require large restructures of the way assets are loaded, which while a fun technical challenge, would likely cause an array of unforseen issues that I wouldn't be able to catch in my testing.

Thank you all for the continued support. Next up will be Achievements and Cloud Saves!

Best, Eldin T.