Zeran's Folly

[myroidtc]

I found one problem:
I minimized the game and then switched to it using Alt-Tab (Windows) and it became "not responsing". I forced it to quit. Also, why it eats so much memory (in my case - 500 MB)?

Thanks for playing! Yeah, I noticed it has problems with losing focus--I'm not totally sure what's causing it. Maybe something with threads? During loading screens it does a lot of stuff with RenderTextures in another thread to draw the levels.

Once the game is more or less done, I'm going to go back in and revise and how the levels are loaded and kept in memory. Right now, it draws textures for three layers (collision mask, midground, foreground) for each room in the zone. That way, room transitions are instant since the level art is already drawn and ready to go. The downside is it takes a lot of memory (like you said) and the load times can be a little egregious (sometimes as much as 40 seconds for a big area like the Manastery).

I'm going to look into seeing if drawing rooms on demand can be fast enough to feasible--that would cut loading times and memory usage dramatically. It all depends on if I can do it or not. A lot of time is spent create()ing the renderTextures for each room to make them the exact size of it, and create() tends to be expensive. So, I'm thinking of making them a static, large size and just re-using them over and over by clearing them instead of creating them.

But, that's for later. I want to have a game to optimize first.

[DarkRoku12]

Such a great game!
Amazing moving and physics.

[Carlos Augusto Br Cpp]

Wow...this game is so awesome... you have done a REALLY good job bro... stay awesome!

[myroidtc]

Update, December 30 2016: New Build! Download the Vinegarden Build (Windows only, ~82 MB)

5 of the 6 main story dungeons are available. The two new dungeons, Dorfhole and Vinegarden, are unfinished in places but mostly playable. Load times have been improved a bit, too.

[myroidtc]

Zeran's Folly is now on Steam Greenlight if you're into that sort of thing.

[eXpl0it3r]

Up voted.

[Ironbell]

Voted  . Good luck with the greenlight campaign, love your game.

[Jabberwocky]

Upvoted.  Good stuff.

[myroidtc]

It's been a couple months since the last update. Zeran's Folly was indeed Greenlit--a huge thank-you to everyone who voted or checked it out.

At this point, the engine and features are all mostly in-place--it's that boring part of development where it's like, "alright, now make all the assets". A few boss battles still need some tweaking but aside from that, all that's really left is a bunch of overworld areas. Basically, that means a ton of art assets for backgrounds, NPCs, etc.

I don't have a definite release date but I'd love to release sometime this year. It's still at least a few months out. Once the game's out on Steam I might come back and throw around a few keys or something if there's interest.

Anyhoo, here are a bunch of videos:






I don't know if I ever posted this here but here's a silly little animation from Feb 2014. Can't believe it's been three years already. I made it to flesh out the characters a little more in my mind and get a better idea of who they are. They've changed a lot since then but it was still a helpful exercise... even if it is a little cringe-y in retrospect, ha.

[myroidtc]

Horror story time!

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how much video card memory the game was using. So, I found a GPU profiler, ran the game, and found out it was using a shocking 3464 MB.

Was that a lot? I checked out some other games. Overwatch and Guild Wars 2 each used around 800 Mb. It turns out 3 gigs is pretty terrible.

The problem is that I was using a lot of big, redundant RenderTextures for the level art generator. 4096x4096 textures * 6 per room * 2 depths * 4 layers. It's obvious now in hindsight but I had no idea it was using that much memory.

So, I did what I could and eliminated some redundant RenderTextures. Now my system uses about 1505 Mb when running the game. Still pretty bad for a 2D game, but way better than what it was before.

Moral of the story: Be careful of what you're allocating.

Anyhoo, now that that's fixed, I put out a new build that hopefully shouldn't immediately crash for everyone. Windows only, and you'll need a video card with at least 2 GB of memory. I've seen them online for as cheap as $35 if you need one.

Link to build: http://www.myroidtypecomics.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip

There's also a bunch of the new stuff in there like rings, talents, outfits, and prettier environments.

I've been working on NPCs for the past couple of weeks so here are some pics:

[myroidtc]

The first five (well, two) playable minutes of the game:

[myroidtc]

Finally got all my business stuff in order and approved as a Steamworks partner. Zeran's Folly has an appID and a (hidden) store page on Steam now, so that's nice. The process of setting everything up is pretty complicated at first glance!

As far as a release date goes, I'm still gunning for this year. The game is 80%-85% done. There are a bunch of art assets that need to be done, along with some bits and pieces missing from pretty much everything. For example, there are three or four bosses that are scripted but not implemented yet, two of the dungeons need set dressing and some music, the vendor interface needs to be made... you get the idea. Just a mountain of small rocks.

[myroidtc]

Did some scheduling and I may have the game finished as soon as October. The ol' "double it" rule puts it at the end of the year. So, it'll make its 2017 release date after all! Hopefully.

So, Zeran's Folly, coming Fall 2017 to Steam.

[myroidtc]

Two months before launch, all the world areas are finally connected and accessible:

[Tank]

Great stuff, and very interesting. Keep it up!