My goodness I'm late with writing this month!
I've been working real hard trying to make the game run better. I've been re-writing parts of the game in more efficient ways. It's forced me to think of things in a new way, and has taught me a lot, but my goodness is it taking forever to make! And even though it's getting better, I'm still having a hard time getting it to be fast enough on the phone!
-drawing tiles
-de-randomizing and preparing rooms
-altering core parts of the game breaks everything it's attached to. Which is everything.
-Lag spike
-Working towards twitchcon.
I've been working real hard trying to make the game run better. I've been re-writing parts of the game in more efficient ways. It's forced me to think of things in a new way, and has taught me a lot, but my goodness is it taking forever to make! And even though it's getting better, I'm still having a hard time getting it to be fast enough on the phone!
-drawing tiles
-de-randomizing and preparing rooms
-altering core parts of the game breaks everything it's attached to. Which is everything.
-Lag spike
-Working towards twitchcon.
Environment Tile System Finished!
After many different ideas, I found one that works better than before. It's very weird and complicated, but it works!
So the way it use to work was like this. When tiles are off screen, they got deleted. Then tiles would be added to the now empty space on the other side of the screen! But the way I found which tiles were off screen in order to delete them was crazy inefficient and was the biggest reason the system was slow!
The new system keeps track of every tile and where it is. Doing this makes it a whole lot quicker to delete and speeds everything up! It increased the frame rate and now runs just a little better on the phone! But Still not good enough. I have a few quick fixes that could speed up the game, but I'm waiting to implement them until later down the road.
So the way it use to work was like this. When tiles are off screen, they got deleted. Then tiles would be added to the now empty space on the other side of the screen! But the way I found which tiles were off screen in order to delete them was crazy inefficient and was the biggest reason the system was slow!
The new system keeps track of every tile and where it is. Doing this makes it a whole lot quicker to delete and speeds everything up! It increased the frame rate and now runs just a little better on the phone! But Still not good enough. I have a few quick fixes that could speed up the game, but I'm waiting to implement them until later down the road.
Big-Ol Lag Spike
So as you can see in the gif above, there's a short lag spike that happens between each room transition. I had to fix that! It was driving me crazy and messing up some of my jumps. So I've been trying to squash it down for a while now.
The reason it's happening is because it's loading the entire next room right on that frame. So in order to not have a lag spike, I gotta load a little of the room 1 frame at a time! And that's exactly what I did!
Unfortunately it isn't as easy as it sounded and has been taking quite a while to make. In order to make it work properly I had to change some of the core code. And like removing the bottom of a janga tower, the rest of code fell apart. So now I've been building back up this code tower piece by piece. And currently... the collision is all borked.
The reason it's happening is because it's loading the entire next room right on that frame. So in order to not have a lag spike, I gotta load a little of the room 1 frame at a time! And that's exactly what I did!
Unfortunately it isn't as easy as it sounded and has been taking quite a while to make. In order to make it work properly I had to change some of the core code. And like removing the bottom of a janga tower, the rest of code fell apart. So now I've been building back up this code tower piece by piece. And currently... the collision is all borked.
Lots of things got borked! But I fixed most of them so far. The most notable, still to be fixed, is collision. But that's my plan for this week.
There is one thing I'm worried about though.
If it turns out that after all this, it still isn't enough, the game still runs too slowly on the phone, I'll have to go back yet again and fix up the core of the code. While making these fixes, a friend suggested an even better way of optimizing things. I don't want to do it if I don't have to though, because it will just take even longer before I finish the game. I'm going going to do it if I absolutely have to. We'll see if it works after this week.
TwitchCon
So I decided to go to twitchCon! However, it is going to cost a lot of money for me. In order to make the funds, I work crazy hours for a week straight! I clocked in over 100 hours by the end of the week. And because of that I've made enough money to go! But that means I'll be having a week of no work on this game, so next month's update might be a little bare. But hey, if you're also going to twitchcon feel free to say hi!
For what I've dubbed "hell week" I worked 2 jobs. 1 as a car director and a janitor. It didn't pay much, but with long hours it made enough for me to make it to twitchCon!
For what I've dubbed "hell week" I worked 2 jobs. 1 as a car director and a janitor. It didn't pay much, but with long hours it made enough for me to make it to twitchCon!
Wrap Up
So overall, if I'm not in "hell week" working 17 hours a day, I'm in optimize hell re-doing everything. But it's all in the name of progress! If after a few more fixes it still isn't good enough, I'll have to go back and make even more changes! And that would be rough.
As well as that I have the tile system back up and running. And I plan to go to twitchcon so I might not have much to show next month.
Either way though, slowed down or not I ain't stopping! It might take some time, but I'll have this game out soon enough. I'm not worried about that. See you in the next month!
But hey, if you don't want to wait until next month, feel free to stop by the twitch stream or discord group! It's the most recent version of the game, plus it will be cool to say hi!
twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab
discord: https://discord.gg/SZf4wFj
As well as that I have the tile system back up and running. And I plan to go to twitchcon so I might not have much to show next month.
Either way though, slowed down or not I ain't stopping! It might take some time, but I'll have this game out soon enough. I'm not worried about that. See you in the next month!
But hey, if you don't want to wait until next month, feel free to stop by the twitch stream or discord group! It's the most recent version of the game, plus it will be cool to say hi!
twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joltjab
discord: https://discord.gg/SZf4wFj