Delta Light
Release 1.36: Applying Bandages and Optimizations
In the last three years I’ve been updating and patching the game and its engine with what feels like literal patches or bandages. For Delta Light the whole engine has been branched off to accommodate the game-play layer. But unfortunately bad design choices three years ago bite me harder than I can bandage.
In these patch notes I want to lay some bandages applied in this summer 2023 patch!
The first big bandage was applied on a subsystem that handles rendering sprites. This bandage increases actual CPU performance by a ton. Without going too much into technical mumbo-jumbo, I phenomenally reduced the amount of time different CPU tasks wait on each-other when displaying sprites. I don’t think 3 years ago I would have found this problem. I ain't Dave Plummer yet (and I don't pretend to be), but this must mean I am still getting better, this makes me happy.
Delta Light still uses more ram than an app of its complexity ever should, and I know why It does. And this issue has a clean solution. But that requires me to rewrite how to handle huge images. I know this, but instead I used a bandage. Much like increasing performance by reducing the amount of running code, I increased ram performance by using smaller images. There was a huge part of the background that was never visible to the player, now the game just doesn’t ever try and render it. So less ram is used.
The last bandage - this is not really a bandage - is in the system that holds a couple dozen of variables for each object in the game. Each object had a dictionary for the variables, a type of collection that stores every variable with a readable name. Now, instead all the possible variables are stored in a line in a fixed order. When the code wants to retrieve something from the list it just has to know where in the line the variable should be in and return whatever is there. This might not seem like a big improvement, but just going into memory and returning whatever is there is way quicker then looking it up by a name. But this small improvement, done for each (of the thousands) object in the game multiple times per frame sure adds up.
I want to thank everyone kind soul that interacted with me or the game in those three long years
~Veldin
Release 1.35: Immunity frames, tutorial messages, controller support and more
Immunity frames
The question about how the game handles immunity frames have been a much discussed point since the existence of Delta Light. Many people even thought the game had no immunity frames at all.
The initial way the game handles frames is not on the character like most games, but on the things that can cause damage to the character. So the same mob could only damage the player once every once in a while. This meant however that mobs that shoot bullets like the Pulser could do so while you where in contact with the Pulser itelf. Meaning the player would instantly lose 1 health from the Pulser and up to 4 health for every bullet.
This system is now changed to the more conventional way of handling immunity frames. After the character gets hit and loses health (or a melon slice) they are immune to further damage for half a second. Reducing the chance of insta deaths by Pulsers and the like.
More tutorial messages
Some of the more early levels - pre first boss - have new shiny text boxes displaying on the level select screen. This should clean up a bit of confusion some players had playing the game for the first time. It's not much, but it's honest work.
Improved controller support
When using a controller, the menu items could only be moved using the up and down keys with the d-pad and thumbstick even when the items where positioned horizontally next to one another. This didn't make much sence so it got changed to also include left and right buttons/movement on the menu screen's.
Additionaly you can now turn speedrun timers on and off with the left shoulder and skip the currently playing track with the right shoulder.
Speedrun timers
The speedrun timers were a bit long and got in the way after playing a couple of segments. This could cause the player to lose view on the game window itself. Now only the last 4 segments, the current segment and the total time is shown. This should reduce use screen real estate by at least half.
Made the game run better
Not only has the game's dotnet version been upped, the engine now also has some render improvements. Mostly things to do with the text renderer. Hope to give ya'll a few more FPS this patch.
Version on home page
To more easily see what version of the game is currently running, a patch number is added on the home screen. If you play this patch it should say 'v1.35'.
Release 1.3.4: Ingame Speedrun Timer & UI clarity
And as a bit of direction change I would like to allow people who seek the thrill of speed to have every single second tracked by in-game Speedrun Timers. While the timers are hidden by default a single press of the 'T' button will make them appear.
Functionally that records the best time will come in the future!
I also cleared up some AI elements ;)
I hope you guys enjoy the small update and patch <3
~Veldin
Release 1.3.2: level editor & Performance
Performance is a recurring topic that we always seek to improve upon. Having our own bespoke Engine gave us extreme scalability in Delta Light. We are always improving the Engine for both Delta Light and other projects build in the Engine.
To push the performance of Delta Light we even made a Delta Light specific branch of the Engine that clamps down the engine and gameplay code to run with as little overhead as possible. We want to give everyone the best gameplay experience, running on as broad of a hardware spec as possible.
I hope you guys enjoy the small update and patch <3
~Veldin
Release 1.3 - Summer Patch 2021
Statistics
Ever wondered how many mobs you defeated or how many pickups you picked up? We have a tracking mechanism to the game where we can track all sorts of stuff, and we compiled everything we track in the new statistic page (accessible from the main menu)!
Bestiary
Believe it or not, there is some lore that surrounds the game. But that doesn't really shine through in the game right now. To introduce you all to a bit of the lore, we created a bestiary containing five maps. One for each basic mob type! Each map contains writing about the specific mob in question (Also accessible from the main menu).
Performance
Pushing the custom engine to go beyond anything it could do just a couple months ago should give players (especialy using weirder setups) a more smooth and streamlined experience. Because we use a custom engine, the work on it was slow but steady and I hope we can deliver an even smoother experience in the future. We are hopeful to continue development on Delta Light and it's engine :heart:
Discord
We launched a discord for FlapBox studios. Here we want to start building a friendly community for all our (existing and upcoming) games. Here we want to support streamers, give away keys, talk about all kinds of topics and we would love to make a home-brewed levels section in delta light in the future. To create this we NEED input from our players.
Hope you all enjoy the patch <3
See you in the future
~ Veldin