New Video Settings and Balancing! (Update 0.6.1.0)
Supporting the potato PC
Many people don't have insane $1,000+ gaming PCs and often they are forgotten. We want to make sure Don't Sink can run on any potato, even old ones. This update brings two new video settings which we will discuss below!
Lighting LUTs
LUT stands for Look Up Table and all it really does is take the color of a pixel and convert it to another color using the LUT as a guide. This allows us to render vibrant scenes using nothing besides a texture and a single shader. It is extremley performant but there are two weaknesses.
A single LUT (for example our morning colors) require a 4096x4096 (48mb) image to be kept in memory. When it is drawn the GPU takes a bit longer (when compared to other sprites in the game) to draw the image due to its size.
For a slow GPU a single LUT can be fairly expensive to handle. When transitioning between various times of day, two LUTs are drawn per frame. This means the LUTs are even heavier at times.
There are two settings available for LUT Lighting:
Disabled - LUTs are cleared from memory and are not rendered
Enabled - LUTs are kept in memory and are rendered
LUT enabled shown on the left, disabled is shown on the right.
Parallax Detail
Parallax details are shown in the background and currently include passing ships, clouds, and light rays. At a glance these don't seem like they would hinder performance however due to the size of some images the various sprites are on separate texture pages which results in three additional texture swaps. Aside from the cost of rendering, the details also require a tiny bit of processing power to update their various logic.
There are four settings available for Parallax Detail:
Disabled - No details are generated or rendered
Low - Only passing ships are enabled
Medium - Passing ships and clouds are enabled
High - Passing ships, clouds, and light rays are enabled (and anything else)
New content & features
LUT video setting added, disabling will remove the LUT textures from memory and prevent the LUT shaders/rendering to be performed
Parallax video setting added, non-required textures will be removed from memory and various details will no longer appear
Minor changes
Each island is now more/less effective from each source of profit so that trading, mining, and farming aren't the same
Auto-feed is now more efficient
Tooltips function like text boxes now
Crew stats reset on islands
Storm random event only damages sails
New quest pop-up stays around too long, reduced by 30%
Sleep margin timer changed from 1ms to 10ms, this should cause the CPU to stay saturated and avoid power-saving related performance issues
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
More Islands, Quests, and Good Stuff! (Update 0.6.0.0)
Improving town balance
It's nearly impossible to predict how players will utilize a mechanic in an open-world/sandbox environment. Towns were originally intended to be something you could do for side revenue but most users tend to make towns their main objective.
As a result we are slowly making towns more profitable and easier to manage. For example islands were being captured by pirates far too often so we toned back the chance of that happening.
We've also increased the effectiveness of town defenses which can further reduce the chance of an island being taken from you.
Quality of Life
While we aren't near to the full release of Don't Sink yet we do consider the game to be a playable product and as such are making efforts to improve the experience no matter how small the change.
There is now a tooltip pop-up when you begin ship combat for the first time that explains the controls and gives a simple tip.
We've added a buy/sell all button for shops in this update to help make the late game faster paced and less annoying. It's hard work shopping for a crew of 250!
Thanks to a community suggestion we took the shopping category of the quick menu and merged it in with the base menu for governing. We will continue to make changes like these moving forward.
New content & features
New island, "Yamakoshi"
New island, "Yaleshka"
New quest, "Broken Bones"
New cutscene, "Yamakoshi Mountains"
Revamped intro and loading screen
Tooltips added for combat when it's your first fight
Recreated and added new character sprites (may negatively affect performance for low-end computers)
New pirate crews added, 9 in total
3 Schooners
1 Corvettes
1 Caravels
1 Brigantine
1 Naves
2 Galleons
Changed buy/sell menus to include the following:
+10
-10
Buy/Sell all
Minor changes
No more ship encounters or random events right at the beginning of a trip
Sea Bully quest changed to make (the) Sea Jerk more likely to appear
Quick menu no longer has the sub-menu "Shop", instead all buttons are listed from the base menu
Enemy ship AI won't attempt to board unless they have the same amount of or more crew than the player
Improved character shadows indoors
Bug fixes and performance improvements
If game was paused during battle, travel music track would begin to play when the game was resumed
Selling items would occasionally return the wrong amount of gold
Resolved mixed up gender sprites
Fixed possible crash when defeated during ship combat
Gamepad interface setting is disabled unless a controller is plugged in
Starting up the game with the gamepad set as the input interface but no gamepad plugged in will default to keyboard input
Balance Changes
Reduced chance of islands being captured at lower attack risk percentages
Island defense more drastically decreases the rate that attack risk increases
Mining Camps and Farms are much more effective and trading has been reduced to 25% of its original effect
Community Additions
The user Khaesho made the suggestion that the "Shop" sub-menu be migrated into the quick menu and that enemy AI doesn't try to board you when they have less crew
New pirate crew, "Seas" the Day added as requested by baneofpain823
New pirate crews, The Naughty Buoy, Schooner Or Later, Somefin Fishy, and Doofish Brigade added as requested by colormecurious
New pirate crew, Booty Smacker added as requested by Taco_Guitar
New pirate crew, The Black Dawn added as requested by noonyx33
New pirate crew, If It Ain't Broke added as requested by baneofpain823
New pirate crew, The Big One added as requested by Captain Fantastic
A sneak peek of the new combat!
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
Thirteen (artist) is working on the hand-to-hand combat alongside Topher. Meanwhile I'm fleshing out more content and resolving errors/bugs with users.
We hope to have hand-to-hand combat available in public builds soon but only time will tell!
Ship name requests!
Post some ship names you want to see in game! You can include the type of ship, the items it drops, the gold it gives, etc. We'll pick out our
favorites and add them into the game. Please post in the comments section below!
New Community Additions section of changelog
Many of the changes you see in each update are the result of user feedback/suggestions. We feel it is only fair to give praise where praise is due.
From now on you'll see user's names mentioned in the Community Additions section of changelogs.
We've been meaning to involve the community more but between development and some personal business we just haven't got around to it yet.
Hopefully this is a good first step towards community involvement. Expect more to come soon!
New content & features
Quest, "Preparing For Winter"
Quest, "Family Matters"
Implemented support for lots of various resolutions
Added button prompt to set new quests as your primary when they first appear
Build menu now includes information regarding the benefits of each structure you can build
Shipyard buy menu now shows the actual ship instead of a white square
Trigger system implemented for cutscenes
New cutscenes, 4 in total
Nikra, admiration
Frigidov, loot
Mairyporan, big trees
Marina, skirt man
New pirate crews added, 37 in total
6 Schooners
10 Corvettes
8 Caravels
5 Brigantine
4 Naves
4 Galleons
Minor changes
Black is now drawn over non-application surface areas
Shipyards and taverns add to the towns profits (10% more profit calculated from sum total)
Changed the DRMs affect on the game and made improvements
Bug fixes and performance improvements
Changed the way resolution is stored in the settings.ini file to prevent crashes when switching between monitors
The store owner of the shipyard in Cramton has been visually modified to avoid a possible crash
Resolution hotfixes, no longer crashes on launch if resolution is unsupported
Bad Soil quest no longer shows in Cramton until Farm is built
Gold gain pop-ups no longer show decimal values
Balance Changes
Increased damage of bombs to the ship and sails, modified the games difficulty involvement with player damage
Increased damage of grapeshot to the ship and sails, modified the games difficulty involvement with player damage
Community Additions
The White Tiger was add as per the request of the user, Leafpelt. It is a pirate crew sailing a Corvette.
Build menu structure info was implemented as a result of issac.whittaker and Brian's forum posts regarding mining camps and farms.
Linux user please read!
Due to my current lack of internet for my desktop PC I am unable to compile Linux builds. I will have internet access again on January 22nd and will upload build 0.5.7.0 for Linx ASAP.
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
We felt there just wasn't enough variety throughout Don't Sink so we went a little crazy with it. You'll find two entirely new regions in the game and a total of four new islands. These islands will be given new quests and cutscenes as we continue to develop the game.
What's next?
Hand-to-hand combat had been put off whilst we added more content but we finally are ready to work on it. The next update might take us anywhere from one to two weeks but it'll likely bring a fully featured hand-to-hand combat system alongside additional content.
New content & features
New quest, Bad Soil
New region, Caaporan
New island, Itaborahy
New island, Mairyporan
New region, Koldogrado
New island, Stalyoshka
New island, Frigidov
Implemented aspect ratio locking instead of stretching for the game window
Window can now be resized freely with the mouse
Added 15 new pirate crews
Minor changes
Particles can now be toggled on/off in the video settings
Night LUT has been modified slightly
New mountain assets added to various islands
Island particle system implemented
Bug fixes and performance improvements
Fleeing from battles now shows escape message
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
Before we kick off the new year here we wanted to give all of you swashbucklers one more update. This update addresses many user concerns/feedback and improves the overall game experience. We even added two new achievements for those completionists out there.
Here's a sneak peek at one of the upcoming biomes!
New content & features
Quest icons are now shown above NPCs and interaction locations
Ship cutscenes added, crew will comment on various actions the player performs
Auto-feed option added when feeding crew
Added two new achievements
Minor changes
Random events now include full translation features
Added a new random event
Reduced number of lines in translation file by removing redundancies but did not break previously translated lines
Bug fixes and performance improvements
Translation tool retrieves the english file much faster now
Reduced memory usage per island by removing obselete data
Quest completion list now uses correct IDs
READ BELOW FOR PREVIOUSLY CREATED SAVE FILES
All quests have been reset for old save files to prevent compatibility issues. Rewards aren't lost, only quests completed. This won't cause every quest to appear again.
Removed extra cutscene queue in Seabully revisit #2
Improved Steam Cloud support for Ubuntu
Balance changes
Increased capacity/quantity of wood planks in every Generalstore
Reduced rate attack risk grows by 25%
Attack risk resets when an island is first captured
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
Watch out island dwellers! The pirates can capture and take any island for themselves! Tons of new islands and two new regions. This update brings it all. We hope to have more content and features available in the coming updates!
Ubuntu/Steam OS support
Don't Sink now officially supports Ubuntu! The current build is entirely playable and should run smoothly for most Linux users.
New content & features
Added unique region music for each town
Islands can now be attacked and captured, as well as lost to other pirates
Added new region, "Sfenamaria"
Added new island, "Gazpacho"
Added new island, "Marina"
Added new region, "Oshiekra"
New side quest, "Without Fear"
New side quest, "Sea Bully"
Minor changes
Menus navigation with keyboard/gamepad works regardless of mouse position
Delivery missions improved; pay is based on distance and pay is accurate now
Cutscene system completely rewritten to simplify future development and solve a few bugs
Enemy ship actions are now displayed above them
Various translations allow for users to move values around the string
Shipyards can now be entered from both doors on every island
Bug fixes and performance improvements
Island cache system implemented to avoid doing file_exists() for new islands (faster loading of saved games)
Port menu would crash occasionally when moving mouse across islands
Pressing escape with the leaderboard open works correctly now
Completing two quests at the same time would result in a crash
Map data/paths are cached when the game is first started rather than calculated in realtime
Adjusted position of sand background layer to be an integer instead of a decimal (in towns)
Some crew counts would result in the boarding command no longer working
Resolved potential bug when enemy ships are defeated via cannon fire
Balance changes
Traveling between islands is a lot faster and distances between islands has been reduced
Happy holidays everybody!
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
We've heard the community and what people want most is content. In response to this we have decided to put off GUI changes until later on in the development cycle. The upcoming build will include mostly content and feature additions.
One major feature you can look forward to is the ability to capture islands. Since it's a key part of the gameplay it only made sense to get it implemented sooner instead of later. By doing this the overall experience is much more dynamic and expansive.
What's done so far
We've got unique music for each region, improved delivery missions, and a ton of backend changes. In the previous post we talked about a massive code cleanup that would greatly improve development time. Well that bit is already finished and so far it has made a world of difference.
Most importantly cutscenes have been changed internally to allow less code and more content! Previously a cutscene would require upwards of twenty minutes to properly program/write which was absurd considering the amount of content we want for in the game.
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
If you purchased Don't Sink then you already know we usually push updates once a week. Over the course of the next month you will likely not see any major changes come up if we even push any updates.
Rather than continue to push minor content updates for the next month we are going to be recreating all the GUI elements and possibly other (currently unavailable) gameplay.
During this time we will continue to post our progress.
Why does GUI take so long?
The current GUI scales 1:1 with your resolution meaning it doesn't work like a normal GUI. Our new GUI will have pixel perfect sizes meaning a 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 ratio for example. You'll also likely see scaling choices added to the video settings so playing in 4k (3840x2160) isn't completely impossible.
Code cleanup
During this time we'll also be focusing on cleaning up the projects assets/code. The game has a lot of cut corners (in the code) that are causing a bit of extra work every day. Cleaning up the project will allow us to move forward faster in the future and let us bring you even more content in each update.
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
Steam Leaderboards! Delivery missions and more! (Update 0.3.5.0)
The water got better
Before we talk about anything else... isn't that water just 10x better?
Another big update
We aren't stopping! This week you'll discover two new islands, delivery missions, Steam leaderboards, and lots of general improvements. Leaderboards are a great passive aggresive way to say to your friends, "I'm the best pirate ever". It's also a good way to show strangers on the internet that you aren't to be scuffled with.
On a side note check out these new sliders! No more toggling through volume levels.
While this update doesn't bring any new side quests it does bring a whole new dynamic quest system. Delivery missions are available from time to time and can be acquired by speaking to Generalstore owners. The pay is decent and a lot of the time the destination is near where you were heading anyways.
What about future updates?
Our focus is primarily on content right now but that doesn't mean we aren't looking to improve gameplay or the user interface. Next week we'll begin fleshing out brand new UI for the game (no more ugly paper panels).
New content & features
New island: Niragua
New island: Danier
Added controls menu, you can now change the gamepad deadzone and interface detection mode
New enemy ships: 7 Brigantines, 8 Naves, 7 Galleons
Delivery missions are now available if you talk to Generalstore owners
Implemented Steam leaderboards for the following: "Gold collected", "Gold spent", "Travel distance total"
Minor changes
Water reflection quality drastically improved, most notably on the high setting
Ship fires grow to normal size and holes fade in instead of just popping in to existence
Implemented new sliders for future GUI
Replaced volume buttons with sliders
Reduced the speed that time passes on islands to an extremely low rate
The arrow above the player in towns isn't shown in the water reflection anymore
Repositioned the main menu and pause menu buttons
When primary quest GUI is disabled the gold GUI now shifts to the right side of the screen
New quests are no longer set as your primary quest automatically
Bug fixes and performance improvements
Map data is now cached when the game is first launched instead of being parsed every time you open the map menu
Island updates were being written to the wrong data structure, may have lead to serious issues for some users
Resolved crash on the generalstore sell menu that would occur if you sold everything you could
Gameplay/Video settings save when changed but Audio/Controls require you to press "Apply Changes"
Island saving no longer is triggered when loading a saved game
Reduced island save files to 1kb instead of 64kb which should speed up saving drastically
Reduced memory usage by 64kb per island
Pausing no longer flickers when it is first activated
Removed legacy synchronous saving from new game creation
Pressing "B" on the controller exits the quest GUI menu now
Lost Lovers side quest no longer lets you interact with the final trigger twice (can't turn it in more than once)
Player could still use ship battle GUI when prompted for a response to an action
Player gold is added properly in random events
Quest logic loop bug fixed
Balance changes
Grapeshot has a 75% (used to be 50%) chance to kill a crew member
Changed the travel speed of every ship to be a bit faster (Example, Schooner used to be 125%, now it's 130%)
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
Update 0.3.0.0, Side quests, GUI improvements, and more!
The big week one update!
This update adds a boat-load of new stuff. Obviously you can read over the changelog below so we'll just highlight the major stuff here.
We've created a new translation tool to simplify the process for everyone in the community. (Thanks Topher!) This means that the current translations are broken and have temporarily been removed. We'll be slowly uploading them as they are replaced with the new versions.
After seeing how people have been playing Don't Sink we noticed a few issues with the GUI and so have addressed those problems accordingly. You'll notice the changes within minutes of playing and we promise you'll like it.
Lastly we added a two new side quests and a quest menu.
New content & features
New language parsing system and tool, translations are much easier to do now
New quest menu GUI
New side quest, "Lost Love"
New side quest, "Message In A Bottle"
Asynchronous saving implemented to reduce hiccups in performance
Steam screenshots implemented
Minor changes
Window size is now locked to your current resolution setting (no more resizing manually)
Increased the cost of higher tier ships by about 50%
Bars added to make crew feeding GUI more clear
Item GUI popup for when you gain/lose items or gold
Added back button to quick menu in towns
"Quest Menu" prompt added below "Quick Menu" when first showing island view
Bug fixes and performance improvements
The "Default" save no longer occurs when the world is initialized
When building a new structure on an island the entrance triggers would not be created until returning to the island
Islands you own would give you gold improperly
Repairing would either take too much wood and allow you to repair while having full health
No quest items had translations enabled
About 90% of interaction prompts did not have translations enabled
Sails on the players ship in towns were animated while it was not moving
Items shown on the general stores sell GUI sometimes would say "Sold Out"
Characters in the town would pop in and out when near the edge of the camera
Tavern crew hiring menu kicks you out of the hiring screen if you have the max amount of crew, they run out of crew to hire, or if you can't afford it anymore
Pressing ENTER in the shipyard to confirm a purchase did not work previously
Shimogawa rock inspection cutscene dialgoue fixed, mispelling and improper grammar
Cramton arrival cutscene was previously missing from translation files, also "government" was mispelled
Removed unused scripts/resources and cleaned up code, minimal memory usage reduction
The player had a clone that would occasionally walk past whatever shop the player was in
Hotfixed Steam achievement issues
As always... stay salty sea dogs!
Team Lead / Lead programmer Sebastian Nigro (Seabass) Twitter
Artist / Visual design Daniel Marques (Thirteen) Twitter
Audio / Web / Programmer Chris Anselmo (Topher) Twitter
