Onikira: Demon Killer
Patch one - achievements, challenge arenas, performance, and more
Just wanted to make a quick announcement here to let everyone know that we've just released our first patch for Onikira. The thing I want to bring up first is the performance issues that some players have been experiencing. We spent the first half of the week trying to nail down exactly why this is happening. In almost all cases we've seen, the hardware seems to be way above the minimum spec, and on these machines, the game should maintain a silky 60 fps almost all of the time, as seen in this video. What seems to be happening is that, when vsync is turned on, and the refresh rate of the monitor is not set to 60 hertz, and the game experiences a hiccup in frame rate, it doesn't seem to be able to recover back to 60 fps, but keeps bouncing off the vsync interval and oscillating back and forth between different frame rates, which is disastrous for gameplay. While we look for a more permanent solution, our advice is to set your monitor refresh rate to 60 hertz in Windows. Simple as that. Or if you can live with tearing, to turn off vsync.
Sound issues
Some other players have reported crackling noises when in the soul shop. One player mentioned that wiping the game and doing a fresh install fixed it. If you were an early access player, this might fix the problem for you, otherwise hold on for a fix in the next patch:)
How to patch
If you haven't already downloaded the update, go to your [SteamApps]\common\Onikira-DemonKiller\Scripts folder and delete the files in there, then perform the update. If you have already updated, first back up your [SteamApps]\common\Onikira-DemonKiller\Data\SaveInformation folder, then delete the files in your Scripts folder, and then in Steam, right click the game->Properties->Local Files->Verify Integrity of Game Cache. When that has finished downloading, copy your SaveInformation folder back into place. It's ok to override the files there. Sorry that this is more tricky than it should be. We'll fix it in the next patch.
Finally, thanks to everyone who took the time to report issues in the forums:)
Digital Furnace Games
Change log
* Fixed excessive CPU use after viewing a move video in the soul shop
* Strong, stronger, and strongest achievements now work as expected
* Items in the soul shop no longer draw on top of each other at high resolutions
* Fixed problems with the dragon fragment, soul coin, and air kill achievements not unlocking properly
* The dragon fragment collected screen now animates correctly
* Removed the soul counter from the challenge arenas
* Fixed slow down when starting a challenge encounter due to assets being loaded from disk
* The soul shop portal now shows the correct button to press depending on whether the keyboard or gamepad is the active input device
* The last level was not staying unlocked after completing Yomi
* Fixed a bug where only the first set of three collected dragon fragments would increase health. Now health increases for each set of three dragon fragments until it is maxed out
* Mouse buttons now show in tutorials when using keyboard and mouse
* Enabled adaptive vsync on machines that support it
Known issues
* Resolution resets to default when switching levels
* The game sometimes needs to be restarted for the vsync option to take effect
Onikira released into the wild!
But I digress:) We've been working on Onikira for pretty much three years, and now finally, unbelievably, it's done. Its been an amazing journey, with some amazing people, and like any creative endeavor, full of its ups and downs, but so so worth it. We'd like to thank everyone who had a hand in making the game what it is. That includes everyone who was kind enough to buy the game on early access and give us their feedback, our publishers, HeadUp and Merge Games, for putting their trust in us, and all of our estranged friends and families who we will now be re-introducing ourselves to in the hopes that they remember us. We will be all over the forums to help with any problems that come up in the next few days, but for now, this is the Onikira team signing off. You stay classy Steam-diego ;)
Onikira is out today. Thank you for helping us make it a reality.
But I digress:) We've been working on Onikira for pretty much three years, and now finally, unbelievably, it's done. Its been an amazing journey, with some amazing people, and like any creative endeavour, full of its ups and downs, but so so worth it. We'd like to thank everyone who had a hand in making the game what it is. That includes everyone who was kind enough to buy the game on early access and give us their feedback, our publishers, HeadUp and Merge Games, for putting their trust in us, and all of our estranged friends and families who we will now be re-introducing ourselves to in the hopes that they remember us. We will be all over the forums to help with any problems that come up in the next few days, but for now, this is the Onikira team signing off. You stay classy Steam-diego:wink:
Release date + new trailer
So we have a new trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-SwXISipY
And a new release date of the 27th of August 2015, more details http://www.onikira.com/press-release-14th-august-2015/
All the best
DEV PEEK #3
Today I will try to keep it shorter and scramble order!
I've played the whole game yesterday and... WE HAVE CREDITS! Now the game is done. YAY! (j/k)
Everyone is stealing my job and playtesting! This sounds great, as in they have time to playtest, it means they aren't overwhelmed with stuff to do anymore.
Ronan just killed permanently and irreversibly a tengu on level 5 who kept breaking... He is gone now and nobody will miss it.
Andrea fixed bugs in the soul shop and is working on some persistence issues of the unlocked moves, and did some changes in the achievments, as a few of them were unobtainable.
Dan is the guy who did what had to be done with the credits, and he is recording the animations for the soul shop, they are looking swell.
And Andrew is playing the game right now! Steam just notified me about this...
He changed the video player inside the soul shop, so... It will always play the moves properly and continously (with the new cool animations), also updated the player for the cutscenes in a way that it will use less memory and close after finishing the cutscene as not to waste any resources.
And that is it!
Plus a screenshot with a cat on level 5, first to find this area can ask GLADOS for a cake.
See you in the next DEVPEEK issue!
Thiego
Find the previous DEVPEEK
DEV PEEK #1
DEV PEEK #2
29th July 2015 - Work in progress
In the months since early access we've been working our collective butt off to finish this game. Our final deadline for release was to be July 30th and while we've fixed countless bugs, and added 3 times the content, we feel that if we release tomorrow, the game will be missing that final layer of polish that will take it from being a fun game to being an amazing one. We know that the game in it’s current state far exceeds the early access version in every possible way, so we’re anxious to get it out there, but obviously everything needs to be running as smoothly as possible before that can happen.
So, we have decided to hold off on release for just a few more weeks while we put our final marks on the game. We hope you understand and that this doesn’t come as too much of a disappointment. We promise it will be worth the wait! All of us here are so excited for Onikra’s full release, and we’ve been working like crazy to get there. Thank you for all your reviews both good and bad. We read every one to help us push harder to make the game as good as it can be.
We have a release date!
Thanks so much to all of you for supporting the game and helping us to make it to this stage. All your suggestions, bug reports, etc have contributed to make this game what it is today... so take this cat picture as a token of our thanks
At the moment we're working really hard to fix any remaining bugs and improve the overall performance of the game.
We would like to thank our publishers Head Up Games and Merge Games who have been super helpful.
Of course everyone involved in making this game and supporting the making of this game, thanks so much :) [the list is long you know who you are], no seriously people, you rock!! wait.. that means I rock too right? (awesome).
We are part of and big fans of the Irish game developer community aka #irishgamedev thanks to all of you
I am sure you are wondering how the game is looking these days, some screenshots here:
If you are a member of the press looking to review the game please use this link to request it.
Press release
Press Kit
Screenshots
The awesome Marlow Wiebe (FTL, Hotline Miami, and Nuclear Throne amongst other trailers he has worked on :D) is currently working on our trailer, and we'll update this post with it as soon as it's ready.
We are planning for the 30th of July as a release day, what do you think? :D
Update 19th June - Still alive!
You might have noticed that things have been a little quiet around here lately! Sorry about that...but there’s a very good reason: we’ve been working non-stop to finish the game within our deadline, and it's coming sooner than you think!
Over the last couple of months we’ve added a ton of new content to the game, such as:
NEW ENEMIES like the Kanabo Oni, a heavy beast with rock-hard skin! And more...
NEW MOVES like the Kama Vortex where Jiro’s spin attack is so powerful that it pulls enemies into it! And more...
Reviewed STORY! We re-wrote Jiro’s story in a way that flows better and gives you a much more exciting conclusion!
NEW CUTSCENES! Awesome story sequences in the style of old japanese scrolls.
NEW LEVELS that we can’t wait to show you!
Thank you all for your support as always and keep the feedback coming. Onikira wouldn’t be the same without you guys, so we’ll keep an eye on the forum in the following weeks! In the mean time, here's some new stuff to fill your goggle orbs with. Enjoy.
The Onikira team
Update 27th March 2015 - New level, new enemy and more :D
We've been working hard to improve the game as we come closer to release, and today it's time for another patch. This patch brings a new level, a new enemy type, a huge number of bug fixes and, I'm happy to say, fully re-bindable keyboard support. You can see a more detailed changelist below.
In addition to the features we are adding today, there is some solid progress happening behind the scenes on the rest of the levels and new enemy prototypes. Things are getting very exciting but also quite hectic as we embark on the final stretch of development. For everything that you play in today’s build there's a lot more in development that isn't quite release ready, but we're looking forward to the time when we can release this new content to you and get your feedback.
We’ve also decided to take some more time to finish the game to a standard we’re proud of. There’s quite simply too much left to do, and if we were to make sacrifices in favour of our earlier release plans it would negatively affect the game and our community, so we’ve pushed back and we’ll be finished close to summer.. We hope you can understand; we feel this is the best course of action to make sure OniKira is as polished and fun as it can be.
Thank you all for your support and keep the feedback coming. We read every post on the forums and use them to help shape our vision for OniKira.
The OniKira team.
<*> New level!
<*> One brand new enemy character
<*> Configurable keyboard controls
<*> Configurable audio controls
<*> Projectile attack on the Naginata weapon
<*> Combat improvements, more cancels
<*> New sound effects added to enemy characters and environment
<*> Particle system bug fixes and performance improvements
<*> New tile system for environment art for waaaay better performance
<*> Bug fix: Some of you were experiencing the game crashing at the very
<*> Start, this release should fix that
And our trello board, in case you are curious :D
Progress report until 22nd February
We've been doing a lot of work on a new level. Here is an early preview of Hirumo's Return, including a new move for Jiro: naginata aiming!
For the last 4 weeks on Thursdays we have been live streaming from our channel www.twitch.tv/digitalfurnace We generally stream on Thursdays at 2pm Irish time (at the moment that is GMT), so stop by and say hi!
We have some videos from the previous weeks' streams as a result on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoExYObYR4eqzTDTFvHMzOw/feed
You asked, we listened: the controls menus are nearly complete! Here are some screen-shots of the work in progress :simple_smile: .
We also have a trello board that we thought you might want to look at:
Finally, we're updating existing levels with a new texture tile system, resulting in lower memory usage, smaller file sizes and decreased stuttering and load times!
Thanks for all your support as always and hope you are enjoying the game!!