Update #43: Fixing Faults, Faulty Fixes and Freakin' Fonts!
Hello everyone!
Super quick one today (no serioulsy, I'm giving myself a word limit!) - you may have seen a build go live earlier today. So in last weeks flurry of optimisation, I did manage to catch a few things I missed pretty badly. You may have noticed a few slow downs on any screen showing the Deck/Discard viewer, and potentially in regards to upgraded cards in hand. These have now been fixed (sorry about those). Also a couple of little bug fixes I saw crop up in the logs and Discord reports the last week.
I also dove into another round of crazy optimisation - working with some users in the Discord. I managed to clean up a bunch more things - and you’ll probably notice a few changes visually -- both in todays patch and moving forward as well.
Mostly to do with Fonts.
As things get optimized and moved over to support all the new languages, it’s been important to make sure that that process is streamlined and in place. Previously, Vault used some sprite fonts. This was all well and good when I was dealing with 26 letters and 10 numbers... but now it's a very different story.
I’ve tried my best to keep things clean and readable still. I know first hand that font changes can be very jarring, I’ve tried to keep them to areas which needed to change only. Hopefully it only takes a few fights to get used to - although if something is unbearable, feel free to drop me a ping!
750 Community Reward
So... we are hurtling towards the 750 review mark very quickly. Time to give away a little bit more info about what’s coming up. Keen eyes might notice a new category in the Unlocks screen - the “Alternative Art”. Well, I’ll leave it at that for now!
You can also see that work on the 500 reward is back underway after the hiccup. Still can’t apologize enough for this whole debacle :(
However, onwards and upwards -- this is still an early WIP, but you can see the runes which will be the interactive zones as you take damage, purge cards, end turn etc. Lots more lighting and rendering to go - with a few little features I’m excited to add also! Big thanks to my fellow artist Mengo for stepping in to help out with this - we'll be working on the artwork together to get it all ready to go!
Localisation
My goodness. I’ll be honest - nothing could have prepared me for what was about to unfold when it came to the Localisation work...
This is probably one of the beautiful examples of human friendliness, support and kindness I can remember personally to date, throughout my entire life. I started extracting strings a little while back, and the team that has assembled to VOLUNTEER their time to make this game playable to all is amazing. I can’t extract strings fast enough! Such a dedicated, detail originated group of individuals banding together in support and I’m truly humbled. The work is happening, and it’s happening very quickly. The image below gives you an example of the activity and amount of work already put in.
If I haven't accepted your join request on Crowdin yet - fear not! We just had to pump the breaks a little to ensure each team was setup in a way that would work moving forward, with Proofreaders in place to ensure consistency and clarity.
Thank you so, so much to anyone who has been involved in this process. So far we have Chinese, Italian, Spanish and French almost at a point where its ready to go (requires more implementation on my end), with Japanese and German getting close as well!
(The above image is sitll a WIP - little formating fixes and keywords to tend to also! )
I won’t even try to form more words on how thankful and humbled I am -- they will fall utterly short of my true feelings. Much, much love.
Alright - time for me to dash! More JSON strings to cut out!
Will be back next week with another update I dare say. Appreciate all the kind words on the Challenge Coin update by the way -- I see a lot of people enjoying them and interacting with that experience! Whilst I’m busy smashing away the Localisation work - I’m going to try and sneak 1 or 2 more new ones in for next week!
Thanks everyone - take care!
All for now. - Josh
Update #42: Bugs, Optimization and Leaks!
Hey everyone!
This week's patch isn’t anything too exciting (sorry!) - a few bug fixes, some optimization and a lot of setup for localisation! It's been a challenging week when it comes to bugs and issues, so many obscure little things cropping up that have taken hours to track down. If you're interested in the full list of changes, I'll post that at the bottom! Otherwise, I’m going to try to be brief this week - so let's dive in!
As a side note, because of the types of changes in this patch, I'm going to keep a sharp eye on things over the next 12-24 hours. ANY problems - please reach out right away and I'll fix the issues!
Localisation
The process to localisation is well underway! One thing that was holding me back originally was not having a platform to make the process easy, especially during development when the game is changing/getting new content constantly. In my research, I stumbled upon Crowdin - and ... it’s been fantastic!
Firstly, I can’t say enough about the volunteers who have stepped up to get things moving. Already there is a fair chunk of progress made on things. If you’d like to get involved as well, anyone can contribute by signing up to the project. If you jump onto the Discord as well - feel free to reach out and I can add you to the Localisation role. I can’t thank all the volunteers enough for their work so far (and into the future). It’s very humbling and I greatly appreciate the fact that people would volunteer their time to contribute to the process!
Not all the game strings are pulled out yet - but a huge chunk of them were dealt with this week. Next week should see more of them extracted, looking to hopefully have that process finalized in the next 2 weeks.
The Memory Leak
So in the last patch I spoke about the new save system, created to avoid the profile crashing issue. Whilst the new save system seems great (haven’t had any new reports of that past issue), there was one majorish problem. It did contain a memory leak.
I reached out to the person who built the extension, and we went back and forth on testing what was going on. Turns out - the extension wasn’t leaking, nor was the local code -- seems to be an odd Gamemaker issue! Shrug...
I’ve spent some time this week however writing a new, new system. This one doesn’t leak, uses buffers, and is really quick!
This also kicked me into gear to get some more optimisation work done as well, more on that below.
Optimisation
Spurred on by the Memory issue, I booted up the debugger and started combing through the code to try another optimization pass. This process needs to get done every few months, especially as I add new stuff all the time. From the work done, I was getting about an 25% increase in performance, plus I killed a few other small mem leaks. Overall, things should be much smoother - let me know if something still falls behind but!
Feeback on the Challenge Coin patch was super, super positive! I've already seen a bunch of people racking up wins across the full board - even achiving all classes on every coin! Insane! Expect a few more of these to drop soon as well!
Other than that - I’ve been busy here preparing for the 750 Community Reward. I’ll have details on that next week, along with hopefully a preview on the 500 Reward still owed (I’ve found a new artist to help with that, after the previous bad situation :( )
Thank you everyone for your continued support. I know there's nothing too flashy here, but once I get the Translations stuff sorted, I’ll pivot back into more content, and try to outline some plans for 2022 as we head towards 1.0!
P.S: The Great Balance Pass of 2022 is still on the cards as well - hoping to start that process in the next week or so.
All for now! - Josh
The Big Ol' List o' Stuff - Lots of work on performance and memory management! - Mute Audio in background toggle has been added! - Original Card Cost option added, which will show you the cards original cost in brackets - Magnetic Pavise Block increased from 1 to 2 - Artifacts which aren't in the game have been hidden from the Compendium (Crown of Thorns, Light/Heavy Armor, Waterbender, Sharpening Stone. - One-Punch Monk fixed so it removes the right amount of Rage - Blood Libraries won't appear on the Perfection coin - A new "Evaded" text/effect will play if you clear a room and have Threat still on the stack - Fixed damage projection on a few fights, mostly Arkaos and Blood suckers - Promise of Jewels now gives 2 different colour stones - Phantom Spike will now not trigger twice (doh), but will include Fatigue! (yay!) - Winged Circlet - now gains Block instead of Delay Block - Added auto exit to the Shrine and the Matron of Memory - Endless Suffering passive now just casts Vulnerable once, and won't tick down below 1. - Fixed a bug where the game would crash if you chose a challenge coin for a class you didn't have unlocked yet. - Secret Treasure Chests won't spawn an upgrade point when playing on Wild Talent Challenge Coin - Fixed a really obscure bug that would cause some Solo effects + some shii transfer to not go correctly. - You can no longer heal at the Shrine with the Worksite Acccident Challenge Coin.
