Fixing back hospital (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

I didn't had a lot of time this weekend so I though it would be a good idea to fix some stuff before starting another big thing. So I went back to the hospital because this level have a few things leftover that needed fixing.

First, I incorporated the hit and throw features so you're able to hit, throw things and distract guards. It will be possible to get things to throw and hit before starting this level so I think it's a nice way to take out some frustration and reward exploration, while making theses features relevant outside of mini events or mini games. 

More importantly, I got my hand dirty on some performance issues that were (and in a certain way still are) plaguing the game.

To start with, I improved the scene management loading system to better handle scene transition. A scene is basically a level, so what I did is to make sure the player can't and won't move until the last bit of the scene finished loading. This may end up with longer "loading screens" but I hope this will take care of the "falling into the void" bug. I didn't get it anymore after some playtesting.

I also decided to give another shot at the performance issue that cause a big dip in FPS in the hospital. 

I'm gonna get a bit technical here, so spare me a bit, but some of you may like behind the scene explanation. I decided to try something I haven't tried yet, because while it seem a good idea it can also worsen the performance: occlusion culling. 

What occlusion culling does is basically take the camera, and render only the things that is in the direct field of view of the player. On top is the normal scene, and below is the scene after occlusion culling. 

This mean obviously far better performance on the GPU side, but it also mean that the CPU have to work more to check what's hidden and what's not. So it's not a silver bullet. As you can see below, (left is the old build, right is the build I'm working on), the dip in hardware utilisation is pretty noticeable. 

And it translate quite well in-game too. 

with it (new update)

and without it (old update)

So,this is a good starting point to work with, I'm gonna fine tune this only for the hospital right now, because it's the only place where the performance are that bad. I'll probably check how it goes by releasing two version on the next update : One with occlusion culling and one without it, let you tell me if it feel better with it. 

That's it, I'm done with technical stuff for a while ! 

See ya next time and have a good week !