Help Needed: Stability Testing (Patreon)

Greetings! I'll be posting a progress update in a few days, but I'm writing now to ask for assistance testing something for the game. The 0.9 series of releases has seen far more complaints about stability than previous ones. Random freezes, crashes, that sort of thing. The later 0.9.x releases were supposed to be the best performing, most bug-free releases ever, but it apparently hasn't been that way for everyone. To help get this squared away once and for all, I'm asking for your help in testing out a few different versions of the game. I'm particularly interested in feedback from people who experienced a lot of freezes/crashes when playing 0.9 releases. I'm going to talk a little about what I think could be causing these problems, so if you don't want to read that, the links are at the bottom!

The Problem

I've fielded a ton of bug reports throughout this game's history. (And I like them, so if you have one, please send it!) Most of the time when folks reported a serious problem, it was because of some logic error on my part, or I forgot to include a file or something. Every now and again I'd get some oddball problem that neither I nor the person reporting it could seem to reproduce, but they were quite rare.

In the 0.9 series of releases, though, reports of strange freezes and crashes have been way more numerous than usual. I haven't personally experienced any of this, but quite a number of folks apparently have, enough to convince me it's a widespread problem. And that's bad. The game is very long at this point, and it really sucks to lose a lot of progress when the game randomly decides to freeze/crash.

One could mitigate that by saving frequently, but if you're caught up in the story it can be easy to forget. I'll probably try implementing an autosave, but it would be far better to get rid of whatever's causing the instability in the first place.

What's Causing the Problem?

The 0.9 series implemented two major changes, either of which could be the source of the problem:

• It introduced a new lighting system
• It upgraded several key components of the game engine

I know for a fact that the lighting system causes problems for some people, and because of that I implemented ways for people to disable it. This effort started off very clunky and unintuitive, but as of 0.9.5 it should mostly be automatic (that is, if it won't work on your system it should disable itself.) But the method I use to detect that only looks for something that would immediately crash the game rather than more subtle problems, so it's entirely possible (even probable) that this is the cause of the issues.

Because the lighting system has been such an enormous pain in the rear I'd already decided to remove it, either in 0.10 or a final 0.9 release. I've thought of another way to do lighting for key scenes/areas that won't have these problems, but haven't yet gotten around to implementing it. I hope that's what's causing it, because if it's the next thing that would make me very sad.

The other thing that could be causing problems is the engine upgrade. As some of you probably recall, I spent (unfortunately wasted) a lot of time working on a port of the game to RPG Maker MZ. I ultimately nixed that because a lot of key plugins in MZ are obfuscated, which meant problems would be harder to diagnose, I'd have less freedom to modify the game, and I wouldn't be able to fix problems as they arose, instead having to rely on the goodwill and continued operation of the outfit I purchased the plugins from. I also determined the game could get about 80-90% of the performance benefits of an MZ port by simply upgrading a few things about the engine, so that's what I did.

It seems to have worked, and I've been pretty pleased with the upgrade. But it was a major change, and I can't yet rule it out as the source of instability.

The Test Versions

And that's where you come in! Below are 3 different versions of the game. The first is 0.9.5, the current release, one that a sizable minority of players seem to be having stability issues with. The second is what I'm calling version Bravo, which is the same as 0.9.5, except with all the lighting stuff completely disabled. The final one is version Charlie, which both has the lighting stuff disabled AND uses the old engine.

0.9.5 Current Version

Windows 

Mac 

Linux 

Version Bravo (No Lighting System)

Windows 

Mac 

Linux 

Version Charlie (No Lighting System, Old Engine)

Windows 

Mac 

Linux 

If you had stability problems with any of the 0.9 series, and you have the time, please try out these versions and let me know which of them give you problems (or rather, which don't.) If you do decide to do some testing, you can let me know the results either here or in the Discord. Oh, and please let me know what CPU/GPU you're using, and which operating system. Thank you for helping to make The Proteus Effect a better game, and thank you for your support!