Anduo Report September 1st, 2023 (Patreon)

 Welcome, feel at ease and cleanse thyselves with thy news from the creators! This moon our complexion might not be the same as you remembered.

Bear:

Heyaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I’ve been working all over the place the past 2 weeks.

First up, I’ve been working on improving all things memory / ram. We now use texture streaming. Texture streaming means that instead of loading every single texture that *could* be used into video memory, we stream textures in and out.

Not only does this method only load visible textures into video memory, it can also decide to load a lower resolution version of the texture depending on the size the texture will be displayed on screen at.

The other big memory optimization was actually disabling a feature. Static batching is a process, in which individual meshes (think buildings, trees, walls, pieces of grass) are clumped together into bigger meshes. This makes rendering them faster because there’s less back and forth between GPU and CPU.

However,

This leads to meshes being duplicated in the game. For example, a tree should only be in memory once and then every time we want to draw that tree, ideally we should just grab that one tree in memory. With static batching, the tree might be packed 20 times with other meshes. This leads to the tree being duplicated tons of time in memory.

Now, static batching is off, which technically makes rendering slower, but when I tested it, I was unable to detect any difference in performance.

These 2 changes brought our ram usage down by almost 2.61gb:

After this, I’ve gone in and optimized every single texture and audio file in the entire project. This was quite an undertaking. Sadly, I was unable to simply select all textures and set unified compression settings. Different kinds of textures require different compression settings and thus it ended up being a lot of clicking individual texture files and selecting the appropriate settings.

BUT! It really paid off:

The download size went from 2.42 to 1.34 GB! That’s really cool! I didn’t think I’d be able to get it down so much :D

Next up on my todo list was optimizing the candles we have put all over the town. Before, each candle would have its own light. While that looks really good, we ran into a limit on the performance side of things. I decided to reduce the amount of individual lights by around 75% by only having 1 point light per group of candles. That absolutely did the trick and the lag when looking at the fountain area is gone now! c:

In general, I’ve made candles a lot prettier! C: The flames shader had an error which caused them to look weird. It’s fixed now!

After that, I’ve gone over to implementing voice acting and foley sounds to the Alda meet Marcus cutscene. You’ll be able to hear it when you finally get to play the next version! :D

I’ve added different camera distances to the different areas of the game. For example, in the main square, the camera is now much further away from Alda:

Whereas in the Market the camera is now closer than before:

This will hopefully make spaces feel more open or narrow depending on what we want! c:

Alda now has a few animations while sleeping and there’s a bit more of a properly implemented feel to changing time in general now! c:

When entering the town, on the right side there has always been a placeholder building that is supposed to be a Guardhouse. This week I sat down and did a mockup for it. This is going to LenChi who will eventually be making a concept based on this! c:

Lastly, I’ve been working on the new version of the melt bad end.

Things in this section are still very much early work in progress, but it’s definitely starting to take shape.

This and a blackmail elf section are the last things that are blockers for the release of a 0.2 version. I’m sure there will still be plenty of rocks on the way still, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! c:

JuggerDown:

JuggerDown has been polishing, adding and changing many of our head priestesses ASSets. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

You can almost taste the cherry lip balm through the screen. 🍒 💋

If you recall LenChi’s concept art of the shrines from previous Patreon reports, you will see a growing resemblance to what Jugger is currently working on.

Scaling between the concept art and the model for reference:

Lenchi:

 Lenchi fleshing out the beautiful town, so it matches its inhabitants and players' beauty. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡° )✨

Less:

 Dala’s design has never quite fit with the vibe her character ended up having. We have decided to redesign her. She’s still going to be lewd mommy vibes, but more pronounced! c:

Pixie:

Pixie is painting our characters even more beautiful, kissable and of course breedable! („• ֊ •„)

Nerada:

Nerada has taught Dala  how to send air kisses, here’s one for you! ( ˘ ³˘)♥

Besides that, he’s also been working on the visual side of things of the guard fucking an elven slave behind the door that would lead directly from the start of the demo to the Guild building! c:

 Thank you for giving us your time as tribute, it will not be overlooked for you all are one of a Erokin’d! ♡