Oh! I am a fool:

Early on I added the flag animation frames to the goblin towers, assuming empty space/ pixel art size didn’t matter, but i guess that’s what the game crashing giant texture file is!

It’s good to learn lol

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Achievements have turned out to be much more of a nightmare than expected: but I’ve finally got godot to talk to steam:

Should be fine, but achievements aren’t activated prerelease so there’s no way to know for sure yet.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Steamdeck test, performance is better than ever! No issues, with weather and all enemies on!

There’s a slight frame slow down when you fire a charged multishot, but that’s kinda nice and adds juice so might just leave it

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

I think I found the problem!!!!

It didn’t like nestled particle effects, even when not emitting; but turning them invisible and having them turn on when on screen seems to have fixed it.

Look how small that spike is now!

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Checking performance; I think I can solve that load in spike…

I fixed the error messages from the tilesets. No performance improvement, but it is nice to get rid of those error messages that were driving me crazy.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

So I had the quick idea to just mirror the portrait art to the equipped armour art, which made this INFINITELY easier to program than I was worried about!

Commons done, working on art for uncommons next.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Ok, I’m going to bite the bullet and do it: Character portraits for the pause menu with weapons and armour that change.

It’ll help draw more attention to the inventory system.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Testing the persistant world:

If the players leave enemy range, they march towards the town.

Rescued npcs will also go to town to help defend.

Performance feels fantastic! Doing final tests and reuploading the demo.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

It’s running so well now, and I have so much more wiggle room if I want to add any more unplanned energy intensive things later.

It thinks there are errors in the tilesets, but I solved those in a round about way early on.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Updated Godot and it has informed me of bugs that existed but for some reason weren’t problems earlier?

This is good; it should solve the mysterious loading problem, and I’ve got the spike below 400! It runs so smooth now!

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Achievements!

Once I get this done, I can go back and add them to Roid Chimp. It was nowhere near as difficult as I was worried about.

Knock on wood until after testing of course.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

I’m procrastinating on some backend stuff, but I’ve put so much time into this animation.

I will end up using it, so it all feels productive. Eventually.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

In process!

I’m going to have an RE type “collect the pieces of the relief sculpture” to unlock this in stages, which will be a portal to…. Somewhere.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Making a boss ghost!

I can really go to town on the death animation since there will only one on screen at a time, but the rest of the movement animations are a bit of a nightmare at this scale.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Sorting out achievements! I think it’s a lot easier than I’ve been dreading.

I hate backend stuff so much, I’m always worried I’m going to break something.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

A little behind the scenes look at how I (dis)organise my sprites as I work on them.

I really need to start labeling all my files properly.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Testing on the steamdeck and this $300 laptop from 2018.

It runs perfect on both now!

I think I’m happy with performance now, going to focus on maintaining while expanding next.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

UI updates are a go!

I also added little “!”s to draw attention to the to do/ skills menu.

Players hate reading lol

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Found more places to fix optimisation! I think I can get that load in spike down another ~20%!

Also decided to pause the game while in the pause menu; not having that happen was needlessly stressing out the player.

#gamedev #pixelart #solodev #indiedev #indiegame #godot #TheUniverseOfDeath

Bear!

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