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Some words on the immediate future... (Patreon)

Published:
2017-11-29 22:21:27
Imported:
2020-09

Content

[Abelius]: Hi people!

Well, first of all, thank you for playing 0.1 and giving us your valuable feedback. I won't say your two main concerns took me by surprise... ^_^

Player speed is indeed frustrating at the current state of the game. The village will be a far more busy place in the future, with people moving around and barking their thoughts away, but we understand your boredom at not seeing a soul and needing to make the same trip over and over.

You've suggested several changes related to that. I don't want to make this post even longer with in-depth technical explanations, so I'll get straight to the point: it's far more feasible for me to implement a fast travel (teleport) map than drastically changing the movement method.

For starters, the plugin I'm using for characters to move, forces you to make up your mind and choose between point & click or keyboard movement. The first depends on path-finding algorithms, while the second works with physical colliders. So...: no arrow keys to move in the foreseeable future.

With that said, I can tell you I'm going to try (again) implementing a run command that doesn't relay on double-clicking, but maybe a Shift+Left Click combination, which would be easier to "refresh".

I know it would be better to have a 'hold to move' system. I tried long ago to implement it but, unfortunately, the path-finding logic of this plugin leaves a lot to be desired and the character turns back the way she comes from.

If you look at the development board you'll see this card...:
Experiment with A* pathfinding [BIG TASK]

That's for me to try to integrate a far better path-finding plugin with the one for movement. It's NOT a trivial task by any means, but I'm positive that if I get them both to work, then we could have that 'hold to move' feature in the future.

In the meantime you'll have to bear with me and use the fast-travel map we'll implement in 0.1.1 in the next weeks.

And now that I mention that version, the other main concern is about lack of content... well, as I already warned you, 0.1 was supposed to be a test of how well the basic engine would work for you hundreds of people. And I must say I'm pretty satisfied with the results. Even though I was stupid enough to change some code at the last minute and break the 2nd HJ scene (sorry), bug reports have been sparse and mostly cosmetic in nature.

For that reason I'm positive we could spend more time now on creating content. That doesn't mean we will only focus on that, because there are still things to add to the map, characters and the engine inner workings, but you certainly won't need to wait another six months for 0.2.

What we really, really need to do now is to make a proper plan. We can't improvise when deciding what to work on from now on. 'Content-tasks' and 'Feature-tasks' should be wisely balanced according to their game value and needed man/hours, so if you don't see much movement in the next days (from me at least), don't worry, I'm walking some steps back to take a little run.

I will end this wall of text with bad news for some people...

I tried guys, I REALLY tried. But making this game to work (well) with DirectX 9 systems is just madness... :-(

Even though I can make 4K sprite atlases, and I even said I would make that modification for you today, I must back down on that decision. I've spent ALL day frustrated and pissed off at the problems I've had at trying to fit all the graphics in those tiny textures.

You could think 4096^2 pixels are a lot... but when you went down from 8192^2 you quickly discover that 4K is NOT the half of 8K, but FOUR times smaller, so the beautiful but BIG backgrounds Kuja made are just a nightmare to fit in those atlases.

"-But you could slice them...!" Yeah, and then I'd need to manage a fuck-ton of tiny images with custom pivot points and four to six times more atlases than before which, in turn, hit performance because draw calls grow as well. I could go on ranting for hours...

Oh, and it also would be nice to be able to use some DirectX 11 features in the future, just saying... :-P

So, if you see blue backgrounds... I'm sorry, but it's time to upgrade your computer. I mean, there are DirectX 11 cards for less than $50, for God's sake!

And seriously, my life as developer will be far less stressful this way. ;-)

Tomorrow morning I'll finally release Mac & Linux versions along with the final (I hope) Bugfix 2.

Thank you for reading and good night (here at least).

Comments

Aromatic Hyena

I think we would all prefer using WASD and the directional keys to work, for one thing im pretty sure that’s how the original LOK worked, adding shift click for sprint would mean we would have to use two hands, one on the mouse pad one on the keyboard, I still don’t understand why it’s so difficult, nor will I, I don’t have any game developing experience. But it will continue to be a major frustration and literal pain in my fingers until otherwise.

Anonymous

LOK team, you can be proud of this first release. I don't think there's a game out there with more potential than this gem.

Anonymous

The time spent navigating from A to B is my single biggest concern with the first release, so anything you can do to remedy that tedium is appreciated. Thanks

Anonymous

Well lets be honest, who here has ever played a game where walking is actually helpful (exclude horror and death being a result if you didn't walked)

Anonymous
>>8578960

I could see walking being important in here if you had a some sort of sneak system however

Anonymous

Well..... then does the game tell me when it's over? because i stuck in my first job (you know the pot)... Someone can tell me please if the game go on or not? Thanks :D

Anonymous

what if next patch will be next year lol

SirMalo
>>8580261

That's the only job you can get for now. If you ask the guy for help your lust stat goes up. More lust means more naughty stuff. After you've reached the second boobjob it's save to say you're done with the sexual content.

Anonymous

Instead of hold a key and clicking to run, could you have a key to toggle between run or walk? Like Press RightCTRL and run mode activated and stays activated until you press RightCTRL a second time.

kuja
>>8581718

That's a good idea. Though I'll try with CapsLock key, which is the usual suspect in most games.

Anonymous
>>8574906

I simply use a macro that dobleclicks for me every second, toggle mode on binded key works perfectly fine.

Anonymous

Hi LOK Team. My 2c on tech questions: it's probably better NOT use atlases for backgrounds. Use it for small pieces like sprites, icons and etc. One more draw call per background won't kill performance really, and you can use detailed background as large as 4096^2? How about to merge walk and run under a single click? Just check the distance between character and the mouse pointer. Bigger than ... 30% of the screen will toggle running.

Anonymous

all the mega links are down for some reason am i missing something? i didnt get a chance to check it out ;-;

kuja
>>8589040

Yup, I delete them when posting new versions. Take a look at the last post.

kuja
>>8586540

Yeah, I agree that atlases are designed for consolidating small sprites. My problem here was that our backgrounds are about 5400x1080px in size, so they needed to be sliced if they were supposed to be visible with DX9 cards, which only support textures up to 4096px. That movement behavior you describe is not supported by the plugin I'm using... in fact it supports the exact opposite: prohibit walking if you're too close to the point you clicked. xD There's also another movement method that allows running by holding down the left mouse button, but there's a huge built-in limitation: you actually need to click on the NavMesh if you want to run there. So, if I switch to that movement scheme, players would need to find the (invisible) strip that goes along the ground, instead of loosely clicking on the direction they want to go. At the end of the day, I'm not a coder, and I can't easily modify a huge plugin made to meet my needs. I only can open a ticket with the author and hope for the best.