[Updated to fix missing images]
I'm releasing a new game on Steam, it's a reskin of "Necro Mutex" called "Attack Of The Retro Bots" that has 50s style toy robots instead of weaponized undead. Necro Mutex was too gory and bloody for a general audience, so this is a more family friendly "PG" version.
Last edited by mkultra333 on Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
EDIT: working now thanks! I can't see the images
Looking great! Congrats! and great job on making that very demanding scenes work on VR (very difficult task, from experience)
Last edited by xrgo on Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Damn, it works on my chrome browser but I just had a look on firefox and they don't show. They're on Google Images and they decided to make linking difficult for some reason. I'll upload them somewhere else and try reposting them.
And thanks!
The above images are desktop gameplay, which uses a slightly flashier renderer than VR usually does, but the image difference isn't too big. Just cut back on some of the more expensive effects, like using cubemap based reflections instead of realtime screen space reflections.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
Just curious, how much time required to compile your project - "Attack Of The Retro Bots" ?
Do you often edit-then-recompile repeatedly?
Does long compile time hinder your lone development cycle?
My program structure is... not the best, so it probably takes a lot longer to compile than it should, because most the code is in one big file. Also my computer is getting a bit old now, but still okay.
Compile times got to be a real pain at one point, taking 3 or 4 minutes, which is agonizing when you're trying to debug or perfect something. Eventually I worked out that if I create a build that doesn't have any of the VS2013 optimizations active, it only takes about a minute and still runs well enough. Although for final releases I turn on all the compiler optimizations again, and they definitely make a big difference to the more demanding scenes.
So if the compile time is in the 1 minute ballpark I don't mind too much, and the 3-4 minute compile times are fine for the release builds.
What does take a super-incredibly painful amount of time is running a debug build. Just getting to the point where a level is loaded and playable takes an excruciatingly long time, about 15-20 minutes, so trying to find bugs using debug mode is a last resort I try to avoid.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
mkultra333 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 5:53 am
So if the compile time is in the 1 minute ballpark I don't mind too much, and the 3-4 minute compile times are fine for the release builds.
What does take a super-incredibly painful amount of time is running a debug build. Just getting to the point where a level is loaded and playable takes an excruciatingly long time, about 15-20 minutes, so trying to find bugs using debug mode is a last resort I try to avoid.
now I understand why people are so eager on using MinGW on Windows..
Visual Studio 2008 wasn't nearly as bad as far as optimized compile times goes. It never even occurred to me as a problem. But then I upgraded to Visual Studio 2013 and suddenly compiling an optimized build became a real drag. I have no idea what the newer versions are like.
I suppose I should qualify that by saying I don't know how much better the optimization on 2013 is compared to 2008, since I can't run a side by side comparison. The optimizations certainly do make a difference, I get much smoother performance compared to my unoptimized, faster building version.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
mkultra333 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 5:53 am
So if the compile time is in the 1 minute ballpark I don't mind too much, and the 3-4 minute compile times are fine for the release builds.
What does take a super-incredibly painful amount of time is running a debug build. Just getting to the point where a level is loaded and playable takes an excruciatingly long time, about 15-20 minutes, so trying to find bugs using debug mode is a last resort I try to avoid.
now I understand why people are so eager on using MinGW on Windows..
Personally I prefer MinGW (and yes I know I've been one of the bigger pains on keeping it working with 1.x) because I've been using GCC since the mid 90s via DJGPP on DOS and later when I migrated to Linux. So I'm used to how it works.
I find building in release with /ZI and /DEBUG gives me enough performance to adequately use the program. But of course, I mainly just need a callstack.
Zonder wrote: ↑Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:10 am
Not a bad idea doing a reskin. Sorry for not posting sooner my new workplace blocks posting to forums!
TBH, it seems like it was a bit of a waste of time from a financial perspective. Response was pretty muted. A lot of people who reviewed Necro Mutex didn't bother with AOTRB. Perhaps because it's a reskin rather than a different game. I make it clear on the Steam page it's a reskin, and if you already have Necro Mutex it's super cheap as a bundle, just a buck or so. But that doesn't seem to stop people complaining that it's a reskin.
Despite that, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
EricB wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:42 pm
What data do you need for debugging with VS?
I find building in release with /ZI and /DEBUG gives me enough performance to adequately use the program. But of course, I mainly just need a callstack.
I haven't really looked at the debug build options. I probably should, since going over the release build options had a big payoff in terms of making a much faster building, unoptimized release build I could use for day to day coding.
But then I use the debug build so rarely, it's not a major concern. It comes up once in a blue moon when there's some bug driving me crazy that I just can't work out. Otherwise, the internal logging I've added usually allow me to find the part of the code causing issues.
"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." - Psychology Textbook.
