KickStarter Serpent in the Staglands Pre-Release Thread

[Sensuki]

Will there be an option to disable Vsync ?

edit: couple of other questions

There are some periodic slowdowns in this game, any idea what causes those?

You guys either have a very 'error-free' game, or you're not using Unity's in-built output_log to throw try catch errors, when bugs occur :D

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

All fonts are fine, Serif'd current / Serif2 would be best.

This. (serif2 being my fav)

That seems to be the consensus — thanks folks for the input! We'll release 2.0 with one of those two.

I don't think anyone would strongly oppose any font, but perhaps it would be possible to make an option for what font to use?

perhaps you will consider for the final game to let players choose from a game menu an alternative font. Eg. current and Serif'd current look both already working naturally judging from screenshots. Serifes need some more spacing work, not sure if worth an effort.

From a design standpoint we'd like to just have one that stands on its own, though we could implement a toggle like that down the road when we get some more time for user-control options, good idea. They are implemented as bitmap fonts with the system we're using to put them in, so unfortunately it would be a bit more involved than being able to just swap between .ttf fonts, but we may be able to have a select few. We'll adjust the current ones prior to 2.0 for kerning though, definitely.

Will there be an option to disable Vsync ?

edit: couple of other questions

There are some periodic slowdowns in this game, any idea what causes those?

You guys either have a very 'error-free' game, or you're not using Unity's in-built output_log to throw try catch errors, when bugs occur :D

We've had some folks send us their output_log to help with some prior build's saving issues, some with a few thousand lines of errors! I think all the saving errors have been squelched with 1.6, and maybe you've had some remarkably good runs with everything else.

Vsync helps quite a bit visually with moving the camera with the way scaling and render textures are set up. With the pixel art being scaled the tearing can look pretty brutal, we'd advise keeping it on, though I think there's some way you can dive into Unity menus somewhere and toggle it off.

Slow downs are being caused by enemies/NPCs being activated, which is one of the remaining issues that is being addressed for 2.0. We can get a ton of enemies or NPCs on any given map which is great, but the cost of turning on all their innards taking a little hit as you mention — we've currently landed on trying something we were doing before which was loading them all at the start and putting them into an off-grid idle until a PC comes in perimeter.

Thanks for the vids on the forum btw , we've added those to our polish list! There was also an issue with when you travel in a map-within-map area that has immediate enemies spawn in after you arrive. We've fixed this so they are already there when you get there, though I forget if that made it into the last build or not.

 

[ushas]

Oh. Sensuki, are you going to to make videos for this game's beta as you did for PoE?

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Does SITS have beetles?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Does SITS have beatles?

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

 

[Photokoi]

Hey Joe, are you making any provisions for the 320x200 or 640x400 resolution for CRTs? I recently rescued my CRT monitor for dos gaming and windows 98/xp gaming. Do you guys think a 4:3 resolution would be nice to play with or is widescreen preferred?

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Hey Joe, are you making any provisions for the 320x200 or 640x400 resolution for CRTs? I recently rescued my CRT monitor for dos gaming and windows 98/xp gaming. Do you guys think a 4:3 resolution would be nice to play with or is widescreen preferred?

The 320x200 resolution is no dice: (the min. height is ~285)

So this resolution is something like 450x285 which works pretty pretty well, and probably around the smallest one could play at.

This size is 640x400 which is about perfect though. 4:3 is actually great because the HUD pieces are closer to the playing area.

Hope that helps!

 

[Photokoi]

Nice, that is snazzy. I find a lot of top down rpgs with baldur's gate style interface benefit a lot from this ratio. Widescreen I love for 1st person or third person over-the-shoulder view, but strategy games and top down games are great for 4:3. Otherwise the widescreen seems to stretch out the HUD like you said. With tablets though, a widescreen HUD like in Shadowrun works because your fingers are able to reach the extremities of the tablet with ease. Are you guys considering a tablet version release out of curiosity?

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Yeah, HUDs can be a tricky business. No plans for tablets, I don't think it would be possible with the mechanics.

 

[Niektory]

Photokoi probably meant 640x480 which was the commonly used VGA resolution, 640x400 is 16:10 and would be stretched on a 4:3 monitor.

 

[Photokoi]

Photokoi probably meant 640x480 which was the commonly used VGA resolution, 640x400 is 16:10 and would be stretched on a 4:3 monitor.

Yes, but strangely enough many games in the early 90s which were 320x200 were stretched to fit the screen. I'm not too sure how that works or why its done.

 

[Niektory]

Photokoi probably meant 640x480 which was the commonly used VGA resolution, 640x400 is 16:10 and would be stretched on a 4:3 monitor.

Yes, but strangely enough many games in the early 90s which were 320x200 were stretched to fit the screen. I'm not too sure how that works or why its done.

Resolutions with non-square pixels were common in these times. Why? I don't know. Probably because they wanted to squeeze as many pixels as possible on the screen. Here are some articles about this if you're curious:
http://nfgworld.com/mb/thread/660-Aspect-Ratios-Scanlines-and-Modern-Displays
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/10/320x200-resolution-of-choice-for-ibm-pc.html
https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/update-2-hot-ratios/

 

[tuluse]

Resolutions with non-square pixels were common in these times. Why? I don't know. Probably because they wanted to squeeze as many pixels as possible on the screen. Here are some articles about this if you're curious:

320x200 was the highest 256 color resolution supported by VGA.

 

[Apexeon]

Late backer picked up my pre order.

 

[joelofdeath]

Sensuki, Tuluse

http://serpentinthestaglands.com/community/forums/topic/beta-2-0-fighting-arena/

Edit: thanks tuluse

 

[tuluse]

Sensuki, Tuluse

http://serpentinthestaglands.com/community/forums/topic/beta-2-0-fighting-arena/

Just a heads up, if you put a @ in front of a name, it will tag the person and give them an alert.

 

[Sensuki]

Aw yis, famous in a video game

 

[tuluse]

There's interview with Whalenaught: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-130336/TS-932859.mp3

Starts at about 8:30. Various stuff like influences (spoilers: Darklands, IE, and Fallout 1). Description of the game that people following this thread should already know. And general discussion of video game philosophy.

 

[Sensuki]

Oh. Sensuki, are you going to to make videos for this game's beta as you did for PoE?

I'll try and do some more.

 

[Infinitron]

There's interview with Whalenaught: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-130336/TS-932859.mp3

Starts at about 8:30. Various stuff like influences (spoilers: Darklands, IE, and Fallout 1). Description of the game that people following this thread should already know. And general discussion of video game philosophy.

Where did you find this link?

 

[Greatness]

Where did you find this link?

http://steamcommunity.com/games/335120/announcements/detail/135440633468160229

 

[Sensuki]

Listening to the interview

Nice to hear stalwart defense of the old school sensibilities

Points for Biscotti as an item too Had a good chuckle when I saw that

 

[Infinitron]

What's with the quality? That podcast sounds like a RealPlayer stream from the 1990s.

 

[Photokoi]

Listening to the interview

Nice to hear stalwart defense of the old school sensibilities

Yeah, I like how they're consciously creating a game where the player has to think, where they know that this won't appeal to the casual gamer. Do you think you're average Skyrim-er will play a game without an automatic questlog or map?

When told that some people will hate this type of game, these guys don't care.
"We're fully expecting it to be split in the middle" -Joe

And the recording quality is utter shit. Worse than an iphone recording.