Hello everyone,
I’m back from the Japan Expo, where I met many very cool people! Thanks a lot to anybody who took the time to stop at my booth, and welcome to new subscribers 🙂 Thanks also to my booth mates from oQo and all the indie dev colleagues for the nice ambiance, and thanks to all the organisers from Toulouse Game Dev, and the Japan Expo of course 🙂
I couldn’t take pictures, but here is one of the booth taken by my friends before the opening:
So now is the occasion to upload the last demo I showed there. It’s mainly the same as before, except more optimized.
So here is the last version of the demo of A Thief’s Melody, a 3D cartoon adventure/stealth game with a contemplative atmosphere, somewhere between “Zelda” and “Beyond Good and Evil”. Don’t hesitate to test/share/reblog/comment/like if you want to help me!
Beware: This is the alpha (=NOT FINAL) demo of July 2017. If you want to get the latest demo for sure, just check the official website.
Feedback & bug hunt: As usual, if you want to tell me what you think about the game, or if you find bugs, contact me at contact at oneiricworlds dot com
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Install Notes
- Linux
Under Linux, you have to change the execution rights on the game file:
chmod +x aThiefsMelody.*
- Mac OS
Haha… I didn’t test on Mac, because I don’t have a Mac. But the beauty of Unity is that I can release on Mac from a Windows system anyway.
So, if Mac users out there want to give it a try and tell me what’s wrong (or what’s right, hopefully 😉 ), you’re most welcome!
What’s new since the last demo?
You have to know the demo quests are more or less final at the moment. The next official demos (including this one) will only provide bug fixes and graphics/sound/music enhancement.
Since May 2017, lots of optimisations has been done
- Lots of draw call optimisations, by merging renderers and colliders at editor time, depending on tags and layers.
- Removal of water real-time reflection in fastest mode
- Full deferred pipeline using a toon BRDF for characters (instead of old deferred + lighting prepass pipeline) which results in a 20-30% fps improvement
- Toon shading now reacts to multiple light sources
- New grass et vegetation shader to better take into account lighting on both sides of each mesh + overlay texture to add color variations
- Change of the control names in the tutorial to better fit the Xbox 360 conventions.
- Better camera moves on cutscenes + new cutscene for locating the Bo dojo.
- Lots of code cleanings
As a benchmark, I tested on my 8-year-old laptop. Before optimization, the game ran at 5 fps. Now it runs at 17 fps. There is still room for improvement, but that’s a good start. Of course on a nowadays PC, the game should run pretty smooth.
What’s broken ?
You didn’t expect everything to work perfectly, did you? I’m aware of a few bugs/regressions/problems:
- Controls are displayed in English, whatever language you choose.
- Some assets still need work to be done or polished (Audio, Graphics, UI, …)