Devblog Update #40: Introducing someone new

This is Skye. A young gryphon who has a knack for inventing things. The airship he made, “The Hummingbird”, suffered a malfunction and he landed it on the island the first level takes place on. Not being the most social of creatures, he’s been hiding in a cave working on fixing it up.

 

The first challenge room in the Vault has been made! Starting off pretty easy, the player just has to fly through all the various rings scattered around the chamber to open the door so they can proceed to the second challenge.

 

I’m starting to upload timelapse videos of some content creation. I would love to stream development on Twitch, and upload videos showcasing development in the engine, but neither my computer nor my internet can handle doing those things. So, I’m recording content creation for now.

 

An interesting challenge I faced this last sprint (and am still figuring out, to be honest), is the quest system. Because of the size of the map, I’m loading and unloading parts of it to save memory, but the interactive pieces of the quest need to retain their references to the quest system. Also, the Vault is a little like a Tardis, it doesn’t exactly fit inside the islands physically, so I have to load/unload the Vault/Island as you enter and exit it. Somehow the bits and bobs need to know what to talk to when they’re loaded, and also the quest manager needs to know who to tell to activate next as the quest progresses.

Anyways, it’s been more complex than anticipated. If it was all one static level, it’d be easy peasy. The best workaround I can think of is to simply have things be invisible, instead of unloaded, but that means they’re still taking up memory. There are pros and cons, and I need to do more thorough performance tests to see what we can get away with. 😛

 

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