1/18 Patch, and upcoming ones

[Lifeformed]

You guys should already have the first update that we deployed. In that patch we resolved some crash issues, especially one with XP. We also fixed the crash that happens in the Caverns level. We also fixed the 0.000 scores in the scorebook.

I know some of you are still having issues; our next patch has a lot of performance tweaking options that should help anyone with framerate issues. Regarding crashes: we get crash reports automatically so we're constantly working on resolving those. Keep posting any information you have about when the crashes happen and your system specs, it does help us. We'll be putting up a lot of patches over the next week to make sure you guys get to play!

Also, be aware that this game is more resource intensive than you may think. It is not like other 2D games: this engine does a lot of work to make the game look as nice as possible. For example, it streams in the textures so that there are zero loading times and so you can play levels of unlimited size (to be explored when the level editor comes out!). Also, it does a full fluid dynamics simulation to make the leaves move as fluidly as possible. Also, a lot of extra work is done so you never see tiling textures.

[binarian]

Thanks much for the update! Just a couple of quick question: when you say that the textures are streamed in, would that mean that the game has few/no locally stored textures? If so, I can see how that would reduce loading times, but wouldn't that also make the game unplayable offline, or if your servers go down?

[liq3]

Thanks much for the update! Just a couple of quick question: when you say that the textures are streamed in, would that mean that the game has few/no locally stored textures? If so, I can see how that would reduce loading times, but wouldn't that also make the game unplayable offline?

Hrm... It probably means something along the lines of loading textures (from HDD) while you're playing the level. Just a guess though.

[Lifeformed]

liq3 is correct - most games load in all the textures they need (from the HDD) into memory (the RAM), and then when they need to run into an area with many new textures, they run out of texture memory and so they have a loading screen to unload all the old ones and load all the new ones. Dustforce has a streaming system that is always loading and unloading textures as you run through a level, so you'll never have a loading screen. It doesn't only do this with textures, but the entire world, which includes tiles and enemies. That means you can have maps of virtually unlimited size, because it only needs to load a small section of it at a time.

We don't have any gigantic maps (except for the nexus), but our original plan was to have a huge campaign that connected all the levels (instead of through doors), but that ended up being a poor design choice. Once we release the editor, it'd be cool to see people making huge exploration maps.

[Wedge_Antilles]

We don't have any gigantic maps (except for the nexus), but our original plan was to have a huge campaign that connected all the levels (instead of through doors), but that ended up being a poor design choice. Once we release the editor, it'd be cool to see people making huge exploration maps.

Yeah, making a game like Nifflas' Knytt games and such using this engine would be preeeeeetty damn awesome.

[Kitsunin]

Yeah, making a game like Nifflas' Knytt games and such using this engine would be preeeeeetty damn awesome.

Oh man, that would be soooo cool. Even if it's super unlikely, I hope that the level making community can match that of Knytt Stories.

One thing that I must wonder, will we be able to make hubs with the editor? I'm guessing not, but it would be really awesome if people could do collaborative projects with new hub worlds, as in some ways that's one of my favorite things about Dustforce in the first place.

[Moatillata]

would it be possible to preload textures instead of streaming them? that would obviously drastically improve performance in mid-lower-ranged PCs.

[Afajak]

I turned on all the setting that improve performance, and I now get 50-60 frames in some levels, but around 30 in the hub area, and 15-20 in that starting area with the computers and tutorial entrance.

Pentium D 3ghz 2 core
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
2GB physical memory

[lothies]

I know the game looks quite good, but for it to require a mid-high specs machine (Stuff that can run crysis on high/max) to run at 60 fps all the time is unreasonable imo, even with the performance options enabled

[Meuhoua]

Still don't work properly for me, the intro is jerky and without any sound or music (i just have a little "gling gling capcom logo style" then that shut off), the game have lots of low fps moments, and crash after less than 5 min ingame.

My specs :

OS : XP SP3
CPU : i5 750 4 core with 4go memory
GPU : Gforce GTS250

[Saijin_Naib]

Texture streaming doesn't have to flog the computer. The first Soul Reaver game for PC streamed all assets and ran perfectly fine on a 266mhz Pentium 1 MMX with 64mb of RAM.