Hello !
Time for a new dev diary ! My two weeks summer holidays are ended so i can get back to work on Dangerous Rays
1- Alpha 18 release period set !
I have decided to release the alpha 18 preview version of Dangerous Rays in the end of December ! Yes it's almost 4 months from now but i need a bit more time as my work productivity in summer was not that great (my work productivity is never good in summer anyway) and i am late on my schedule. I will soon move in Paris in my secret dev bunker and i will not leave it till the Alpha 18 Preview version is not ready. Everything in Paris is prepared so i can work on the game in very nice conditions and without being disturbed by anything. Player will be able to give feedback on this Alpha 18 preview version so i can make some fixes and add some more features before the Steam release. I am very exited by this Alpha 18 release as it is the "rebirth" of the game, i am now satisfied with the engine that i made from scratch for this version and i will be very pleased to be able to release frequent updates in the future again for you guys.
2- Terrain Vegetation Memory Improvements
Last month i have worked on vegetation memory improvements. The biggest memory consumption source was due to trees physics shapes (so objects and player could collide with trees). For Alpha 18 version i have implemented a new technique so one physics shape can be shared between all identical trees models. This was quite easy to implement and this feature is saving a HUGE amount of memory ! In fact, vegetation memory consumption is decreased by 99%. This free memory gain will leave more room to implements others feature to make the game better in the future.
That's all for now, September, October, November and December months should be much more exiting and i will have much more things to show.
Original Article: Forums.lonelybitsgames.com
Exciting! Looking forward to the end of December even more now!
~Brendin