A Tale of Survival Archives - Page 3 of 4

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News, Patch notes May 20, 2014

ATOS patch notes #5

Hiya guys,

Today’s patch focuses on fixing some of the broken logic in the crafting system of ATOS, as-well as some bugs that where present with the core npc controller. I am extremely happy to report that performance reports people have been sending in across the board are very positive, and the game is now running stable on most devices. It was a rough few days but we finally got there. We can not start to focus on improving the game-play as-well as adding new features, items and objectives!

We are currently working on a raft type system to allow much quicker movement over water, so be on the lookout for that!

Version 1.1.37 (20-5-14)

• Fixed bug that was preventing campfire and other objects being placed

• Fixed bug with needs not planting correctly in some instances

• Fixed bug with player death animation not playing

• Fixed bug with npcs changing direction too quickly

• Increased campfire burn time by 10 seconds

• Fixed bug with campfire particle positioning

• Fixed bug when using items with other objects the positioning was calculated wrong

• Fixed bug with bow animation not displaying correctly

• Fixed bug with map sometimes being fully drawn when entering the world

• Crafting metal armour now requires an anvil. Cooking meats now requires a campfire

• Fixed bug where meat could be cooked without campfire being lit

• Fixed bug where bandages where not being removed from inventory after use

• Fixed bug where dead NPC where sometimes being drawn after reloading the game

• Fixed bug where dead NPC and resources were being drawn on the mini-map

Thanks for reading,

Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News May 19, 2014

ATOS patch notes #4

Hiya guys!

Its been a patchy few days but after this patch I think ATOS will be up and running as first intended. We have managed to work out most of the bugs people have been experiencing from the reports you have been sending in. We hope to start adding more to the game in coming patches including more crafting items, enemy variety and game play elements!

1.1.36 – 19-5-14

• Fixed action bar width overflowing on some devices

• Fixed bug with interaction with some environmental objects such as trees no longer working

• Fixed bug with dungeon entrance positioning not always being correct

• Fixed out of bounds errors when generating a new world after patch 1.1.28

• Fixed bug with player attack animations not playing when gathering resource

• Fixed bug with inventory items staying selected even after placing them

• Based on feedback increased horizontal movement speed by 0.6

• Increased diameter of joystick and move slightly further away from crafting window

• Reduced healing effect of bandages by 1 per second

• Fixed graphical glitch with torch

• Fixed speech bubble movement glitch (again)

• Fixed equipment durability metres sometimes drawing blurry

• Fixed item placement mouse positioning offset to compensate for touch

• Fixed bug which prevented tomatoes being planted in dirt

• Fixed bug with text log which was sucking up a huge amount of memory

• Reduced weather particle effects life and size across the board to help with available memory

• Consolidated number of active timers in step events

• Fixed bug where weather was always lasting a constant time instead of a variable length

• Fixed bug with leaf item not healing any hunger

• Reduced stress on initial game load by growing all resources on map on generation instead of as background task

• Fixed glitch with map drawing but when being damaged by fire or cacti

• Fixed glitch that was preventing movement sounds from being played

• Fixed bug with player depth not correctly being calculated in reeds

• Fixed bug with audio engine not correctly calculating song length correctly

• Fixed bug with menu music not changing as intended

• Fixed bug with cave theme music not playing correctly

• Fix bug with songs continuing to play after exiting to menu

• Player can now sprint while moving diagonally

• Fixed bug where flying enemies where appearing underwater

That is it for today, please let us know if you have any ideas that we can use to improve ATOS!

– Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News May 18, 2014

ATOS patch notes #3

Hiya guys,

Here is the second update today for ATOS, sorry it took a little longer than expected. This provides allot of new functionality aswell as (of course) bug fixes. Thank you to everyone for the reports so far, they have been invaluable in finding the issues present!

More notably in this patch we have completely changed the way that items are placed on the ground to now display a grid instead of a point and click system, I hope you will find this far more useful!

version 1.1.30 (18-5-14) –

• Reduced world size by 20% for better performance across all devices

• Fixed mouse ‘sticking’ in the menu screen on some devices

• Fixed bug with lighting controller crashing when game lost focus in some situations

• Reduced texture page size to 1028×1028 for better performance on lower-end devices

• Weapon and armour sprites are now loaded externally to save ram and boost loading speeds

• Added new item – Iron leg armour – Along with crafting recipe

• Reduced game save-size by 50%!

• Reduced world generation time by 30%!

• Fixed red-imp sprite glitch

• Fixed NPC water avoidance bug

• Added multiple toggle states to interface items to prevent too many windows being open at once

• Reworked the way that player energy works to now regenerate when the player is walking, just at a slower rate

• Added player speech text for when energy is extremely low

• Changed the way that damage is calculated to be less linear

• Player now has the chance of dealing a critical hit on any attack!

• Fixed a memory leak associated with the players targeting system, this could stop a few crashes!

• Fixed ai path finding bug that could cause the game to crash

• Added sound effect for when the player takes fire damage (lava, campfire etc)

• Fixed bug with power bar sometimes being overlapped by map tiles

• Reduced players base attack damage by 1

• Fixed bug where the player could target dead npcs

• Increased spider base health to 30

• Reduced attack damage, speed and range of worm

• Fixed bug where player and npcs where constantly being checked for changes instead of only when they actually changed

• Fixed bug with dungeon torches staying visible after leaving a dungeon

• Fixed bug where cooking pot could not be placed on top of camp-fire

• Based on recent recent feedback the object placement system has been completely re-written to be far easier to use

• Fixed bug when planting seeds that planted them at an offset to their intended position

• Fixed bug where assets where not being cleared from memory correctly when leaving the game

That is all for today,

– Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News May 18, 2014

ATOS patch notes #2

Hiya guys,

We are going to be rolling out a new update for ATOS shortly, aimed at fixing some of the random crashes people are currently experiencing. We are working hard to fix the problems up and to anyone currently experiencing problems please accept our apologies!

Version 1.1.28 (18-5-14) –

• Added automatic periodic player data saving to prevent character loss Game is now saved upon generation to allow this

• Fixed bug when placing items that could cause a game crash

• Fixed several random crash issues that were reported, sorry it was not sooner!

• Fixed bug with fishing line and float not being visible after last patch when fishing

• Fixed bug with some tiles ‘flashing’

• Fixed issues with sound engine ‘overflowing’ and potentially causing the game to crash

• Fixed bug when reaching the end of the world that the player could potentially get stuck

• Fixed text alignment issue in character selection window

• Fixed random crash that could happen when the game was held in the pause menu for long periods of time

• Fixed bug with action text alpha not properly resetting after each message

• Fixed bug with paper dolls still being full visible when the player was in water

• Reduced frequency of thunder as-well as sound volume

• Fixed bug with ground item interaction that could cause an out of range error

• Fixed bug where player total health was not being updated when healing

• Fixed bug with red imp sprite not displaying correctly

Thats all for now, expect another update either later on today or early tomorrow. Keep those bug reports comming in!

Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News May 17, 2014

ATOS patch notes #1

Hiya guys!

Its been a day since we released on the Google Play store! Thank you for everybody that has taken the time to play. We are releasing a patch today to address allot of the performance related issues people are having. The game released with a bug which prevented objects within the game being destroyed when no longer needed, meaning that the game would progressively get slower and slower until it crashed. This has been resolved.

Here is the full list of changes –

• Fixed critical bug with map clearing system that was killing game frame rate, people with slowdown issues this should now be resolved

• Improved collision performance for environmental objects such as trees

• Fixed bug that would prevent some character files from being fully deleted

• Increased map drawing loop performance on some lower-end device

• Replaced object grid map and twinned with map tile drawing to increase performance and reduce overall ram usage

• Fixed bug when entering the world that the screen could begin black

• Fixed bug when some npcs would sometimes move position when spawning

• Increased energy regeneration rate by 1 energy per second

• Increased energy cost for running by 1 per second

• Increased energy cost for walking by 0.5 per second

• Added several new online leaderboard types

• Fixed some logic with the calculation of limb damage

• Fixed hunger damage text glitch

• Re-added damage text for player damage

• Fixed bug with score positioning

• Replaced rarely used font types with common types

• Changed font colour when damaging npcs to yellow

• Fixed bug when the player had died that the game could randomly crash

• Reduced off-screen tiles by around 25% to improve performance while moving

• Fixed performance bug when calculating water depth that could cause slowdown

• Reduced ‘pop-in’ rate of auto tiles and resources

• Fixed speech bubble drawing glitch whilst moving

• Fixed bug with weather depth sometimes being overlapped by some tiles

• Increased rain and snow drawing performance by reducing time particles are visible on-screen by half

• Fixed bug with npcs sometimes appearing to be in water even if they were not

• Fixed graphical glitch with npc water indicator sometimes drawing the wrong sprite

• Fixed graphical glitch with npc healthcare sometimes appearing blurry

• Increased spawn rate of skeletons

We will be working over the weekend on new features, more bug fixes and implementing your ideas!

Thanks guys,

Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News, Patch notes May 16, 2014

A Tale of Survival has been released on the Google Play store!

Good news everyone! A Tale of Survival is now available for purchase on the Google Play store! After months of development, delays and refinements the game is finally ready!

A Tale of Survival (ATOS) is open world survival based RPG. The game features a completely randomly generated open world to explore, crafting, survival based game play and resource gathering. Stranded and alone you must harvest the materials from the land around you to survive! –

* Randomly generated, unique open world to explore

* Craft weapons, clothing and tools

* Dungeons to discover and explore

* Lots of enemy variety!

* Permanent death

* Fight deadly monsters

* Manage your hunger and and warmth to stay alive

* Unique soundtrack

* Fishing, mining and lots more..

This version of the game features hundreds of bug fixes, performance optimisations and game playimprovements. The game has been heavily changed to put much further focus on the survival and crafting aspects of the game. A score system has been added with global rankings and better yet there is still lots more to come!

Get the game – HERE

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and awesome ideas, we really appreciate it! We cant wait to begin receiving your feedback, implementing new ideas and developing ATOS even further.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News May 15, 2014

Performance issues and random crashes PATCH

Hiya guys,

Today we will be releasing a quick patch to address some performance based issues. This new version should increase performance across the board marginally. Also a bug was discovered at night that could potentially crash the entire game consistently, this has also been resolved.

Changelog –

. Fixed memory leak in weather particle engine that eventually slowed the game down

. Increased energy regen rate by 40%

. Reduced weather particle effects cpu usage by 10%

. Fixed memory leak associated with torch particle

. Fixed bug when spawning enemies at night that could potentially crash the game

. Fixed random game crashing at night time

We are working on lots of new items, features and fixes. If you have any ideas please let us know!

That is all for now,

Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog, News, Patch notes May 11, 2014

Gearing up for release, changelog and unexpected delays!

Hiya guys,

It’s finally here, well almost. ATOS will be released tomorrow (May 12th) on the Google-play store! Despite it taking a full two-weeks longer than originally planned the game is finally playable and stable enough for public release and we are more than excited to do just that. There have been allot of changes in the last few weeks, a huge amount of balancing and many additions. Here is just some of the most recent changelog –

• Fixed bug with npc collision checking

• Some npcs can now be ‘pushed’ out of the way when walking into them

• Added new cow npc type

• Added new npc static animation type, for example cows can eat grass

• Added two new items, leather and leather scraps

• Implemented new global resource tracker so that resources will now re-spawn even when the player is not in that area

• Plants will not grow without the player being near them

• Identified bug with resource placement script

• Added new time based npc re-spawn script to game

• Added new pig npc type

• Added chicken eat animation

• Added sheep eat animation

• Npcs will no longer re-spawn on a visible area to the player

• Fixed bug where some resources and npcs would randomly appear on screen

• Removed clouds temporarily due to performance issues

• Fixed bug with paper doll drawing that would cut off some specific items

• Added many seed item types including –

Carrots – Potatoes – Chilli -Sweetcorn

• The seeds for these items will spawn randomly

• Armour now actively reduces incoming damage

• Fishing now slowly damaged fishing rods durability

• Mining and woodcutting now slowly damages respective tools durability

• Added new status indicator to indicate when movement is being slowed by leg damage

• Added new indicator for arm damage

• Damaged arms now reduce attack damage potential

• Removed damage text for player, replaced with notification in text log

• Removed multiple interaction types for npcs and resources, replaced with a single click event

• Added black text background to text log

• Bee’s are no longer aggressive by default

• Finished updating credits file

• Updated names of facial features on character creation page

• When credits end the menu will now automatically return to the home screen

• Fixed bug with action key sometimes not detecting instances even when they should of been within action range

• Adjusted timers on day and night cycles to be slightly more random

• Adjusted night alpha settings to not always be completely dark

• Added random text display to menu home!

• Fixed bug that would allow android users to have an almost unlimited character length on their character names

• Fixed bug with some trees requiring the wrong tool to cut them

• Increased enemy regeneration rate by 0.2 per second

• Increased the amount of hunger all food replenishes by 50%

• Fixed bug with scores still incrementing on player death

• Added several new interaction icons

• Fixed bug with crafting not detecting required objects such as furnaces and cooking pots

• Added cooking pot objects requirement for some crafting recipes

• Added anvil object requirement nectary for some crafting recipes

• Fixed bug when placing objects where blood on the floor would prevent items from being placed in that area

• Fixed bug with deep water not progressing player water depth indicator

• Moving between deep and shallow water will now change water level

• Added several arrow sounds when missing targets

• Fixed interaction icon position bug

• Fixed bug with audio engine getting stuck in constant error loop and not playing songs

• Fixed bug with bow animation playing even when the player did not have any ammo

• Wrote a new targeting system script that will now detect targets based on a priority system rather than first detected This means that enemies will always be targeted first if in range before resources, followed by items. This should fix allot of issues regarding hitting the right targets!

• Fixed bug with cacti not doing damage on collision

• Fixed targeting bug with chicken npc

• Added wooden shield crafting recipe to weapons

• Fixed bug with status indicators causing a random exception error and crashing the game

• Fixed graphical bug when placing specific items that would draw random GUI objects on the screen

• Added water movement step sounds

• Fixed bug with cave entrances sometimes not being accessible

• Increased dungeon monster spawn rate by 60% for harder difficulty

• Fixed bug with some speech bubble text not displaying correctly

• Gathering grown plants now has a chance of dropping seeds too

• Fixed bug with npc re-spawn timers not functioning correctly

We are very much looking forward to hearing your feedback, ideas and criticisms and looking forward to fixing all the bugs that will inevitably appear!

Thats all for now,

Zero.

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, News April 12, 2014

Development news, release dates, changes and more

Hiya guys,

Today I thought I would post an update on the state of development, new core features and how the project has developed since my last update. Lets begin!

There have been a huge number of key changes in the past few weeks. Part of these are due to time limitations, some due to me loosing focus on the original ambition of a survival based game, and most are down to me trying to be too ambitious when it was coming down to the actual release! I have decided to take the game back to its original roots. Some of you may have seen a video of a prison section that I posted a few weeks back, this has been removed from the game. The game now solely revolves around the island.

I have been able to drastically improve the generation of the island to a much more efficient method. This change allows generation of an island 300% bigger than the original, and it does this in the same, or less time. This allows space for much more diverse environments and better game play.

I have also implemented a brand new character creation screen with over 9 different body types to choose from. The new character screen also included customisation of not only hair and body type, but also eyes, ears and noses too!

There is also now a GUI element for monitoring your limbs health and status, meaning you can choose exactly which limb you would like to heal depending on your current situation instead of it being completely random.

Most of the graphical glitches that where present in the game have been fixed, there are still a few floating around but the majority have been resolved due to a new method of sprite implementation that allows more to not only quickly add new sprites but manage them far more easily!

Performance wise the game should now run a steady 150-200fps across most medium-end android devices.

Finally the initial release date is now a firm April 30th, this will be considered our open Beta!

Thats it for today, if you have any questions please feel free to ask away!

– zero

Zero published in A Tale of Survival, Blog March 15, 2014

Just rambling, and some updates too!

Hiya guys,

As I mentioned in a previous post the game had to go on the ‘backburner’ as such for a few weeks while I worked on other things. I’ve delayed the overall release of the game to late April, however this is a firm release date with no compromises!

Allot of the work I have been doing is more on the ‘back-end’ side of things. Understanding the constraints of the mobile platform and overcoming them has been a huge learning curve for me and I have learnt a lot of great new programming concepts along the way. In-turn I have learnt a few painful lessons about the scope of the game, limitations terms of time and resources and also how to and how not to manage a project!

All in all the game is now allot more stable than before. Performance has increased a noticeable amount across all my testing devices. With the new optimisations it has also allowed me to increase the world size to over 300% more without impeding on the games performance (although a little slower generation time). Also map items are now stored alongside the resource data which allows a near infinite amount of items to remain on the ground without slowing the game down significantly.

I have gone back and re-developed the character creation screen. There are now several new options including body type, hair, eyes and nose customisation. As-well as the original hair colours and world generation options.

The game now features over 100 unique items.DOT and HOT items with indicators. Fully randomised dungeons and dungeon entrances with unique items, enemies and loot. Several armour sets. Several weapon types. Around 40 crafting recipes. 20 different enemy types.

My core focus at the moment is the finish up allot of the survival elements. Hunger and thirst need tweaking so that they are more meaningful to the gameplay. I need to implement some kind of ai for night time which makes specific enemies much more deadly and aggressive once the sun sets.

Okay that is my ramblings done for now!

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