I was unhappy with the performance of the last version or two of Masteroid. I’ve added things over the last 2-3 releases that have had small performance impacts and those have resulted in some frame drops and chuggy behavior that was frustrating but too big to get completely fixed in the last release. This release I wanted to focus on performance and missions but performance ended up encompassing both visual and audio and was bigger than expected!
So, the theme of this release was improving performance, but improving it in a way that added to the game experience above and beyond just higher framerates.
Here are the new features for Betelgeuse Release
- Masteroid now has dynamically-created background starfields: Technical details about Dynamic Starfields are in their own blog!
- Sectors now pre-allocate memory for things like shots and ships, reducing framerate stutters when lots of ships spawn or shoot
- Fixed UI issues with editing tools caused by major UI updates in last release
- Complete overhaul of engine trails. Engine trails are now longer, prettier AND more performant
- Minor tweaks to shot objects for performance
- Cleaned up sectors to look and perform better with new dynamic starfield
- Added loading screen since Sectors now do more work up front
- Audio now pans!
- Improved error/crash logging, should be easier to solve bugs on user machines now
- Audio system now supports looping sound effects for things like engines
- Ships now have unique engine sounds!
- Fixed various audio issues related to too many sounds being created
- All ships have increased turn rates and are more nimble/responsive in combat
- Fixed issue where picking up lots of resources creates a really loud sound
- Fixed some minor UI bugs from last release
- Sound effects are now paused when game is paused
- Some minor planning, tweaks to support deeper mission system
- Listened to The Chaos of Code album by Dan Terminus a ton (soundtrack to NeuroVoider)
- Listened to Hologram album by Vogel a ton
The next release focuses on adding depth to the mission systems in game. It should also include some additional audio and potentially music improvements!
Thanks for playing,
Justin
