Hello everyone, here are the news from the depths of the dungeon
View game page Hello everyone, here's the news from the depths of the dungeon.
Why the Last Details Take the Longest
Although the game is nearly finished, the final phase is taking longer than expected. This is a classic development scenario: initial design moves quickly, leading to overly optimistic projections.
My biggest piece of advice for aspiring developers would be to make a modest game but push it all the way to a professional release on Steam (polish, translation, QA, etc.). It's the only way to truly grasp the actual timelines required to finish a project.
Before summer, I was finalizing all the text for translation, aiming to launch the translation process over the summer and have the game ready for the fall. However, I got stuck on certain dialogues. Rather than forcing it, I chose to switch to technical tasks while waiting for the creative block to pass.
Speaking of dialogues, Did you know? It's possible to be nice to the dungeon goblins.
Also, a small setback: my main work PC fried this summer (thanks, heatwave). Fortunately, I didn't lose any work, but replacing the hardware and resetting my environment took considerable time.
Design Detail: Death and Checkpoints
In Neverlooted Dungeon, when you die, you continue the adventure as a new looter from the last bedroll you visited. You have to go back and retrieve your lost inventory from the corpse of your previous character. Depending on your difficulty mode, your equipment may also degrade, even more so if you die again before recovering it.
In the worst cases, you can also use the shop's "Lost & Found" service, for a small % of your loot!
Throughout the levels, numerous bedrolls are placed, acting as checkpoints. But you can also find or buy bedrolls to place yourself.
Depending on the difficulty mode, there will be more or fewer bedrolls. On the hardest mode, they'll mainly be located at key spots (level start, shop, a few critical areas), and it'll be up to you to find some and decide where to place them... Unless you decide to live dangerously and sell them all to the shop... But you'll have to face the consequences ;)
Huge Performance Boost
This summer, the game gained significant fluidity. I profiled in detail, tackled the biggest bottlenecks, and massively reduced CPU usage.
For example, I completely reworked my display and camera pipeline to have only one active camera, achieving a significant performance boost on certain Unity routines during the render pass.
In my benchmarks, I measured huge gains. On the same test areas, I saw an average increase of +30 to +60 FPS on very low settings and +20 to +30 FPS on ultra. I'm now averaging 95 FPS on ultra. Stabilization is still needed on some areas, but the gains are already there.
Memory Usage
I also took the opportunity to measure and reduce memory consumption. I've already made significant gains, but for some levels I'm still a bit too high compared to my target. I'm aiming to get everything under 4 GB, at least when the game is set to very low quality.
Continued Polish & Debug
I'm still iterating on bugs and visual/design polish. For example, I reworked the throne room to give it a more royal look.
I also further tweaked the endurance system, notably reducing the regeneration penalty when it hits zero. Also, eating food now gives a small temporary stamina boost. Eat MeatPlus™ Ham, much more than meat!
Here is a little paradise view from the Pocket Heaven window.
Roadmap
To give you a concrete idea of timelines: once I've validated all the text, it will take at least 1 to 2 months to complete the translations, followed by 1 to 2 months of beta for implementation, testing, and fixes.
There are still important tasks left to complete. My goal is to leverage the translation period to advance on the remaining items, such as Steam Deck support, Linux support, final debugging, and polish.
Thanks for reading, I can't wait to hear your feedback!
Arnaud