Early Access Update Fjorton (14)
build id: 56167F90
Hello all! We are happy to announce a new update to Space Beast Terror Fright.
Performance Optimizations
This update is basically all about further optimizing general performance, as a follow up to the previous update that was focused on network performance. As many of you know, our new network implementation increases the calculation load on the simulation, and as we started looking into general performance post the previous update we found that many of the changes we had made were sub-optimal.
We proceeded to implement a robust timing toolset and actually measure what was taking all the CPU time. This proved very effective, and we were able to significantly increase performance across the entire simulation.
Network Party Version Checking
In preparation for upcoming work on the multiplayer game-finding experience, we have added version checking to the multiplayer parties. The game will notify you if an existing party is of the wrong version and not allow you to join that party. This will in general not happen when everyone is running the same version, but we require this for development as we will be doing tests using the same lobby system that the public deployment uses, and we need to avoid confusion while we are making changes.
Call For Volunteer Testers (Networked Multiplayer)
As mentioned earlier we have discovered that Swedish internet infrastructure is awesome. This makes it rather difficult for us to accurately test networking performance on the internet at large. We have managed to do some testing between Sweden and North America with the gracious help of our friend Classic Billy, but we need more coverage.
For this reason we would at this time like to call out for more volunteers to help us make SBTF networking as robust as possible for international play. From time to time we will call on these volunteers to help us test pre-release versions of the game to make sure things are working smoothly. Requirements are as follows:
- You own Space Beast Terror Fright.
- You live outside of Sweden.
- You are available on Steam relatively often and have time to help us test.
- You have a microphone that enables you to chat with us while testing. We will be using the Steam Voice Chat system.
- You speak English reasonably fluently.
If you are interested, please send the following information via email to: [email protected]
- Name
- Steam Profile URL
- Steam Account Name (this is the name you login with, NOT your profile name as this can be changed after the fact.)
- City, Country, Time Zone
Further information will be supplied once you have been accepted as an internal tester.
Miscellaneous / Known Issues
- Beast textures are now 4x higher resolution. We haven't really noticed the difference... :)
- We suspect that there might be some intermittent latency spikes happening at the beginning of networked games. We have been unable to reliably reproduce this, and this is just one of the reasons we would appreciate the help of more international testers.
As always, thank you for your support and patience,
/nornware AB c/o johno
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