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Project: Twisted Tower - Chapter 1
Project Started: 19th December, 2010 Last Update: 5th March, 2017
Project Owner: HitmanN Project Members:
Project Type: Dungeon Crawler Platformer Project Progress:

Traditional weekend update! \/
Posted 12th Feb 11, by HitmanN  
As the title implies, doing a devlog entry on weekends has pretty much become a tradition, so here we go.

"Previously on Twisted Tower devlog..."
Last time I was complaining about having couple of problems that were preventing me from focusing on the project.

I've got both good and weird news.

The good news? The problems are mostly gone. After intensive reinstalling and updating of all sorts of things on the computer, ending up having to do system restores and going through a miniscule hell, the problem with framerates dropping and cpu usage rising with an extra layer are gone, completely. Haven't had the issue for a few days now. I'm guessing it was either the updating of GFX drivers, or reinstall of MMF2, but I have no way to verify.

The weird news? The other problem with the erratic and jumpy framerates altogether when using set framerate of 60, has become random, and much more rare every day. Yesterday I had a few times, today not at all. Something I have running in the background must be causing it, but I'm yet to figure out what. In any case, it's no longer frequent enough to bother me much.

So, I've finally been able to focus on new content and polish. w00t!

New Stuff
What I've mostly done is add new decorations, some new room layouts, added a new attack move for staff and hammer, as well as made some of the old attacks more dynamic, such as upward slashes and swings lifting Arina (the main character) in air a bit. There's also a new enemy although a simple one. Corpseweed Bud's purpose is to occupy space in ceilings. It's a plant that spits out slowly floating toxic spores when provoked with attack or prolonged close presence. Ranged attacks are the safest, although not fastest way to rid of these. They're more an obstacle and nuisance than an adversary. Lots of other stuff too, mainly bug fixes, inventory controls, general tweaks, etc. Most of those can be witnessed best in new video clips I'll make at some point.

Also, it was delightful to notice that trying to test Tower Level 8 with a level 1 character was much much harder than with a level 3-4 character, which you're supposed to be at that point. Certainly it's possible to play well, avoid damage, whack enemies continuously with attacks that do 1 damage, and so on... but when you make mistakes, you'll feel it. Just as I intended and wanted things to be!
Preview

Preview

Preview

Preview


Posted by Shiru 13th February, 2011

Glad to hear that you've solved your problems ! I like the new trail effect. It looks nice . I hope that you will do a video soon . Anyway, good luck !
 
Posted by Eternal Man [EE] 14th February, 2011

Yeah, I hope you don't have any more problems. I'm really digging this project btw, though I weep every night about the fact THAT YOU AREN'T WORKING ON ARROW CLASH...
 
Posted by HitmanN 14th February, 2011

Eternal Man:
Sorry. If I'd work on Arrow Clash now, there'd be a chance that I'd lose motivation to work on this project. However, there's definitely something I want to do with Arrow Clash sooner or later. Change the custom movement from a ton of loops to one with less loops. That's something I learned while working on Twisted Tower. I also have most of the layout for the new 'Tag' game mode level done, so when I get there, a new version with a new game mode and a performance boost should be only a few evenings away.
 
Posted by Eternal Man [EE] 14th February, 2011

Ha ha! Nice to hear! And of course, you shouldn't work on it as long as you feel motivated on doing THIS PIECE OF SAUCY! Btw, have you had any more trouble with the fps/cpu issues? I'm soon to embark on a journey with similar heavy duty layer/loop/add backdrop thingies, so I'm very interested in your experience.

Best of luck to you!
 
Posted by HitmanN 15th February, 2011

Eternal Man:
Like this devlog says, the cpu usage issues have vanished, and the fps issue is totally random (sometimes I can go an entire day without any incidents, then another day it happens every few minutes), most likely caused by another program or process I have running in the background.

In any case, I don't know what fixed the cpu usage issue. Updating and reinstalling software and drivers seems to have done it, but I have no idea which specifically. Alongside that, the fps issue became more rare.

Currently I have an extra empty layer in the game at all times, just to monitor if the cpu usage issue resurfaces, in which case it should be easy to check if it's related to coding changes I've done recently. I doubt that though, but anyways.
 


 



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