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Dev diary number forty one : Memory issues and … Popcorn?

Posted by Thierry on 01 Mar 2013 / 28 Comments
Mar
1
2013
 28

Hi guys!

This week we were down a man at Sauropod. Paolo was really sick and had to work from home. The studio felt a little empty without him, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t hard at work.

Memory issues

As you all know, we’ve moved our code to Unity4. However, the change has started causing some memory issues and the more we code the more the issue is cropping up. We’re running into unusual Garbage Collection framerate drops every 5 seconds or so whenever we start the game, but the issue seems to go away after playing the game for awhile. We’ve been searching high and low for what could be causing this. After some research on the Unity forums, we found that a lot of developers were having issues with the GUI framework that were resulting in this. So, we deactivated our GUI and went in to do some more testing. As you can imagine, testing a game without a GUI can be problematic since there’s no button to actually start a game. To get around this, we built our own performance tool to help us out. Removing the GUI seemed to help, but the problem is deeper yet and we are still investigating it. This could very well mean that we will have to find another GUI system and gradually transfer everything we have done with the old one to the new one. Now, this may not be a bad thing. The Unity GUI is very strict, and there are a lot of other GUI frameworks we could use such as Scaleform or Awesomium that use simpler languages.

Profiler-GC-spike
here is a screenshot of the profiler with the evil spike

Beacon issues

In the last dev blog, we showed the new beacon system that comes with the new radial menu. as it turns out, there were two minor issues that had to be fixed.
Collision on beacon : the beacon icon had a collider. This meant that the bricktrons couldn’t move through the beacons. That is now fixed and bricktrons will be able to path through beacons as intended.
Shaders : Whenever we created a beacon and built something on it, the beacon icon was always disappearing behind the blocks. Benoit created a shader that keeps selected beacons visible on top of blocks.

Popcorn Generator

Last week, we did our first testing with a new feature we’re wanting to integrate into the game. We’re not ready to talk too much about it yet, but we have a little video showing it off a little. We’ll let your imagination fill in the blanks.

Soundtrack of the week

This week, we’ve got an artist I discovered only just recently. Like I said lat week, I’m really more of an OST person. It reminds me of the new Tron movie pretty strongly. It has a very electro feeling throughout, and the artist does a great job with his remixes. It has a good energy to it, keeps your blood pumping and head bobbing no matter how much work you’ve got infront of you.

Danger 1 by Thierry Begin on Grooveshark

Thanks for reading!

Team Sauropod




28 Comments for Dev diary number forty one : Memory issues and … Popcorn?


Dan
3 months ago


I’m hazards a guess… Blocks reform land?

(Reply)

    Dan
    3 months ago


    *I’ll hazard a guess

    … geeze

    (Reply)

      Jerry
      3 months ago


      Thanks Dan… I can’t stand it when people get their grammar wrong like that!! (Unless of course, they’re under 5 or English is a second language i.e. for French Canadians ;p – either of which are perfectly valid excuses!)

      Nico
      2 months ago


      We (french and non english-natively speaking peoples) are legion here ;)
      But, since english is the more intuitive and easy to learn language, (not like esperanto or others…) I agree in the fact that we must take a second look when we spoke or write too fast

      Damn! This is the first really cute and painless captcha I’ve ever seen

Flyn
3 months ago


Whoa O.O I like this week’s music playlist! Also, I like how dirt moulds back into the ground if it’s left laying around. Really cool idea!

(Reply)

Snowywaters00
3 months ago


Good idea guys ;p

(Reply)

3 months ago


awesome

(Reply)

Pandapapst
3 months ago


Nice! Finally no ugly craters any more. :)

(Reply)

Angusman
3 months ago


I had an idea pop into my head when i saw the popcorn thing, it may be a bit too complicated and even impossible with your current coding tools, etc. But if you could find a way, even if it would be after the actual game is released, could you consider the possibility of some sort of land snake type thing that would “swim through the ground” on specific islands, and pop up occasionally… maybe to swallow up an unsuspecting bricktron, or come up if they dig a mine on a specific island or parts of islands ;)

(Reply)

    Adam
    3 months ago


    Angus, did you ever play Croc: Legend of the Gobbos? (1993) The land snakes a great idea but the concept has been thought up before! :/ Unless of course copyright doesn’t cover that sort of thing, if so that would be cool to see in the game!

    (Reply)

      3 months ago


      to say nothing of the Tremors movie series referrences

      2 months ago


      Yeah, I own the game myself! It is an awesome game!

      Cr0ss0vr
      2 months ago


      Or, even from the Dune game series… It has been done in many different games
      In dune, the worm would only chase bigger objects, like vehicles, in this case it could be a bricktron carrying something, rather than a regular one running round)

      Tsi
      2 months ago


      Should it be original, inspired or used as a reference, it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t call your game Croc. ; )

Nacon
3 months ago


Looking good!

(Ok that was odd… for the Sweet Captcha, I had to drag popcorn into a paperbag.)

(Reply)

Space Narwhal
3 months ago


YAY!

(Reply)

Ultric
3 months ago


Have you guys had a look at iGUI or NGUI? iGUI is really easy to use and you can change a lot of the properties of it. I don’t think it’s free, but that shouldn’t really be a problem (I think it’s about $60). Hope it helps you folks! I’m looking forward to seeing where you guys take this!

(Reply)

    Friedrich Wessel
    3 months ago


    I work with NGUI for nearly 1.5 year now – and could say, its pretty solid, and easy to use. Code is written clean and easy to enhance for your own stuff. Together with Photoshop and Texturepacker you´ll get a pretty nice pipeline.
    I hope you get the UI Problems solved. Greetings Friedrich

    (Reply)

loddo
3 months ago


Hm.. Its kinda sad, that I can’t listen to the music at all :/ maybe it would be possible, with another source? Seems a bit silly that only people in the US and Canada can listen to the music :) or is it just me?

(Reply)

hi
3 months ago


Nice entry!!
I love the new blog style that you write more than once a week. You Sauropods are fun again.
Pls have friendly kiss.

(Reply)

Hobo 42
3 months ago


Its funny you guys mentioned possibly having to move to Scaleform! We recently had a Student Govt. meeting here at my school about how we should be buying a bunch of Unity Pro licenses so we could then learn Scaleform because of how popular it is and how often knowing it is a big plus if not required on job applications for entry level GUI development/design jobs!

But yeah, the popcorn thing looks cool! Hope you figure out the bug! I’m very anxious to play the Beta and patiently waiting for it! Good luck! :)

(Reply)

Andrea
3 months ago


Great work guys! I really like to see all this updater for us backers… It’s simple amazing! I can’t wait to try the new prototype :)

(Reply)

Alexander
3 months ago


I’m sorry you guys are having trouble and I hope things go well in the future!
The click-and-explode feature seems like i tcould be fun for destroying big castles :D

I am so glad you guys featured danger! I have been listening to him for years now, it’s good to see him getting some attention :D

(Reply)

Aaron
3 months ago


{ :{ I am still waiting for my hug} I hope you get the GUI system fixed. AND KERP MAKAN DEM GARME. :}

(Reply)

Free
2 months ago


Hey this stuff looks very cool! We’re currently developing with Unity too, just a heads up, we tried using scaleform and ran into huge issues with speed, so I don’t recommend it. Cheers!

(Reply)




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