On Call Patch 1.02 - Progress Report

The patch has been with Sony for some time now, the review process took a few days longer than it normally takes, so there was an unforeseen delay that I had no control over. Its frustrating for me as I try to maintain a strict schedule.

Alas, it should be on PSN oven the next few weeks. Ill update you guys here as soon as I hear anything. As of now its passed review and is waiting to be uploaded. I'm sorry for the delay, even though I had no control over this, its still a pity to have to let you guys down.

On other fronts. My dev PC has crashed and I've needed to re-install windows. Don't worry, everything is fine as my workflow is good and I have many backups. The problem is that Sony wont let me test new content till the patch is on the store. So the next patch for on call cannot be tested till 1.02 is on the store.

I've been working very hard on coding AI. What I want to do with that AI is add brand new levels and story content, as well as overhaul existing levels to feature this new AI model. Its coming along extremely well and I look forward to posting more details as i make more progress.

I'm also re-designing the way upgrades work in On Call, but I first want to get the new AI model and levels done.

So, that's great, now to recap:

• Patch 1.02 will be out within 1-2 weeks (a week later than planned, again, sorry) and features many changes, the biggest of which is probably the control customization options.

• Patch 1.03 will feature new levels, main objectives, side objectives, enemies and story's. It will be a MASSIVE patch in terms of content and I hope that it will be enjoyed.

On a side note. Let me know what types of things you'd be interested in me adding to On Call. I'm planning on adding things to do in space, like Races not dissimilar to those seen in Ratchet and Clank 2. The way I see it is that On Call can sort of be our little platform to make the game we bought a Vita for, it may take time and effort, but I believe we can get there.

As always, I hope this is good news for you and I hope you have a good time today (or night, whatevs) Ill keep you posted with progress reports.

On Call Patch Performance

I've found some unexpected optimizations that needed to happen due to game crashing bugs.

This is a good thing though as performance is greatly boosted, especially when using the flashlight. The game now runs almost constantly at 60fps, but still has drops when using the flashlight and some stuttering in some areas that I cant quite pin down the cause for.

I'm obviously always trying to squeeze out more frames per second and flatten out stuttering, so this is a massively good find! I guarantee that you'll be able to feel the difference between version 1.01 and 1.02 when using the flashlight. Or you wont... Its hard for me to know if you will even feel it. I do, but On Call is practically all I've been playing lately and I have a frame rate counter for debug, so you know, there's that. I'm not sure of the exact performance gain, but its between 5-10fps.

I'm also quite happy with the 2D arcade level I'm adding in. Unfortunately I could not upload the patch to Sony yesterday as I found game crashing bugs that I fixed. I'll hopefully have it done for upload by tomorrow, thus still being on time for Sony's deadline.

Tomorrow, after the patch is uploaded, I also plan on continuing with my AI code so that I can add in the soldiers and stuff. That's what I've been looking towards adding in. I cant wait, its the biggest addition to On Call as it creates new level and story possibilities.

On Call Patch 1.02 - New Content

I'm busy with the last thing that I want to add for this patch. Its a new Arcade challenge. Its a 2.5d wave based shooter where you shoot enemies to score points, dodge asteroids and fight bosses.

Its not much, as a matter of fact I plan to include it on an in game video games console for the player to play this game within On Call, but its still the first batch of fresh content for On Call and I hope its done by the end of tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will upload the patch to Sony, they will test it and if it passes (I can't see a reason why it won't pass their testing, but they did initially reject us using triangle, circle, x and square, so you never know with Sony's testing) it will take Sony up to a further 2 weeks to upload the patch after that point. Once its online, you just simply log into the PSM store and re-download On Call to install the patch.

Here's what the new level looks like at the moment (Note that its not near finished, but as I have the assets already, it should only take a day or 2 to get the code done for it):

On Call Patch 1.02 - Inverting Controlls

This morning I've been working on the last things that will be implemented for patch 1.02, as I've said before, there's so much I want to do, I have to spit it into several patches.

As for what I've just added this morning. Its a feature that many people have asked me to put into the game, and so I hope you like it. Its the ability to invert the player camera, ship camera and ship controls. I've done it in a way to allow for each person to set any of those values to one they prefer, thus hopefully everyone will get more enjoyment from the game!

As I've said before, many people have asked me for this, and I've wanted to add this feature for quite some time. But I'd like to thank Forsaken Crown for bringing it up in the comments here, as if it wasn't for that, this feature would likely have only made it into a later update. Another requested feature is the ability to lock the camera behind the ship. This has been in the game since launch, by pressing O while in the ship, you are able to lock the camera. I want to improve on how I've done it here, as evidently its not good enough. I can see several reasons as too why that is and I'm currently investigating better ways to do this.

To access these options simply follow the menu: Pause > Controls > On Fool / In Ship
Here's what it looks like in the options menu:

On Call Patch 1.02 - Progress report

I'm nearly done with the patch!

I've split my targets into acceptable and achievable goals over a reasonable time frame. On top of that, I've fixed all but 1 of the crashes that have sprung up with the addition of textures. My massive University Java coding assignment is due today, which means that I'll finally have some time where I can smash out some awesome dev time this weekend and finish off the patch and add in as much of the other features as I possibly can before uploading it to Sony and starting on Patch 1.03

Thought I'd post some pictures of the progress that this patch has made. The screens obviously speak for graphical changes and not for the numerous game play changes and obviously, these are progress shots, so its important to keep in mind that I hope to fix and add even more into the patch before my deadline.

On Call Patch 1.02 - Progress report

I've gone through the levels that run out of memory one by one and reduced their memory footprint. Its frustrating, as even though Unity Insists that PSM offers "near native" performance and hardware access, I only have access to less than 100mb of memory... That's not "near native" performance and hardware access, which leads me believe that PSM's run time is more like an emulator, with many background possesses such as DRM slowing things down, but what do I know, I'm just some woefully inexperienced part time indy dev / University student.

In any case, I've made great progress and I'm flattening out one or 2 more bugs and crashes till I upload Patch 1.02 to Sony, which they will review in a day or 2 after I upload and then they'll give it to you guys in a further 2 weeks after the point of review. I'm getting used to this workflow.

Things In the current Patch:

• Hold L1 to look down sights
• FoV adjusts when looking down sights
• New control images for the new functions
• Dynamic FoV in the Ship
• Faster Character movement
• Faster Ship movement
• Faster Aiming in the Ship
• Other general control tweaks to improve responsiveness and tighten controls
• Performance Optimizations for 60fps
• Some stutter resolved (constantly trying to get rid of it completely)
• Performance with the flashlight active is improved from 30fps to 45fps
• Taken out annoying space turrets (Will add new story content to replace them)
• Tripled Asteroid count (Looking into a low performance cost fog / clouds in the belt)
• Ship takes damage on collision with objects
• Added version number in main menu
• Improved texture filtering on baked shadows
• Optimized shadow resolution
• Compressed textures to lighten memory load (For faster load times and less crashes due to filling the memory)
• Fixed random technical bugs / glitches
• Tweaked AI
• Fixed random AI bugs / glitches

I'm still busy adding / changing more things for this coming patch, but as I don't want to make you guys wait too long, I might have to upload this version, and then start the next patch with some of the other stuff I'm still working on. Hope you will enjoy the progress we've made, and please keep in mind that we are still working hard adding new features, content and fixes.

I'll finish this patch up and upload it ASAP, then I'll start the next patch.

On Call Patch 1.02

I had the patch ready for upload tonight, but I was testing it and found a crash. It seems that PSM on the vita has too high a memory restriction (as it has access to the full vita, but has to run through essentially an emulator, thus loosing some resources resulting in less CPU and RAM being available)

Ill have to tweak the new textures to see just how far I can push them.

The bad thing about the Vita is that when it hits its memory limit, it doesn't slow down, It simply crashes and reports an error... What this means is that its extremely hard to squeeze every drop of performance out of the vita to get say, a beautiful game running at 30fps, and at the same time, as soon as you have more than 20k polys on screen there is a chance you will lose frames, though I push 100k at 60fps... So 60fps is also hard to hit...

Over all its an awkward device, but progress is coming along extremely well with performance closer to 60fps than ever with better visuals than ever.