Welcome to the fifth Soulstone Survivors Devlog! Today we are breaking the rules!! We are always working on quite a few things at the same time, and we usually avoid showing stuff that is still very early or experimental or super placeholder, but today in addition to the usual stuff, we wanted to share a little something we have been working on in the background, so if you are interested in learning more, this devlog is for you!

Next major update is already getting closer and closer, so we also invite you to sign up to our new mailing list and be among the first to find out when its released!

Performance Improvements

But first lets talk a bit about the boring but crucial stuff! As you might know we have been putting a lot of effort into improving the games overall performance and we believe most of you will notice a considerable difference with the next update! Lets take a look at the numbers we got so far.

Build sizes

Improving the memory footprint of the game has been a big focus for us. It helps the game run faster, prevents crashes related to memory, and has one extra benefit: much smaller build sizes! Here is a comparison of what Update 11 vs Update 13 (the next update) looks like:
As you can see, a zipped build of our game went from 3.46GB to 1.44GB. This means that downloading the game is faster and it takes less space on your machine. And this includes a bunch of new content weve added to the game since!

Memory footprint

Now lets take a look at the actual memory being used shall we? All of the data was captured running at native 4k, all graphics maxed out: Before:
After:
The images above show a profile capture of 2 runs. These captures show 2000 frames worth of data captured at around the 10 min mark into a curse 62 run with the Engineer. The total memory usage went down from 3.09GB to 2.55GB, approximately 20% less memory than before. As the match progresses deeper and deeper into endless, that difference is greater and greater since a lot of the optimizations have been made with crazy scenarios in mind.

Frame-time performance

We have also made some frame-time improvements that will hopefully make a noticeable different when we release the next update. Heres a comparison of whatve accomplished so far on the perf side: Capture 1 Specs: i9-14900HX (32 cpus) 2.2ghz, 64gb ram | RTX 4090 Laptop 16gb vrm
Capture 2 Specs: Ryzen 9 3900XT 8 CPUs 3.8ghz, 32gb ram | RX 7900 XT 20gb vram
To read the data above, Left Median represents the median time in milliseconds per frame on the previous update, and Right Median the time on the next update. Each image represents the comparison between two runs with the same build, in very similar gameplay scenarios. As you can see from the data, in a very high end spec PC the game ran 13.06% faster, while in another, still very good PC, the game ran 38.75% faster. Since the game can be very taxing on your CPU, the improvements you will see will depend a lot on your specs, especially on your processor, and will also vary between characters and builds, but you can expect to see double-digit frame-time improvements in general. Once Update 13 is live, wed love to hear your experience regarding performance, so if you see improvements or lack thereof wed love to hear from you on steam forums or discord.

Player skill target area

A new quality of life improvement that has been requested many, many times is also making its way into the game. We now hide the players skill target areas (the blue circles) in endless and overlord cycles. While these markers are useful in the beginning of a match when you are trying to make the most of your skills, they get redundant later on when you are pretty much blowing the whole map at once, so this change should improve overall visibility. Check out this comparison clip down below: [previewyoutube=kKBZ8bl4iU8;full][/previewyoutube]

And finally

the new, experimental and STILL IN DEVELOPMENT thing we are working on! As you may know from our previous videos and devlogs, new game modes are something we have been working on for a while, with the Unholy Cathedral being the first one to appear but definitely not the only one in the works! The clip below doesnt show much and might look a bit boring haha, but dont be fooled by its simplicity! What we are developing is essentially a tool that allows us to create structured, hand made content, not just for one, but possibly different game modes in the future. [previewyoutube=qHhjM7EwdDA;full][/previewyoutube] Its still VERY EARLY and in an experimental stage, changing a little every day as we develop new maps and challenges, but if you pay attention to the little details in the video you might get some ideas of the type of stuff that is in the works. We often say there is still a lot coming to the game, and trust me when I say its not just characters and skills! We are excited about all the possibilities that this system is already opening up, and who knows, maybe we will share some more sneak peeks at a later date of the sort of stuff we are creating with it! This was all we had to show for todays Devlog! Performance has been a big priority for us recently, but we also have been working on some pretty cool new stuff... Let us know what you would like us to talk about next and what you are currently excited to get your hands on! We hope you all have a lovely day or night,
~Soulstone Team