Update
Since the last update a few weeks ago, I've been focusing my time on preparing MiLE HiGH TAXi for beta testing. Originally I was targeting the 1st week of February but that is likely to slip into the 2nd week.
Beta Details
Realistically, I should be calling this an Alpha release, but "beta" seems to be the catch-all term these days. There will be a number of things missing in the beta build. Speaking of which, I still need to figure out Steam's system for releasing betas to people. So bare with me on that.
The following are the biggest components that are either problematic or likely won't be ready in time for the beta build:
1. Windows only for now (sorry Mac users!)
2. No score page presented at the end of game play
3. No ability to restart the game without killing the app and restarting it. A time-consuming adrenaline-killing cycle :O
4. Booster packs won't be available
5. No vehicle traffic. I'm fixing and optimizing the traffic system.
6. No ability to use right-analog stick to manually move the camera view
7. No Navcom AI (3D minimap)
8. There will be bugs. It's bug-hunting season!
9. Large areas of environment mostly empty - limited number of passengers, pedestrians, bridges, skywalks, etc
10. Memory usage is currently way over budget (it skyrockets up to 12GB sometimes and my memory budget for the final game is 4GB). This is likely to cause crashes for some beta testers.
11. Steam achievements. There's only 1 so far.
12. Each vehicle currently handles exactly the same. Also, the handling definitely needs work on the up/down rotation timing.
13. Multi-language support not fully implemented.
Current performance is about 120fps-160fps on my gaming machine. Occasional drops to 80fps when memory usage is high. On my potato, it's unusable - 35fps but with countless drops below 10fps. I believe this is due to high memory consumption, likely pushing some of the game into swap/paging on-disk (see below). It's an 8GB laptop, Intel UHD-640 integrated graphics, Intel i3; so a crappy machine anyways.
If you're interested in participating in the beta, please
let me know.
Optimizations
I'm currently working on pooling the pedestrians and passengers, which is proving to be more complex than I anticipated. The end goal is, of course, performance! Pooling them should help me in three ways. First, a bit less memory used. Second, less computational power (CPU) required overall. Third is it brings me closer to being able to implement "restart game" without reloading the entire scene.
The biggest problem factor right now is RAM usage. As mentioned, it goes up to 12GB occasionally and I want to keep it to 4GB or less. Not sure how much improvement I'll be able to squeeze in prior to beta - so player beware! :)
Bug Fixes
I'm not going to itemize the bugs I've been fixing here because that would take too long and, let's be honest, nobody cares! :) But in short, I have fixed approximately 50 bugs over the last week or two and there's still a bunch more to get fixed up. I'm fairly certain they won't all be remedied prior to the beta launch.
That's all for now. I'll try and post one more time before the actual beta test news/announcement.
Don't miss launch day savings. Wishlist Now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1366560/MiLE_HiGH_TAXi
[ 2022-01-26 00:48:37 CET ] [ Original post ]
