Aug 31, 2023

Diplomacy is Not an Option - Moto_kattie

Good Lords, Fair Ladies!

Today we are here to talk to you about what's under the hood of our game.

At times, community members ask things like:
"I've lowered the graphics settings and the performance is almost the same! How come?" or "I have an RTX 3080 and DiNaO is only giving me 40 fps! Care to explain, why?". These questions are usually followed (quite rightly) by the requests addressed to the developers. You ask us to figure out the architectural issues of the game and fix the obvious defects.

Let us make it clear and tell you how Diplomacy is Not an Option works, and finally give you some answers.

Let's start with the graphics

As you may easily notice, visually our game is far from... being high-detailed. It can be explained by the stylistics (low-poly design and the scale of combat actions in the game limit graphical solutions).

But to be honest, we chose the style taking into account the capabilities of the team (a reminder: our team is pretty much small). On the one hand, this is an unconditional win. At the concept art stage, artists don't need to draw anything complicated. The processing of the large number of objects on the screen doesn't crucially influent the game's performance. (What is called "bottleneck" effect) On the other hand - this solution becomes an Achilles' heel. That is correct, reducing graphics settings can help some potato pcs, but this is more likely a special case, for the majority of hardware configs changing the settings has no effect on FPS rate.

It is worth mentioning the fog of war, or rather, its refresh rate. If Diplomacy is Not an Option runs slowly, you should try to reduce this setting. It is quite possible that it will give a noticeable performance boost for you. (As a consequence, visually the game will not change for the better - the borders of the fog of war will be dissipated step by step, without proper smoothness. Those of you who remember the strategies of the 90s-early 2000s, understand the difference).

"Why does DiNaO runs slowly then?" - you may ask and this is another question to answer. The main resources that our game consumes (as well as many strategies, citybuilders, simulators, and games with a large number of calculations) - come to the work of the CPU. You have understood everything correctly, CPU work is the very "bottleneck" of DiNaO.

To summarize, we can say the following. If you have a powerful video card, but an old processor with just a few cores, FPS will be low. But even if your video card is not top-notch , having a modern processor will give you high FPS rate.

How the power and number of threads of your processor affects the game

For many people, it's no secret that DiNaO is made on Unity. In particular, we use DOTS (Data Oriented Technology Stack), and the main features of the Stack are Entities (Essentially a kernel built on the ECS architectural pattern), Job System (Secure Multithreading), and Burst Compiler (Pure Magic. A compiler that requires code to be written in a certain style, which imposes its own limitations, but still allows ILPP to turn IL/.NET code into high-performance native code (in other words, for each processor architecture, it builds exactly that version of code that will maximize performance on that particular hardware architecture). Thanks to all the above, we can optimize all the capacities of modern multithreaded processors. As a result, we can make DNO exactly as we intended it to be!

"And what exactly did you have in mind?" - you might ask. Here comes the answer. We wanted to create a game with crowds of warriors on the map. With the flight of each projectile processed by the game engine. With a complex system of economy and a realistic model of disease spread. Well, and with wild animals change their behavior depending on circumstances. All this (Another reminder about the number of entities on the screen) requires a lot of calculations from the processor. Even despite all the wonderful tools we have, a direct approach to implementing all these features would still not give us a satisfying performance. And would not allow us to fulfill all our ambitions.

In particular, each warrior in the game is a full-fledged, independent entity. Thanks to this, the player can control his behavior at any time, just like in old-school strategy games! (And even civilians that players don't control are also separately calculated by the game). We wanted the battles between tens of thousands of people in Diplomacy is Not an Option to not be a trick that strategy game creators sometimes use. The essence of the trick is that it is actually squads that fight, and it is the squad, not the individual warrior, that is the minimal unit in the game. To make our design work, and work convincingly, we wrote many of our own software solutions based on the basic tools that Unity provides. For example, our navigation system combines many approaches such as A* and Flow Field. We made navigation layered and as cacheable as possible so that all the many in-game entities can "travel" across the map. (At the same time, the processing of their movement must still not burn players' computers). Combining these approaches allowed us to have those very crowds of enemies moving autonomously on the map, maximizing the re-use of "paths" already traveled by other entities. For example, if one enemy from an attacking wave has already traveled a route from a certain area A to area B, rest assured that the other warriors (including those from subsequent attacking waves) won't try to re-find the path. They will reuse the one they already had unless the state of the map changes. (A new obstacle appears or what was an obstacle is destroyed). But even if the route is changed, only a small part of the way is "discarded", which again allows us to save precious hardware resources. We've written our own physics in the game, maximally optimized for strategy, with the main simulation in 2D space (XZ plane of the ground) with the "connection" of the third dimension if necessary ( projectiles, explosions, thrown enemies). And we have listed only the most significant of the solutions applied. In fact, there are many more.

"But since you've got everything so cool optimized, why is the CPU still sucking up a ton of resources?" - you may ask again. That's a very good question. The answer lies on the surface: even with all our tricks and techniques, we are not wizards. If we were wizards, we would have a lot more stuff in our game ;) Anyways, hardware resources are not infinite, and we are literally pushed to the limit of performance. Even considering the maximum usage of each core of your processor, certain algorithms have certain boundaries. Not everything can be done "simultaneously", on all CPU threads. In the image below - each green block is some kind of work that our game is doing on different threads. It could be finding the nearest targets for the warriors or finding the nearest tree for the forester, it could be the movement of an animal on the map or the production of stone at the mine. As you can see, almost every CPU thread on our test machine is actively used.

See the blocks highlighted in red? There is a lot of empty space above and below them, unoccupied by any work. This is a clear example of a situation when not everything can be processed simultaneously. Some calculations in the game rely on previous work and the processor must wait for this work to finish before making a specific calculation. Similarly, if another part of the game relies on that particular calculation - it has to "wait for the right moment" as well. The image above clearly shows how "densely" we are using each thread of your CPU, while also illustrating why CPU usage is never at 100% mark. Each CPU core cannot be fully loaded every second you spend in our game. After all, certain tasks require calculations performed by other cores. In addition, it becomes obvious: if a game has such a large number of calculations scattered across all CPU threads - their number directly affects how many tasks can be solved per one frame. The more of them, the faster it will happen (and vice versa), respectively, the higher the game's frame rate will be (and vice versa).

"Ok, now I see why many people reduce game performance, but what does this have to do with the map size? Why not make super large maps, say 9999x9999 cells?". A fair question. Once again, it all comes down to CPU resources. Let's skip the obvious point that a larger map takes longer to load - to calculate the location of resource sources, to analyze all enclosed areas, to define environment objects, etc. Until recently (before the 0.9.94 update) the maximum map size was 200x200 cells, but we've figured out (once again) how to optimize the processing so that players could have a larger map at their disposal (we increased the maximum size more than twice! (by 125%), up to 300x300 cells) and did it without any noticeable changes in gameplay. As mentioned earlier, the game features our own navigation system responsible for the movement of game entities through the map. In particular, besides the obvious task of finding a way from point A to point B, this system deals with a whole bunch of other tasks, one of which is checking if the path search is necessary at all. For example, in the case when the endpoint is in direct line of sight and you can just move straight to it. It would seem to be an obvious solution. If you don't need to search for a path and can just go straight to the goal, you don't need complex calculations. This should make the game run faster for sure! However, in reality, it's not that simple. This feature (the direct path) is made for aesthetic and gameplay purposes in the first place. From a technical point of view, (again, do not forget that we are talking about TENS of thousands) this functionality - on the contrary, requires a lot of computing. The processor is not a human brain, it cannot determine at the snap of its fingers whether the path is free or not, it relies on pure data (it doesn't have eyes, it can't just see the target). And the data must be processed one way or another. The algorithm itself is very simple, the map is divided into cells, and each cell is either free or blocked. We need to construct a line between the entity and its goal and check every cell on the path of the drawn line until the calculation "gets" to the end point of the route (or finds an obstacle, which means that there is no direct path). This is a very simplified description of the algorithm (We don't just check cells along the line, we check them on several levels, using various tricks to reduce the resources required for the calculation. There are many other calculations involved in this process). But in general, the point is clear to you. For each entity in the game, you need to check a lot of data at a certain time interval (sometimes several times per second). You have probably already guessed how all this relates to the size of the map. As the size of the map increases, so does the number of cells between points A and B. The further the points are apart, the harder the calculations become. And when it comes to our favorite point about tens of thousands of troops (and not only troops), the amount of resources required from the processor starts to grow by leaps and bounds to make it all work!

That's roughly how Diplomacy is Not an Option is set up.

Thank you, and see you soon!

Yours, the Door 407 dev team

Aug 31, 2023

Chess Survivors - 1.0 Released!

Chess Survivors - Aarimous

After nearly 10 months of early access, Chess Survivors 1.0 is now fully released!

Thank you to everyone who played my little indie game while I continuously worked on and published over 50 patches. A special thank you to anyone who has given me feedback. This game would be nowhere as good as it is today without your gentle encouragement and support.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be working on bug fixes and balance changes based on your feedback. Then I'll make another update here with any post-release plans for Chess Survivors and what's next for me personally.

Cheers,
Aarimous

P.S. Please consider subscribing to My YouTube Channel where I share my game development as an solo indie dev.

1.0 Patch Notes

Note from the dev: Please DM me on Discord if any of the below changes make my game unfun. I want my game to be fun and I am more than willing to hear you our and I will likely make changes to address your feedback!

New Content

New Map Consumables System
- Every so often a random consumable will spawn
  - Potion - heals player
  - Magnet - sucks up all current XP
  - Bomb - creates an explosion dealing damage nearby enemies
  - Frost bomb - creates an explosion freezing nearby enemies
New Character based on my cat Karl
New Character based on my cat Martin
16 new steam achievements
New run records system which will show you if you beat your previous stat (for now this is only shown on the game over screen)
New button on the settings screen to reset the player progress
New button to the settings screen to reset the records

General Changes and Balancing

Health and Damage Numbers

Multiplied all the health and damage numbers by 10 since bigger numbers are more fun.
- Adjusted damage text to fit new scale of numbers
- Adjust health bar size to fit new scale of numbers
Ability Damage
- Increased ability damage values across the board with a focus on making single target abilities really scale at the top end of the upgrade path (more info below)

Elites

Removed Elite Combat Modifiers
- These include bonus damage (red), reduced damage (blue), and always move (green)
- These were boring at best and never got the love they deserve. In their current state they don’t feel like they are adding to the game.
All elites will now drop extra XP when killed, the amount scales with acts
- Previously non-chest elites could drop bonus XP or a Potion
- With the new consumable system player should no longer need potions from elites
All elites now have three times the health, and deal 50% more damage than their normal versions

Enemy and Act Difficulty

Adjusted the health and damage increases for Act 2 and Act 3
Adjusted the enemy spawning for the first 100 turns of Act 1
Increased enemy spawn rates in parts of Act 1
Added randomness to the Act 2 major spawn event to spawn a wave of either Pawns, Knights, Rook, or Bishops. Previously this was always a wave of pawns.
Adjusted the act modifiers for Act 2 and Act 3
Enemy health and damage
- Increased elite health scale from 300% to 400%
- Decreased king base health from 300 to 200
- Increased rook base health from 120 to 135
- Increased bishop base health from 120 to 130
- Increased queen base health from 150 to 175
- Reduced bishop attack range from 3 to 2
- Increased bishop attack damage from 20 to 30
- Increased Pawn base health 80 -> 90
- Increased Knight base health 80 -> 85
- Added randomness to the Act 2 major spawn event to spawn a wave of either Pawns, Knights, Rook, or Bishops. Previously this was always a wave of pawns.

Abilities

Across the board the exact number have been adjusted with the goal of making each ability feel rewarding and fun to select and upgrade. I tried to list them below, but I am sure I missed some changes.

Jack Trap
- Reworked this ability as the original version was unfun
- Sets a trap to your current tile which will trigger when an enemy collides with it dealing damage to the enemy and launching projectiles in random directions. These projectiles will deal damage to other enemies and trigger other traps.
Cribbage
- Projectiles now shoot in alternating directions
- I wanted to make this one a bit easier to use since it will be the first ability a player gets, this ability also resembles the starting ability from Vampire survivors. As such, I’m hoping this will act as a good tutorial ability for players.
- Damage has been reduced since the ability now starts with a base of 2 projectiles and it’s easier to hit enemies
Boomerang
- Reduced the cooldown from [10,8,6] → [8,6,4]
- Increased the damage from [55, 80, 110, 175] → [75, 100, 150 250]
Blizzard
- Reduced the number of particles from 100 to 50 to improve visual clarity
- Made the entire effect a bit transparent
Tic Tac Toe
- Increased damage from [55, 75, 100, 160] → [65, 90, 130, 175]
- Projectiles now always pierce enemies
- Reduced cooldown from [4, 3, 2] → [3, 2, 1]
- Increased range from [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] → [2, 3, 4, 5]
Yo-Yo
- Reduced damage form [40, 85, 100, 120] → [40, 65, 100, 150]
Marble
- Increased the base pierce now starts a 2 instead of 1
- Adjusted max number of projectiles to be at 25 at all levels
- Can now upgrade number of projectiles to 2 in act 1, previously this was locked to act 2

Character Health

All characters will now gain 20 health when leveling up
Base health amounts have been reduced by about 50%
My goal here is to make the early game feel a lot harder, previously it felt like a bad build could easily get by the early game without getting lucky or having good mechanics. This massive health reduction should mostly felt in Act 1. I balanced this around getting to near the same health by the end of the game.
- Joker 640 → 350
- Doll 420 → 200
- Evil Monkey 690 → 333
- Smol Wizard 540 → 275
- Jak 250 → 120
- Fishbowl 580 → 300
- Ghost 220 → 185
- The Real Knight 420 → 230
- Koala 500 → 270
- Little Robot 630 → 300
- Karl 520 → 260
- Martin 450 → 225

Miscellaneous:

The Real Knight
- Reworked since the original theme of “can’t heal, but has a lot of health”, ended up being a bit confusing since healing related relics would still spawn.
- Instead this will be a melee focused character
Relics
- Old Smelly Cheese - Removed % max health increase, Added +100 base health increase, Added +20 health gained each level
- Lucky Crown - Added -5 to Consumable Spawn Rate
- Magic Carrot - Increased healing amount from 10 to 20
- Three of Clubs - Increased all damages mods from 30 to 33 (for being on theme)
- Lost Diadem of the Queen Added +2 to player pierce
- Ancient Hawacha Rocket Added +2 to range
Player Base Stats
- Increased base XP needed to level for 3 to 5. With the elite dropping more XP the player would get to powerful to quickly so I have adjusted this down a bit.
- Each level the XP requirement will now increase by 4 (previously 3)
Firewall
- Increased the spawn delay to match the Meteor and Laser map hazards
UI
- Updated the game over screen to show the run stats
- Update the art of the game over screen
- Removed XP calculation text as it was just messy
- Increased the speed the XP bar increased
- Adjusted other game over UI elements to fit better
- Update the art on the main menu screen
- Removed “Early Access” text from main menu screen
- Removed the early access developer note from main menu screen
- Disabled stat tracking as it was useless, and as such removed the data tracking opt in message
- Fixed the run settings screen to now properly show the arrow you are focused on. This was creating some confusion for controller only players
- Removed the tutorial and controller screens from ever appearing, but you can still access these from the pause menu.
- On a players first run they will jump right into playing as the Joker, them on their next run they will see the run settings and character select screen. The goal was just to streamline the process and get the player playing sooner.
- Updated my logo on the main splash screen to be higher resolution
- Hide the run timer, there is already enough time pressure during the run and this is just extra clutter
- Run timer is still in the stats screen and game win/lose screen
Bugs
- Fixed a bug where the alien’s teleoperation laser was not dealing melee damage to enemies
- Fixed an text issue where the wrong text would appear for the laser map hazard
- Adjusted the level up UI so it moving around the popup would properly work with controllers
- Attempted to fix a bug where the level up screen would sometimes note work when using a controller or for some steam deck users.

Aug 31, 2023

New DLC: Another World Heroine Generator DX for MZ, KR Grand Taiga Tileset

RPG Maker MZ - Nick_Komodo

More parts to make heroines and a whole new biome for them to explore with two new packs out now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2531740/RPG_Maker_MZ__Another_World_Heroine_Generator_DX_for_MZ/

Fill your game with princesses and heroines with Another World Heroine Generator DX for MZ! Gee-kun-soft is back with another MZ generator pack, bringing you 79 new parts to help you make even more female characters. Create princesses decked out in gorgeous dresses or give your armor-wearing valkyrie a long flowing dress to help her sneak into a noble’s ball, let your party members wear their hair long and loose or tied up to stay out of the way of their powerful magic spells, and finish any outfit with a sparkling tiara!

20 Clothing options offer up a variety of dresses, from simple robes with lightweight shawls and dresses topped with a white apron to ornate ball gowns with fluffy skirts and frilly hems and party dresses with off-the-shoulder tops. Let your players choose which dress your heroine should wear to a party, with different styles leading to different conversation options, or have siblings all wear the same dress in various colors so your players can easily tell if they’ve found them all. 20 Front Hair and 20 Rear Hair options can help you find the perfect set of bangs for your party members, as well as new ways for them to tie their hair up. Give your close combat fighters looped braids or long hair pulled back into a braided bun while your mages can wear their hair in dangling twintails or completely loose and almost touching the ground. And this pack’s 14 AccB crowns and 5 Eyes are the perfect way to finish up your character’s design! So if you’ve been wanting to make a unique princess for your kingdom or want to give your female party members some new dresses and hairstyles, pick up Another World Heroine Generator DX for MZ today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2531730/RPG_Maker_MZ__KR_Grand_Taiga_Tileset/

Send your heroes on a grand Northern adventure with the KR Grand Taiga Tileset! Kokoro Reflections is here to help you set up your campsites in lush evergreen forests or next to the gentle babbling of small waterfalls bouncing off rocks as they run down cliff faces. A1, A2, A3, A4, and 4 B sheets give you interior wood cabin resources as well as natural dirt, stone, and grass floors for your outside hikes. Let your heroes wander between towering pine trees on their way to a magical pond, or make them run between mossy boulders and patches of mushrooms to reach the safety of their campsite! Search for missing NPCs from a firewatch tower and collect clues in hunting lodges, or visit the nearby fishing pier for a break from monster fighting.

Also included in this pack are 21 character sprites to add more life to your maps and help your heroes get around river-filled areas. Flowing springs of water can turn a normal cliff face into a place to gain some healing water and large boulders with a mist around them can add some interest to large waterfalls. Kayaks and canoes are the perfect way to travel to new locations, or use them in cutscenes where two characters get to know each other better during summer camp. Animated doors and wooden boxes are ready to give your heroes a reason to explore, and a bright flame in the fire pit is a great way to end the day. Search for rare monsters that live near mountain springs or give your relaxed camping game some lovely and detailed maps with the KR Grand Taiga Tileset!

Update: Sprite Height Modifier

The Sprite Height Modifier Plugin has been updated on on Steam. Update it in your projects through the DLC folder (on Steam)to get the new version.

Fixed a bug where one of the plugin parameters wasn't working properly.