Here's your (hopefully) weekly Progress Report! I'll be focusing on Rendering and LOCALIZATION! WOO!!
Some info about how Venus Derby will be distributed
Like I've said in earlier posts, Venus Derby will initially be published as a public demo (+hotfixes if necessary), after which, Patreon members will get the newest version available whilst the public will get the previous version.For example, if Patreon has 1.2.0, Public version will be 1.1.0.
A trip to the monster that is called Rendering
Optimizing the UI effects (like backdrop blur) was one of the sidequests I took this week. It was a bit tiring, but the results were worth it!The screen blur effects now use a higher quality blur shader, improving the general look of the "frosted glass".
Interestingly enough, a higher quality shader also netted a whopping 20 FPS on my Android test device, of which, I can run the game around 80-85FPS on an S21.
You may be saying, S21? That's some flagship Samsung phone! What about older or mid-range devices? Well, for that, I also got my trusty, a bit dusty, maybe wondering when will the next time be that it would be used, S4 mini from 2013! A bit of a fossil considering modern standards, but still works, and runs Android 7 thanks to some ROM tinkering. Without going too much on a tangent, I got the game to run on a S4 mini, running around 10-12FPS. (That's a 12 year old device with 1.5GB of RAM with a screensize of 4.3"...)
With that on the record, I'd love to see on what people get the game to run on when the Android version drops... (Venus Derby on a smart fridge when???)
Localization
I've also worked quite a bit to get languages to work on Venus Derby, along with a moddable translation system that accepts modded translations that you can feed into it. Allowing you to add in your custom translations and even sharing it with others! The system is not quite done yet, but I'll share the details of it in a later post. The system only supports translating the game UI so far and the ability to translate Characters, Events and Scenarios will be added later on with possibly more demos or a Pre-Alpha depending on how I go with the releases after the demo release.
As for what's currently available, with the help of kind people like CTCL and Katarite Slow (aranuuwasa), Venus Derby's Game UI is now available in Chinese and Japanese! I also added proper Thai text rendering support (Thanks to TeeradonSS!) and proper Arabic/Persian rendering if anyone wants to translate to those languages.
Some other, less shiny, but still important things
Added an in game Console that can be opened using Page Down, quickly allowing debugging and bug reporting to be done (or maybe you're just curious?).
Improved Race simulation performance by around 3.5x
Added a skill activation UI element, so its more obvious when your trainee activates a skill.