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Build 15 - Performance!

One Knight in the Dungeon
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux

This build is all about performance. A massive C++ game refactor has reduced RAM usage (and made it more predictable), as well as eking out a bit of frame-rate. The real performance win is in the render code:

  • Switched to the forward renderer.
  • Removed Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM); it looked good, but not that much better than bump mapping - and was slowing things down quite a bit.
  • Removed sway from vegetation where it was hurting framerates.
  • ALL terrain now uses a unified ubershader.
  • Removed fancy subsurface light scattering from grass; you can't really tell the difference, and it is much faster.
  • Generated and implemented LOD levels for all skeletal meshes.
  • Removed unused plugins and physics models.
  • Removed "distance fields" - I didn't know they were enabled (!), and removing them almost doubled frame-rates.
  • Optimized "scene capture" for dialogue and player portrait renders. MUCH faster.

So while there isn't a lot of new content in here, the game runs much better. I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if you run into any issues.

Files

  • one-knight-in-the-dungeon-windows-alpha.zip 603 MB
    Version 15
Download One Knight in the Dungeon
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