What do you think about my first game?

Question

Hi,

As "Projects" category is described as:

Showcase your current projects with Godot, share plugins and modules: spread the love of your favourite engine!

I want to share with you my fist game-demo made in Godot. It would not be possible to create if not for your excellent support and patience in answering my questions.

GitHub Release

You can download it and give it a spin.

I will be grateful for all the comments and critics, but please take into account, that this is not only my first game in Godot, but also my first game ever. Well, it's more like a demo of a single level of game with basic mechanics and downloaded assets only, but still... :)

Have fun!

Answer 1

Hi!

Thank you for posting this! I gave your demo a try and I have to say it looks very pleasing visually. However, I am barely able to run it on a quad-core Laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and AMD Radeon(TM) R4 Graphics. I know the PC I tested it on is not a gaming PC, but I think that what you have here shouldn't be that slow. Is it running OK on your rig? If yes, what are your specs? Maybe you should consider making optimizations. Having said that, it looks promising, well done and keep it up!

Comments

Hi,

I've got info from couple of people that it's running slow. I've got pretty high-end PC with i7-7700K and Titan Xp and I've got 200-250 FPS with sporadic dips to 150. I'm running Linux Mint 19.1.

I really would like to optimize it, but don't really know how. Profiler says that everything is OK:

Click for bigger image

Objects and nodes are rising because I'm spawning enemies. There is a limit of 50 on the map, so it won't rise through the roof.

I can disable all the scripts, reduce light sources, it still can go higher. I suppose something with Windows compilation might be broken. Or I've done something wrong.

Anyone tried it on Linux?

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Hi,

I've created a small demo here:
ThromeRoom Demo on GitHub

Please run in on Windows and let me know, it it suffers from the same lags as normal demo. I've got 500-600 FPS on my PC here.

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I have just tested your demo. It is runnable, but fps could still improve. It's hard for me to say because there is no way I can see the fps. It feels a little glitchy still.

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There should be FPS counter in top right corner.

If this is glitchy, then it must be issue with Godot. This is only a player with basic script, scene with meshes and two omni lights. Nothing more. It should run on everything.

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I've played the Windows version started on Linux via Wine. Normally software is slower that way, but I was still able to get over 500 FPS.

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I tested the demo again and I got an average of 23 fps. When I moved the character to the darker part of the room, I got 30-33 fps, and when I fell off the map from the opening on the bottom part I got 44 fps. The fps seem to drop whenever I cast the spell too, with 15-17 fps until the effect is over.

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To clarify - you've got THIS graphic card?
AMD Radeon R4 Mobile Graphics

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Not sure to tell you the truth, but since the name of the card is "AMD Radeon(TM) R4 Graphics", I am inclined to believe I have this one:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-r4-graphics.c2496

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Well... I assumed you had 4000 series GPU. There is no way you will get 60 FPS with 15 Watt mobile R4 card - it's way too weak. I use low-poly models, but pretty intensive real-time lightning and shadows. Also particle effects.

You could try to rescale the game window to 640x480 recommended by TechPowerUp.

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You are right, this PC just isn't meant to run gpu-intensive apps.

Answer 2

The game runs good on linux and I've no doubt that optimised gpu drivers on windows will smoothen the framerate with motion interpolation. The overall look is very atmospheric, the rotating light is a nice touch.
The sound design is mostly ok but the volumes are slightly unbalanced and the footsteps sound like a white noise quickly fading out, almost like a rubbing sound. Also the footsteps sometimes don't play and other times play for 5 - 10 frames on every frame.
The fps is stable enough, just got a few lag spikes when using the fireball. I also got barely 10 fps in windowed mode :/ although the game ran significantly better in fullscreen mode. Overall, Great job!

Comments

Nice to hear this.

There are no footsteps sound yet, so... what sound do you mean? There is a sound of casting fireball that sounds something like a white noise. Supposed to be the sound of rotating flame, but I've made it via playing around with fire sound in Audacity, so... it's not very professional.

The sounds are splitted into different busses, like Master, Music, Effects ect. In the final product I want to have proper settings screen, where player can set volume for each section. This will solve those problems.

I've identified many performance bottlenecks with my build since I've released this demo and I've managed to jump from 200-250 FPS on my Titan Xp to over 500 with sporadic dips to 350 FPS. Still polishing it out. I will release new version when I will be done with optimisations.

Care to share your specs and FPS on fullscreen mode?

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I have an AMD A8-7650K Radeon R7 with integrated graphics and 8GB ram. The fullscreen mode ran at about 30 fps.
Also if the audio volume can be altered by the player, make sure the sound effects are balanced in a way so that if there's a sound effect with high-mid frequencies (4 kHz ish) it can pierce though all the other sounds even if the file is compressed and normalised to the same volume. I personally would also turn the music volume down a bit and EQ the highs down a little because the glockenspiel sound has quite a tinny reverb on it, you could utilise that for an attack sound.

Answer 3

I played your demo! awesome work. I wish I could get anything close to something like this so be proud of your self. I found a few small problems that might need addressing however.

first of all when you spam your right mouse button attack you cancel your attacks you almost never complete an attack swing always just resets your animation.. leads to a problem when im panicing cause of the amount of mobs.

the spawn rates were a little crazy but I mean you have difficulty selections and I choose med so thats on me.

only other issue I had was that the game crashed when I tried to exit it. froze on me and locked my window for a about 30seconds.

im running a fairly hefty rig so I didn't notice any lag issues or response issues.

Comments

Awesome! Thanks for the review!

If you spam RMB you initiate the attack and then cancel it, but if you press RMB again fast, you will resume the attack. To reset attack completely and start a new one after canceling, you need to wait until animation fades... it's 0.5 seconds i think. I've done this intentionally, so there is no sudden, unnatural change of animation, but one animation blend smoothly into another. It's also more natural as in real life you cannot reset you pose in the middle of swing to start new one.

Spawn rate is not affected by the difficulty - it's constant 1 per 2 seconds.
Difficulty only changes AI behavior.

Easy - they simply run towards you and swing the sword if they near.
Medium - they will try to fool you by stopping before entering your range and sometimes they will wait to synchronize with other guys to attack all-at-once.
Hard - They will actively dodge your attacks and wait for the perfect moment to strike in groups and from the flanks.

Stability and performance will improve in next release - I've learned a lot from your feedback guys. Thanks again!

Answer 4

I really liked it. The art style is great and the music is catchy.

I think some basic feedback would go a long way. Such as when a hit of yours connects, give some particles. Similarly, some indication of you being hit. I know there are sound effects, but sometimes the overlap of so many grunts and the music made it hard to hear. Similarly, when a fireball is ready some like shine that you can fire it.

Performance wise, I have an FX-8350, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1070. I had a ton of dips into single digits, then it was running at 150fps. My guess is an issue in instantiating all of the enemies. Especially at the start, a huge FPS dip when you're likely making all of those new enemies. There's an article about deactivating and then recycling assets if you need them versus always instance and queue_free, but that's just my gut feeling.

It's a great POC and the lighting/design really stood out to me. I'm sure as you add more features and mechanics, enemies, locations, etc. it could be a fun dungeon crawler!

Comments

Thanks for the review.
I will definitely add more feedback to hit events and fireball/other spells.

Performance-wise - I hope I will be able to push next build on the weekend, this time with different, bigger map, focused more on quests. On this map, even if it's bigger, I've already pushed FPS from original 250 on my GPU to something between 700 and 1000.
I found many bottlenecks and instancing enemies was only one of them. Lightning was poorly made, models had some infinite loops... all fixed now. I've learned a lot from your feedback guys and I'm sure next version will run for you smoothly :)

Answer 5

There is a new release on itch, if you are interested:
https://skipperro.itch.io/halloween-candies-hackslash