adorablesergal

Go out and make something!

๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Mom, ๐Ÿ•น๏ธ gamedev, ๐Ÿ”ญ amateur astronomer, ๐ŸŽจ artist, idTech4 engine appreciator, DOOM 3 shotgun enjoyer

โ˜ข๏ธ 2D Lead, @dnf2001rp โ˜ข๏ธ

๐Ÿš€ I run @nasa-unofficial ๐ŸŒ 
๐Ÿ”ž I draw porn, yo. ๐Ÿ”ž

โค๏ธ๐Ÿงก๐Ÿค I was here ๐Ÿค๐Ÿฉท๐Ÿ’œ

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The response to our release of DNF2001 First Slice has been overwhelmingly positive. It's not a perfect release, but we've been getting a lot of valuable feedback that we will be taking to heart when we're back from hiatus come 2023. The two big elephants crammed in the room are performance, and players getting stuck on progress.

To the first problem of optimisation: this is an old engine that hearkens from a time when dual core CPUs were just barely showing up on the scene, so not only is chewing through tris done on the CPU, it's single-threaded as well, which now means the renderer has to fight for time with sound and game logic. Thus, the engine is very much CPU-bound, so those on budget CPUs (like me) will have a rough time on modern PCs. There are a few thoughts on how to fix this, but short of a complete engine switch (which internally we are dead-set against doing), game performance will be highly dependent on how many GHz your CPU cores can vibe at.

To the second: this one's also a bit tough. Our primary goal was to spit and polish what was already there, and what was already there was clearly early on in the dev cycle, which means that signposting player actions was spartan at best. I think our team has done a good job of adding more signposts, but I personally feel there's an inherent flow to some of the maps we inherited that is a tad confusing. This doesn't mean the problem is intractable, and there is an element of classic FPS design that hearkens back to a day when we poor saps would wander around a map for a half-hour struggling to find a path forward, but it will require more careful thought from here on out. I don't think older Duke fans will mind, because we grew up with that gameplay design, but there's a chance we will lose younger players, and I don't think that's fair to those who want to be fans of Duke. We aren't looking to do on-rails game flow; there's actually been discussion on how to open up maps a bit more, but there's no harm, I feel, in considering more modern map flow techniques.

Dead Horses Everywhere

While I'm pleased at the overall response, one thing that makes me sigh are the digs against prior dev teams on the Duke franchise. Like, I get it. We all know what went down. We all still have a lot of passion and love for The Duke, but it just feels mean-spirited at this point to say hurtful things about the old devs. I know gamers gonna gamer, but we really don't need to bring up the past. The past has been picked clean by the vultures of critique and cheap laughs. I'd rather we all look forward to what the future can bring, and all of us at Mighty Foot are looking forward to getting back to work in 2023 after some much needed R&R.


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