Felio October Update - One step back Two steps forward

Hello again! This month has seen a lot of work done, but unfortunately only a relatively small update. You can download and play this update from this post's attachment or the main page.

------

tl;dr change log:

- No gameplay changes or additions

- Linux native support dropped (Linux users should run the windows version through Wine, verified to run with no visible downsides. In fact it runs better than the native linux build, idk why)

+ Upgraded project to Unity LTS 2020 (the hard way)

+ Changed rendering pipeline from 'universal' to 'built-in', this reduces performance but allows for better graphics

+ Added basic graphics option into the settings menu (You can select from a set of preset quality tiers, support for custom settings not implemented yet)

For next update I plan a massive UI overhaul.

This month's news:

Hard update:

In my unrivaled game development expertise, I have successfully corrupted my Unity project. Luckily enough, 99% of my assets were unaffected, and so I was able to 'transplant' everything into a brand new project with relative ease and no actual losses.

-New graphics:

I have also taken that opportunity to change the rendering pipeline. - In Unity a rendering pipeline is the thing that makes things appear on screen, and in the previous version of Felio I was using a special 'Universal Rendering Pipeline' - URP - which is designed to be lightweight, and most importantly: comes with a visual shader editor (because I don't know shader language enough to write good looking shaders). This proved to be a poor choice, as the URP is more geared towards mobile games and as a result it is incredibly restrictive in terms of features and quality. I went ahead and removed URP, enabling the 'old' Built-in render pipeline, which is slightly slower but allows many more features, such as more lights that can cast shadows, or super fancy Screen Space Reflections.

The main downside of this switch is that I lost the ability to use the included shader editor and I had to manually recreate pretty much every single material in the game since the pipelines are not compatible with each other in the slightest. I ended up purchasing a 3rd party shader editor and spent most of the month recreating everything.

While I was working on that, I've implemented some basic graphics quality settings, which as the name suggests let you set the quality of graphics anywhere from Ultra down to Potato. These are presets that affect all graphics, but I plan to eventually add the options to define more detailed custom settings. The current settings are also not remembered between sessions, and will always default to 'Medium' quality when the game is launched. I plan to change that in the next update.

-Unity don't like Linux:

I will blame this Unity and the world's general disinterest of making stuff work properly on Linux. Unfortunately it seems some features that work perfectly fine in the Windows build are completely broken on Linux, which goes for both the game and the Unity editor itself. So when I build the game on Windows, it runs just fine, in fact it even runs fine on Linux when launched through a compatibility tool such as Wine. But when I build the same code natively on Linux, it gets broken post-processing and randomly crashes the whole computer. That's not something I can publish with good conscience. Because I don't have the time nor experience to maintain OS-specific versions of the code, and because the Windows version actually runs better on Linux with Wine, I've chosen to drop Linux support for the time being.

-Next Month Plans:

The thing I currently most dislike about the game is the UI and the menu systems. Pretty much the whole menu system has been rushed for a university deadline. It is holding together by duct tape and willpower, and it just looks ugly. So, now that I managed to fix the broken update and graphics pipeline change, the very next thing I want to do is rewrite the menu handling system into something more stable and more flexible, and replace all of the boring placeholder rectangles with actual artwork. So look forward to that!

Huge thanks to everybody who followed this project, please don't forget to share it around! And if you spot any issues/errors that are not listed on the 'known issues' list, make sure to inform me so I can add it there (and hopefully fix it soon).

I will see you around!

-K-