Is it bad that I was reading all the "geeky" parts and understanding them - and honestly being happy to get to use that part of my brain for once? haha
Looks great devs - thanks so much for all of your hard work. Can't wait to see what's in store for the future!
Oh Stoot, you make it sound like it was so much work. We all know u just outsourced the development to India and spent days on days at the beach. ;)
Ok, in all seriousness, I wanted to say I admire your transparent and detailed blog posts about the development of the game and appreciate all the work going into it. I'm working on my own startup and the manner in which you've set the bar so high is inspiring. Thanks, and I look forward to your next blog post.
Stoot, I didn't understand most of the blog post (lol, I am a geek but not in computers...liberal arts geek); however, what I did understand is that you guys are great about telling us WHY things might be behind schedule...and boy, do I appreciate that. Much better to treat your players like adults and explain things rather than just passing us off or saying, "Eh, we're late with beta. Just wait." Thanks...we love all of you devs!
Fer sure , thanks a bunch for taking the time out to explain precisely and coherently in relative layman's terms what you are dealing with. I for one could live without the butt scratching, the shocked look and the snarling. The rocking on the feet, while rather superfluous, is just tooo cute to give up and alot would be lost without the effect of breathing, blinking and looking around when idle. Boy am I glad I am still in world this time so I can analyze my character against the movements on the sprite sheet .... wandering off now to study CSS Sprite sheet functionality..... Thanks most of all for piquing my interest hence giving me something to do !
Hmm. Delicious, delicious info. Optimization is very, very important for those with older computers like mine, and striking a nice balance between gorgeous appearance and zippy speed is crucial to any game.
I wonder what other optimizations you have planned for the future?
I don't get the technical aspect of what had to be done, just not of the pc geek generation. I do get that there is much being done to make the experience of the game the best it can be.
It also explains why there were so many people running around in nothing more than their bare bones. lol
Good blog post. I'd love to know what tool was used to generate the "rarely-used form of indexed PNG with proper transparency" though. Sounds very useful, and I didn't realise you could do that in a PNG.
"It reads like going naked is an awesome thing for the game" - Tingly
Well, in a way, this was the case, prior to the recent optimizations. A naked character had fewer layers to display onscreen and their avatar data had a smaller filesize. With the update, this is no longer the case - everyone's avatar is converted into a series of static images that are played like a rotoscope or flip-book to produce animation.
With this change, the avatar image data of someone wearing many layers of complex clothing has about the same filesize as someone completely nude - a difference of kilobytes rather than megabytes, if I understand things correctly.
Is that my avatar on the left side of the first image in the blog post? It looks exactly like me... or is that a coincidence? If it is--yay! I've been immortalized in blog form! If not, maybe my choice of avatars is too obvious... I need to get more creative.
Thanks for the very detailed post! I'm pleased that the devs are willing to share so much information with us. Awesome!
Wow! I only understood about half of the technical stuff but it sounds like utterly awesome work is being done behind the scenes to make this game stupendously superb. For that I am willing to wait! Thanks devs!
OOOoooo thank you so much for sharing the nerdiness Stoot! Absolutely great info. I think i might spend some time in game just walking back and forth and jumping... just to see ;)
izb: this is the software we ended up using to reduce the colors in the PNG: http://pngnq.sourceforge.net/ The index of colors includes the alpha value (it is not a separate channel, so each "color" is actually stored as RGBA). Unfortunately, Photoshop can't save them like that (and kind of borks them when opening) but they are understood by Flash and web browsers, so it does what we need. Here's an example image: the frames needed my current avatar's jump sequence.
Later, we'll make the spritesheets in different sizes and make them available in the API (along with the proper frame sequences for scripting). Then ... look out!
Wow. Read through blog post twice. Didn't understand most of it (ok, hardly any of it), but WOW, it sure gave me an insight into what goes on behind the scenes in game development. To me, it seems VERY complicated. Thank you for letting me take a peek into your world. I find it fascinating even though my comprehension is the size of a gnat:)
OK. First. WooHoo to Shepherdmoon for your new found stardom!!!!!
And second, a HUGE thanks for all this communication! While a great deal of it zooms over my head, I read through it all and love that the "bigwigs" are keeping us all in the loop.
Maybe it's typical in alpha... I don't know.... but I did beta in FS and we never got anything close to the info we're getting here.
@stoot barfield: thanks for the official clarification!
@Pirate Apples: thanks for the WooHoo (not the same as a Sims WooHoo, I'm sure... uh-hem...)
Yep, apparently, I'm awesome :)... or at least my avatar is... Now I'm jealous of her...
Also, @Pirate Apples, I was just telling my husband today that I was impressed with how much more open the Glitch staff is with us than the staff at FS (after he made a note of that himself based on what I was telling him about the blog posts)... Kudos to the Glitch staff--you are truly awesome: even more so than my avatar ;). Now you've gone and given her a big head... tsk, tsk...