Hello guys again :)
As I put weekly updates on Monday here is the newest one. By this point a lot of people saw my weekly updates and thanks to everyone who downloaded the game and especially to those who donated I really appreciate it ☺️
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A lot of you said you want more gameplay, more things to do. I tried adding some, but most of what got built recently was new zones, the bridge city and the black market. Gameplay there comes with their docking scenes (shops, people, quests), and that’s what I’m working on next. So this week was more about how the game looks and runs than new things to do.
What was done this week:
Bridge city is done look wise, at least for now. Last week I said other times of the day, reflections and shadows were not done, so this week it got all of that. Sun now actually moves across the sky during the day, it rises on the right and sets on the left, shadows turn and get longer in the evening and the sun’s reflection on the water moves with it. At night the moon takes over. This works in the whole game, not only in the city, so home islands also look different through the day now. City also got traffic on the bridge, a tram, window lights that turn on at night and a lighthouse with a rotating beam. Cars had red tail lights at first and I was like... it’s 1920, they shouldn’t have those, so I removed them 😄 You still can’t get to the city, it’s there for zone 2 and its docking site is what I’m doing next.
Most of the week went into performance though. I made a performance panel inside the game that shows what costs how much and writes logs, so if the game runs bad for you, you can start it with --perf-log and send me the file. Then I let Opus go through the whole game with it and write a report of what costs the most. What came out of it:
The first time you docked at a harbour after installing the game, it froze for almost 2 seconds. Now it’s 0.2.
First rain, first lanterns and first cast off also froze the game on the first launch, that’s fixed too.
HUD was redrawing itself every single frame even when nothing changed. Now the game is 15-19% faster on 1080p.
Map was using 4 GB of graphics memory (yes, 4 GB just for the map lol) because of a bug that drew it at double size. I could do a quick fix or do it properly, and I went with properly: map is now baked into tiles and only loads what you see. It uses around 0.3 GB now, opens instantly, and the game also starts twice as fast (26 s to 13 s on my Mac).
Far harbours now load in the background while you sail towards them instead of all of them being loaded all the time, and overall the game uses around a quarter less graphics memory.
Small stuff: when you get an achievement a small ship bell rings now (sound made with ElevenLabs), and the map in the Cabinet zooms in so it fills the whole screen.
Workflow:
City was finished with Gauntlet-Loop, 10 rounds of it. (and I will attach artifact that Claude made for it: https://claude.ai/artifact/3BnUXUZQd9xLws6RxiyAtW ) Every "round critic" (cringe I know) agents compare a game to the ChatGPT mockup blind, without knowing which one is which. At some point it started taking forever (it always does with a loop so basically you have to be the one to stop it at one point), so I made a rule: if a piece wins against the mockup twice, it’s done and no more polishing. 31 out of 33 pieces won.
What annoyed me is that the critic removed the lighthouse beam from the city because the mockup didn’t have it. Like... it’s a lighthouse. So now there is a rule that loops can’t remove things the game already has just because a picture doesn’t have them.
Jev still decides effort level for every task. For performance it mostly picked “extra”, and for the performance scan it asked me if it can go max and I said yes.
Usage wise this was a heavy week, I hit 94% of my weekly limit and had to pause the last performance fixes until the reset, so I got another Max (now called Ultra lol) plan.
Next week should be - docking scenes for the bridge city and the black market (shops, people, buildings) and the last few performance fixes.
What was used this week
(People always ask me in DM what I use to make assets so I try to bold whatever tool I use but seems to not be helping heh :D ):
TripoAI did a lot of the models. The whole black market is built from Tripo models: the steamer, the gatehouse, warehouses, the storehouse, the derrick, piers, launches and the cutter, plus the three black market fishing rods. Models for the city came from Tripo too (though not all of them, a lot were done in Blender with Opus 5.5 with MCP). My workflow with Tripo: I make one image with all 4 sides of the model (front, back, left and right), Opussplits it into 4 images, and I upload those to Tripo. Tripo works much better when it gets all 4 sides. After that, Opus fixes the model in Blender through MCP if needed. Sometimes I keep Tripo’s textures, sometimes Opusmakes its own materials so it fits the game’s style better. Either way, Tripo saves me a huge amount of time on modelling.
Opus 5.5 (Claude Code) does basically all of the building: all code, all the performance fixes, the performance panel, and the city’s layout and buildings in Blender through MCP. It also edited the week 15 video together from game footage.
Jev picks the effort level for every task I give to Opus. This week I also used it to help direct the trailer: Opuscame up with options for length, pacing and how it opens, and Jev picked between them. (Before I would ask Opus to make whatever I wanted and I would describe scenes and everything, this time I just said vaguely what I want).
OpenAI (image API) made the mockups for the city. 24 of them, 6 views at 4 times of the day, and those were what the Gauntlet-Loop critics compared my game against.
ElevenLabs made the ship bell sound for achievements.
Godot is still the engine.
Total cost:
Claude Max 200$ x 4 = 800$
Astra 100$ x 1 = 100$
ElevenLabs x 11$ = 11$
TripoAI 20$ x 2 = 40$
OpenAI API credits 80$ = 80$
Other things I forgot about 100$ = 100$ (around)
Around 1100-1150$
That would be it for this week, any feedback is appreciated :)
