Archive:
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in… Well, I pulled myself in. I updated my Framework 13” laptop with some new AMD internals, which meant it was just about able to run 2umo. Slowly.
Being infinitely lazy, I rely heavily on the internal up-scaler. The game renders to a smaller area than the display resolution, and that gets scaled up to 4k, or whatever. Unless you’re on a PS5 pro, or a reasonable PC, then the game’s either detected that there’s not enough grunt, and set the up-scaler to what it thinks is needed, or you have to go into the settings – PC only – and tweak it yourself. And this works! Well enough, for the most part, that I thought I’d get away with leaving it at that, but apparently not. My laptop couldn’t quite cope with 1440p, even up-scaled. So I thought I’d add a setting to tweak the actual “screen resolution”.
2umo doesn’t run in exclusive full-screen, i.e., it doesn’t take over the whole screen, or change the desktop resolution. This is fairly normal these days, because people like to be able to Alt-Tab without windows throwing a fit, and their monitor ping-ponging between resolutions. Instead, it opens a full-screen window covering the entire desktop. So, “changing the resolution” isn’t what people might expect; all that really happens is the engine’s back-buffer size changes, and stretches across the window. And not very cleverly... I have a super-ultra-wide, so setting 1080p gives me a veeeery stretched image. The desktop’s actual resolution never changes. But… a smaller back-buffer and optional up-scaling should give enough of a performance gain...
I had a “fun” weekend messing about with this. Worst of all, asking Linux to “please give me a list of supported resolutions” didn’t work at all (at least, not on my Wayland running boxes), so even after all that, I’m no closer to sorting my laptop out. I’ll have another go…
The excursion was worth it, though. I’d not set Steam’s cloud saves up correctly! Oops.
UE’s dev builds save in a different location to shipping builds. Dumb-ass here set Steam up for the dev builds… But phew. Fixed.
This is inching closer, I’ve done a quick editing pass to half of it, and I’ve written a little Python script that’ll take everything out of Obsidian, and top and tail it so my static-site generator can add it to the blog. Hopefully, I’ll be able to put up a first-draft fairly soon. And then I’ll look at doing the proper layout for a PDF or eBook of some sort…
So the jobby job has been the main focus for the last month, but I’m back to working on Gilby in my free-time. And the break was useful – it’s always good to look at something with fresh eyes – as I’m going to change the structure of it. Rather than try and teach everything in-game (my normal route) I'll do a proper tutorial level. Mainly to introduce the controls.
Gilby’s movement is slightly odd, and doesn’t do what people might expect. It’ll be better for me to walk players through it, step-by-step, as I’ll be able to jump into the levels straight away with less of a fear of people flailing about. I have an idea about how I’ll approach it, but it’s going to be a bit time-consuming. Especially handling when people get things wrong… oh well.
Oh, and I’ve finessed some of the character actions. They give a bit more feedback when things fail, including some gentle joypad rumble. The only thing left to do on that front is to ensure turning in place sneakily slides Gilby back onto the grid, so his little feet don’t hang over the edges of platforms...
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