Star Story Saga: Renaissance

[Scout]

I'm so far enjoying it.

(We talked about it crashing once for me on IRC; here's your dump, Jake.)

[Jake]

(We talked about it crashing once for me on IRC; here's your dump, Jake.)

Hmm - that's an error in a routine bit of OpenGL code... so probably not much I can do about it. Are you running under Windows, or Mono?

[Scout]

This was under Windows. I'm certain it was just a fluke; I wouldn't really be concerned. I just posted it because you asked.

[DaFool]

I can't play this game

Specs: 1.3Ghz P4, 256MB RAM, Windows XP SP1

I just installed dotnetfx.exe and sdldotnet-6.0.0-runtime-setup.exe

Last year I was able to play Morningstar, but I was on vacation and it was on a better computer.

I know I should upgrade my RAM... I did start with more RAM, but the memory sticks started to conk out so I took them out, and looking for replacements... stores don't sell RAMBUS sticks anymore.

[Jake]

Yeah, itdoes take a fair bit of RAM. :/

It's something I'm working on, 'cause it shouldn't have to; I was just lazy writing the loading code to fit into the NaNo deadline. I'll post with an updated version of the game once I'm done. Although my lowest-spec machine still has 512MB, so I won't be able to make any guarantees... (and it already runs on that one).


One thing to try, though - did you turn texture compression on in the config.xml? It makes everything look a bit like highly-compressed JPEGs, but it's probably better than nothing and it does notably reduce the RAM requirements if it's not loading everything onto your video card's RAM.

stores don't sell RAMBUS sticks anymore.

I'm still kind of surprised that anyone sold RAMBUS RAM in the first place, to be honest!

[Jake]

Updated version finished!

Renaissance 1.1 is downloadable from the Renaissance website, or directly from:
http://mab.eviscerate.net/renaissance-1.1.zip

Fixes include:

• Difficulty balanced across action stages 2-4.
• Third action stage boss now has new bullet patterns.
• Final boss difficulty tweaked.
• Anton now comes with sword-swinging sound effect.
• New villager sprites.
• Initial game load drastically sped up:
  • on a low-spec test machine, loading used to take 5 minutes, now takes fifteen seconds.
  • on a high-spec test machine, loading has gone from twenty to eight seconds.
• RAM usage improved - drops of up to 75% seen in testing.
• Several minor graphic-alignment and graphical artifacting bugs fixed.

Upgrading from 1.0
The archive file format has changed, so simply copying the new files into the old directory isn't such a good idea. The best process would be:

• Back up any save games (*.s3r) and your "score.dat" file - which contains highscores and unlock data - outside of your game directory.
• Delete the entire contents of the game directory
• Unzip the 1.1 zip into the game directory
• Drop your old score.dat into the game directory

All save games from 1.0 should load find in 1.1.

Known Issues
I think the only reported problems which remain unaddressed are the random OGL error Scout had (above) - which I don't think I can do anything about - and:

• (All) Open/save breaks fullscreen.
• (Mac/Linux) Open/save don't work on some Mono installations - particularly Tiger-based Macs
• (Mac/Linux) Mono consumes approximately twice the RAM the Windows/Microsoft CLR does.

I'm hopeful that this should now run even on DaFool's machine; RAM is probably more of an issue than processor speed, and on my test machine (a 1GHz Pentium Mobile/Centrino laptop with 512MB of RAM) the loading time is reduced to around fifteen seconds, and the RAM usage now tops around 95MB, usually sitting nearer 75 or 80.

I'm a little wary about Mono installations, since I've seen Mono's garbage collector fail to release memory on occasion for no apparent reason, so the new caching/unloading of textures may result in exponential memory use. Jasper tested this and reported that the memory usage fluctuates down as well as up, so I'm hopeful, but if you're using the latest version of Mono and notice runaway memory usage, then let us know!

And lastly, since it was suggested to me last night and I had a half-hour or so to kill, have a cheesy promo video for the shooting stages:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OA32UoHhcY

(It only covers the shooting bits, just 'cause it's really aimed at trying to get some of the Shmup-Dev people to actually play the thing and give some feedback.)

[DaFool]

Thanks.

Am able to launch the game, it still takes a few minutes and is very laggy, but at the least the VN screens are playable. Unfortunately, the gameplay portions are laggy. I wish there was a way to skip the gameplay like with Raidaa.

[Ren]

Possibly one of the most frustrating, irritating, infuriating, and homicide-inducing things I've ever played.

The final boss isn't fun or challenging, it's just homicide-inducing.

I also hate how easy it is to accidentally quit out of the game (thus losing all progress) when the Continue menu appears, right in the middle of a battle where I'm obviously mashing buttons like anything.
As a friendly advice: next time get a games tester.

Also, I know where all of you live.

(I skipped all the VN bits)


>:/ *grunt*

Edit:

I hated this game so much, I decided to draw crappy fanarto of it.
Vanderwaal, I bet you don't even remember him, any more!