Gravity Circuit

[Shatzune]

Very late here! Just bought the game and discovering it was made with Love makes me even more happy. I'm a huge fun of the genre (I was a kid in the 80s after all...) and huge fun of this framework. Let me ask you a question if you don't mind: how long did it take to develop such a polished platformer? I know you are a team, while I work solo but I'd like to have a rough estimate of how long would it take for me to ma ke a game that polished.

Thanks in advance and looking forward to play your game tonight

[pgimeno]

I am definitely not a fan of the genre, but it looked impressive to me either way. So much so that I mentioned it to a friend, and he bought it to run it on his Mac. He showed it to me; one problem was that the resource loading was very slow, so I took a look at the code. I found out that you're using this in main.lua:

Code: Select all

if love.system.getOS( ) == "OS X" then
  print ( "[CONFIGURATION] macOS detected, disabling JIT compilation!" )
  jit.off()

However, you didn't put that in every thread's code, which is where the resources are loaded. That's what caused the slowdown during loading. Adding jit.off() on every thread solved the slowdown and made loading work smoothly. The only part that keeps being a bit slower is startup, but that's a very minor issue.

[MrFariator]

Thanks for the heads up, I don't actively use macOS, so I didn't quite realize that issue with the threads (truth be told, the threading is some ancient legacy code that could use an overhaul). I was turning JIT off on MacOS on the main thread, due to some potential luajit issues. Will look at adding the appropriate jit.offs in a future patch.

Let me ask you a question if you don't mind: how long did it take to develop such a polished platformer? I know you are a team, while I work solo but I'd like to have a rough estimate of how long would it take for me to ma ke a game that polished.

In theory the game was in "development" for like nine years, going through various iterations and ideas, and even changes of engine (from moai SDK to love2d). However, that wasn't all active development, with frequent pauses or breaks due to real life obligations, like work or studies.
The game entered full time development near the start of 2021, so the "real" timeframe is more like +2 years, as +90% of the game was done in that timeframe. Game was (contents-wise) finished in April of this year, released in July, and since then it's been patching, bug fixing, and adding some extra bit of content or QoL.

[pgimeno]

Thanks for the heads up, I don't actively use macOS, so I didn't quite realize that issue with the threads (truth be told, the threading is some ancient legacy code that could use an overhaul). I was turning JIT off on MacOS on the main thread, due to some potential luajit issues. Will look at adding the appropriate jit.offs in a future patch.

Great! I'm aware of these issues, and for what I could see in this friend's machine, they're not just potential, they're very real!

[alejandroalzate]

Megaman Z: the untold sequel
(X exists so... idk)