The Watchman’s Reflection

He was tired. His bones ached. He was sure that he was too old for this. Riding from one castra to the next. Desperately trying to convince some thick skulled, overly self-important, arrogant commander that his news was real. The peace had lasted too long. The people forgot why the castra was built and what it stood for.

Standing watch atop the walls and waiting for the proof to arrive. It was impossible to not notice those very walls were in disrepair. Soldiers out of uniform. Weapons and armor sitting idle and gathering dust. Watching as those very ill-prepared forces came to awareness too late. And then, as the horde arrived, he would mount his horse again and ride ahead carrying the news and repeat the process all over again. He could not continue to see castra after castra fall.

As he approached New Elenia he could tell right away that it was different from any castra that he had previously visited. Not only were there no gaps in the walls but there were workers actively improving the fortifications. The land had been cleared for 200 passuses all around the walls. Hastati were easily spotted walking along the walls and at the gates.

He was greeted at the gates and led to the commander straight away. None of the waiting for hours as it had been in the previous castra. Warenth, the commander of New Elenia, greeted him with a smile and an outstretched hand. He listened intently as the watchman shared his news. He went on to explain that he had spent more than a year refurbishing and retrofitting this castra. He had drilled and trained his troops daily. He even had an elite force that would help them be well prepared long before the horde arrived. It had been time to rebuild and they were ready.

Updates

We are very excited to announce that the latest and greatest improvements to Rumble Runners of Feldryn are available now on Google Play. It has been a long strange year for us at Daemon Games, and I’m sure it was for you too. It was a strange year but a productive one. We found ourselves spending more time at our homes and less time working with each other in the same room. Discord, Google Meet and Slack became a mainstay. But the ideas kept flowing and much like our old friend Warenth, we have been busy rebuilding and enhancing. So without further ado...

Version 0.38 of Rumble Runners has been released, bringing with it some major changes under the hood and a few perks for players as well.

Boulton Syphon

With each lightning-fueled step a Rumble Runner’s speed increases and with that the chance of a misstep that’ll send you back to the starting line. While there are whispers of a technique to manage a Runner’s ever increasing speed it has not yet become common knowledge. Until that time, the young inventor Matilda Boulton has seen this excess energy as an opportunity instead of just a threat.

With the Boulton Syphon, this increase in danger comes with an increase in reward. The longer you survive the more rewarding each pick-up becomes, starting at 1x and progressing as high as 3x.

Much like Matty’s other inventions, it’s not without its… quirks. Just--don’t be surprised when it has to vent lightning.

Stats Screen

Runners pride themselves on how long they can survive a run. Unfortunately, it was hard for a Runner to see if they were improving or know when they had set a new personal best.

This is no longer the case! Introducing the stats screen:

Here you can see your average and best scores for distance, gold, and intel. If you see a green arrow then you’ve increased your average performance. Now a gold arrow, that's when you’ve set a new personal record!

Lets see what you’ve got ;) Send me your gold arrows @DaemonTrey

Under the Hood

This is where things get a bit more technical.

This time last year we were dealing with some very real performance issues on a multitude of devices. While we were iterating on asset complexity and code execution times we decided to explore an emerging technology from Unity.

That technology was DOTS, or Data Oriented Technology Stack. This essentially brings an architecture, known as Entity Component System, to the Unity ecosystem. Additionally it beefs up other performance components to enable game devs to capitalize on processors with multiple cores.

While this technique wasn’t new, it was new to us. We found ourselves rewriting many gameplay systems in order to accommodate this approach. We were humbled by this project, but ultimately prevailed--and our skills and game are better for it.

Noticeably, code is more decoupled allowing for complexity to be compartmentalized and individually iterated on. This lets our team iterate quicker and we expect that means more frequent features for our players.

Lastly, we hope you’ll see a noticeable difference in performance and load times--we have. :)

Patch Notes

• Significant Performance Improvements
• Boulton Syphon Added
• Added animation to Kinchyle on the town scene
• Results tabs relocated to the right.
• Stats screen added
• Under the hood
• Migrated to DOTS
• Collision System Reworked

...and we'll see you in Feldryn...
Bud and Trey