[p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/6221ff25993c67ddcc78a04de08f1661dd48cc14.png"][/img][/p][p]For years, we've clung onto GameMaker 8 (and GM8.1 to be more precise). It's the program that introduced me to game development, and because this was all just a hobby and for fun, we never bothered switching. Don't fix what ain't broke we thought. GM8.1's workflow was just so cozy, we had a great debug workflow and besides, it was cool to be able to work on and play the game on old Windows XP machines! [/p][p][/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/ae84641fe752511151c1eaf92e6b9edc43be9133.png"][/img][i]so cozy... any real ones reading this just got really nostalgic.[/i][/p][p][/p][p]But sadly, it was broke. If you go back to Windows 7 or older, our game ran perfect on basically anything, even Athlon XPs, but there was a problem... [/p][p][/p][p]Windows 10 and 11 just do not like Gamemaker 8 games! Most systems ran just fine, but some lagged, making us look like typical lazy indie devs that can't even get a pixel game to run on a modern gaming PC. This was really embarrassing considering it SHOULD run just fine on modern PCs, considering it runs easily on hardware from 2003, but life isn't that simple. The GameMaker 8 engine is just too old and too crusty... If I had my way, the game would have been finished on GM8.1. But since that's not the world we live in: [b]We spent the last couple weeks migrating the game to GMS2![/b][/p][p][/p][p]And finally, we think the game is in a good enough state to push out The Patch[b]™.[/b][/p][p][/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/0e284cf9940a4a3f27e6538e4f42625d114a0c13.png"][/img][i]so........ cold...[/i][/p][p][/p][p]So, with this big change, Team Dehdehbon should be up to snuff now! Right off the bat, the game runs about 5x faster on my Ryzen 5600x rig, and 3x faster on a bottom end HP Stream laptop! Just about any computer should run the game perfectly now. Bonus: It even halved the memory usage! The game starts pretty much instantly now and loading hangs are pretty much gone now.[/p][p][/p][p]This also opened us up to the world of shaders. Although I really don't wanna start throwing shaders everywhere, it will be really cool to have extra palettes![/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/7c40d398ecbd15c2076206646da504c645f0795d.png"][/img][/p][p][i]really rough example of real time sprite recoloring, so much innovation...[/i][/p][p][/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/2c5eabcf4e568b8a760dd27d652cf06cb02661a3.gif"][/img][/p][p][i]and a rough example of shaders doing shader things![/i][/p][p][/p][p]It also fixed some problems old crusty GM8 had, like:[/p][p][/p][p]The Steam overlay did not work in 240p mode no matter what we did in GM8, so we had to ship the demo in 1080p mode, which broke the pixel grid. Now, the game ships in glorious 240p by default, obeying the grid![/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/ad0ce16e304fe1172e627f101878bbea02b72832.png"][/img][i]left: icky mixels!!! right: chunky indie pixel goodness.....[/i][/p][p][/p][p]Steam remote play actually works now from our testing!!! Before where it had a lot of delay and was REALLY laggy for some reason, it seems to work great now! And screenshots and recordings are even working proper now. (gee, how groundbreaking....)[/p][p][/p][p]This update also includes rebalancing and QoL changes, and we did a completely poor job of tracking the changes, so no changelog!!! We promise we'll get better about that. I'll try to list some of the changes here:[/p][p][/p][list][*][p]Finished mouse support for the main menu screen/file select. (still none on the pause menu, sry!!!)[/p][/*][*][p]RT and LT can now be remapped to on Xbox controllers! (This was a GM8 limitation)[/p][/*][*][p]Some rooms are a lil easier, some a lil harder...[/p][/*][*][p]Dehdehbon damage buffs!!![/p][/*][*][p]Boss 1 is a lil tougher now.[/p][/*][/list][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/1a4d04e24a631e3668c4b4757a5c7bbb3bb5ae8f.gif"][/img][/p][p][i]boss 1's punch sends shock waves that deal damage now, and is generally quicker to act.[/i][/p][p][/p][p]Some known issues with the conversion:[/p][list][*][p]Zooming cameras are broken in VS mode, so they don't zoom anymore![/p][/*][*][p]We've had reports that alt tabbing can stop music, but we can't seem to recreate it.[/p][/*][*][p]VS mode is a lil brokey right now in general...[/p][/*][*][p]For some reason the start button icon is not displayed in the controller remap menu... huh...[/p][/*][/list][p][/p][p]And also, there's probably gonna be some other bugs we missed... So, sorry bout that....[/p][p][/p][p]Anyways, this update isn't really much in the grand scheme, but it feels really great for us to see our lil' guy growing up into a real product, er, game. This was a huge step into treating Team Dehdehbon as a serious game that we can sell to people as opposed to a little passion project. Thank you to everyone that's stuck with us through it all and hopefully, big things soon!!![/p][p][img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45455982/48450da4fe7e7fe7278fd86cf018db32113c124c.png"][/img][/p]