Amnesia: The Second Dimension [READY FOR LAUNCH]

**MrBehemoth** · 11-16-2014, 11:56 PM

(11-16-2014, 02:34 PM)dawgiedee Wrote: this looks amazing and really creative! when will it be open to the public?

Funny you should ask... I was just thinking about that. The release date is slated in for 20th December, but it's time I announced a slight delay...

Estimating how long it will take to complete a project is something I am still learning. The story has also grown in the telling: there are now 20 levels being worked on, including 4 bosses, plus gameplay features not shown in any of the videos.

I may well have it finished by the 20th December, but that won't leave much time for testing. I want to recruit a few serious beta testers and it would be unfair of me to ask them to put in hours and hard work over the festive period.

So, I'm going to say early to mid-January. I'll update the OP and ModDB to reflect that. I hope that doesn't disappoint anyone too much!

**Nikson.** · 11-17-2014, 03:42 PM

I can also be a Tester ;D
I would be very happy!

**Radical Batz** · 11-17-2014, 05:27 PM

I would be very glad to be a beta tester for this master piece MrBehemoth.
I would likely be available all day so I will always find time to test this brilliant project.. thnx

**dawgiedee** · 11-17-2014, 05:44 PM

(11-16-2014, 11:56 PM)MrBehemoth Wrote:
(11-16-2014, 02:34 PM)dawgiedee Wrote: this looks amazing and really creative! when will it be open to the public?

Funny you should ask... I was just thinking about that. The release date is slated in for 20th December, but it's time I announced a slight delay...

Estimating how long it will take to complete a project is something I am still learning. The story has also grown in the telling: there are now 20 levels being worked on, including 4 bosses, plus gameplay features not shown in any of the videos.

I may well have it finished by the 20th December, but that won't leave much time for testing. I want to recruit a few serious beta testers and it would be unfair of me to ask them to put in hours and hard work over the festive period.

So, I'm going to say early to mid-January. I'll update the OP and ModDB to reflect that. I hope that doesn't disappoint anyone too much!

Alright. Thanks for the clear long response :3
i'll hope I'll remember it by then

**MrBehemoth** · 11-17-2014, 11:39 PM

(11-17-2014, 05:44 PM)dawgiedee Wrote: i'll hope I'll remember it by then

Oh don't worry about that. I'll be making some noise! Cool

Also, since there's been a lot of responses about testing, rest assured I'm taking names and details will follow when the time is right. Thanks!

**MrBehemoth** · 01-06-2015, 09:40 AM

Update time...

I wish I was here to tell you that A: SD is ready for beta, but I'm not. There are two reasons... I thought I was going to be able to work on it pretty much full-time over the last month but, you know, life happens and stuff. I've gotten an awful lot done, just not as much as I'd hoped.

The second reason is also good news. I've completely overhauled a lot of systems, like the NPC/enemy AI (which is entirely script driven), and added some new features. A: SD is very script heavy so this overhaul made a big improvement in terms of performance. It needed done. It's also allowed me to do a lot more with enemy based puzzles as well as cutscenes and storytelling, adding a bit more depth to the grunts' world. There will be a few surprises that I hope you'll like.

I'm not going to make the mistake of giving you a date until I'm more sure of it. It'll be ready when it's ready, but hopefully that won't be too long. I will, as always, keep you all posted.

**Pedro Gabriel** · 01-07-2015, 04:54 PM

When starting the beta test, I want to participate, because I can't wait for this wonderful mod!

**7heDubz** · 01-10-2015, 08:51 PM

Your crowd waits patiently behemoth.

Okay maybe just me,

**MrBehemoth** · 01-26-2015, 05:09 PM

I'm behind where I wanted to be, but things are coming along. To make sure they keep coming along, I decided to set myself some milestones:

01/02/15 - vertical slice alpha ready for closed testing (details below)
08/02/15 - features and mechanics locked down, mapping 90% done
15/02/15 - full beta ready for closed testing
26/02/15 - debugged, polished and ready for release

So, about that vertical slice alpha...

Spoiler below!

**MrBehemoth** · 02-20-2015, 01:26 AM

Nearly a month ago I decided to package up an alpha version of the first half of The Second Dimension, to catch any bugs early and leave me free to work on the second half. Boy, did it catch a bug. Flawless and Badcatz, the ready and willing alpha testers, hadn't even got their hands on it before I noticed a fundamental problem with the way Second Dimension works.

To move the visible player character and NPCs, there are looping scripts running constantly and doing a lot of work. As far as I know, no other CS or game has kept a loop going 30 or 60 times a second, performing all the necessary calculations, for such an extended period of time.

Now, I did lots of testing as I built the levels and everything seemed to be fine. It wasn't until I put the first-half-alpha together that I discovered the problem, as that was the first point when I was able to play through more than a couple of levels at a time. Depending on various factors, two, three or four levels play just fine, then the engine crashes whilst loading the next level. It's only indirectly related to memory and processing power, as it happens the same way on two very different PCs.

Lowering the frequency of the loops to, say, 10 times per second seems to help a bit, but the game is practically unplayable and the crash still happens eventually. I've experimented with so many tweaks and tried so many things to try and fix this, but even though I can improve performance at a cost to gameplay, I can't actually stop it from crashing after playing a few levels. There are also a few other weird symptoms, like texture loading errors that only occur after you've been playing for a while over multiple maps. Resource Monitor doesn't show an increase in memory or processor usage, so it must be some problem internal to the engine.

I've come to the conclusion that HPL2 just can't handle scripting so intensively over long periods. If there is a more efficient way of doing it that the engine can handle, then it is beyond me. Because a lot of people were excited about the videos, and because I've put such huge amounts of time and energy into it, it makes me sad to say that I don't think I can make The Second Dimension work.

If there is an advanced coder out there who wants to take a look at it, then I will be happy to let them, but be warned: the script is complicated, I don't use comments much, and I've already tried everything I can think of.

I've tried and tried. I'm really sorry.