2024.04.17 DEVELOPER'S NOTE - Notice About the Optimization Issues After the Engine Upgrade | eversoul
eversoul DEVELOPER'S NOTE
2024.04.17 DEVELOPER'S NOTE - Notice About the Optimization Issues After the Engine Upgrade

Greetings, Saviors.

This is Kim Choel Hui, the chief director of Eversoul.


As announced on April 16th, the Dual Gate redesign and the release of Evermatch have been postponed.

I will now provide further details regarding this matter.


<Reason for Content Delay>


First of all, I sincerely apologize to the Saviors community for the delayed release of the content.


I want to explain that this decision was unavoidable,

as our primary focus at this time is on stabilizing the game.


Since the recent engine upgrade, there has been a frequent occurrence of app crashes,

and currently, all our resources are dedicated to resolving this issue.


As a result of all development efforts being focused on stabilizing the game, 

the personnel assigned to content development have also been diverted, 

leading to an unintentional delay in content development.


Once again, I apologize for this inconvenience.



<Memory Issue>

We believe that the sudden increase in memory is the primary cause of the app crashes during battles.


However, reducing memory usage is not something that can be resolved in one area;

it requires incremental improvements from various aspects to reach our target.


We have been consistently working on reducing memory usage, and this effort continues.

(Unfortunately, there have been instances where unintentionally, the patch size increased due to the gradual reductions from various aspects. We apologize for this inconvenience and seek your understanding.)


We are on the verge of reaching the memory levels before the engine upgrade.

We are committed to achieving this through ongoing improvement efforts.


(You may have noticed that we have added an option to toggle real-time shadows ON/OFF during battles as part of our efforts to minimize memory usage as much as possible...)


<Frame Rate Issue>


The existing Eversoul frame rate options were Low(15fps) / Normal(30fps) / High(45fps) and Very High(60fps).

The default was High(45fps), and selecting Very High(60fps) would trigger a warning popup.


The reason for the warning popup at Very High(60fps) was due to the potential for excessive heating of the devices when running the game at 60fps.

This could lead to performance degradation or app crashes.

Therefore, the Very High(60fps) option is recommended for use in environments such as emulators or Google Play Games.


However, since the engine upgrade, we encountered an issue where the engine no longer supports the previous 45fps setting. 


As a result, the options now function as Low(15fps) / Normal(30fps) / High(60fps), and Very High(60fps).

This sudden change caused players accustomed to playing at 45fps to be unexpectedly shifted to 60fps, leading to excessive heating of their devices.


Implementing a new method to maintain the 45fps setting will require some time.

Meanwhile, playing the game at 60fps on devices may result in overheating issues.


Additionally, having the frame rates set as Low(15fps) / Normal(30fps) / High(60fps), and Very High(60fps) seemed unusual

,so we ultimately decided to remove the Very High(60fps) option and set the default to Normal(30fps).


We understand that transitioning from playing at 60fps to 30fps can be quite noticeable and uncomfortable....


Nevertheless, we are committed to expediting the addition of the 45fps option.

Until then, we appreciate your understanding and patience as we ask players to play at Normal(30fps) on your devices, although this doesn't apply to emulators.



<Issues About Crashes of Story Dungeons / Hall of Memories / Dimensional Labyrinth / Town>


Especially in the iOS environment, there have been numerous reports of the app crashing when playing story dungeons. 

After investigation, we identified that the issue stemmed from malfunctioning

pathfinding logic for NPCs in territories/dungeons, which occurred after the engine upgrade.


Upon the completion of this week's Thursday patch, we anticipate that this problem will be largely resolved.

Saviors should experience fewer instances of the app crashing shortly after entering territories/dungeons.



<Lag in the Battle & Google Play Games>


Many Saviors have been reporting issues with lag occurring during battles, separate from the frame problems.


While we have identified and addressed most of the clear causes of lag,

some environments still experience this issue despite our efforts.


This problem doesn't appear to be easily resolved with just one or two measures.

We are conducting optimizations across various aspects such as characters, effects, and backgrounds.


Therefore, we anticipate that it will take some time to improve this issue.

In the meantime, we kindly ask for your understanding and cooperation.

We recommend taking measures such as turning OFF real-time shadows and lowering the frame rate option

to alleviate the inconvenience while playing the game.


We apologize for not being able to provide a quick and definitive solution. 


However, please be assured that our development team is dedicated to stabilizing the game and,

we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.


As a gesture of apology, I would like to offer you a gift of <Everstones x1,000>

You can collect them from your mailbox, and they will be available for retrieval until 09:00 on April 24th (UTC+9).


Thank you.

Kim Cheol Hui