Steamdeck Patch
After Benn tried to play the demo on his steamdeck, he asked if a patch could be created to make the game work on it. We have been in the process of building a patch, but its more than that so we’ve thought to breakdown whats been going on with the patch.
Unity Engine
Originally, we didn’t think we could continue working on the demo after its release, due to the Runtime Fee Unity was going to impose on creators, we left a lot of developers jumping ship as it would have left them struggling to finance their games, the idea was to charge the developer every time a user installs their game. NO MATTER IF THEY INSTALLED IT ALREADY OR PRIATED THE GAME.
As the deadline for the new fee came closer and closer, Neo-Noir Entertainment was going to release the demo and then withdraw from both the game and Unity, but Unity decided to only charge those with the newest version of Unity, allowing NN to work on the 2024 patch.
We started to work on the patch for steamdeck back in July, as it was a new thing to try, we found it wasn’t an easy task, all while we were developing our next game Zed-heaD, we discovered using Playmaker we had made some of the controls fixed to mouse and keyboard but we could make the controls more fluid for both mouse and keyboard but also controller, so we were going to fix this.
But a year after the announcement of the Runtime Fee, Unity announced it had restructured its management and had the former EA execs step down, they also scrapped the runtime fee entirely, allowing us to use the latest version of Unity which means we both have a better running engine and we get to finally remove the Unity Splash screen.
We thought it would be a simple update. Now let’s explain why that’s not the case.
Issues
After updating to the new engine, a lot of the scenes were in a scrabbled order, some were even missing, a lot of different systems had been reset losing a lot of the data including some of the visual scripting, with this its left us unable to know where to start, so we’re starting from scratch.
But it also allows to add things we missed, removed and even new ideas. For example, the current location indicator uses a poorly optimised script and with Zed-heaD we found we could use Playmaker’s visual scripting to allow us to can both monitor in real time and simplify the script.
Upgrades and Additions
With Unity 6, we’ve finally got rid of the Unity Splash Screen, we’ve updated the intro of the game to include the change of Neo-Noir Games to Neo-Noir Entertainment, we’re now using Vulcan instead of Direct X which will improve performance, to work on the steamdeck, there will be a Linux build to make it run natively on the steamdeck without having to emulate it, which saves on performance. We will also be using a new system to bake the lightmaps and some slight updates to the systems.
Plus some new easter eggs coming, involving things as Z.Live, Disgraced and the TCG.
So it will take some time to get things back to working order so there won’t be a release date until its ready to be released,but Z.FG is far from over.