Performance Improvements
We have continued to maintain our efforts on generally improving the performance of MPQ. For 345, we focused on what could be done to improve the initial load time, as well as attempting to reduce the number of softlocks and crashes the game experiences.
Optimizations to improve the initial load speed
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We found that there were inefficiencies in the initial game loading, so we have utilized some more efficient and modern techniques for handling initial loading, as well as tightening up existing data structures to be more efficient, which we hope will also generally improve efficiency throughout the game.
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We also found that during the initial load of the game, there were processes running that were causing the game to not only take longer to process the data, but was also using far more RAM than it should have. We have reduced the wastage in this initial load.
(And who wants to waste RAM… in this economy. -Hadleigh) -
Additionally, we have made changes to the general Saving and Loading of data to improve performance and filesizes. Marvel Puzzle Quest has been around for a while and technologies in this area have improved, so we’ve just brought this part of the game more up to the modern day.
Download Retries
In our investigation of performance issues, we found that there were a lot of instances where, due to MPQ requiring an active internet connection, the game would softlock or otherwise get into an unrecoverable state if an internet connection became unstable and the game quietly gave up on retrying.
While we can’t impact network stability, what we could do was at least have the game communicate that something had gone wrong, give players a chance to recover, and improve systems to stop the game from just sitting around without trying to do anything.
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If the game is unable to download an asset, then a new Popup will be displayed allowing it to retry downloading the asset.
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An error message is also displayed which explains what has gone wrong. If the text gets too long, a Copy to Clipboard button will become available to view the whole text.
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Assets which must be downloaded will pop up with the error message immediately.
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Any assets which the game can still function without (e.g. Images) will now show a Notification message in the bottom left corner of the screen showing that it will retry automatically.
- If this continues to retry without succeeding, it will show the full popup. This will also provide an Ignore button. Pressing Ignore will stop the popup from showing up again for an extended period of time for any of these optional assets.
We are still investigating other areas to apply this to, because there are definitely other systems that get into a similar state.
UI
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Added a loading bar to the Marvel loading screen to show loading progress
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The loading percentages on the initial load screen should now be more granular, and more accurate showing the actual progress
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Roster and Team Select sorting filters now have more fallback search criteria - e.g. if you have duplicate comics, they will be further sorted by:
- Level
- Then number of covers
- Then number of shards
Miscellaneous
- Removed BCS logo from the loading screen
Bug Fixes
Gameplay & Heroes
- Rebalanced characters - including those from pre-344 release (e.g. Green Goblin (Norman Osborn)) - should no longer have health or healing issues:
- Characters whose max health was increased - if they were full health in the Team Select screen, they will be at full health in the Battle screen, not pre-damaged
- Characters whose max health was decreased - using health packs will heal them to full health, not partially heal them, or waste health packs with no effect
- A few less issues with the new character headshot images:
- The headshots of non-playable characters are no longer missing
- Team Up character headshots are more in-frame now, in the pre-battle Versus screen.
- Mojo (Mojo Master)’s Drama tiles will render as Drama tiles in a battle with Mephisto (Lord Of Hell), not (sometimes) Hellfire tiles.
UI
- Added gradient behind season pass time remaining for visibility
- Fix white box when viewing supports equipped to no characters
- Tutorial prompts should be appearing again.
Performance
- Fixed the images needing to reload and redraw if it has already been loaded before
344 Character Bug Fixes
Note: The following were all fixed during the live release of 344 via data patches and are summarized below.
Hero Fixes:
- Teams at full AP in their strongest color won’t lose AP when making matches in that color while Celestial BrawnBuster is on the board.
- Doop (Green One)’s Crescent Darts ability description says the number of turns rather than NumTurns.
- Spider-Horse (Widow) has the Spider-Verse affiliation.
- Spider-Man (Original)’s number of stun turns now increases by 1 at ability level 3.
- Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius) now has the Spider-Verse and Spider-Foes affiliations.
- Arnim Zola (Digital Scientist)’s Head Of The Hydra ability no longer changes from Black to Green.
- Scorpion (Brand New Day)’s face is visible in the team-up image.
- Ghost (Quantum Thief) has the Thunderbolts affiliation.
- Boomerang (Frederick Myers)’s Major League Pitcher ability now:
- Activates for allies, not just Boomerang.
- Reduces damage dealt from the initial attack.
- Does not rebound damage, including when Downed.
- Miles Morales (Spider-Man) and Miles Morales (Spider-Fit) have the Spider-Friends affiliation.
Other:
- The tutorial hand on the Roster screen points to the comic, rather than above and to the left of it.