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I looked for a guide or good practices when we build a game in order to avoid crashes. I've few questions and may be someone knows the answer. I want to build a game with 5 levels and each level with an average of 50 to 70 entities between dynamic and static ones. My question is, based in your experience, which would be the risk of crashes if your game is tested by others. Can all the possible crashes be solved if I sell my game? What you think?

Thanks, Javier

I guess you would have to solve them for yourself, but one of the main causes in my experience is poorly placed lighting. For many other people it's too many characters.

I haven't had any problems once the game is built.

Poloflece is right about the lighting.

Initial tips would be to limit the number of dynamic entities. That is if, the player isn't going to interact with it or the entity is not involved in triggering one of your scripts. There is no reason for it to be dynamic. Like Polo said, mess around with the lighting as well. Also, before you do your builds go ahead and close FPSC run the cleaner and memdump then reload FPSC. Also I find that doing numerous builds starting with the lowest quality first and working your way up can help you find out where your biggest draws are coming from. Like this, first build would be no lightmaps, low texture quality. Second, lightmaps best for performance, low texture, third lightmaps best performance, medium texture.. and so on.

It might seem like over kill, but do the cleaner and mem dump in between each build...

Rinse, repeat till you have the build that you want... if you keep having problems over and over no matter what you do. Back up all your maps and other assets, uninstall FPSC, go back through your harddrive and make sure it is all gone. Re-install, drop your maps and assets back into the files directory and try again... If you still fail.. break your levels up into smaller levels.. rinse and repeat again.. lol

It is a drawn out process, I know and many people will disagree with me.

Good luck.

[now that I think of it, there was an optimization guide floating around somewhere..]

You should start a testing/beta phase with 5 or more friends who run different hardware.

As soon as all the bugs are perished, you can sell the game (and provide support to all those who still experience problems.)

I would also suggest to learn a lot about FPSC and release a few free games before you try to start selling.



-Wolf

Here you go, I just ran into this post again. it is pretty detailed.
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=170920&b=21

Landmark,
Are you currently testing with any of the 1.18 betas yet? If not, maybe you should try it out. It feels really stable when it comes to "building".

No, but I will try 1.18 betas soon. I appreciate all recommendations guys. Thanks!!!

Landmark, a question for you now. Have you at least updated your install to 1.17? Making sure you stay current at least with the stable releases should help you stay up with the new featurs and bug fixes.
If you haven't updated to a stable release, go here.