Optimized Build Size

One thing that had been on the back burner for a while was the build size. I noticed a couple of months ago when testing on Steam that the build was over 1 GB.

That sounded way too much for my game. But I think it's important to prioritize properly. During development, you should keep an eye on optimization, but it should not be a high priority, especially because your game will be changing.

That does not mean you should wait until the last month to start optimizing. You need to find the right balance and optimize as you go. When you are near the final months, you should work harder on optimization.

1 GB is nothing nowadays but I guess there is some programmer pride in being able to reduce that while still delivering the same quality. I am happy to say that I managed to reduce the build size from 1.18 GB down to 458 MB. A lot of it came down to compressing the art assets.

The game has a lot of animation for the characters, but there are also quite a few icons. Those icons are usually displayed at a very small size in the game, so optimizing those truly helped.

Intro Cutscene with VO Synced

As I had mentioned last month I added VO to my intro cutscene. I think it adds quite a bit to the game. That being said it ended up breaking my cutscene because the visual timing did not match the VO.

I thought about redoing the entire cutscene in a proper video editing tool. This way it would be easier to sync the VO with the visuals. The problem is that my Cutscene System works with Unity Animations.

Out of all the possible solutions the best one ended up being to fix the animation one section at a time. It took a couple of hours but I think it was the best solution.

Redoing it on a separate tool and then having a video instead of a Unity Animation would cause other problems and would require code changes. On a future project, I might go the video editing tool route and have the subtitles running in Unity.

Closing

The devlogs are getting shorter but still are quite a bit of work to do. I am happy the project is closing, there were a lot of lessons learned and I plan on doing a postmortem in the future.

That being said this past week I was struck with some bad news. I might get laid off from my current job. As I mentioned before I work full-time and work on personal projects during the weekends. This has caused some stress. I am trying to keep my head clear and prepare for a possible transition.

I don't want to push the game release anymore. My failures and successes in this game are all learnings and will propel me forward to my next project.

So for this month, the focus is on Steam Next Fest February 2025. I have updated my DEMO and will playtest it more and improve where possible.

I learned so much working on Yurei that it is insane to look back. I am glad I kept a proper log of my work and it will be a huge incentive and reference for future projects.

If you like Japanese-themed games, then Yurei might be for you. Maybe you know a friend that does? If so, please wishlist it on Steam. It helps a lot with this project and future projects.

If you wanna reach out and say hi, please do. It's always nice to meet other developers.

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Thanks for reading all the way. Keep an eye out on Twitter @brightflask.