Sin Spire - Dev Log 40

In the library

Hello everyone! Sorry for not posting anything last week. I had intended to get either a new Dev Log or even a new build out, but I ended up spending most of my time crunching to get the Steam Build Review version of the game ready.

As of writing this, the build is still under review. I submitted it on Monday, but I’m not sure when the process will be complete. I’ve heard mixed things – some developers say reviews can be quick, whilst others have reported waiting around a month. So right now, I’m kind of in limbo. I can’t say for sure when or even if the game will be approved for sale on Steam, so as you can imagine, this period is filled with trepidation.

Steam Review Build

To meet Steam’s requirements, I had to rush through and do a few things such as preparing a trailer and setting up Steam Achievements – essentially, anything listed on the Steam page as a feature had to be at least mostly functional.

That also included controller support. While controllers have technically worked since the first or second build, some menus like the extras menu or the in-game map screen never functioned properly. Those issues, however, are now fixed! There are still a few things that could be polished, but with controller implementation finally complete, that’s a very long-standing task I can finally tick off.

Now that everything is submitted, there’s not much left I can really do except wait. I was hoping to maybe release the game or start the marketing push fairly soon, but with the review ongoing, my hands are mostly tied.

Performance and Optimization

Light Complexity - Hurts my eyes

While waiting, I decided to try and address something I’ve been neglecting for a while: performance.

On my main PC that I use to develop the game, Sin Spire runs buttery smooth – but that’s to be expected, as I’m running it on a 4090. Obviously, not everyone has that kind of hardware, and for a game with a retro style, it feels odd to have to recommend high-end PCs just to run it. So, I got to work on optimization.

I have an older laptop from about six years ago that runs a GTX 1650. I figured that’d be a good system to test with, as I imagine most people on mid-range systems are running hardware roughly in that range or higher (at least if statistics are anything to go by). I also ran the game on a Steam Deck, which is another good point of comparison for performance.

Prior to this, a community member had done some testing and shared their insights on lower-end systems. Essentially, the game ran pretty well on the equivalent to a 1050, but I wanted to deep-dive into a few commonly flagged areas when it came to performance issues.

Surprisingly, during testing, I noticed that the Tutorial Cave and Starting Hall dropped below 60 FPS. That was odd given how simple those areas are. After some digging, however, I realized that I was relying way too much on non-baked lighting.

The game mostly uses dynamic lights since the dungeons are procedural – as they’re built at runtime, I can’t really bake lighting information to improve performance. The dungeons themselves haven’t been too bad because I already did quite a lot of optimization on them early on. But I never optimized areas that were purely static and didn’t need dynamic lighting.

So, I baked the lighting for those few areas and made additional optimizations. The results were great – smoother performance across the board with similar, if not better, visuals. I did have to re-learn a lot about Unreal’s baked lighting systems as it’s been a long time, but it was definitely worth it.

The Forest

The Forest - Where performance goes to die

The biggest culprit for optimization by far, however, has been The Forest.

The Forest is one of the few areas I’ve commonly seen complaints about regarding performance. I had naively assumed that because I was using World Partition (introduced in UE5) and foliage instancing, any performance hit would be negligible. I was wrong.

There were multiple issues, including but no limited to:

• The moon casting shadows for every single object.

• Trees using overly complicated materials with advanced shading models.

• HLODs doing the opposite of their intended function by actually hurting performance.

I spent two full days optimizing the Forest alone – adding fixes, rebuilding binaries, and testing on my laptop. Thankfully, it was worth it, as the whole Forest has seen about a 40% increase in performance with almost no noticeable visual degradation (thanks to the fog and dark lighting).

Does that mean the area now hits 60 FPS on the 1650? No – it averages around 50 FPS now, which is much better than the 30 FPS I was getting before. I haven’t tested it on the Steam Deck yet, but that was also noticeably rough in previous builds.

Unreal 5’s landscape system combined with World Partition wasn’t quite the magic bullet I had hoped for. In some ways, UE4’s older system was simpler to understand and optimize. The upshot to all of this, though, is that for future projects I’ll be going in aware of these issues and their solutions, resulting in better-optimized games from the get-go (hopefully).

File Size and Next Build

Because of the new baked lighting, the game’s size has increased – still under 2GB, but well above the 1GB target I was initially aiming for. Realistically, though, 2GB isn’t bad at all for a 2025 release.

As for a new build, there will probably be at least one more build before release. It’ll include bug fixes and the performance improvements mentioned above. However, I won’t be adding in any new content beyond Ophelia’s sex scene. The remaining purification animations and anything else that could be considered “new content” will be saved for the final release as well as general polish.

Steam Pricing

Current Steam Page - Subject to Change

Since this ties into the release, I figured I’d mention it. I’ve done my best to match the game’s price to similar indie titles, which is tricky considering there really aren’t really any games like Sin Spire. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

While there are first-person, multi-layered dungeon crawlers out there (some even procedural), Sin Spire’s adult content makes it a unique case – a niche within a niche. I think the price I’ve chosen is fair, but I understand that not everyone will agree.

Credits and Translations

A quick note on credits – I’ve now locked them in as of the beginning of the month. Anyone who has reached out regarding that, I’m afraid the window is closed. Apologies to everyone who messaged me in the past week or so, and thank you to everyone who responded.

Also, the translation documents that I’ve mentioned a few times have been completed! If you’d like to help translate Sin Spire into your language, feel free to reach out. At the moment, I have Chinese and Russian translators, but I’d love to expand further.

I can’t thank you all enough for the support you’ve given me – both financially and through your kind words. Sin Spire exists because of you, and as we near release, I’m able to comfortably and excitedly think about what project comes next.

But we’ll leave that for another time.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all next time.