WORK IN PROGRESS
By Jeffrey Kaplan
It’s been a few weeks since we provided you with an update on what the team is up to and how the game is progressing. As we mentioned in our last post, we realized that overall game performance was not up to our standards. Since then, we’ve focused the majority of our development on improving the performance and stability of the game experience. We still have a lot of work to do in that area but we’re also moving with urgency and focus.
Here are a few highlights of our progress. I realize some of this might be too technical for some of you and not technical enough for others. The high-level goals here are getting a higher player count per server and having the play experience be as smooth as possible.
We optimized our database persistence layer, reducing allocation counts by 95% and saving 20GB of memory for playtest servers.
Refined our automation system to cover more player behaviors and generate server performance reports nightly
Addressed performance spikes across a number of systems, including land claims, outpost/zone/Stronghold discovery, harvestables (trees and rocks), and animal spawning. We've created an automated system to stress test these more accurately, and will address more issues as server performance reports roll in.
Dramatically cut down the memory cost and performance overhead for AI pathdata generation
Dramatically cut down memory cost for game simulation
Cut collision data in half for Strongholds
Compressed animation data by a factor of 6
Optimized animation graph loading
Reduced voxel navigation data by a factor of 6
Optimized ranch building operations
Server browser foundation replaced to make it extensible for better UI/UX
Per server login queue reliability improved
Character create flow improved, eliminating some fringe bugs that could prevent you from playing on a specific server
Reduced texture memory usage on the Client by 40%
For those of you less familiar with Game Development, this is just one small example from above of the work that’s involved. In this particular case, you can see how we approached collision optimization.
“We modified Unreal so we could simplify the collision on this forge from 22,586 triangles to 14 simple shapes while retaining three different collision materials: stone, brick, and metal.” - Erin Catto
Progress has been great. But we still have a long way to go. As of the writing of this message, we’re currently working on these things as well:
Rewriting how items/storage works (again) to drastically reduce memory, save file size, and compute cost for large storage operations
Making significant CPU optimizations to how we track moving entities
More game sim memory cost & perf spike optimizations
More memory and performance optimizations for AI Pathdata
Working on reducing navigation data size for Strongholds
Performance and optimization aren’t one-time tasks that you do and are done forever. They are constant responsibilities and every new feature and all new content requires us to revisit how the game is running.
But let’s talk about some fun stuff too. Even though the next public test is mainly focused on improving how the game runs, there is a lot of new stuff the team is working on as well. This won’t be the most content or feature-heavy patch we do. But we thought it would be fun to share some of the progress so far.
We have two new “medium” sized enemy Strongholds that should make the next public test. As a reminder, “medium” size is the equivalent of McCarthy, Observatory, Hacienda, Yellow Pine etc.
One of them is a new “Presidio” Stronghold that is proving to be a super fun addition to the game
The other is a surprise for later (that’s my way of saying it’s not far enough along to show off yet)
We’ve started work on Proximity Voice Chat since it was by far the most requested feature of Alpha. We're not sure if it will make it to the next public test. But work has started
Improved bird death animations and ragdoll
Cleaned up weapon swapping/firing/throwing animations
We did a bunch of updates to Wood and Lumberjacking
The Iron Bison and the Hartspear have both gotten custom art and sounds
We made a Spitoon because you guys asked us to =P
We’ve added 4 new “abandoned mines” – these are the small mines that spawn procedurally in the overworld as you’re adventuring
Mining has been updated with cool “rock fracture” tech to make the act of mining feel more visceral
We’ve added a few more hair options for character customization
We’ve been polishing a lot of our Stronghold art
We’re updating cooking and the way recipes are obtained and distributed
We updated rainy and overcast weather
We updated daytime interior lighting
We created new assets for our Tier 4 enemies, Legion Sangre. These are still in progress with more coming. But we’re finally realizing the vision of an evil military unit in exile
We’ve updated our desert rocks and are just starting a visual pass of the desert (this will most likely not be finished for the next public playtest but it’s in progress)
We’re also working on some things that just aren’t going to be done on time for the next test. There is a lot more we want to do with World Events and PvP, for example. The exciting thing for us is that with a game like this we have a strong foundation that we can keep adding to over time. And with the resetting world, every reset can start with the promise of a new adventure.
We appreciate how enthusiastic and supportive everyone has been, and we want to get the game into people's hands as soon as possible. But the last thing we want to do is rush something out that doesn’t meet our or your standards. We appreciate all of the passion we’ve experienced from the community that is forming around this game. And we appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to bring the game as close to our vision as possible before releasing it in Early Access.
If you’re the type of person who enjoys seeing “behind the curtain” on game development and want a sneak peak of the stuff I listed, please join us for a livestream on Saturday May 2 at 10AM PT.
