Short update about Optimization - more stuff, next Monday!

So- around Friday of last week, we began the optimization process for Peace Island.  Ya see: we encountered an issue that was causing the frame rates to dip from 20-30 fps, down to 2 frames per second.

Long story short: it was a glitch in the lighting that was causing the engine to render dozens of instances of the same content.  This resulted in the camera having to render up to 155 million triangles per frame (when our goal is around 2-3 million!)

As this situation coincided with my final Beta review of the vegetation (which will inevitably add another 50-100K tris,) I decided that it was time to pull the trigger on returning Peace Island to a renderer better suited to such a large project.

Fixing this was something I had put off for a while, because it meant having to go back and re-build/re-configure every visual element of the game - from the ocean, to the sky, to the land - down to each blade of grass.  Fortunately, it turned out to be less of a daunting task than I anticipated!  After just two days, 90% of the transition has been completed.

It’ll be another week until we get the game fully back to the visual fidelity that made it famous, in the first place - and it’s great to see that happening, as we get closer to Beta release (more about that, in next Monday’s update!)

Thankfully - work on the gameplay systems was unaffected by this transition (other than Lance having to take a few days off, while we got a URP version of the project up on the server.)

I wish we had more to show off this week, but I took the time required for conversion to URP to clean my office.  I’ve not done it in about six months, and things were getting a bit out of hand…

We’re sending out a bulk e-mail within the next three days to ensure all patrons who are due a postcard set, receive them.

Thanks for everyone’s patience, support, and confidence - see ya'll next week!