Dev Blog [5/28/25] - AI, Engine Upgrade, and more!

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Howdy everyone! It's been just about a month since the last dev blog, so today we will be updating you guys on the progress of a few big points that are all in the works. One of the biggest of these being the AI improvements to make the gameplay more interesting. This will be one of the main things going forward for the immediate future, and we are making good progress towards our first prototype.


[h2]AI progress update[/h2]
We're working on a new infrastructure for the AI system that'll unify our own AI logic and provide an entry point for modding extensibility. At a high level, the system consists of an API exposed to either an internal Javascript runtime or an external client combined with a runtime to support higher level AI reasoning in that runtime. While it's still pretty preliminary at this point, we're aiming to be able to provide an environment that can automatically deal with saving and loading AI logic without needing explicit support and also lets you build out UIs for that logic. We think that introducing a scripting language and API to the game will enable both better AI as well as a wide range of new possibilities for mission design and integration with external tools. This is going to be a longer term project; we're currently working on the infrastructure and intend to both implement new AI functionality on top of it as well as refactor existing logic into the new approach over time. We hope to be able to provide more detail on the API, the runtime environment, and the infrastructure we're building around it in the near future. We hope to begin internal testing in the near future, but we cannot give a estimated time for it's addition to the main game at this time. Once the infrastructure is up and running, it will still take some time to program in the various behaviors.


[h2]Unity 6 upgrade[/h2]
We have begun the process of rolling out a update ver. of the Unity game engine in hopes of gaining some improved performance, as this has been one of our biggest ongoing improvements. With how SP is built, large operations with many vessels will still strain even the strongest of CPUs. For those looking for possible immediate solutions, we recommend turning down the ocean detail quality, keeping the amount of ships in a mission lower, and reporting any other performance related abnormalities to us. With this upgrade, some new errors may occur, so please keep reporting bugs please!


[h2]Linear Campaigns[/h2]
Do you too yearn for the simpler times of playing a story? Before everything had to be open-world? We are adding, in the near future a Linear Campaign feature, to allow you to tell stories with branching path missions. This is intended to be a prototype to allow us to test functionality for the full Dynamic Campaign is a smaller and lower risk sandbox while allowing new content to come to you. Ian B Roberts, iblank, Neu, and Matt have been working together to create a first pack of missions for you, and we are sure that more are going to come soon.


[h2]Biologics![/h2]
That's right, whales are nearly here as well! This should make your submarine fights a good bit more risky now that a submerged contact might be a whale and not only a hostile submarine!

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[h2]Steam workshop showcase[/h2]
Check out this community made, recreation of a historical event! This is one SPs most popular missions on the workshop, so check it out!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3365959120&searchtext=


[h2]Community screenshots[/h2]
Stunning image by the well known Cent__! (MPS Discord)


(MODDED) Helicopters and the night sky just go so well together! Thanks for the awesome shot from the modding discord icem4n!


From the SP_NCMA Reddit, Hugh-J. found himself in a boat load of trouble with this one!