February Development Update
Greeting Golems!
2025 started off a little bumpy but we’re happy to say that development has smoothed out, and we’re making steady progress! Our focus remains on finishing Special Delivery (0.5), an update that may have grown in scope (how'd that happen!?), that we’ve since embraced and now have a clear path to release. Here’s what we’ve been up to!
[h2]Steam Deck & Performance[/h2]
One of our biggest goals for Special Delivery is official Steam Deck support. While the live version of the game technically runs on Deck, in order to get it playable we've needed two things: greatly optimized performance and proper Controller Support (also coming this update!). While our first update Strange Encounters (0.3) included lot of performance buffs, we were still needing to solve some issues that arise when dealing with larger, late-game factories.
To figure out where we were losing those precious frames, we turned to an amazing profiling tool, Tracy while using some test saves provided by our community (huge thanks to those who shared their CPU crushing factories). One particular test save was limping along at 15 FPS on my (Jasson) PC - all those machines and moving parts were simply pushing the engine to its limits.
Map screen of late game factory provided by eseidel on Discord.
The biggest culprit? Heavy workloads in the scripting language. This includes things like handling the logic for bypasses and processing everything going on in combat. Using a scripting language can be great; however, the overhead of the engine going between C++ to script constantly while running is fairly expensive. These systems are responsible for many objects and things such as combatants (monsters) incur that overhead cost repeatedly - we'd describe it as death by a thousand cuts. The good news is that these kinds of performance issues have a fairly straightforward fix: migrate the critical code from the script into the main C++ code. After some focused optimization, that 15 FPS factory save is now running at 80+ FPS on the same computer! Huge gains - and I'm not done yet!
Tracy profiler showing frame resource data.
[h2]Controller Support[/h2]
Development on controller support is still ongoing - it's a beast! Fortunately we've completed the initial pass and are now going back over everything to polish it all up and I imagine there will be some fine-tuning for this even after we've released the update and we gather player feedback. One head of this beast was making pixelicious, fully mappable glyph sets for all major controllers: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and Steam Deck - and they turned out juicy! Courtesy of James here's a little sneak peek at the Steam Deck controller glyphs - notice that we have not forgotten about the paddles! While our default controller mappings focus on basic setups, we wanted to make sure we cover all the bases for those who like to go the extra mile with customizing their experience with these more advanced options that are now available on newer controllers.
Sample Pixel Glyphs for the Steam Deck.
[h2]Monster Party[/h2]
For over a year, we’ve been eager to introduce more creatures, but there was always something "more important" to do — like making sure the game didn’t explode. Fortunately, Special Delivery has been such a programming-heavy update that James finally had time to let loose and bring his roster of little freaks to life!
All of these had been loosely introduced with Early Access for Monster Husbandry purposes as placeholder but they're now fully animated and we are excited to truly introduce them into the Wilds (can you tell that we are excited about the new Monster Hunter?).
From left to right: Wind Wisp, Zabis, Voidling, Otto (shocked his new friends threw him a party), Fire Wisp, Flame Crystace and Ortomi.
[h2]Wrapping Things Up[/h2]
We’re incredibly excited about how Special Delivery is coming together and can’t wait to share this massive update with you all. We still have a few more weeks of effort ahead, but the wait won’t be much longer!
Thank you for your patience, especially during the holiday season and my health struggles. Your support means the world to us. Stay tuned for another update soon!
2025 started off a little bumpy but we’re happy to say that development has smoothed out, and we’re making steady progress! Our focus remains on finishing Special Delivery (0.5), an update that may have grown in scope (how'd that happen!?), that we’ve since embraced and now have a clear path to release. Here’s what we’ve been up to!
[h2]Steam Deck & Performance[/h2]
One of our biggest goals for Special Delivery is official Steam Deck support. While the live version of the game technically runs on Deck, in order to get it playable we've needed two things: greatly optimized performance and proper Controller Support (also coming this update!). While our first update Strange Encounters (0.3) included lot of performance buffs, we were still needing to solve some issues that arise when dealing with larger, late-game factories.
To figure out where we were losing those precious frames, we turned to an amazing profiling tool, Tracy while using some test saves provided by our community (huge thanks to those who shared their CPU crushing factories). One particular test save was limping along at 15 FPS on my (Jasson) PC - all those machines and moving parts were simply pushing the engine to its limits.
Map screen of late game factory provided by eseidel on Discord.The biggest culprit? Heavy workloads in the scripting language. This includes things like handling the logic for bypasses and processing everything going on in combat. Using a scripting language can be great; however, the overhead of the engine going between C++ to script constantly while running is fairly expensive. These systems are responsible for many objects and things such as combatants (monsters) incur that overhead cost repeatedly - we'd describe it as death by a thousand cuts. The good news is that these kinds of performance issues have a fairly straightforward fix: migrate the critical code from the script into the main C++ code. After some focused optimization, that 15 FPS factory save is now running at 80+ FPS on the same computer! Huge gains - and I'm not done yet!
Tracy profiler showing frame resource data.[h2]Controller Support[/h2]
Development on controller support is still ongoing - it's a beast! Fortunately we've completed the initial pass and are now going back over everything to polish it all up and I imagine there will be some fine-tuning for this even after we've released the update and we gather player feedback. One head of this beast was making pixelicious, fully mappable glyph sets for all major controllers: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and Steam Deck - and they turned out juicy! Courtesy of James here's a little sneak peek at the Steam Deck controller glyphs - notice that we have not forgotten about the paddles! While our default controller mappings focus on basic setups, we wanted to make sure we cover all the bases for those who like to go the extra mile with customizing their experience with these more advanced options that are now available on newer controllers.
Sample Pixel Glyphs for the Steam Deck.[h2]Monster Party[/h2]
For over a year, we’ve been eager to introduce more creatures, but there was always something "more important" to do — like making sure the game didn’t explode. Fortunately, Special Delivery has been such a programming-heavy update that James finally had time to let loose and bring his roster of little freaks to life!
All of these had been loosely introduced with Early Access for Monster Husbandry purposes as placeholder but they're now fully animated and we are excited to truly introduce them into the Wilds (can you tell that we are excited about the new Monster Hunter?).
From left to right: Wind Wisp, Zabis, Voidling, Otto (shocked his new friends threw him a party), Fire Wisp, Flame Crystace and Ortomi.
[h2]Wrapping Things Up[/h2]
We’re incredibly excited about how Special Delivery is coming together and can’t wait to share this massive update with you all. We still have a few more weeks of effort ahead, but the wait won’t be much longer!
Thank you for your patience, especially during the holiday season and my health struggles. Your support means the world to us. Stay tuned for another update soon!