DORFteam

End of September - Better map editor and optimization

Added 2025-09-27 19:35:36 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone.

This month was mostly spent further optimizing the game and fixing bugs. We made a short timelapse video showcasing some of the editor improvements, so if you haven't seen that video, you can go watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xSitFxY6zc

First off, we finally, finally fixed that terrible bug that was causing the top row of terrain tiles on the screen to disappear. It turns out the game's viewport culling feature - which de-renders terrain tiles and certain assets that are outside of the viewport frame - was smaller than it needed to be, resulting in the top of the screen being cut off. Similarly, we also expanded the size of the viewport culling for other assets, such as sprites and shadow meshes, so large structure sprites should no longer vanish when on the periphery of the screen, and shadows should no longer pop in like they used to.

We also added a lot more vegetation objects to the game, better filling out the world with more stuff to make maps feel more alive, and allowing for a wider array of possible biomes.

Also, as you can see with the following gifs, there is a slight animation to trees as well. We plan on including wind mechanics which will not just include a visual effect, but blow fires in different directions, adding a bit of extra chaos to the game.

And of course, all these can be set on fire, too.

That's all for this update. Next month we will be continuing our optimization efforts, as there are a lot of performance issues some of these new features have made. We'll also be working on updating pathing logic, so that large units have appropriately large collision, among other things.

As always, thank you for the continued support.