Dereliction: 2022 - the Swarm Update - Devlog

Hello everyone, Here is an update on the progress of Dereliction. This update will be on the navigation of the swarms of Dross.

I have been working hard to implement some new features to the swarms.

I am currently finishing up revamping the navigation system used in Dereliction. It is using a new system entirely, ditching the unity’s Built in NavAgent system. So now it is using a more cost efficient system, and all the enemy pathing and logic has been delegated off of the main CPU thread. This is only for systems with processors with two or more cores, but most systems have 2 if not more these days.

The frame rate has improved a fair bit as a result, and, me being me, immediately started to increase the enemy bug count (and balancing them too, hopefully)So it was roughly a 25% increase on my computer without any Frame issues. I ran into issues past this, but I think that was more a GPU bottleneck since there were so many bugs on screen that it was just too many polygons. I an going to continue to work on this, hopefully increase the enemy count further.

Here is a preview of how its going. It doesn’t warrant a demo update yet, mostly because I have a few other things I would like to add, such as some more details on the ceiling of the rooms, little art pieces, etc. Enjoy.

Thanks to everyone who has tried out the demo so far! I will be putting up the Swarm update (demo v0.13) on indieDB too. I hope it’s fun, and a good start to this whole thing. Ive been told of a few issues that I have been working on fixing for this update. However, if you encounter anything please feel free to let me know, thanks!

Till next time,

~SALT_