stationmaster

Stationmaster 2: Optimizations and 10,000-NPC Economic Stress-Test (Kinda NSFW Text, so patrons only)

Added 2021-07-22 12:10:11 +0000 UTC

I've learned a lot since I built Stationmaster, and one of the biggest benefits of starting from scratch is the ability to implement those lessons from the get go.

This screenshot shows a stress-test with 10,000 AI's and 20,000 furniture items running at 120 FPS. While there will be other things going on in the final game (like, you know, graphics), this means you'll be able to build MUCH bigger stations before it starts to chug from too many NPC's.

I'm not sure what the population limit will be in the final game, but I would guess somewhere in the low five figures. I've still got some ways to boost this if I need to.

Importantly, this comes without just modelling people statistically. These NPC's are still using (simplified) pathfinding to get to the nearest available sources for entertainment and sleep, which means that your station layout will still play an important role in your income. They're just not relying on the rendering and animations to figure out where they are anymore, and that lets me really tune the performance without worrying about the display overhead.

There's a lot more there that would only be of interest to the super-nerds among you, but that's it for this post. Feel free to hit me up in the Discord if you have any questions or feedback. I don't have much to show yet, so I'm going to try to keep communication as open as possible during this process so y'all know I'm not just slacking off in the Bahamas somewhere.