[h1]O mighty Tlatoani! [/h1] Games, as a whole, are quite complex. This means that we’ve been hard at work for the last few months focusing on a number of things that are crucial. And very technical. As we live in an age in which some think a 10-hour-long game weighing more than 250 GB is acceptable, we want to make a statement. It is not. We’ve been working hard on limiting and optimising the game. The other thing is that we adjusted the game’s architecture to allow easier work on it. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/2c8c694e5311bb40c979098b9378ac3ed6716175.png[/img] [h2]Modules[/h2] One of the huge things that we introduced into the game is the modules. In tech speech - we will be able to create assets and code and add it into the engine which serves as a backbone for the game. What does it mean for you, the player? You’ll be able to get patches, fixes and new content of high quality and the game will also be more stable and easier to update if a need arises. So, more content, more things to do in the game and more fun. Aside from that, there’s also a possibility to support user-made content (mods), but we haven’t yet decided if we’ll introduce such a feature into the game. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/309dd090ade8231f030b79f4f266817995f780ed.gif[/img] This solution also helps us with management and work. It’s all going to be streamlined and easy to plan. It may seem a bit mundane, but at its core it’s necessary. We want to release the game as soon as possible and being more efficient will only help with the delivery. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/2c8c694e5311bb40c979098b9378ac3ed6716175.png[/img] [h2]Optimisation[/h2] Making the game run flawlessly demands a lot of time and work. Because of this, we decided to focus on this aspect relatively early in the development process. We’ll go over some methods we implemented and what they mean in practice. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/3d042d531756287b1ae2453c3def9cedcf894a7b.gif[/img] The first thing was reviewing the 3D models. Some of them might’ve had parts of them hidden underground, clipping through the ground. And it would consume the resources to render these invisible parts. Having learned which ones may cause such a thing to happen, we took them and “trimmed” these invisible polygons off. Because of this, your computer will be able to render what’s actually seen. The next big thing are LODs, also known as low-poly models. When the camera is far away, you won’t be able to see the more intricate details of some 3D models. So, we will swap them for their less-detailed counterparts, seamlessly switching between hi-and low poly models. This method serves the same purpose as the one above - why would you want to have your computer render something that you won’t be able to see? It’s a well-known way of optimisation and it’s an industry standard. Not to boast too much about our ingenuity, but we used a pretty clever technique when it comes to textures. Normally, a texture for each model is placed in a separate file. We opted to add all of the textures to one file. This does two things: it decreases the amount of RAM used from about 500 MB to 5 MB and it also allows your GPU to work more efficiently, as it only uses a single file for textures. We also worked hard on managing the processes the game needs to run in order to further reduce the amount of RAM used. All of this is to make it run better. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/086e6192ea177c38f422c5b1ead26b38de662144.gif[/img] What we aim to achieve is to have the game run smoothly on GeForce 1XXX GTX cards at low details and we’re quite happy with what we’ve achieved so far. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/2c8c694e5311bb40c979098b9378ac3ed6716175.png[/img] [h2]A big thing for the future [/h2] Aside from all this fancy but not the most exciting work we’ve done, there’s also a huge feature that we hope to present to you sometime in the future. It pertains to expansion and conquest. We still have a lot to do with it, so we’ll cover it sometime in the future. However, it will be one of the most crucial parts of the game. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38759521/2c8c694e5311bb40c979098b9378ac3ed6716175.png[/img] Make sure to join our social media and Discord server if you want to be up to date about Aztecs: The Last Sun and our other games. [list] [*] [url=https://discord.gg/Grj6R3B]Discord[/url] [*] [url=https://www.facebook.com/play2chillsa]Facebook[/url] [*] [url=https://www.instagram.com/play2chill/]Instagram[/url] [*] [url=https://twitter.com/Play2Chill]Twitter [/url] [*] [url=https://www.tiktok.com/@play2chillgames]TikTok [/url] [/list] We’re always up for a talk and we appreciate each and every one of you! [url=https://discord.gg/Grj6R3B][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35097038/52776425f0640fde78df8f4963da1de04989d4ee.gif[/img][/url]