Posted October 06, 2023 by TeunHarm
Hey, back again with another quick little patch, fixing a couple critical issues. Changelog:
The new save system (coming soon), a quick overview:
To start off, the main point of the new save system is to move to a region system. Currently chunks have two types values associated to them, one permanent and one temporary. The temporary data, called chunk info, contains all the data needed to properly spawn and render the chunk, vertices, foliage and other. This data is generated every time the chunk is loaded. The permanent data are the chunk properties, these contain all the saved information, broken foliage, entities, buildings, ect. The main issue comes with the chunk properties.
Until now theses chunk properties have been saved in one big array that gets loaded at the start of the game and saved every time. Every new chunk generated adds to this array, this can very quickly grow to quite a big number of items and doesn't prove to be the best idea for stability. Altough so far no reports of crashes due to this have been noted, it is almost guaranteed to happen as the game continues to grow, so the decision to move to regions was made.
What are regions, basicly, just like chunks are groupings of tiles (hexagons), regions are groupings of chunks. Theses regions will then be saved individually and thus have smaller lists of properties, that will be saved and loaded dynamicly based on demand. This will require to adapt some systems since not all chunks will be available at will anymore, but the main plan of action has been laid out and implementation is already underway. So look forward to a more stable playing experience very soon!
That's all for now, see you for the next one.