Dev update: May

May was quieter on the surface. The first week went on bugs left over from the 3D work, and most of the rest on one problem: big fights in 3D were too slow.

Big battles in 3D

Hundreds of animated units at once is about the hardest thing you can ask a browser to draw. This month chipped away at it:

• Large armies animate far more cheaply, so the frame rate holds when two of them meet (the trick)
• Smaller downloads for all that animation, roughly 60% smaller than the first version
• Units you can't see aren't drawn, whether they're off screen or in fog
• Ragdoll deaths in 3D, because I was in there anyway

The fix that didn't work

The real long-term answer is letting the game think and draw at the same time instead of taking turns, so a heavy fight can't make the camera lag behind your mouse. I got a first version in (write-up here). It started every match with no units, no buildings and no AI, so it's switched off until I get it right.

One small fix too: if you end up controlling a worker from another faction, its buildings show up now instead of being invisible.

Adam