Friday Blog 229 - 20% off 0.9.1

Colony Survival is currently on sale! It's 20% off until 23 March. We also just released the first major update to 0.9: 0.9.1.

The major change in 0.9.1 concerns pathfinding and siege mode. In short: siege mode is properly functional again, and pathfinding should be better and faster. On to the long explanation!

The Old Situation Before 0.9.0

Paths for colonists and monsters are calculated in a special “Navigation World”. This world is made up out of Chunks that are 16 blocks wide, 16 blocks deep and 16 blocks tall. Many of these Chunks are underground and hold no space for NPCs to physically stand. When there are places for NPCs to be, these are designated and connected with each other in a special Navigation Mesh.

When a monster spawns far outside of a colony and has to find a path to the banner, he has to connect Navigation Meshes in many different Chunks. Sometimes, the path through a Chunk is a straight line through an empty field. Sometimes, the path through a Chunk is a complex maze with gates, barriers, stairs, bridges, tunnels and multiple different levels of height. NPCs only had access to a rough estimate of the time it would take to traverse a Chunk. This lack of information regularly caused them to make silly choices.

Before 0.9.0, monsters spawned from 8PM to 1AM. The monster spawning algorithm picked a random location outside of the safe zone and tried to find a path from there to the banner. If it succeeds, a monster is spawned there. If it fails, it does another attempt, and another, and another. After twenty attempts, the algorithm gives up and activates Siege Mode, which lasts until the end of the spawn period, 1AM.

In that period, food consumption would increase eightfold, but only in that period, leading to an increase of your daily food consumption by 160%.

"View of the world as seen by NPCs - just showing positions they can stand at. Color is approximated distance away from the banner.

The Situation in 0.9.0

In the recent big update, monsters only spawn between 8PM and 9PM. Siege mode lasts equally long, which means your daily food consumption only goes up by 32%.

We planned to have a proper Notification Menu, and in preparation for that, we removed the text message that informs you about the activation of Siege Mode. The audio effect could only be heard in the specific outpost/colony where Siege Mode was active. This made it very easy for players to be completely unaware that Siege Mode was even a thing. The effect on food was barely noticeable too.

0.9.1 Improvements

Each Navigation Mesh now contains a Signpost pointing in the direction of the banner. This makes it a lot easier for monsters to calculate the right path, which significantly improves performance when you’re dealing with large amounts of monsters. Without Signposts, pathfinding would “give up” when mazes became too long and complicated. With Signposts, 0.9.1 should support mazes that are functionally infinite.

The Signposts are recalculated every 20 to 30 seconds. Monsters only spawn in Chunks with Signposts outside the safe zone. If these are not available, there is no path to the banner, no monsters will be spawned and Siege Mode is activated. This can now happen 24/7! Closing your gates in the middle of the day will result in Siege Mode.

It will last until Signposts are available outside the safe zone again. As long as Siege Mode