Jitter Monthly Devlog #3: Speed, Shadows & the Citadel

May was a deep-engine month. A lot happened under the hood, and a lot happened in the world. Here is the breakdown.

We made the game significantly faster

The game is faster and noticeably smoother. This month is the reason because the game now does a lot more work in the background instead of making you wait.

Heavy calculations moved off the main thread. Three systems that used to run every frame on the main thread, specifically fog of war scanning, oxygen simulation, and crew health decay, now run in background threads. The result is fewer micro-stutters, especially when you are moving through large connected areas or when a lot of crew members are active.

Filters replaced across the board. Heaps visual filters are expensive. We removed them from almost everywhere including device animations for oxygen pumps, generators, repair bots, and weapons, as well as UI buttons, unit hit flashes, and battery color indicators. They are now replaced with pre-baked frame color swaps, direct color math, and a new bitmap-based UI highlight system. This cuts a large number of redundant GPU operations per frame.

Batched rendering for ship interiors. Doors in a section now render in a single draw call instead of one per door. The same applies to repair bot segments and to all the static decorative objects inside ships. The more complex the ship you dock to, the more this matters.

Minimap no longer checks the whole world every frame. It now only checks objects near the player. Additionally, solid objects on the minimap share a single draw call instead of one per object.

Docking freeze eliminated. The freeze that could happen during dock or undock with large ships was tracked down to an algorithm that was doing exponential work. It is now fixed. Docking also pre-warms its cache in the background when you first select an airlock, meaning the actual dock resolve is instant.

Fog of War - new look

The fog of war edge got a visual rework. The old blur filter caused edge bleeding artifacts and was expensive. We replaced it with a shader-based approach.

The default mode is Bayer dithering where the edge of the darkness dissolves through a pixel pattern instead of a soft gradient. It fits the game's aesthetic better and looks cleaner at all zoom levels.

There are config modes if you want harder or softer edges. The fog contour also has subtle per-frame variation now so it does not look like a frozen shape when you are standing still.

The camera-dive effect

When you travel into a new area, such as descending into a cave or jumping to a distant location via a scripted event, the game now plays a transition effect. The ship fades and scales down, the screen darkens in layers from the edges, and the view snaps to the destination with a fade-in.

It is a small thing, but it makes zone transitions feel much less like a teleport and much more like actual movement through space.

Cognitite

There is a new resource in the world called cognitite. You will start seeing it in the environment and in the HUD. We are not going into detail about what it does yet, but it ties into upcoming story beats and has physical effects on certain equipment.

Unstable units

Units can now have an insane state. An insane unit becomes hostile to everyone, including their own faction. They get a distinct HUD indicator and a warning icon above them. You can cause or resolve this state through scenario triggers.

This was needed for specific story scenarios, but it is also available as a general-purpose tool for level designers.

Sticky objects

Space objects can now have a sticky contact property. When a sticky object touches something, it clamps and the whole connected group freezes in place. There is an audible snap when it sticks. Constrained groups like welded chains freeze together.

Combined with the weld-break system from April, this opens up a range of physics puzzle and trap setups.

Lasers, fixed

The laser weapon mechanics were reworked from the ground up. Lasers now deal damage at the exact impact point, meaning there are no more cases where a shot visually hits but does not erase anything. Penetrating lasers now properly pass through objects and hit multiple targets. Large asteroids now have proper destruction thresholds based on actual pixel damage, not just an arbitrary counter.

Laser shots also push objects now so asteroids get knocked back and other movable objects get a smaller push.

Missions react to more things

Detection triggers. Missions can now react to the moment an enemy first spots the player. You can place a trigger zone and have it fire once an enemy inside it detects you. This enables things like alarm systems, ambush cues, or dialogue that starts when you are caught.

Camera transitions. Camera move events now support easing for slow in, slow out, or both. This is useful for cinematic moments and guided attention.

Auto-despawn triggers. Triggers can now delete themselves after firing once. This means no more invisible lingering logic zones after a scene is done.

Pirate base - quest and content

Work on the pirate citadel continues. This month brought several updates:

The pirate citadel quest chain now has a working flow with multiple dialogue branches for the bartender, dock contacts, reminder popups, and quest gating. The work is still in progress, but the bones are solid.

A brand-new Naira sector map was added to the world.

The admin block and the habitation zone got further updates and internal content.

A new unit type was added, specifically a cleaner for a specific pirate base scenario.

Meet Zak

One crew member we have not introduced yet is Zak. He is the pilot of the Friday, and he is not where he should be right now.

Zak is a zoryan, which means he comes from a community that has lived in zero-g for generations near a Mars colony. Their bodies adapted to it. This makes them exceptional navigators and pilots, while making time spent on planets genuinely difficult for them. Zak is calm, slow to trust, and takes his craft seriously. He has a family back in the colony and a savings account that is almost large enough to buy a ship of his own, which for a zoryan is the equivalent of buying a house.

Faction badge in the HUD

The crew panel at the bottom of the screen now shows a small faction badge on each unit card. If you have a mixed group containing crew, neutrals, or recruited characters from other factions, it is now immediately visible who belongs to what group.

Bug fixes

Units were sometimes refusing to auto-attack nearby enemies, which has been found and fixed. Repair bots were playing a sound effect on every single pathfinding update, which meant every frame for every bot. A dialog choice button was catching phantom clicks before it fully appeared on screen. The minimap was causing FPS drops in large world areas. Finally, a few dialogue triggers were not disappearing after being used.

What's next

We are pushing the story toward completion. We are also continuing performance profiling and optimization passes, alongside creating more content for the pirate citadel and the Naira area.

See you in the next devlog!