Keeping a big world fast
Lords take turns, and soldiers skip the physics when they can
In a long campaign the world of Age of Medieval holds several thousand villagers and a couple of dozen Houses, each with lords on the road. All of them have to think every day, and the player must not feel it.
The first trick is turns. The lords do not all decide in the same frame. Their decisions go into a queue that is spread across the day and fully drained before the next one begins. The world is the same; the stutter is gone.
The second is knowing when not to simulate. In an open field, soldiers' bodies are taken out of the physics engine and moved by simpler rules, because there is nothing for them to bump into.
Then we measure. One of our probes runs the world for years and reports how many milliseconds a day costs at the end. When that number creeps up, as it did this autumn, it goes on the list like any other bug.
Age of Medieval is developed by UnderStudio in UnderStudio 2D and published by Brasa Interactive. It releases on 17 May 2027.
Age of Medieval on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3259670/
Official site: https://ageofmedieval.com/
