Dev Diary #3 — System Designer Overhaul and Upcoming Performance Improvements

Greetings, Commanders!

Welcome to our third Dev Diary. Since our last update, the team working on Planetary Annihilation has nearly doubled in size! Our new contributors have already helped deliver Galactic-War Co-Op, new splash and main-menu artwork, and many of the bug fixes and optimisations in our recent hotfixes.

This time, our Dev Diary will focus on new enhancements coming to map making and the System Designer, written by our very own WPMarshall. But let's start by reviewing what else is coming in the pipeline and how you can get involved, as there's a lot happening behind the scenes.

What's in the Pipeline?

Performance Optimisations

We're tackling some of the engine's core systems to significantly improve performance in areas such as AI and pathfinding.

These changes affect some of the foundations of the game, so there may be some short-term instability as we push through the transition. We're continuing to work on resolving long-standing bugs and crashes alongside these improvements.

Extensive Rebalance

We're also taking a fresh look at the core gameplay of PA. Our goal is to strengthen hard counters, give units more distinct roles, and encourage unique army compositions rather than relying on a broad mix of everything.

We're also looking to rework major aspects of the economy and production with the introduction of new geothermal plants and a change to how assisting factories works.

More details on these changes will come in future updates.

New Mechanics

New mechanics are in the works that will drastically expand how you can interact with the enemy and the battlefield. While these are still in development, we've scattered some clues throughout our discord. Join the PA discord today if you want to hunt for more!

Get Involved!

The PA development team is growing, and we're looking for volunteers to help us build and test these upcoming changes.

We're particularly looking for:

• Testers — join our test environment and provide directed feedback on balance, new mechanics, and other features. A new testing cycle is now open!

• FX artists — help us create new and improve existing effects, including explosions, projectiles, tracers, and more.

• Animators — basic knowledge of animation and Blender is helpful.

• Video editors — help us create cinematics, trailers, and other promotional material.

• Map makers — design systems for various gameplay modes!

If you see yourself in one of these roles, reach out to the Community Commanders on Discord. Our DMs are open and we'd love to hear from you!

System Designer Overhaul with WPMarshall

I've been involved with Planetary Annihilation since the earliest days and remember the first time I got my hands on the System Designer. I could choose a biome, move around some sliders, and place planets in orbit. But crucially, I was at the mercy of the seed — the randomly generated settings governing things like terrain, mountain locations, water layout, and more.

This meant spending hours changing the seed to find a map that vaguely resembled what I was looking for, and then hoping the start locations would be suitable.

Jump forward to today, and we have a huge range of tools in the System Designer for creating worlds for robots and tanks to battle across. But that toolkit is about to get even broader.

Let's take a look at what's in store as we sprint through the map-making process.

Basic Map Design — With Some New Toys

To start, I create a vision of what I want to build.

Do I want the map to be fast or slow-paced? Hard-fought or more macro-heavy? Do I want naval or air supremacy to be important? Should reclaim be a major factor?

In this case, I want to build a 5v5 team map where attacking on one front is different from another, and where the ways you support your team depend on where you start and where you attack.

Getting the basic layout of the planet is the first step.

Now, however, I've got some new symmetry types to play around with. I'm going with antipodal, since it creates an opposing mirror that fits the flow I'm interested in.

I'm not completely happy with the lava, though. I'm looking for a blank canvas. Let's fix that with a global height adjustment!

Now we've got a reasonably flat surface, we can start creating the majority of the map's features.

First, let's make sure I'm scaling my features correctly. I don't want to think I'm giving a player just enough room for a starting base, only to discover that I've actually given them enough space for a megabase.

With the scale sorted, I can build out the rest of the features.

There's just one problem: the blank-canvas approach was really useful at the beginning, but now I want to add some lava pools…

Now we're cooking! Get a group of 10 friends together and experience the map above for yourselves! It'll be available as part of WPMarshall's map pack which you can access via Community Mods. Soon it'll also be available in the PA tab in the system browser.

You can see some of the new features we're bringing to the System Designer, giving map makers much more direct control over their creations.

To summarise, we're adding new symmetry types and new height-adjustment tools that allow you to raise and lower terrain as you please.

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a few other additions in the screenshots too…

We'll have more to show you in future updates.

The Community Commanders are working hard to bring you major updates across all aspects of the game, and we'll continue to give the System Designer plenty of love.

If you have ideas for what you'd like to see in the editor, let us know on Discord or in the Steam discussion comments.

Be sure to join the Planetary Annihilation Discord to keep up with the latest news, join our testing team, or find out more about volunteering as a Community Commander.

Until the next Dev Diary - thank you for tuning in and we'll see you on the battlefield!