Major Performance Boost

We've revamped our game draw loop for incredible speed gains.

• The ground layer is now recreated as needed, instead of every frame, yielding a massive ~200-220% FPS boost.
• Information about how on-screen entities should be rendered is now cached and recreated only as needed, boosting FPS by another ~10-15%.

Code Efficiency

• Smarter handling of turn-based updates, which were a significant cause of slowdown when many entities are loaded. These events don't run every frame, but could be a cause of jitter while moving.
• Optimized redundant code that ran on every frame for a ~2-4% increased FPS.
• Entities with animations or timers are now managed separately for minor (<1%) FPS gains.

Pathfinding

NPCs are smarter and more efficient in how they find their way.

• Reduced frequency of NPC path requests, relying on cached paths, or using alternative faster methods if it makes sense to do so.
• NPCs now stop pathfinding early if the attempt is taking too long, given the expected distance, and will instead rely on a faster method.
• A* pathfinding algorithm - we now use a hashmap to check if a node has already been visited, for far faster performance.
• A* pathfinding algorithm - updated main heuristic used for node selection, for up to 10x performance boost on long paths (Closest Heuristic -> Manhattan Heuristic).

Debugging Tools

New game option for those who like to troubleshoot or are facing performance issues.

• Added option "Performance Log".
• Enabling this creates a 'performance.csv' file in the game folder to track resource-intensive tasks. Use with caution as it could impact game speed.
• If you are having performance issues, please enable this setting and send your files to doorsoftrithius@gmail.com.