Dev Report – September 2026

Hi everyone,

Update 0.5.0 was released very recently, so I don’t think there’s much point in going over everything that was included in it or describing the usual testing and debugging stages again.

Still, I managed to get some work done after the release, and I’d like to share what I’ve been focusing on in this Dev Report.

Level Streaming Optimization

When I first started developing PI while learning Unreal Engine at the same time, one of the technologies I discovered was Level Streaming, which makes it possible to build large connected worlds without traditional loading screens between locations.

Back then, my first thought was basically: “Great, no loading screens between areas.” Now I understand much better that every technology needs to be used with proper understanding of how it actually works.

As the world of PI kept expanding, freezes during loading and unloading of locations and sectors became increasingly noticeable. I’ve also received quite a bit of criticism about this, and the larger the game became the more obvious these pauses were getting.

Because of that, I decided to deal with the problem now instead of leaving it until the end of development.

I had to split larger locations into smaller streaming levels that can be loaded more gradually instead of being pulled in as one massive chunk. These layers now become active as the player approaches them. At the same time, I also made major changes to the way textures are handled throughout the game.

As a result, the loading delay during transitions between locations dropped from around 300 ms to roughly 25 ms in my tests.

Before:

After:

Of course, the exact result will vary depending on the PC, but even so, this is a significant improvement.

I probably won’t be able to eliminate these delays completely, but if I can make them less noticeable, I’ll continue working in that direction.

Texture Optimization

This is another part of the game that has been bothering me for a long time, so I finally decided to seriously focus on it.

I managed to optimize a large portion of the game textures without any noticeable loss in visual quality and this had a major impact on VRAM usage.

In some areas, the game now uses around 2–3 GB less VRAM than before.

Before:

After:

This part of the optimization process is still ongoing and with the knowledge I’ve gained from this work, textures for future locations will be created in a much more optimized way from the start, while still maintaining the same visual quality.

Level Design and Blocking for New Locations (TEP)

Work has begun on the next locations for The Evolution Path.

Judging by the feedback, this branch of the story interests many players just as much as the main storyline, so I want to make sure that progressing through TEP remains interesting in its own way and continues to have its own distinct gameplay mechanics and identity.

Bug Fixes

There weren’t too many bugs reports after the release of the update but some of them were serious enough that I didn’t want to postpone fixing them.

This included issues such as being unable to draw a weapon in certain situations, as well as some unexpected behavior from the new boss under specific coditions.

Such bugs are not critical, but I decided not to put off fixing them.

Next month will be focused primarily on building the new locations, continuing optimization work, and developing new content for TEP.

Best regards,
Kodman