http://stonehearth.net/desktop-tuesday-performance-improvements/
TL;DR
Due to Early Access, the game’s performance has been prioritised this time round, with the help of the community’s bug reports and sharing of save files. Big improvements have been made in AI, town score calculation, and rendering.
Stephanie writes:
rest assured that the whole team is working hard to get Alpha 11 into your hands as soon as possible.
Hehe yeah as I noted in the blog I think it’s good they went this route… I would as a developer 
continues to chomp. at. bits.
Like you can’t wait or you’re literally chomping at bits of code…cause…well…that’s impossible 
Great update. I always like reading the behind the scenes stuff. Makes your really appreciate what you guys do and all the hard work you put into the game =^.^= my only question is if Tom is out of the office, does that mean no stream tonight? 0.0
We will have a stream tonight. Short. Probably focused on modding 101.
oh nice! I look forward to it 
I love it! I love performance improvements, and I love hearing good developers explain software problems and how they’ve gone about fixing them algorithmically. I’m definitely looking forward to Alpha 11, and beyond, knowing that the late game will have less stuttering and slowdowns.
My question would be, if you’ll indulge me, what other major systems do you think still need a performance overhaul, but aren’t going to make it in Alpha 11?
Noob question! In regards to the settlement score tally system -
Couldn’t you even simplify it more?
Ex: Wood logs, is there a reason for them even to be tallied for the settlement score? Like, could you maybe only tally them when they become a refined product? house/work bench/fence etc,. Same with ore and raw stone (minus food, that’s a different animal and should be counted up front). Only count the end/finished result. wouldn’t that be even less taxing on it? In and of itself the raw materials mean nothing until they are used type of thing (again just for the settlement score tally system).
As I understand the new system, there should very little taxing the system now with regards to scoring. I doubt they will need to simplify it any more. Essentially all those wood blocks only get counted once when they’re created by chopping trees down, then again when they get turned into something else. This is a dramatic improvement and these sorts of operations will not only be greatly reduced but also spread out much more. The combined effect will be basically no performance hit, no matter how many items your settlement has.
That’s cool if that’s all they need, like I said a Noob question. I still have a lot to learn 
She described the old system as being order n-squared, and it certainly sounds like it. The new system, if I’m understanding it correctly, sounds like order 1. In computing, that’s basically the best you could possibly hope for, since it’ll take a constant amount of time to determine the score, no matter how many items there are in your settlement. Getting algorithms that efficient though, does take a lot of programmer work and adds code complexity.
Will, evidently, is the man who lives by the W key on my keyboard. Will undoubtedly be seeing more of him tonight. 
Stream will be extremely basic: 45 minutes of extensions, json, manifests, entities, brackets and commas. 
If you’ve ever written a SH mod, it will absolutely be review, but you are welcome to come hang out and help answer questions in the chat/call out stuff I’ve overlooked. Our goal will be to create a reference mod that people who have never seen code before can use to add stuff to the game.
Sounds like a fellow programmer to me But yeah definitely a good thing they take the time to reduce the computing. It may make more complex code but it’s still manageable…usually…if you plan it out right. Which never happens in the development world because we’re discovering as we’re developing…so we’re always upgrading and fixing and tinkering and testing and prototyping and upgrading and fixing and… gets lost in old projects
Not as a career. I studied compsci in high school and college, though, and I still dabble in hobby projects from time to time or learn a new language for fun. That’s part of why I really like these sorts of dev blogs that get into the nitty-gritty of programming instead of just talking about new features.
Ditto!!! I mean…it’s called a DEV blog I guess you could argue game DEVelopment…but when I think DEV I think DEVeloper 
thats what i always think also…
