Vibin' & Survivin' — v0.30.1
Released 2026-08-30A follow-up to 0.30.0, and an important one. The performance work in that release was real, but almost none of it was reaching the game you actually installed — the step that packages the game for release was making the code several times slower to run. That is fixed. If 0.30.0 did not feel twice as fast on your machine, this is why, and this release is where you should feel it.
What Was Wrong
The Release Build Was Never The Build We Measured: Every framerate figure quoted for 0.30.0 was measured on a development build. The packaged release goes through an extra protection pass that scrambles the code to make it harder to tamper with — and two of that pass's settings were charging a large cost on every single frame. The shipped game was running its logic and drawing code at a fraction of the speed it should have.
Worst On Steam Deck: The Deck felt it hardest, which is why it was the machine that reported the problem. A benchmark run there had the game's own code taking many times longer per frame than the identical version did on a desktop development build, while the actual pixel-pushing work was unchanged — the giveaway that the code, not the rendering, was the problem.
Constant Cleanup Pauses: The same two settings were generating memory garbage continuously, forcing the engine to stop and clean up roughly ten times a second under load. That is gone too, so heavy waves should feel steadier as well as faster.
What Changed
Two Settings, Measured Individually: Rather than simply turning the protection off, each of its settings was measured on its own. Two of them carried essentially the entire cost — about thirty times slower on hot code — and the rest were free. Only those two are gone.
The Game Is Still Protected: Everything else stays on. The release build still has all its names scrambled, its text hidden and its numbers disguised. It is no less protected than before; it simply is not paying that cost sixty times a second any more.
Benchmark
Build Type Is Now Reported: Settings > Display > Run Benchmark now shows whether it measured a development build or a release build. This is the row that would have caught the problem immediately, and it means two benchmark results can never be quietly compared against each other again when they came from different builds.
Nothing Else
No Gameplay Changes: No balance, weapon, enemy, upgrade or visual changes in this release. It is purely the fix above.