So, now that the visuals are more or less sorted out, it is time to add some action. This is a bullet heaven after all: you need to shoot a lot, and for that you need a lot of enemies. I mean, a couple of dozen mobs — hardly the end of the world, right? A couple of thousand, now that is impressive. That is exactly why I am not moving to 3D: so I can throw thousands of enemies at you even on weak machines.
This is the big one. A line shows up on the horizon, it grows — and a couple of seconds later you realise it is not a squad. It is a crowd moving as one solid front, flowing around the rocks and coming at you from both sides.
The whole convoy works on it: turrets, cannons, mines. The minimap shows which side it is sweeping in from, and the HUD has its own bar so you can see how much of it is left. And no, it does not tank the framerate.
The horde is brought in by its own event. Raiders do not have one: they still bring people and vehicles, same as before.
The Wasteland — mesas and plateaus you can climb. And watch the horde flow around you from up there.
The Arctic — frozen lakes that send anything driving onto them sliding.
The Swamp — water, fog and despair if you get stuck in it.
The Dead Forest — log jams and a rusted zone.
Every place looks and plays its own way, instead of being the same map with a fresh coat of paint.
There used to be grey boxes standing by the roadside. Now those are real objects — and the convoy drives straight into them: shoves them around, drags them along, leaves ruts behind.
You can finally see the shots: the muzzle flash, the tracer, the spark on impact.
The cannon now has a job of its own. It fires backwards along the track, without stopping, punching empty holes in the wave with high-explosive shells. Unlike a turret, it is too big to turn. At first I wanted it to fire forwards, but backwards turned out to be the better deal.
I put serious work into the framerate. On a Steam Deck, with the cap off, it now does 200+ FPS.