This week we get one step closer to being feature complete on Build 11's simulator: towns now spawn settlements and NPCs move to the new frontiers seeking fame and fortune. Well, a job at least.

Some recent decisions to make the game world more "real" and "alive" included moving NPC turns from once a week to once an hour. That's 168x more potential for the AI to make a decision to do something interesting! Of course, this results in 100 citizens having a combined total of 800,000 turns over a year which unveiled a number of performance issues.

Nic hunkered down and got a year of generating from 18 minutes to about 8 seconds. This lowers a century of world generation from 30 hours to 13 minutes. That is still a tad long, we're shooting for 5ish minutes to generate a new world, but progress has been significant.

We have only 1 task left to integrate into the game from the prototype: monsters. We think this will take a week to do, but as usual, we don't know for sure.

This update's title comes from a Gridiron Football term where the offense needs to move the ball 10 yards within 4 downs. If they make it, it resets and they get 4 more downs to make 10 more yards. So basically it means "so close you can almost taste it". Or, the name of an excellent Accolade Sports game from the 80's.