Rimworld developer Ludeon Studios have unveiled the first steps towards a new game engine for the long-running management survival sim. The new engine is developed in-house and called “Waylith Engine.” With so many years spent working on Rimworld, the team have been able to optimise the engine to be good at what Rimworld needs while trimming the fat from the rest. This results in the game looking identical, most mods being compatible, and a 2 to 4 times performance boost (according to local tests).
Rimworld is an unkillable, ever-evolving experience. At B3 we’ve been writing articles about Rimworld updates for over 8 years now, so we’ve seen our fair share of overhauls. A new engine, though, is truly exciting even after all this time. Switching engines did wonders for the other management indie hit Dwarf Fortress, and one can hope Rimworld receives a similar calibre of love from its community.
Rimworld Waylith Engine Update Changes
The good news is that the Waylith Engine doesn’t overhaul the entire game architecture. This means that it’ll still look like Rimworld on the surface, and still function like Rimworld under the hood. The majority of mods should be functional with Waylith, and save files can be converted to 1.7 saves in-game.
If there are issues, you can even back-patch saves onto 1.6 and restore your worlds (and their tremendous inhabitants). In a similar vein, you can contact the developers via Discord if your PC is over 10 years old and fails to run the new Waylith engine version of the game. It’s nice to see support for older systems especially with how old Rimworld is — maybe you’re still playing on the same PC you did the very first time after all!
Rimworld 1.7 is currently available on the beta branch, but will roll out to Steam proper in the near future.
New game from Rimworld developers announced
In a line tucked away at the end of the patch notes, Ludeon Studios teased that “RimWorld isn’t the only game on Waylith. We’re working on something new!”. Armed with a new in-house engine and a decade of experience we are excited to see what’s next from the studio.
