Jake Jameson, founder of Big Rook Games, began by blending genres across multiplayer and single-player games – adding elements from puzzlers along with first-person shooters (FPS) and wave-based shooters. The more he evolved this idea, the more he narrowed his focus on creating a single-player base builder. He soon discovered the ideal balance between building, strategy, and combat, finally leading up to the one and only Hostile Mars.

When completing that final iteration of Hostile Mars, it was clear the game needed to use some sort of data-oriented programming model. Jake wanted to have large enemy waves while still achieving high-end visuals. In order to provide the players with the best possible experience, the game had to run performantly on a massive scale, supporting thousands of enemies simultaneously onscreen.

To meet these demands, Jake turned to Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack. In leveraging ECS for Unity, every enemy in Hostile Mars could run real-time Mesh Physics/Collisions, A* Pathfinding, and Local Avoidance, in addition to robust state systems, animations, weapon and projectile systems, high-quality VFX, particle systems, and more.

“Without DOTS, I wouldn’t have been able to provide the experience that I imagined in my original design. It just wouldn’t have been possible without implementing my own ECS framework, and as a solo dev, this isn’t viable given my timeline and budget.” – Jake Jameson, founder of Big Rook Games

Although Jake is not a game developer by trade, he is an avid gamer and was already familiar with the original Havok Physics engine. Knowing how trusted Havok’s technology has been among AAA studios, Jake felt confident implementing it as soon as it became available in Unity via the experimental package.

Hostile Mars is a physics-intensive experience. The player uses physics-based traps and turrets to manipulate the physics properties of enemies. By applying different physical properties to enemies, the goal is to stop them in their tracks or drive them toward more dangerous traps.

Not to mention that Hostile Mars involves an incredible number of enemies. More specifically, there are up to 5,000 individual physics-based enemies that can flood the player’s Martian factories, which leads to hundreds of collisions and projectiles onscreen at once.

Source: Unity Technologies Blog