Radical Forge Announces a Delay in Highly Anticipated Southfield

The upcoming farming sim sandbox Southfield featured in the PC Gaming Show event has officially been delayed by Radical Forge. This adorable, physics-based title where you play as a wobbly protagonist in a colourful world has been the highlight for a few people — us included — won't be releasing in its previously expected 24th of June.

In a video shared on the official YouTube channel, Flop (the Community Manager) shared a six-minute video where they spoke a bit about the unanticipated delay. Due to the Closed Beta feedback that the team has been receiving, they fixed one of the main complaints that they had faced — performance. In doing so, however, their added fix meant that they were insecure about how it would work in the game moving forward.

Flop explains that the issue would occur when players would break down a specific object (say, a tree), and the items that they would pick up would spawn. At that moment, every item would spawn and cause Southfield's game engine to lag, leading to the performance issues and FPS drops that were a prominent complaint throughout the Closed Beta test. The solution implemented was "Object Pooling", wherein the game already pre-spawns all of the items before they are even harvested (reducing the strain of having to spawn a bunch of items alongside their physics). Though the team has made significant progress in this field, they're scared of the further implications moving forward, the biggest fear being further implementations and features that might, possibly, negatively interact with object pooling.

Radical Forge is nervous about object pooling, as it also has increased a lot of the minor bugs that were occurring and turned them into more complex, detrimental ones that could harm the overall experience. Due to the unexpected performance issues and how everything performed, Southfield has been delayed indefinitely, meaning that we do not know when the new release date will take place. This decision was made to ensure the mental well-being of the developers behind the game, securing their wellness and preventing crunching to meet the 24th of June deadline that had been previously set.

Flop then goes on to explain more about what Radical Forge is going to implement based on the Closed Beta feedback that the team received. The feedback that is being taken is notably on the movement and user experience, as they have bolstered the UI to make it more readable and easier for the player. These are just some of the changes being implemented, and if you want to learn more about them, make sure to check out the "We're delaying Southfield, here's why" video linked above!