Author
Creator and director of COLONIZED
vanguille created COLONIZED and directs its development: the universe, the Unreal Engine 5 build and what this site publishes about it.
vanguille is the public pseudonym of the creator of COLONIZED, a space survival MMORPG for PC built in Unreal Engine 5. He directs the project: the canon of the Aurin system, the technical decisions and what gets shown in public.
Most of his week goes into the build itself: playing it, measuring it and deciding what is good enough to keep. When a planet looks wrong or a frame costs too many milliseconds, the fix goes into the tool that generates it, not into a hand-painted patch.
On this blog he writes about the genres COLONIZED belongs to (survival, MMO and space sim), the technology behind the game and the lore of its universe. Articles that mention other games use public, dated sources and are written with respect for the people who make them.
RenderA much larger L3 cache, stacked on the processor, avoids trips to RAM and speeds up data-heavy games. How it works, who benefits, how a 9800X3D differs from a 9950X3D and how to make sure the game uses the right cores.
4 min read
RenderA base in space survival has to hold up, hold air and stay powered. Four placement systems, why structural integrity turns a base into a puzzle, what changes when you build on a sphere, and where COLONIZED stands.
4 min read
RenderFor large-world MMOs and survival games, per-core speed and cache matter more than core count. The criteria, a reasoned comparison of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and mid-range and budget options, and the usual buying mistakes.
5 min read
RenderA list of the best indie games of 2027 would be out of date in a month. A watchlist you build yourself is not. Where indie games show up before launch, what to check in multiplayer ones, and where COLONIZED fits.
4 min read
RenderThere is no single best indie survival MMO of 2026, but there are nine tests that separate a good one from a risky one. Score any game against them in ten minutes, and see where COLONIZED stands on each.
4 min read
RenderMultiplayer survival is four different products: a co-op session, a private server, a shared server and an MMO. Compare what persists, who it suits and what to check, and see where COLONIZED sits.
4 min read
RenderFor persistent-world MMOs and survival games, spend on the CPU and memory first, and on the GPU second. Three reasoned builds (high-end, mid-range and budget) with the logic behind each part, where not to waste money and how to split a budget.
5 min read
RenderA space MMO lives or dies on what you cannot see in a trailer: whether the world persists, how many people share it, who sets prices and what happens when you log off. Nine tests, and the honest state of COLONIZED.
4 min read
RenderEight things separate a good space simulator from a pretty one: flight model, scale and travel time, ship detail, planets, controls, multiplayer layer, progression and hardware. With the maths on how long space really takes.
4 min read
RenderSpace survival is survival with the rules turned up: no air, no gravity, no shelter by default. Six questions separate a game where space matters from one that only looks like it, with COLONIZED scored honestly.
4 min read
RenderMost survival MMOs you will hear about in 2027 are not out yet. Here is how to tell a real build from a trailer, the five features the genre competes on, and the honest state of COLONIZED.
4 min read
RenderCo-op, PvE and PvP are not just labels. They decide whether you can log off safely, whether a base is a home or a target and who you can trust. A guide to the five conflict models and how to choose.
4 min read
RenderEvery game is limited by either the CPU or the GPU at any moment. A five-minute test with resolution and per-thread usage tells you which one is yours, and a table shows which settings to touch and which part to upgrade.
5 min read
RenderFrames per second count how many frames come out; frame time says how long each one takes. With a conversion table, the formula, what 1 % and 0.1 % lows are and why a high average can hide stutter.
5 min read
RenderA powerful graphics card running at 60 % is not coasting: it is waiting. The seven usual causes, from the CPU to the frame limiter, how to tell them apart with three tests and when the right fix is to do nothing.
6 min read
RenderA nine-step recipe for tuning the graphics of a big-world game: start from a preset, find the worst scene, identify the limit and touch only the settings that move that limit. With a table of what loads the CPU, the GPU or VRAM.
5 min read
RenderMeasuring well is what separates knowing from guessing. Which free tools to use, which numbers to watch (frame time, 1 % lows, per-thread usage, temperature), a repeatable test protocol for online games and how to read the graphs.
5 min read
RenderThe first hours of a survival MMO decide whether you stay. A step-by-step plan for new players: read the rules, learn the needs, build small, find a group, and avoid the six mistakes that end most first sessions.
4 min read
RenderMap size means nothing without travel time and density. Walking-time maths from one kilometre to a whole planet, four ways to build a big map, five questions to test a claim, and how COLONIZED approaches scale.
4 min read
RenderA player cap is not the same as hundreds of people sharing a space. The maths of why it is hard, the techniques that make it work, five questions to test a claim, and where COLONIZED's own design goal stands.
4 min read
RenderWalking through a ship is easy when it is parked. Walking through it while it turns, in a world shared with other players, is a different problem. The three approaches, the hard cases, seven questions to ask, and where COLONIZED stands.
4 min read
RenderPing is not frame rate: it is how long a message takes to reach the server and come back. What ping, jitter and packet loss measure, how prediction and lag compensation work in an MMO, what a good ping is and how to measure and improve your connection.
5 min read
RenderA whole star system with planets the size of Earth is a promise with numbers behind it: surface area, gravity from radius and four engineering problems. What it means, what to ask, and what COLONIZED has built so far.
4 min read
RenderIn a real player economy, players set the prices and the studio sets the rules. Currency, faucets and sinks, markets and the custody that keeps trades safe, plus the five ways economies break. COLONIZED's economy is in development.
4 min read
RenderA big world does not fit in memory all at once: it loads on the fly. How much RAM makes sense (and why in two modules), which SSD is enough, how much VRAM each resolution needs and how to recognize memory stutter, which looks a lot like a CPU problem.
5 min read
RenderA Ryzen 9 9950X3D and a 16 GB GeForce RTX 5070 Ti make one of the most balanced pairs for MMOs and survival games. What each brings, which caveats apply (two chiplets, memory, cooling, power supply) and when a 9800X3D is the better buy.
5 min read
RenderSpace sims are about the ship. Space survival games are about you. They share a sky and part of their audience, but they ask different things of you. A side-by-side comparison, a quiz, and where COLONIZED sits.
4 min read
RenderSurvival MMORPG sounds like three genres in a trench coat. It is three ingredients with different jobs: the MMO gives the world, the RPG gives the character and survival gives the pressure. Here is how they combine.
4 min read
RenderAn upscaler relieves the GPU; frame generation multiplies what you see, not how you respond. A decision guide: what to use depending on your limit (CPU or GPU), with what base frame rate, and why in an MMO it pays to think before turning it on.
5 min read
RenderThe display refreshes at one pace and the graphics card produces at another: that is where tearing and stutter come from. How vertical sync and variable sync (G-Sync, FreeSync) solve it, why a frame limit helps and which setup to start from.
5 min read
RenderA bottleneck is the part that sets the pace for the whole PC. This guide explains how one forms, why there is always one, which symptoms point to the CPU, GPU, memory, disk or network, and when fixing it is not worth the money.
6 min read
RenderA closed alpha is a test, not a preview. What the first week feels like, what you will not get, how to write a bug report that gets fixed, and what the published terms of the COLONIZED alpha say.
4 min read
RenderMore players, more fauna and more structures mean more work for the CPU, and a better graphics card does not fix it. The five loads that saturate it in an MMO or a survival game, why one thread rules and what hardware eases it.
4 min read
RenderFour things in Aurin can attack you without wearing a uniform. The bestiary of COLONIZED in one page: what each creature is, how it behaves, its weak spot, what it leaves behind, its regional forms and who hunts it. As the canon records it.
5 min read
RenderHardly anyone in Aurin flies a flag. Who lives, works and shoots in the system of COLONIZED: the people of the five Guilds, the crew that receives new colonists, the independents, the two houses, the groups hostile to everyone and how to tell them apart at thirty metres.
4 min read
RenderA field guide to the resources of the Aurin system: what technalite is and where it is richest, the other four ores, the world that has them all, the materials only one place gives, what the fauna leaves behind and what can't be mined. As the canon and the design record it.
4 min read
RenderEverything you need before opening The Aurin Chronicle, the novel of COLONIZED: what it is about in two minutes, how long Book One takes, where to start, the fifteen pieces, the seven main characters, the places it visits and how it relates to the game. No spoilers.
7 min read
RenderCo-op in COLONIZED is not a lobby that waits for you: it is a colony in a persistent universe. What a group shares today, how roles work with the Compis, what group content is still in development, and how a group of friends can get into the closed alpha together.
3 min read
RenderOne day of work on COLONIZED, read from the commit history: how dune fields will come from each world's wind, why the ground now weathers by real data, what the terrain costs and how we will make it cheaper, and why our public roadmap looked frozen until that night.
8 min read
RenderThe heavy transport ark of the Flota Aura never reached the dock built for it. A guide to its fall from the canon: the war of Year 1, La Cicatriz, the Cuarenta Días de Fuego, the question nobody can answer, the anniversaries and the chapters of the Chronicle.
6 min read
RenderA practical guide to game testing phases: what each label usually means, how a closed test is run, what Steam Playtest and Early Access are under Valve's rules, how to write a bug report that gets read, which offers are scams and how the COLONIZED closed alpha works.
5 min read
RenderMegaLights became production-ready in Unreal Engine 5.8. What it actually does, why its cost barely grows with the number of lights, what hardware it expects, what it cannot light yet, how it differs from Lumen, and why the COLONIZED development build does not use it.
5 min read
RenderMost procedural planets start from a random seed. COLONIZED starts from a canon: radius, density, air, rock, places and rules written as data. How that data becomes fifteen worlds, why the terrain comes from real elevation and physics, and what is still under review.
4 min read
RenderWhat is coming in 2027 for COLONIZED: the first closed alpha wave, what it builds on in the current build, the universe it is set in, what is still in development, and how to get a key in the first waves.
3 min read
RenderIf you are looking for a new survival MMO for 2026 and 2027, this is COLONIZED in one page: the survival loop, the worlds, building, combat and factions, what is already in the build, what is still in development, and the timeline to the closed alpha.
4 min read
RenderEverything that orbits Aurin, the star of COLONIZED: four planets, ten moons, the asteroid Ashkar, the Cementerio de Aura and the Rings of Kaldrek. With the canon's figures for every body, the mysteries the settlers still argue about and where each place appears in the Chronicle.
7 min read
RenderSmall floating cores that kept the accounts of a fleet nobody lived through from start to finish, lost in a war and rescued one by one. The lore of the five Compis, how a settler gets one, where they appear in the Chronicle and what exists of them in the game.
6 min read
RenderThe first devlog on the new site does one job: sort every system of COLONIZED into done, in development or designed, with the numbers behind it, plus two things we got wrong and how we fixed them.
5 min read
RenderNVIDIA's RTX technologies without the marketing: what each part of DLSS does, which GeForce cards support it in 2026, why generated frames do not respond to your input and how Reflex fits in. Plus how COLONIZED's development build uses them.
4 min read
RenderFive neutral organisations born from the wreck of the Arca Aurora, trusted by both factions and owned by neither. Their origin in the Cuarenta Días de Fuego, their leaders, how reputation with them works, what of it exists in the game today and where they appear in the Chronicle.
6 min read
RenderMMO is the umbrella: many players in one persistent online world. MMORPG is one kind of MMO, built around a character who grows. The types of MMO, theme park and sandbox, and how to spot a game that is only online multiplayer.
3 min read
RenderNanite and Lumen without the marketing: how virtualised geometry and dynamic global illumination work, what Virtual Shadow Maps, MegaLights and TSR add, the budgets and limits Epic documents, and two lessons from using them on a whole planet.
6 min read
RenderWhy a planet-sized world breaks a game engine, the three tricks that fix it (floating origin, double precision, compressed distances), how orbits and spheres of influence work, and how COLONIZED builds the Aurin system: real radii, Kepler orbits and one server zone per body.
5 min read
RenderWalking from the cockpit to the bunk changes what a ship is. What a walkable ship needs to work (scale, rooms with a job, honest measurements), how COLONIZED designs the interiors of its seven ships, and what is still in development.
3 min read
RenderA practical guide to performance in UE5 games on PC: the settings with the biggest impact, what eats video memory, how to read minimum and recommended requirements, and the measured story of how we cut a planet's VRAM by 58 % and its cloud cost from 15.5 to 3.5 ms.
6 min read
RenderWhat makes a game a space sim, the three flight models (arcade, Newtonian with assists, orbital), how a space sim differs from a space MMO and a space survival game, what “realism” really means and where COLONIZED sits.
3 min read
RenderA plain definition of the survival MMO, how it differs from a co-op survival game and from a classic MMORPG, the mechanics they share, the PvP question and what changes when the genre goes to space.
4 min read
RenderOne fleet, one war, two houses. A guide to the Zenith and the Nadir from the canon of the Aurin system: what each believes, where each lives, the cracks on both sides, what choosing a side means in the game today, and where to read them in the Chronicle.
7 min read
LUMBRE