Riverbanks, trees, floating stones
DOMEN KONESKI, ANDREJ KREBS
Riverbanks
Riverbanks and (under)water are now filled up with more content such as grass, stones, chorals, ruins, tires and more. I’ve developed a spawning system that allows quick and easy setup for new game objects. You want to spawn a game object only in water at certain depth? You want to spawn trees at certain slope angle and then change its height on the fly? This system now allows you – without coding – to do such things with ease.
ruins on the riverbank
New trees
We decided to rework the tree tops, so I experimented with techniques and stiles, until we got to something we all really liked. This really changes the attitude of the game and creates more immersive but still somewhat abstract feel. The solid blob treetops are now being replaced with bunches of textured alpha transparent planes.
new trees implemented
Floating stone
Lastly, here we have a timelapse video where I modeled a floating stone with a crystal. These stones will float above the crater where the floating islands were raised. I sculpted the basic shape and applied a decimate modifier, after that I added a crystal made in a similar fashion.
[% youtube zysDL8tcpNw %]
Exponential grass level of detail
DOMEN KONESKI
I’ve been tweaking our new grass renderer a little bit and asking myself if I can increase the grass draw distance without ruining the overall performance. I came up with an unique solution by decreasing the amount of rendered grass, having in mind maximum grass distance and current camera position.
New LOD logic allows subtle decrease of rendered grass meshes over the distance between the player and the final render distance. With this system we can now increase the render distance and allows us to add more content into the world of Floatlands
LOD comparison
Terrain minimums and maximums
VILI VOLČINI
Finally I set out to improve the tools for terrain. It’s not much, but I did a function for local min/max search and slope of terrain. Local maximums should be useful for spawning bigger objects that need visibility. Local minimums could be useful for resources that need to be more hidden from the player.
local min/max search
Critter concepts
MITO HORVAT
To further enhance the world we’ll add tiny critters that will roam around the environment. Critters will be friendly animals or mechanical creatures that will move around specific territories. For example you’ll encounter turtles near the sea/shore line, chickens near villages etc. If you decide to kill the critter, there will be a chance that it will drop loot or crafting materials. Although, what kind of heartless person could possibly kill a tiny cute crab dragging around a tin can house.
critter concepts
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