What changed
0 fixes1 addition0 changes0 removals
addedI've wanted proper rivers in this game for a long time, and I finally built a system for them right inside Unity. You thread a line of nodes through a scene to set where the river runs, and the tool bakes that into a flowing ribbon of water. There's an in-editor River Tool so authoring one is pleasant instead of a chore. It came together faster than I'd expected, because under the hood it's the same idea as the road tool from last time, so a good deal of that code carried straight over and I didn't have to build the hard parts twice. Steam post image Before this, every stretch of water was assembled by hand from flat quads, each placed and angled to meet the next. Still water wasn't so bad, but rivers were a real pain, and drops and waterfalls worse, since every change of height or direction meant nudging individual pieces into line and hoping the seams between them didn't show. The node system takes all of that off my hands. I lay down the path the river follows, and it builds one continuous surface over the ground, with no visible joins where tiles used to meet. It's also far quicker to put a river down than it used to be, which is the part that matters most to me. The whole point is to get levels finished faster while the water reads as one connected thing that flows, rather than a row of angled tiles doing their best to pass as a river. The surface ripples and reflects the way moving water should, and getting it to read as water rather than a painted blue strip took plenty of fiddling. There's more polish on the water that I'll cover separately, but the bones are in, and rivers finally feel like part of the world instead of a texture laid over it. Full write-up's on Patreon if you want it: https://www.patreon.com/CallOfSaregnar/posts/devlog-172-new-162466940. If the game's your kind of thing, a wishlist helps most, and a follow means these updates show up in your Steam feed. Rhu
Call of Saregnar changes
addedI've wanted proper rivers in this game for a long time, and I finally built a system for them right inside Unity. You thread a line of nodes through a scene to set where the river runs, and the tool bakes that into a flowing ribbon of water. There's an in-editor River Tool so authoring one is pleasant instead of a chore. It came together faster than I'd expected, because under the hood it's the same idea as the road tool from last time, so a good deal of that code carried straight over and I didn't have to build the hard parts twice. Steam post image Before this, every stretch of water was assembled by hand from flat quads, each placed and angled to meet the next. Still water wasn't so bad, but rivers were a real pain, and drops and waterfalls worse, since every change of height or direction meant nudging individual pieces into line and hoping the seams between them didn't show. The node system takes all of that off my hands. I lay down the path the river follows, and it builds one continuous surface over the ground, with no visible joins where tiles used to meet. It's also far quicker to put a river down than it used to be, which is the part that matters most to me. The whole point is to get levels finished faster while the water reads as one connected thing that flows, rather than a row of angled tiles doing their best to pass as a river. The surface ripples and reflects the way moving water should, and getting it to read as water rather than a painted blue strip took plenty of fiddling. There's more polish on the water that I'll cover separately, but the bones are in, and rivers finally feel like part of the world instead of a texture laid over it. Full write-up's on Patreon if you want it: https://www.patreon.com/CallOfSaregnar/posts/devlog-172-new-162466940. If the game's your kind of thing, a wishlist helps most, and a follow means these updates show up in your Steam feed. Rhu
I've wanted proper rivers in this game for a long time, and I finally built a system for them right inside Unity. You thread a line of nodes through a scene to set where the river runs, and the tool bakes that into a flowing ribbon of water. There's an in-editor River Tool so authoring one is pleasant instead of a chore. It came together faster than I'd expected, because under the hood it's the same idea as the road tool from last time, so a good deal of that code carried straight over and I didn't have to build the hard parts twice. Steam post image Before this, every stretch of water was assembled by hand from flat quads, each placed and angled to meet the next. Still water wasn't so bad, but rivers were a real pain, and drops and waterfalls worse, since every change of height or direction meant nudging individual pieces into line and hoping the seams between them didn't show. The node system takes all of that off my hands. I lay down the path the river follows, and it builds one continuous surface over the ground, with no visible joins where tiles used to meet. It's also far quicker to put a river down than it used to be, which is the part that matters most to me. The whole point is to get levels finished faster while the water reads as one connected thing that flows, rather than a row of angled tiles doing their best to pass as a river. The surface ripples and reflects the way moving water should, and getting it to read as water rather than a painted blue strip took plenty of fiddling. There's more polish on the water that I'll cover separately, but the bones are in, and rivers finally feel like part of the world instead of a texture laid over it. Full write-up's on Patreon if you want it: https://www.patreon.com/CallOfSaregnar/posts/devlog-172-new-162466940. If the game's your kind of thing, a wishlist helps most, and a follow means these updates show up in your Steam feed. Rhu
