Hello Everyone,
We hope you have all had a relaxing holiday season and a happy new year! Over the past few weeks we have made great progress on several exciting new features planned for future release in The Fifth Day. First and foremost, the core framework for the new AI pathfinder is virtually finished. With the ability to quickly find and navigate both aerial and ground paths we hope to add much more diverse NPC behavior in the future. A few more performance optimizations still need to be implemented before release, but overall the component is nearing conclusion.
Additionally, we have received many requests on adding new levels and implementing more variety in level design. To address such concerns, we have started work on a new physics based procedural world generator. Physics based effects such as erosion and water body formation, will allow for much more natural looking terrains than traditional noise based methods. This concept is still in its early stages, but you can begin to see some of these nice effects in the images below.
NOTE: These images are of early work in progress, and are not representative of the final product.
The first image shows some of these concepts in action on a traditional fractal noise based terrain with multiple material layers and two water point sources. After the physics simulation, the rivers are triangulated to produce an optimized water mesh to save performance and triangle count.
The second image was created by combining several rain-based erosion passes with variable vegetation growth.
We hope to continue expanding on this system to deliver new worlds for you to explore in the future.
Cheers,
-Touz