Tawa: Lost in Time
🌿 A Month of Major Changes
The past month has been a turning point for Tawa: Lost in Time. Our focus has been on realism, stability, and fine-tuning the world’s living ecosystem. Here’s everything that’s new:
🧠 Core Systems
Smart Respawn: a brand-new system (MRespawner + PlayerStats) now brings Tawa back to the latest checkpoint without reloading the scene.
Death & Recovery: when Tawa dies, she collapses, the screen fades out, and she returns seamlessly to her last safe position.
Dynamic Stats: stamina and health are now linked — lower health reduces maximum stamina, making survival more strategic.
🐀 Main Character Improvements
Complete rewrite of the mouse controller, now based on Rigidbody physics with smooth transitions between walk, run, idle, and death.
Added Stealth Mode: Tawa can hide inside bushes and camouflage herself from predators.
Climbing mechanics added for interactive surfaces and objects.
More natural movement: better turning, ground detection, and overall responsiveness.
🦋 Wildlife & AI
Dragonfly AI: a new intelligent creature that orbits around the player, changes size and color when sensing danger, and randomly moves toward water, fruits, or environmental points of interest.
Birds Rewritten: the flying system (lb_Bird.cs) has been fully overhauled — birds now fly freely, land, and take off naturally without relying on NavMesh.
Giant Rat & Creatures: autonomous ground movement with looping patrols, using only the walk animation for realism and performance.
🪵 Technical Optimizations
Integrated UnityMeshSimplifier (Whinarn) to automatically reduce vertex counts on heavy 3D models.
Added an Auto-LOD Replacement Tool: if a low-poly version exists, it’s automatically used as LOD1 with proper LODGroup setup.
Fixed camera clipping and collision issues — no more falling through the ground or seeing through terrain.
Extended Far Clip Plane for improved long-distance rendering in large open areas.
🌎 World & Atmosphere
All biomes are now complete: beach, forest, rocky zone, castle-forest, and the central island (final area).
Enhanced additive scene loading and seamless zone streaming.
Added natural ambient sounds: wind, birds, distant volcano rumbles, and environmental layers.
Removed duplicate trees and reduced unnecessary debug logs to boost performance.