Adding This One Thing Made my Game Look 327% Better

My game has been in need of a major face lift for awhile now, and it's finally time. It's amazing just how much better the game looks after only adding grass and a skybox.

#unity #gamedev #devlog #indiegame

[mastrio]

An easy way to optimize the grass more is to disable them from casting shadows. They can still recieve shadows from other objects but won't cats any themselves.

[seekpodcast]

Tip: have the grass models be only two triangles. One upside down and one right side up on top of it. This will allow you to speed up the game tremendously without sacrificing too much. The grass in Breath of the Wild is actually only two triangles as well.

[alexevaldez]

Good video! A good next steps for your optimizations are:
Textured cutouts rather than full poly grass.
Occulusion drawing (rather than drawing everything from a circle. Do it like the line of sight)
Lod grass. The farther the grass the less detailed it should be~
Then colored grass would be an awesome next visual xD

[smiles]

I feel like there's too much grass, maybe have areas with some less dense grass clumps and areas where theres none at all, ferns and different species of fauna will help as well

Also a way to improve performance further is make it so the further away something is from the player the less polygons it uses so you can be be able to render in the entire map from one spot as well as increas ethe performance of the game.

[SirHorned]

I like the tree shaking a lot more than the camera doing so. Maybe just add the screen shake on the last hit, when the tree explodes (Or when it hits the ground in the future perhaps). I think the problem with the tree shake right now is how the base of the trunk is moving, when really that part should be static.
I think you should use the camera shake when getting hit by enemies instead, maybe add a red vignette or a blue one since you play as a robot (electricity/sparks).

[Danntens]

Everybody: „Damn, we need grass“
Me: „His mouse is on the left side of his keyboard“

[kihayu]

Some tips on how to improve the grass (stolen from Breath of the Wild):
- Zelda renders every blade of grass separately. It uses a straightforward model with 8 vertices for the sides (4 on each side) and another 4 in the vertical center. This allows you to make the blade more 3d like by bending on the two vertices in the middle. This 3d model has the shape of a rectangle and isn't in the shape of a blade. It uses a texture of a grass blade that bends however you modify the 3d model. This allows you to have a more complex texture. I hope I described that enough. Just ask for more information.
- To increase the grass distance, replace the (already simple) model with another one that is more simple with like 6 or 4 vertices in the distance. It will look like normal grass at that distance and you don't have to animate it which also improves performance.
- At a certain distance, don't render every grass blade. Render only every 2nd or 3rd or 4th blade.
- Don't let the grass blades pop in. Use a smooth transition to fade them in or out.

As I said if something is unclear or if you have some further questions, just ask. Maybe I can help :)

[Mighty_Oak]

I think the sky box does really improve the look of the game. one thing I would say is that it looks more realistic than everything else in the world right now so that's maybe why it looks a bit off. maybe you could add some really simple looking cartoonish clouds that slowly move off and disappear a bit like how the Minecraft clouds do. anyways loving the game :)

[lg]

I’d suggest having geographic landmarks in your world. It’s a good way to not get lost when exploring a new world. For example in ARK Survival there are unique terrain features in different locations. Once you see a giant mountain or cave, you know where you are!
Regardless, loving the content, keep it up! Really enjoying watching the progress!

[dalecranston]

I think it would be nice to have a more hilly world rather than a flattish one

[obrooks]

Nice progress as always! I think for the terrain, it might improve the look of the hills by increasing the roughness of the perlin noise to combat that smooth look - maybe even increasing the roughness only on the hills, so that you still keep those nice rolling grassy meadows. Also spawning rocky cliff pieces on steep terrain could help with it looking bare when the grass stops - not sure what the performance would be like though. Keep it up!

[dev.midnighthays]

I want to say this is an really good start to making terrians!
I am struggling rn with developing mine for my new game and I want to say don't let this part of level design mess with you. it takes a long time but in the end it will determine the game level

[deepcanionstudio]

i think that making the top of the grass brighter or the bottom darker would be a great effect to fake ambient occlusion, also randomly scaling the grass can make it look more natural

[Glooberloob]

the brightness from the skybox looks great in my opinion! love seeing your progress

[SalvadorMusica]

You could use occlusion culling, instead of chunking the terrain. It renders only what the camera sees (within a group of static objects).

[sanderschat]

when you see hills, in real life or virtual, you wll get a sense of perspective. Suddenly you realize how 'far' away stuff is, how grand the scenery is.... so adding a few distance hill might give a sense of 'scale' to your world too.
Great to follow your work!

[caden]

I honestly really like the flatter worlds, it makes the environment look so much more vast and pretty

[forbutinactive]

I suggest making LOD models (level of detail), basically the model gets less and lass detailed the farther away from the camera it is, so it will look nice close to you and you wont be able to tell that it looks bad far away, and if you want to have, lets say, a mountain, it would look weird to have it be completely smooth, so you can have it just be low poly and it wont even be noticeable, hope this helps :)

[sammyn.]

Love the new light! I also like how it is flatter more.

[LemurG]

I love acerola’s videos so it was cool you found his grass video! He makes a ton of videos about post processing and such and they are super useful