Creating a realistic wilderness possible ?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hello,

I am in the beginning stages of designing a realistic survival skills game inspired by Survivorman, among other things. My goal is to make a game that is about being in a situation that you lost, and need to be able to find rescue, and stay alive.

There are no zombies, or anything like that… but my main concern is the divide between real life and video games.

What I mean is, walking through a forest in a game you can most easily pick a direction and go that way no problem. But in reality people can tend you get off track as they walk and end up going in circles… or getting more lost

So, I figure the thing I would need to do is increase the amount of obstacles (rocks, trees, etc) and make sure these things are generated in a way that does give any clear “straight” paths for a player.

I wonder if this kind of forest density and detail is attainable performance wise, and what if any tips and techniques I should be researching.

I hope this question is clear enough. If not please ask, I can explain more.

Michael

2

Yes of course it can be done, the engine can do almost anything, the design is up to you.

3

This is definitely possible, with good LODs and low-ish poly models, you can have whole forests spawn and still get a very high frame rate.

4

We’re working on something similar to what you’re describing (with some additional gameplay features) and it’s absolutely possible. We have actually found that people tend to go in circles in our game just like they do in real life. :slight_smile:

5

The object placement is an important part when you create natural environments -> go into the forest and study it :slight_smile:
In the UE4 you can create pretty realistic forests.
e.g
://80.lv/articles/forest-scene-unreal-engine-4/

6

When we started working on our forest scene, we first downloaded all available assets on the Market, studied them and then made everything ourselves.
Copy, Study, Learn - Do =D