Hey Everybody,
Thought I’d share what we’ve been working on in honor of Screenshot Saturday.
http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/66/65071/thumb_620x2000/FoliageUpdate.gif
We spent the week overhauling Strawhart’s foliage system after we decided that our current tree’s simply weren’t conveying the atmosphere we wanted them to. The stage above, Westharrow, is set in a forest, and features a lumber mill, secret clearings, and a shadowy village. However, with our previous foliage (which you can see in previous posts) the idea of a forest simply wasn’t popping to mind when people played the stage.
We identified the problem as being twofold. First, our current trees did not create a canopy, or any overhead cover at all. You cant have shadowy paths, or that sense of exploration without a canopy. The second problem was that our current forest was too still. People expect movement and chaos from the natural world, and our old efforts weren’t conveying either of those things.
So, to solve the first problem, we made our trees much, much bigger and added leaves. The leaves were really tricky as we wanted to stay true to our 64-bit aesthetic, but still make use of what a modern engine is capable of doing (In actual 64-bit games, their forests usually consisted of a single blurry tree texture stuck on a plane, tiling over and over).
Our first solution helped us find our second. Now that we had leaves, we could add a wind sway to them, to help give the entire area a shimmer of motion. We re-did our bushes to be in line with the new look of the trees, and gave them and the grass that same sway. To compliment it further, we added a simple falling leaf particle.
That’s about it. Thanks for reading! If you want to see all of our previous screenshot saturdays, they’re on our