I’ve been thinking of a game experience where players shape the landscape as they play. For instance, a spline is created behind the player, and over time a path would naturally wear into the grass if the spline is “followed”. Tracks turn to trails, trails: paths, paths: roads etc. If anyone has any thoughts on how this could be approached, any suggestions are greatly appreciated, PCG perhaps? Thanks, all.
You can use texture drawing to gradually reducing the amount of grass and bringing up mud then stone etc.
Check this tutorial:
No, to do this you’d use a render target, and dropped objects that can only be captured into the render target.
The capture is then used to determine how the material is altered with repeated use.
Itemsnyou drop fade out over time, so as to restore the original look.
Once you write to a texture that’s pretty much it. So to have a system that can go both directions you need to re-capture in real time.
Cost wise, its not that expensive. The capture only picking up specific objects makes for a streamlined render that can be either really fast (0 objects) or super slow when fully filled.
You just need to manage that upper level treshold to fit within your performance parameters.
Best part of this, is that its instantly replicated across networks.
You are in fact spawning actors or decals or meshes (niagara works best).
Every client will see them, and render their own version which will probably look identical.