Tag: procedural terrain

New Paths Coming Soon!

New Paths Coming Soon!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Sorry for the silence recently. Sometimes life comes at you hard and you don’t have a lot of time to work on things!

I’ve been busy getting the new path-building system in. Right now, the preview display is in, and allows you to build paths in all 8 directions. As you can see below:

pathman

Right now, the preview is basically a line renderer with a very simple material, perfect for illustrating where your path is expected to go.

As you draw the path, you’ll see how much it’s expected to cost. Once you release the mouse button, the path will begin being built by the landscaper. You’ll be able to remove sections of the path at any time.

Later on you’ll also be able to choose the type of path you want to build, which will come with different materials, costs, and sizes! Should lead to some very interesting styles!

Now I’m working on implementing the procedural mesh for the path proper, which will take a bit of work but I think I can get it done this weekend. Being able to place the path in 8 directions will be pretty useful!

Stay tuned for more!

-Gus

Interface Update for Terrain Demo

Interface Update for Terrain Demo

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

So I’ve figured out how to improve the interface for the new terrain controllers for Boss Golf, and I added a button to display a grid overlay on top of the terrain, so that you can better gauge how it all looks!

Mainly, the painting tool now has an overlay on the terrain letting you know the area that will be affected. You can see it in action in the gifs below:

paint_brush_one

paint_brush_two

paint_brush_three

And the new grid overlay, which makes understanding the terrain slopes even easier:

terrain_editing_update

That’s it for today’s mini-update! There’s a holiday coming up this week, which I plan to take advantage of to further the development of the AI in the game. Still hopeful to have little AI golfers walking around the course and playing a nice game of golf!

Oh yeah, and as always, you can find the updated demo Here!

Enjoy!

Dev Update #31: We have dynamic(ish) water!

Dev Update #31: We have dynamic(ish) water!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

This weekend things have been slower than I’d have wanted, partially due to the typhoon, partially due to spending the afternoon making pizzas, partially due to other life things that happen!

Still, progress was done. I was able to prototype the dynamic water system, allowing water to “flow” to nearby tiles if they are below the waterline. You can see it in action below:

Boss_Golf_Dynamic_Water

It still has a couple of bugs, namely with the water sometimes not disappearing if you move the tile back up above the water line or cut its connection to the water source.

I’ll also need to figure out a way to let the user know where exactly the water source is, so he can quickly remove all the water by simply erasing it. Maybe some particle effects that look like bubbles would do the trick. I’ll test that next week.

For now, it is playable enough for the demo, so I’ll leave it in. Last thing to knock off, tomorrow morning (since it’s a holiday, yay!) will be the putting mechanic. Now that we actually have a hole object, it’ll be a matter of adding a new club option and checking when the ball collides with the hole. Should be simple enough!

That’s it for now. Apologies for the delay, but sometimes life happens.

Stay tuned for the new demo!

Dev Update #17: Better flattening!

Dev Update #17: Better flattening!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Heyo folks!

This quick update is about the flattening tool. In the previous incarnation, it was a bit confusing as to how it was actually doing the flattening. Some thought it was averaging, some thought it was going to the max/min of the quad.

In actuality, it was dependent on the vertex closest to your click. Which, looking back now, while functionally good, it wasn’t well represented by the controls.

So, I’ve changed it so that it will flatten the quad to the highest vertex. And I also made it compatible to dragging, as you can see below:

flattening

It is always based off of the highest vertex on the first selected quad. Works like a treat, though processing it can be a bit laggy in some cases. I’ll take a look at optimizing  it later if we end up going with it.

The vertex and tile height controls will remain as is, as they offer a very good control with the way they are. I envision users using the flatten tool to make a larger area flat, and then using the vertex/tile tools to further refine the terrain as they wish.

Next up; water! Have some ideas about how to tackle rivers/ponds, and am going to begin working on it now. This weekend we’ll have an awesome demo with a lot of new stuff compared to the previous one! Once I can make terrain editing/course building fun, that’s already half the battle!

Thanks for reading!

Dev Update #12: Chunk Terrain is Connected

Dev Update #12: Chunk Terrain is Connected

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hey folks!

Today’s update will be a short one, but it is a good one: I’ve finished replacing the existing terrain system with the newer chunkier one!

implementedTerrain

And took the time to begin redoing other hastily designed systems for more solid ones, improving performance and maintenance as well. By the weekend, I’ll have it back to full functionality with improvements. And a new demo for playing around with the terrain!

Stay tuned!

Dev Update #11: Procedural Tree Placement!

Dev Update #11: Procedural Tree Placement!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello folks!

Today’s update is an awesome one.

If you’ve been following us so far, you’ve noticed that all our tree placement looks rather… Mechanical. One tree per tile. That’s just not how nature intended. We should do something about it.

And we did. Look at this barren course:

courseBarren

It needs trees.

So we give it trees:

courseBetter

Wow look at that! Beautiful procedurally placed trees, make the course look much prettier and breaks the monotony of single placed trees! Hurray!

But how?

Well with the new system! It will attempt to add a tree to a desired tile. If there’s already a tree, it simply adds to it, and jumbles up their positioning. A maximum of 4 trees can be added to any tile. Here’s the feature in action:

treeMaker

As a bonus, if you’ve reached the limit of 4 trees, and you try to place another one, it will simply randomize the positioning of the trees. This way you can keep playing around with the tile until the RNG gods smile upon you!

Next is ensuring the trees stay in location when you modify the terrain!

Til next time!

Dev Update #10: Base Shot Generation is Ok!

Dev Update #10: Base Shot Generation is Ok!

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Heyo folks!

Finally fixed the base shot generation. Since it’s simply a guideline, it doesn’t really care about the sloping of the course: all it cares about is that there’s no direct obstacle in front of the shot! Technically, this is already an upgrade if compared to SimGolf since in SimGolf there were many instances where it would attempt to mark the course by going through trees or rocks!

Below you can see the course path being automatically edited to account for removal of valid tiles:

baseShot

That pretty much covers the basic shot generation. Great success!

I’ve already implemented utility functions for calculating the usefulness of aiming at a certain tile. With this update to the basic shot generation, I can move forward on finalizing the spawning of certain objects when painting the terrain (ie: trees) and create a basic demo for testing the terrain building. If you’re interested in trying it out, give me a shout!

Stay tuned for the next update!

Dev Update #10: Terrain controls good to go.

Dev Update #10: Terrain controls good to go.

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Howdy!

Terrain controls are finalized! Created the displays for showing the vertice height to give you a better idea of the differences in your landscape. For this stage of the game, you can:

-Flatten the tile (to the value of the vertice nearest to the mouse pointer):

FlattenControl

-Edit the tile (by clicking and dragging the tile up and down with the mouse. It influences nearby tiles as well):

TileHeight

-Edit the vertice (by clicking and dragging the vertice up and down with the mouse. It influences nearby tiles as well):

VerticeControl

And as a bonus; since I added some thickness to the tiles, the current base shot generation function works mostly fine. But still need reworking. So that’s the next focus: Improve the base shot generation system. Also need to make it take terrain features into account.

With that out of the way, should be able to get a demo up for testing the terrain and course building, and implement the feedback. Once I’m happy enough with it, it’ll be time to add some golfers to the course!

Stay tuned for more!

 

Dev Update #9: The Hills are Solid

Dev Update #9: The Hills are Solid

by Gus Martin ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Heyo folks!

I’ve just finished tweaking the mesh generation to make the terrain solid. Instead of being a simple flat mesh, each tile is a cube of sorts, portraying the underground level of the course. Looks much nicer!

tilesolid

I’ve also tweaked the terrain controls so that the stepping is smoother, in this way you won’t accidentally create a massive hill when editing your course. (Unless you really want to!)

Now it’s time to finish up the terrain controls! Stay tuned!