Heya, first-time poster here :)

Recently discovered Godot, been goofing around trying to create an open world playground. Don't have a game in mind, just doodling with my terrain assets and learning Godot. Super impressed with the engine, really dig the architecture.

Watched Jeremy Bullock's excellent FPS controller tutorial and built a terrain using Houdini (for geometry and utility masks) and BMD Fusion for creating a landscape texture and normal map fun.

Im going for a pixelated look for anything up close but with the added benefit of "realism" in the distance. Like how painters can paint with realism but when viewed close up its all just blobby brush strokes and textures. I wanted to follow a somewhat similar approach.

Don't know where this little project will take me, but I'm having fun learning Godot and basic game dev.

First pass "game", capture from Godot. https://gfycat.com/whimsicallankydwarfrabbit

Worked on textures: https://gfycat.com/whoppingnaughtydugong

Second pass working on updating the terrain asset. Note these are rendered in Fusions OpenGL viewport, but I should have visual parity in Godot soon enough :)

Heres's a screen grab of how I've set up the terrain textures in Fusion https://gfycat.com/UntriedNervousGoosefish

Im going to try to do a dynamic day/night cycle with layered (pixelated) Terragen clouds next up. Then moving on to implementing scattering of vegetation and rubble.

ps. how do I resize the images in the post ? Would be great to show them slightly bigger. Also, can the gfycat videos be embedded ?

-redhoot

Looks great @redhoot! Definitely looking forward to seeing how this project progresses.

ps. how do I resize the images in the post ? Would be great to show them slightly bigger

Good question. I'm not entirely sure just yet. I think it the Imgur plugin defaults to returning a small thumbnail version of the images uploaded.

I'll look into seeing if it is possible to have slightly larger images in posts.

Edit: Okay, turns out there wasn't an option to change which size the plugin changes new images to, just whether it resizes them or not.

For now new images uploaded will be the size of whatever they are when uploaded. If it causes a problem, I suppose we'll just re-enable the setting and figure something out from there.

Also, can the gfycat videos be embedded ?

Unfortunately they cannot by default. If we were using the new Rich post editor, it would probably be supported, but the Rich post editor had conflicts with some of the plugins we are using.

That said, I was looking at the source code for the Mediator plugin we are using for embeds and it might be possible to add support. I'll try to look into it soon and if possible, add support for gfycat embeds.

No worries then mr TwisterTwigleg, thanks for chiming in :)

Turns out the Mediator plugin wasn't working at all! So adding support for GfyCat had the added benefit of allowing for all of the other embeds Mediator supports. I also took the opportunity to fix an issue with GodotDarkly and header elements.

Now GyfCat should be supported! :sunglasses:

I hope the performance keeps up as you flesh out this level, such as if we start to see foliage and other details.

Do you have any game ideas yet?

So far I get 60fps, and no LOD or texture streaming yet. Im hoping to work on the lighting and day/night schedule.

Then move onto vegetation and scattering.

Gameplay wise, I've always been attracted to bigger open worlds without too much "game" elements. I do like the survival aspect of games like DayZ, where the environment is just as much of a character as other players. The unpredictable nature of games like that appeal to me, where you start and you literally have no idea what's going to happen for that session.

Multiplayer would be fun :)

12 days later

Added 12 lighting scenarios, reworked ambient light setup, added basic (placeholder) foliage and tree setup.

Not particularly convinced on the scattering setup using particles. Both in terms of speed but also management. Would be great if one could use something like a mask / material with the multimeshinstancer. Anyone have any experience with this stuff ?

What are you using for trees? I saw your YT video and wondered - is it a mesh? Billboarded sprites?

@Zireael said: What are you using for trees? I saw your YT video and wondered - is it a mesh? Billboarded sprites?

Its just a simple particle with a sprite shader. I plan on going down the octahedron billboard / imposter route for most assets I think.

But everything is just placeholders for now.

5 days later

Added 360 sprite impostors to trees, toyed with some snow effects and improved the overall visual fidelity a bit more.

I might go back and revisit the impostor setup to see if it can be used for all of the close up assets I want to move towards now. Grass, rocks, twigs, trees, bushes, rubble, gravel etc.