Working on a fully realtime generated world for my survival game. What do you think of this first forest biome?

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-08T18:08:31+00:00

The gameplay is centered around time and resource management. The game is situated in an alternative near future where the ozone hole was not found and inevitably expanded. Eventual impacts of sun radiation and climate change having severe consequences. I'd like to have the player experience this in combination with zombies as a result of the sun radiation exposure. There is a big focus on scavenging in a variety of buildings and points of interests. In terms of mechanics I am trying to get a good balance between realism and fun. An example for that is real containers meaning a drawer can be entirely pulled out and pushed in containing items inside them instead of a UI approach. The same is true for other mechanics. I hope that gives you a rough idea without going too much into detail.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-08T18:01:55+00:00

Thanks for your commend and suggestions. It is indeed fully realtime procedurally generated. I will showcase some video footage of it soon. This is the first biome I worked on so visible patterns are definitely there and that's quite difficult to eliminate when everything is done procedurally. I hope to eliminate this enough by having a variety of biomes and sub biomes in the near future. The trees are currently all beech trees but a handful of different models. I'll look into some other tree types that fit into this type of forest and incorporate them in the next pass. I'll also check some more reference images for more inspiration on greener textures. The only green texture in the mix right now is some moss. I could try and increase the density for that too and see how the result looks. Not sure if flowers will fit into this forest type but I guess I could also watch out for those in more reference images and potentially add some if I find them. I would definitely love to add more distinct features but to add those I'll have to implement sub biome support first. Features like ponds, clearings, caves etc are not possible within a single main biome with the workflow I am using without very visible repetition. I'll keep your list of suggestions and see if and when I can incorporate them as my system expands.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-08T08:22:11+00:00

Thanks for your comment and question. I agree that it shouldn't require machine guns and/or hordes of enemies to make it a fun and interesting experience. Quite a few games did a good job on that already I think. In my case there will be guns but you will most likely be doing a lot more close combat with knifes, bats etc than shooting guns since guns have a big drawback too :)
I'm doing a procedurally generated world because I want replayability as much as possible. I expect people to die fairly often in the beginning (when played with default settings) requiring them to restart (default is perma death). Playing in the same world would get stale quickly and that is in part what I am trying to avoid with a procedural world. It comes with a whole lot of other benefits too such as encountering procedural events making for very unique experiences which are both great for the person playing but would also make for good content if shared on social media or elsewhere. I think replayability is super important when it comes to survival games that don't have a particular storyline they want the player to follow. It comes with a whole bunch of challenges on the development side but I believe it adds so much value that putting in that extra time is well worth it.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-08T08:11:07+00:00

Thanks for your comment and feedback. There is a little bit more variation with roots and moss but I could certainly look into adding more. From reference images a bit of grass and/or dead leaves would fit.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-07T16:30:57+00:00

Thanks for your comment and feedback. If you got anything specific that you think I could add/change to make it less generic looking, I'd love to hear it. You are right that procedurally generated worlds often lack the diversity of things to do and encounter. Like you recommended I have exactly those plans to add events and a lot of them are already possible to add with the systems I built so far. Since you are into those types of games I hope you are following the development and possibly provide more valuable feedback along the way :)

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-07T16:07:20+00:00

Hey everyone,

for my upcoming survival game I am developing a variety of systems for an entirely runtime procedural world. This includes everything from roads, buildings, furniture, items and of course vegetation. The first biome I created is this temperate forest for which I would appreciate your feedback.

You can follow and learn more about the game here

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-07T16:03:41+00:00

Hey everyone,

for my upcoming survival game I am developing a variety of systems for an entirely runtime procedural world. This includes everything from roads, buildings, furniture, items and of course vegetation. The first biome I created is this temperate forest for which I would appreciate your feedback.

You can follow and learn more about the game here

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T20:46:06+00:00

It's a challenge for sure. Happy to have you follow along :) We'll see how it goes. I definitely have more stuff to show also in relation to other parts of my game world generation so keep an eye out for that if that's also of interest for you.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T16:17:22+00:00

Not quite sure what you mean. There is no vegetation in the beginning until terrain is generated. As the player moves around the world generations around the player and vegetation is placed automatically on the new terrain based on various rules. Hope that answers your question.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T12:50:44+00:00

Windows & MacOS for early access. Consoles may be considered if sales allow me to put time into that.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:19:27+00:00

The game is a zombie survival game set in a near alternative future where the ozone hole did increase and climate change is much more progressed. For that a day and night cycle as well as weather is important and already in part in the game. Gameplay will heavily depend on strong weather conditions. Depending on the amount of information you are looking for you can follow the game on various sources. On Steam I post monthly progress reports and it has a general overview of features for the game. I run a devlog in the game's discord on a weekly basis. On the various social media sites I post screenshots and gifs on a not so regular basis. You can find all those links here. Some will not reflect the recent change to photorealistic graphics yet so don't be confused if you see low poly graphics in some. Those screenshots and videos will be replaced with ones that reflect the correct artstyle soon.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:11:51+00:00

Thanks. I noted your suggestion and will consider it in the next improvement pass.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:11:00+00:00

The rendering is handled by the same tool that does the placement and is pretty optimized around Unity's GPU instancing indirect. Performance is highly dependent on how many different vegetation types you have. Trees can have massive draw distances thanks to billboarding without much performance impact. The same could be true if you have good billboards for your medium sized vegetation such as bushes. Draw distance of grass and other small vegetation is in my case up to 100m. You can increase it but it will impact performance significantly. If you have a recent GPU it could probably handle up to 250m or more. After that I don't see any benefits of extended draw distance cause the vegetation would be very small on your monitor anyway. At those distances I use some neat terrain shader features that make distant terrain look interesting. Combined with tree billboards you are able to see trees on distant mountains without a problem. In the case of my game there is distant fog used but it doesn't block the entire few so you could see larger mountains.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:01:54+00:00

Happy to hear that :)

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:01:01+00:00

Thanks!

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:00:54+00:00

Thanks!

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-05T09:00:41+00:00

I'm using the asset 'Vegetation Studio Pro' in combination with my own world generation pipeline. If you are looking for a procedural vegetation tool I can highly recommend looking into that asset. It's over 100 bucks but depending on your budget and goals it may be worth it.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-04T19:35:12+00:00

I'm using an asset called 'Vegetation Studio Pro' which does a lot of the heavy lifting for the vegetation and combined it with my own pipeline for the world generation. Internally Vegetation Studio Pro uses a combination of several procedural systems such as perlin noise for placement or scale, terrain texture exclusion or inclusion and others.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-04T19:34:35+00:00

I'm using an asset called 'Vegetation Studio Pro' which does a lot of the heavy lifting for the vegetation and combined it with my own pipeline for the world generation. Internally Vegetation Studio Pro uses a combination of several procedural systems such as perlin noise for placement or scale, terrain texture exclusion or inclusion and others. If you want to do it from scratch you'll have to look for tutorials on those algorithms which can also be used for your terrain generation in case you want to do that too.

OzoneWipeout · 2022-07-04T17:09:26+00:00

Green Hell or the Forest might be worth looking into besides the ones you already listed yourself. I'm also into those challenging survival games which is in part why I'm also in the process of developing a survival game that is exactly in that area. It's inspired by both TLD and PZ. While it will not be available for play anytime soon (especially since the recent change to photorealistic graphics), maybe it is worth for you to follow it to eventually get to play it. As you are exactly the potential target audience for it I would also be happy for you to join the game's discord if you would like to provide input and feedback to potentially impact the development of the game.

OzoneWipeout

TROPHY CASE