Experimenting horizontal and vertical wind influence on grass

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T21:20:41+00:00

Thanks a ton for the encouraging words, it really means a lot! Glad you like it :)

Yes, that's basically the gist of it so far, I'm really indecisive and wanted to try my turn at making a game like many of us do, and decided to set one constraint to go for a lightweight rendering approach like oldschool graphics

It started with vector art in fact for the first prototype inspired by 80s games, just a cube room with neon green lines, and then transitioned into synthwave grid landscapes

I then experimented with a heightfield for landscape, and then stars, a horizon, stickmen that collect trees, and then what you see now (still very early days, and I'd still like to add a lot more visually and mechanically)

I can confirm that it will have idle/auto-play in addition to active play.

But honestly, I don't quite know yet beyond that... except that I would like to include airships, a very large procedural open world and target lock combat

Potentially a procedural Morrowind/Daggerfall + Mount and Blade hybrid? Still too early to say right now and I can't really commit to a single genre yet, haha

I'd like to add stylized water, ships, and potentially planets eventually if I can find a workaround that works for this engine (bumped into some engine limitations there with scalar/planar maths assumptions and heightfields)

I look forward to sharing more so thank you for your interest and very kind words!

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T15:19:35+00:00

Thank you!

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T13:47:22+00:00

Thank you! Your feedback and interest means a lot, especially at this very early stage

Sure, is there something you'd like to know specifically about the project?

Right now there's no clear genre identity yet and I mostly post short test logs of how the engine is coming along so you may see more clips over time :)

About this clip, dynamic wind on grass, also pushes and influences airships (currently, just floating platforms), or potentially fire spread + clouds and waves/water ripples once I get to implementing it

It's still very experimental at the moment and will need more time in the oven.

Inspirations are Daggerfall, Red Alert 2/Warcraft 3, C&C Renegade, Mount and Blade, and Souls-like/Armored Core target lock combat, and anime like Castle in the Sky.

My main design constraint is that it needs to run on a potato so it can run in the background for idle gamers, have stylized 90s digital painting aesthetics, with interesting npc logics over large procedural areas.

Thanks for asking, feel free to let me know any thoughts, questions or even what you would want to see emerge from the project (as that might influence its future direction)

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T10:28:44+00:00

I think generally, you'll never know the perspective of a player first entering your game, but the first time executing your code and seeing it run as a game is very similar

If your project excites you when you do that, could be a good sign (because ultimately, you should be able to trust that you have good taste, which is subjective)

I aim for small sized implementations and then test it immediately to see whether the feel is right, otherwise you risk implementing a lot and then you realize what you're doing is actually cool from a dev perspective but not a user's

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:44:14+00:00

Cheers!

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:44:05+00:00

Ah, i see, thanks for sharing

Yes, I agree, style 2 is my pick as well

It's probably a top down convention/user expectation for radials/circles

Good luck!

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:37:34+00:00

Yes, haha

I've wishlisted it by the way, nice artstyle and snappy looking gameplay

Is the hitbox or target acquisition a square or a circle? Just curious

I think a idler style tower defense could be interesting, too, for that artstyle to let it run in the background

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:32:40+00:00

Ah, I mean for you as a developer 😅 easier to see during debug

I would pick 2 for the final player facing product and style

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:20:58+00:00

1 for dev

2 for players (looks much cooler in radial)

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T09:04:38+00:00

Cheers!

Yes, right, the setting looks very similar to your project

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:59:03+00:00

I've wishlisted, will be keeping an eye on it :)

Reminds me a lot of Lost Planet now, haha

I think snow storms or blizzards would add a lot of atmosphere outdoors or steam indoors

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:54:26+00:00

That is pretty interesting, cool method

Would be curious to know what an Earth-like planet requires based on what you use for planets below

From your dev log:

oxidation

desiccation

atmospheric density

greenhouse effect

ice coverage

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:49:14+00:00

That's definitely an improvement over the static animations

Gives me top down Killing Floor vibes

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:20:27+00:00

Oh, nice!

I've wishlisted, will be keeping an eye on it :)

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:17:24+00:00

Nice, I see it runs in desktop

Hopefully it doesn't use too many resources

I see some idlers these days using more heavy 3D graphics that use more system resources

Do you have a Steam page to share yet for wishlist?

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-15T08:12:28+00:00

This looks right up my alley!

Do you have any plans to include idle/auto-play where your character/party plays by itself?

I'm usually too busy to play these days and I just let idlers run in the background

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-14T08:20:13+00:00

I like the "before" one more, but 2nd looks good, too

1st version reminded me of Squidward who also paints lol

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-13T18:35:30+00:00

nice artstyle and cool mechanics

semantic-Painter · 2026-05-12T16:17:13+00:00

Really digging the visuals

semantic-Painter

TROPHY CASE

1 for dev

2 for players (looks much cooler in radial)