Quick update about the new additions to the game.
The instance renderer can support multiple types of instanced geometry now. Ie now it can draw multiple copies of grass/pebbles or any other small simple thing i want in clumps or scattered all over. I can effectively switch the camera to an overhead view and spray the stuff everywhere. I also added the ability to pick an individual pebble or grass and rotate its yaw/pitch/roll, scale and how far its off the ground.
I spent way too much time fiddling with my shadows. I had a classic problem with a slight shimmering on my shadows. I fixed this to a more than acceptable level by adding a variable depth and normal bias on a per object basis. No real performance hit, it just means I need to select a bias that looks nice for each object (so objects self shadow nicely without “peter panning” as is its apparently called. Being the perfectionist I am i’ll go back and revist this at some point to make it perfect probably. I asked usually reliable guys at gamedev but unfortunately I didn’t get any answer that made any sense to me. Only 1 person answered. Wah.
I also added a bit of a “finishing touch” to the terrain which probably could have waited. Color maps. The landscape now has a map where to change it’s color. All this does is add a subtle tint to the lanscape which gives it a more random look. I like the effect anyway.
Did some general code tidying too since I found the sunlight direction was being set in about 4 places. Oops.
I’ll be buying in some medival walls and torches and possibly a hut or two if i can find a decent one or maybe just commission them on Fiverr or CGTrader if not.
It’s time to make the first village!
Realms Of Fantasy 