How Does Tree Growth Work in Wildmender?
[h3]Greetings Wildmenders![/h3]
4 years ago in a game jam, we found ourselves asking the question:
[h3]Why are life forms, especially plants, in procedurally generated worlds invariably just props? [/h3]
From there, we started to simulate plant life and growth to see if plants could take on lives of their own in a game. We created a small spring and a tiny oasis in the desert for ourselves to survive, garden, and bring life back to the world. From there, Wildmender was born.
While we’re still adding more plants, more ways to explore and adventure, and more ways to help with gardening, we thought it’d be interesting to share how plant life in the game has evolved so far - from graybox spheres to what it looks like today.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
When we first started, a tree was represented by very simple combinations of spheres and cylinders. There wasn’t a lot of personality, just the barebones idea of a tree - but we wanted to experiment with how the plants responded to the soil, water, sun, and other conditions as they grew.
We started playing around with procedurally generated trees to get some more interesting shapes into the game. The code for this was based on, of all things, some lightning bolt VFX from a previous game - it’s just a series of cylinders linked together, with a simple cap on the ends.
This turned out to fit really well for a game about growth and cultivation, since it also let us show all the intermediate stages of a tree’s growth without creating unique assets. Trees also gained some individual personality, and their shape could respond to the terrain or other objects.
It was a unique challenge to have a tiny sapling turn into a large tree. The programmer and artist worked closely together, and with a lot of tuning turned those basic shapes into something that really looked natural at every stage of the tree’s life.
Each tree is defined by a set of rules that tell the game where and how many branches it has, plus some handcrafted assets for the bark texture, the leaves, etc. We’ve created over 20 different unique plant species using this system so far, many of which you’ve gotten to experience if you've played our demo or our Alpha build. If we have the time, we will also try to smooth out the transitions between stages of growth in more exciting ways.
We’ll be doing more development posts to share with everyone, so stay tuned!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599330/Wildmender/
[h3]Want to see how plant growth in Wildmender works for yourself?[/h3]
Then make sure to join our Discord server, where you can request a demo code! Don't forget to also follow us on social media at @wildmendergame on Twitter or @wildmenderofficial on Facebook and Instagram 💬
4 years ago in a game jam, we found ourselves asking the question:
[h3]Why are life forms, especially plants, in procedurally generated worlds invariably just props? [/h3]
From there, we started to simulate plant life and growth to see if plants could take on lives of their own in a game. We created a small spring and a tiny oasis in the desert for ourselves to survive, garden, and bring life back to the world. From there, Wildmender was born.
While we’re still adding more plants, more ways to explore and adventure, and more ways to help with gardening, we thought it’d be interesting to share how plant life in the game has evolved so far - from graybox spheres to what it looks like today.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
When we first started, a tree was represented by very simple combinations of spheres and cylinders. There wasn’t a lot of personality, just the barebones idea of a tree - but we wanted to experiment with how the plants responded to the soil, water, sun, and other conditions as they grew.
We started playing around with procedurally generated trees to get some more interesting shapes into the game. The code for this was based on, of all things, some lightning bolt VFX from a previous game - it’s just a series of cylinders linked together, with a simple cap on the ends.
This turned out to fit really well for a game about growth and cultivation, since it also let us show all the intermediate stages of a tree’s growth without creating unique assets. Trees also gained some individual personality, and their shape could respond to the terrain or other objects.
It was a unique challenge to have a tiny sapling turn into a large tree. The programmer and artist worked closely together, and with a lot of tuning turned those basic shapes into something that really looked natural at every stage of the tree’s life.
Each tree is defined by a set of rules that tell the game where and how many branches it has, plus some handcrafted assets for the bark texture, the leaves, etc. We’ve created over 20 different unique plant species using this system so far, many of which you’ve gotten to experience if you've played our demo or our Alpha build. If we have the time, we will also try to smooth out the transitions between stages of growth in more exciting ways.
We’ll be doing more development posts to share with everyone, so stay tuned!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1599330/Wildmender/
[h3]Want to see how plant growth in Wildmender works for yourself?[/h3]
Then make sure to join our Discord server, where you can request a demo code! Don't forget to also follow us on social media at @wildmendergame on Twitter or @wildmenderofficial on Facebook and Instagram 💬