Grass Matters
In the real world, grass matters. It's an essential part of the food web: plants convert sunshine to food, ungulates eat the grass, wolves eat the ungulates. In WolfQuest, grass matters too -- but for realism and immersion (and just because it looks nice). But every time I got out into nature, I'm reminded of how messy it is -- things growing every which way. This is an issue in games, partly because graphically it would be so demanding on the computer hardware, but also because trying to walk through a dense forest just wouldn't be very fun. So we try to strike a balance. And periodically we try to improve on that balance.
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So while most of the team has been working on the Saga multiplayer modes, I've spent some time upgrading the grass. We have new grass models from Kerry Baldino (who made all the trees and vegetation originally in WQ:AE) and Paul Sandoval (who created several trees in recent years). But I've also wanted to upgrade to a newer version of The Vegetation Engine (the vegetation rendering system that we've been using for the trees for several years now) and then switch all the grass models over to it, so we can take advantage of several nifty features:
1) Blanket grass that drapes over the terrain. This allows us to have larger grass models, which has performance benefits.
2) Motion interaction -- so grass, sagebrush, and other plants wiggle and bend out of the way when animals move through them.
3) Snow accumulation -- so now grasses and plants turn white when it snows, just like the trees do.
So along with setting all this up (and tweaking the settings endlessly), we've been working to optimize the shaders. The goal is keep performance as it was before -- and we're mostly there, though we may need to simplify features for weaker hardware.
Our main focus is still on Saga modes for multiplayer, making good progress! These grass upgrades will be part of that next update with the Saga Multiplayer -- no release date set, so stay tuned!