Rendering pretty sky in Around The World game

(frozenfractal.com)

113 points | by ibobev a day ago ago

7 comments

  • wyrdcurt 6 hours ago ago

    Oh wow, thanks for this. I'm working on a game with some similarities to this (at least in the sense of "includes ocean travel"). Just this week I was working on a sky shader in Godot, and have yet to implement clouds. That whole series of articles looks relevant to my interests... ocean/wave rendering is also on my to-do list.

    Game itself sounds interesting and I look forward to playing.

    > "On Earth, exploration often meant gruesome exploitation and violence, whose effects can be felt even today... However, this game is not about any of that; it shows how things could have gone, if people had behaved more kindly towards each other."

    I love this concept. The world I'm building is almost the inverse of this, taking the reckless real-world exploitation of Earth to its logical conclusions and challenging the player to find a better way of life in the ruins. But despite the different approaches, I think we're both trying to imagine how this world could be better, instead of giving in to bleak, helpless doomerism. We need more fiction like this.

  • shrx 2 hours ago ago

    The light is also reflected from the Earth back into the sky, e.g. over bodies of water.

  • kylecazar 7 hours ago ago

    I'd love to play the game when it's ready. I don't play much of anything but was searching for open-world sailing/exploration games very recently on Steam.

    Sounds like exactly what I was looking for... Strange coincidence.

    • jbattle 6 hours ago ago

      I had a lot of fun with Sailwind, maybe give it a try

      https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764530/Sailwind/

      There are a couple of ships you can sail with a simple economic engine - you start small and work up. It has some simple sail handling - its not enough to just turn right/left and manage sails up/down. Multi-sail ships are an interesting challenge but manageable.

      It's pretty slow-paced, but like I said, I had a lot of fun with it for ~20 hours.

  • hbrav 7 hours ago ago

    I love this as a concept for a game.

  • jimmydoe 6 hours ago ago

    this is gem.

    I particularly enjoyed the post about cloud, and I also watched Ten Skies lately... Strange coincidence.

  • embedding-shape 7 hours ago ago

    Another game that has amazing clouds, where you move around them horizontally and vertically, is the recently released Ace Combat 8. The game itself is UE5 but clouds seem to be completely custom made, volumetric, and look amazing, especially noticeable as you're flying around/through them in the game. Examples: https://x.com/PROJECT_ACES/status/2042437413260443803 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG7DLLdQf1k

    The game is even more amazing in VR where you really get a better spatial understanding of the entire sky, environment and the clouds.