BioGrid

There aren't enough ecology sims out there. I think I'm gonna try to make one.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@fixitorgotojail It runs the dynamics and erosion for the entire region once every second, it's not really related to player at all.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Timelapse of all the geological sim features working together on bare bedrock - avalanches, rock crumbling, sand and soil creation and so on.
Seems okay - I can let players start out with all sorts of weird terrains and trust that it'll become something plausible over time.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@ZealotDKD Unity

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@dynamica_jbacon I have a design document but I've just been focusing on building it, not community stuff. I'll try to get something up soon to explain what this project is.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@TheOneRavenous It's using virtual pipes model for water and multiple weathering, cracking and dissolution terms for turning rock into sand and ultimately soil. All iterative and grid-based so I can sim the entire terrain at once on GPU.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@B7R_Enjoyer Yep, basic volcanoes and lava is already in

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@Xiazee Not right now, I'll either build some simple tectonic uplift or just let players handle it

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Big refactor for particles, it's now alpha-blended with depth-aware upscaling. The dust plumes on cliffs when I add sand there are something new - avalanches. Basically, when granular material slips from a slope, it makes everything nearby also likely to slip and that propagates.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Managed to solve an old issue with water compositing, now it can run the edge-detection pass properly like other objects. Hard to show on a gif, but it gets this interesting almost kuwahara filter look at midrange.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Rubble and gravel fields are done. These also inhibit fertility, giving these areas a half-barren look. I'm pretty happy with this feature, not only does it simulate proper scree at base of cliffs, but also shows at a glance where and how much erosion is happening.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@XorDev The pulse/bump, great for extracting a smooth band from a signal:
smoothstep(0.0, width, abs(x - center))

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@Lulak000 I have a design doc and a roadmap to Early Access, but its basically just a few .md files. I think reviving the discord and posting it there makes sense, I'll get around to it soon.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Fallen boulders and rocks have meshes now. I needed a generic rule based prop spawner anyway, so this was a good reason to write one. Looks pretty good already, but I still need to work on gravel and better particle effects.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@AHappyDragon But...there is no game yet, just pieces of it🤷

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Large, long-living trees vs. small ones.
Big ones are having trouble spreading, since their seedlings don't get a chance to grow. And their generations are also slow, so they adapt to changing conditions a lot slower. Occasional forest fires would probably help them a lot.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Trying out some stability mechanics for cliffs. Collapse creates boulders, which fall downhill and will then slowly crumble into rocks, gravel and finally sand. Those circles on the ground visualize this aggregate, but I'm gonna try to spawn some actual 3d rocks there.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@rcwhiteley Yeah, I suppose. I'm trying to steer clear of anything evolution-related though, since this term carries its own baggage and expectations. It's an evolution sim, sure, but not a "scientific" sim.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@rcwhiteley It's a sandbox sim where you shape a dynamic world, design creatures, and try to evolve them across extinction events toward sapience.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@jacekwozn14k Only in the sense that there's terraforming, tbh

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

Playing around with an accumulating wetness map on terrain. This has multiple uses - it emphasises small transient streams that don't have enough data resolution otherwise, and also suppresses vegetation growth in riverbeds over time.

[BioGrid @BioGridGame]

@SlapMyKnuttz Woah, didn't expect that to be up and running tbh. I guess I should revive it at some point.