Gameplay Update 1

Early tests!

So what do we really need in this game? We have to pick our battles and we can't make everything good. The story is the main priority among other things and we need to development all the mechanics that will help us tell a better story. With that said, Because we anticipate a lot of water features in the game, we invested a lot in the water particle fx for bodies of water, rain, fog, etc. : https://youtu.be/SmUk1xoA64c

Fluid Flux 3.0 proved to be the most efficient option in our benchmarking. Its GPU‑accelerated simulation keeps memory usage low, and its tile‑based rendering significantly reduces draw‑call overhead, making it the most stable and performant water system for our environment.

Features of Fluid Flux:

Real-time shallow water simulation – fluid data modifiers, wave generator, and extendable interface
Fluid surface rendering – caustics, wetness, underwater, waterline, advected foam, advected waves, blending with the ocean, dynamic audio detection.
Fluid Interaction – simple, cheap ripple solver moving with character, optimised to an absolute minimum
Ocean wave blending – rendering a tillable ocean heightmap texture in a single pass
Niagara environment interaction – High-quality effects, bouncy, animated plants, character swimming, boats,
Clean, efficient, GPU-friendly implementation, interface designed with the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) rule in mind
Small, compact, and low memory footprint
A tool for generating ultra-fast static meshes with flow maps baked into vertex colour.
Advanced fluid state management.
Niagara fluid async readback system for sampling height and fluid flow in blueprints.
Dynamic audio analyser. The sound source is positioned based on fluid movement.
Four example maps – beach, island, river, and baked static river
Uses a velocity-based fluid flow advection method for foam, caustics, and waves
Water cross-section rendering
Large-scale nonsimulated coastline(up to 10x10 km) with wave break based on wave profile technology
Infinite mesh grid rendering based on Niagara
Watercolour presents advanced scattering settings and a brush painter
Underwater based on SLW material mode, working with a changeable time-of-day
Unique underwater volumetric glass system

We’ve implemented a lightweight, event‑driven precipitation system to simulate the Philippines’ highly volatile weather patterns. When rainfall is triggered, the system scales particle density and wind vectors dynamically to replicate the “when it rains, it pours” conditions typical in the region—without introducing performance overhead on lower‑end hardware.

For nighttime encounters—especially when the aswangs emerge—we’re adding a volumetric fog layer across forest biomes. This fog is procedurally generated and reacts to ambient lighting, allowing us to push dramatic silhouettes, depth cues, and suspense during nocturnal sequences. Both rain and fog operate under a unified environmental controller that uses time‑of‑day and day‑of‑week parameters to determine intensity, transitions, and special events.

We’ve also begun implementing celestial variance. Night sky states—including cloud cover, star visibility, and moon phases—are now part of the same environmental pipeline. Players will notice unique skyboxes and lighting conditions during full moons, which will tie directly into creature behavior and encounter difficulty.

On the gameplay side, our looting system is now fully functional. Chests, shelves, and storage nodes support particle feedback, sound cues, and item rarity highlights.

Puzzle mechanics are also expanding. One of the core systems is our interactive obstacle module, which includes movable boulders and environmental blockers. Some of these require cooperative force inputs—meaning certain obstacles can only be moved when the player is accompanied by a companion NPC. This adds physicality, narrative gating, and teamwork dynamics to exploration.

Here’s the showcase video for the interaction system: https://youtu.be/MmIKpUFZW88

Haythem has successfully replicated a dynamic occlusion‑cutout system similar to the interior‑visibility logic used in Baldur’s Gate 3. When the player character enters a structure, the system performs a real‑time visibility check and procedurally masks obstructing geometry using depth‑based culling and stencil‑buffer cutouts. This allows interior spaces to remain fully readable without breaking immersion or altering the building’s silhouette.

The solution supports multi‑layered architecture, dynamic camera angles, and partial transparency falloffs, ensuring that walls fade or cut away only when they obstruct the player’s line of sight. It’s lightweight, deterministic, and fully integrated into our rendering pipeline—meaning it scales cleanly across different building types and doesn’t introduce additional draw‑call overhead.

Original

Recreation! Holy cow, that's great!

Despite the visual complexity, the system is engineered to be performant:

Uses a single additional render pass for stencil operations
No extra draw calls for cutout geometry
Works with instanced building meshes
Fully compatible with baked and dynamic lighting

This keeps the feature viable even on lower‑spec machines. The occlusion‑cutout module is now part of our core rendering pipeline and interacts cleanly with:

post‑processing
fog volumes
interior lighting
environmental triggers
NPC visibility logic

This means future building types, dungeons, and indoor encounters will automatically benefit from the system without custom setup.

- Binoy, Haythem

Gameplay Update 1

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