I hadn’t posted an update over the easter holidays, but I have been busy nonetheless! The game is slowly starting to look more and more like a game.
Rendering the landscape has improved considerably:
- rendering distance works better now
- transitions between chunks of the landscape are more seamless now
- no more “gaps” left, right and behind the landscape anymore
Also, the world we are flying through now has 3D clouds, which I think is quite important ;-)
To make sure rendering the environment isn’t using up too much performance, I have implemented a simple level-of-detail-system. Most level objects will have two versions of themselves, one with fewer details and one more detailed version. The game will render the low detail version if the camera is further away, and switch to the high detail version once the camera comes closer.
This should keep the number of polygons rendered low, which will hopefully make the game run more smoothly especially on mobile devices.