r/ScapeLikes • u/DaedricScimitar • 9h ago
Game Update Abyssal Realms - Dev Update: Water, Wading & the Shore Crab
Hey all!
Another update for Abyssal Realms and our custom game engine Cartographer. This one's all about water, wading, and our very first enemy (that I probably spent way too much time on the cute little thing!).
The big one is coasts. Waves used to just slide up onto the beach. Now they build as they come in, tip over, and break into foam that spreads out and fades. They also break in pieces instead of one long white line, so the shoreline finally feels alive. The shaders are still a work in progress, but I think we're finally in the right direction (I'll post a previous shot of what it looked like before). Out on open water the sea is choppier and messier, closer to the real thing, and we made small passes on water shading, lighting and the shape of the waves.
You can also walk into the water now. Players and creatures will be able to walk in up to about waist deep, and anything moving through water leaves a little foam wake behind it. The engine works out where you can walk from the water level, the ground underneath and how tall a body is, and the server decides all of it. Past that depth it's swimming. We have a first test of it running, with characters bobbing on the same waves as the boats, but if I'm being frank, it looks silly with no animation supporting that yet :p
Last up meet the Shore Crab, our first enemy(or it will be anyways)! The clips show our viewer and animation tools, where we pose and animate the bone rig directly. Every one of the crab's moves is its own animation clip we can tweak in the editor.
More soon, and thanks for following along!


