Moving From Blocky Terrain to Smooth Terrain

One of the bigger changes I’ve made recently in Evolve - First Age is moving away from blocky terrain and over to smooth terrain.

The main reason for it was actually pretty simple. During playtesting, I found that dinosaurs just didn’t path particularly well across blocky terrain. Small steps and sharp changes in height could cause problems, especially with the larger dinosaurs, and they could end up getting stuck on things that really shouldn’t have been an issue.

Moving to smooth terrain has helped a lot with that. Dinosaurs can move around the world much more naturally now, larger creatures have an easier time getting around, and overall it just feels better when you’re watching them move through the environment.

Visually, I think it’s been a nice upgrade as well. You can see dinosaurs much more clearly across hills and valleys, and the terrain feels a lot more natural.

The interesting part is that underneath, the terrain is still completely voxel based.

That means I haven’t lost the ability to actually modify the world. You can still dig into the ground, carve into hillsides and make your own caves. The difference now is that instead of everything looking like blocks have been removed, the terrain can form much smoother and more natural shapes.

I’ve also added sub-voxel precision, which gives much finer control when modifying terrain and means everything doesn’t have to line up perfectly to the voxel grid.

So although the terrain looks less traditionally voxel based now, all of that voxel data is still there underneath. For me, it’s ended up being a really nice middle ground. I get smoother terrain that works much better for dinosaurs, but I still keep the freedom to let players dig into and shape the world.