Horizon Forbidden West Concept Art(Erik van Helvoirt – Concept Artist – Guerrilla)

I previously built my game engine in Rust. 2 years on, I’ve been using C++ professionally for 3 years now and I feel much more confident in my ability to work the language. Instead of tripping overmyself (and the borrow checker), I’ve decided to rebuild my graphics projects in C++. My first showcase is to be an Island scene.

Motivation

Just over 3 years ago, I was at University where I first learnt about graphics. We had to create an island scene using OpenGL and that’s what led me on my graphics journey. I thought this rebuild of my code would be a great opportunity to test myself to rebuild that scene(or something akin to it). Vulkan has been a great learning experience but I’ve found myself on the side of engineering architecture more than any actual scenes to be impressed by.

What graphics features will I be implementing?

For this scene, the goals are:

  • Instanced rendering
  • Deferred rendering
  • PBR
  • Water shader (Foam, Refraction, SSR)
  • Real-time shadows (Directional w/ CSM + Pointlights)
  • Day/Night cycle
  • Foliage (Trees + Grass, probably w/ a wind shader)
  • 2D Particles (Campfire?)

What have I got so far?

Currently, I’m still in the process of piecing what I had back together. So the most impressive thing, instanced rendering! I’m using bindless to simplify descriptor set management.

Instanced Rendering

My next steps are to get an island mesh setup, with a simple water plane, then go from there! Hopefully in my next post I’ll be able to share more screenshots of something that looks like an island!