Rocks

We’ve added new rocks to Pigeon Simulator. These rocks add some gameplay and aesthetic variety. Rocks in the game provide cover, but they cannot be destroyed.

The rocks are added procedurally and springboard off our existing vegetation system. The system that determines the placement of in-game vegetation also chooses where to place the rocks. This allowed us to leverage the same systems to reduce code duplication.

Unlike traditional vegetation, these rocks can be rotated along three axes and height adjusted in the game. We hope this random placement rotation will make the rocks seem more varied.

One of the challenges in implementation came from getting the rocks to work with our existing GPU instancing system. GPU instancing is a technique that optimizes the rendering of multiple identical objects in games by reducing the number of draw calls, thus improving performance. We had to ensure the rocks had the correct components to be plugged into that system.