Thanks a lot to you for the kind words, that's great to read!
And I explain the generation method in another comment, but here it is as well:
--------------------
The generation is inspired by what Oskar Stålberg has done for his game Townscaper. It is done with those steps: - start with triangles (ideally in an hexagonal pattern). - merge pairs of triangles into quads, randomly leaving some as triangles. - we subdivide both quads and triangles, and end up with quads only. - smooth the whole to get nicer shapes
I've also created a webgl engine to solve this type of procedural modeling for the web, and you can see 2 examples scenes where you can play with parameters that affect the shape of the irregular grid:
So even though you're currently seeing a flat grid, it's all 3D under the hood. So I'm also considering having those grids on a sphere, a torus, or even a custom 3D model. I had done some earlier test: https://polygonjs.com/gui/minesweeper_torus_sphere/edit So it's technically possible, but there's more work to have this easy to navigate around, and to still look visually minimalist while still being pleasant.
If the steam version becomes profitable, I'll definitely explore those directions. I agree this can be stretched further.
And I explain the generation method in another comment, but here it is as well:
-------------------- The generation is inspired by what Oskar Stålberg has done for his game Townscaper. It is done with those steps: - start with triangles (ideally in an hexagonal pattern). - merge pairs of triangles into quads, randomly leaving some as triangles. - we subdivide both quads and triangles, and end up with quads only. - smooth the whole to get nicer shapes
It can be a bit abstract with just this list, so you can see some videos in my tweet: https://twitter.com/fradingue/status/1712218108826460428
I've also created a webgl engine to solve this type of procedural modeling for the web, and you can see 2 examples scenes where you can play with parameters that affect the shape of the irregular grid:
- https://polygonjs.com/gui/irregular_quads/edit
- https://polygonjs.com/gui/irregular_quad_relaxation/edit --------------------
So even though you're currently seeing a flat grid, it's all 3D under the hood. So I'm also considering having those grids on a sphere, a torus, or even a custom 3D model. I had done some earlier test: https://polygonjs.com/gui/minesweeper_torus_sphere/edit So it's technically possible, but there's more work to have this easy to navigate around, and to still look visually minimalist while still being pleasant.
If the steam version becomes profitable, I'll definitely explore those directions. I agree this can be stretched further.