Dev Blog
Hi, this is the Stranded III development blog (see also Forum Thread, Comment Thread).
Entry 117 - First Godot Screenshots - February 23, 2025
In the last dev blog I announced that I'm switching to Godot so now it's time for...
First Godot Screenshots!
I've been working hard to move the project to Godot. Here are some screenshots showing some parts of the UI and the landscape.
Close to beach
(or: me trying hard to not show the sea because it still looks horrible)
Glade
Dusk
Settings: Controls
You can now define up to 3 different keys per action!
Settings: Effects / Post Processing
Sky3D
Tokisan Games recently released Sky3D which is an amazing Sky and day/night cycle solution for Godot. I'm using it in Stranded III now!
Volumetric Fog
Godot has volumetric fog which can be enabled fairly easily. So I added it to the game. It can be disabled because it can have a big impact on performance on older GPUs. I think it looks really amazing!
Here's a small gif. It's kind of hard to see but you can see subtle volumetric sun shafts at the top of the palm fronds. Maybe I still need to tweak the light and fog settings a bit.
Volumetric fog gif (9 mb)
Supersampling and Upscaling
There will also be a new setting which allows you to set the 3D render scale. The game will either be rendered at the native game window resolution (100%), in a lower resolution (upscaling) or in a higher resolution (supersampling). The scaling either works with a simple bilinear scaling algorithm or with ASM FSR 1.0 or AMD FSR 2.0 (unfortunately Godot 4.3 doesn't support FSR 3.X).
With upscaling you can get significant performance boosts but the game may look less clean and flicker a bit. With bilinear scaling it will be more pixelated and blurry. With supersampling you will get super smooth edges (less aliasing) but it will cost a lot of performance.
The setting only affects the 3D scene and not the UI.
Here's an example how ugly you can make things look. Here the game is rendered at only 20% of the original scale and upscaled with a bilinear algorithm (the worst upscaling option).
20% Render Scale (Bilinear Upscale)
Tone Mapping
Tone mapping heavily affects the mood and colors of a game. In Stranded III you will be able to switch between different tone mapping profiles like "ACES" (which looks oversaturated in Godot in my opinion) and "Filmic" (which will be the default and which is also used on all the screenshots above). Moreover - somewhat related - there are finally sliders to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation! Hooray!
First Godot Screenshots!
I've been working hard to move the project to Godot. Here are some screenshots showing some parts of the UI and the landscape.
Close to beach(or: me trying hard to not show the sea because it still looks horrible)
Glade
Dusk
Settings: ControlsYou can now define up to 3 different keys per action!
Settings: Effects / Post ProcessingSky3D
Tokisan Games recently released Sky3D which is an amazing Sky and day/night cycle solution for Godot. I'm using it in Stranded III now!
Volumetric Fog
Godot has volumetric fog which can be enabled fairly easily. So I added it to the game. It can be disabled because it can have a big impact on performance on older GPUs. I think it looks really amazing!
Here's a small gif. It's kind of hard to see but you can see subtle volumetric sun shafts at the top of the palm fronds. Maybe I still need to tweak the light and fog settings a bit.
Volumetric fog gif (9 mb)Supersampling and Upscaling
There will also be a new setting which allows you to set the 3D render scale. The game will either be rendered at the native game window resolution (100%), in a lower resolution (upscaling) or in a higher resolution (supersampling). The scaling either works with a simple bilinear scaling algorithm or with ASM FSR 1.0 or AMD FSR 2.0 (unfortunately Godot 4.3 doesn't support FSR 3.X).
With upscaling you can get significant performance boosts but the game may look less clean and flicker a bit. With bilinear scaling it will be more pixelated and blurry. With supersampling you will get super smooth edges (less aliasing) but it will cost a lot of performance.
The setting only affects the 3D scene and not the UI.
Here's an example how ugly you can make things look. Here the game is rendered at only 20% of the original scale and upscaled with a bilinear algorithm (the worst upscaling option).
20% Render Scale (Bilinear Upscale)Tone Mapping
Tone mapping heavily affects the mood and colors of a game. In Stranded III you will be able to switch between different tone mapping profiles like "ACES" (which looks oversaturated in Godot in my opinion) and "Filmic" (which will be the default and which is also used on all the screenshots above). Moreover - somewhat related - there are finally sliders to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation! Hooray!