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Florisium

@florisium.bsky.social

18 followers 7 following 33 posts

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · Aug 5

Florisium is a peaceful mobile sandbox game where every flower is meticulously simulated, ensuring no two are ever the same

#flowers #mobilegame #sandbox #cozygame #gamedev

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 2d

btw - check HDR version of these images on Threads - completely different atmosphere!

www.threads.com/@florisium.g...

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 2d

Sunlight meets color, and I’m hooked. Proof that subsurface scattering deserves more hype.

#flowers #mobilegame #cozygame #flowerlovers #homeplant #sandbox #simulationgames #subsurfacescattering

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 6d

Sometimes, the best things grow when you stop trying to control them. This tangled beast I grew up last week, thinkscreenshotsaturday is the best time to share it.

#screenshotsaturday #flowers #mobilegame #cozygame #flowerlovers #homeplant #sandbox #simulationgames #bee #honeybee

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 20d

Autumn is here 🍁🍂🥀

#screenshotsaturday

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 23d

I have forwards and mobile - not too many moves allowed 😅 So its a simple multiply-blending that runs after all geometry. For the lights, its a bit hackier - I don't have proper albedo at the pass, instead, I multiply with the back buffer and add the same value on top, very wrong but works for me 😜

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

There are, of course, plenty of limitations (obvious and not-so-obvious) - I’ll dive into those next time 😉

And finally, here are a few fresh in-game shots (and remember - the game is still about flowers! 🌸)

(16/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Bonus point: the same approach also gives cheap multi-point (and areal) lights support - in forward rendering, on mobile! 🎉🎉🎉

(15/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Performance-wise, it’s similar to the previous method, but no texture fetches, all math is half-based, and only ~30–40 instructions per shape type.
On an iPhone 15Pro, native res, it costs about 0.02–0.2ms, depending on scene complexity and density (all are combined to a single draw-call).
(14/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Using this system, I built a small set (7 types) of analytical AO shapes that cover most in-game dynamic props.
The result is much more detailed and believable than the old texture-based version.

Left = old. Right = new.

(13/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Side views of cylindrical shapes also needed separate math (and again, the right image shows the ray-traced reference).

(12/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Rectangular shapes are trickier since they have hard edges.
I ended up with a slightly different, yet still cheap, function that models the visibility per rectangle size - same logic as with cylinders.

(11/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

For a top-down projected cylinder, that relation is proportional to arctan(D/R), where R is the cylinder radius.
This separation (vertical+horizontal) produces results that are visually close to ray-traced truth - see the right image (distances and heights are not correlated on the images):
(10/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

The vertical part comes from the formula I showed earlier - nice and straightforward.

The horizontal part, though, depends on how visibility changes with the distance to the surface and the surface’s own size.

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

The 2D version is a good start - but it doesn’t capture the whole. We need one more dimension to handle, which makes things trickier.
Ideally, this should be a hemispherical integral of point visibility.
In practice, I simplified it by splitting it into vertical and horizontal 2D components.
(9/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Luckily, this simplifies nicely since cos(arctan(x)) = x/sqrt(x²+1).
That gives a lightweight, computation-friendly formula that still behaves like smooth, realistic occlusion.
You can play with the simplified version here: www.desmos.com/calculator/j...
(8/16)

occlusion-simplified

www.desmos.com

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

The core 2D case is actually simple:
Imagine a flat occluder of width 2W(from -W to W) standing at height H.
The occlusion function looks like:
(cos(arctan((x - W)/H)) + cos(arctan((-x - W)/H))) / 2 + 1
In other words - the sum of light coming from the left and right gaps around the occluder.
(7/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

So I finally found the courage to revisit the technique.
This time - no prebaked textures.
Instead, I went analytical - doing the math to emulate occlusion shapes directly for some simple primitives (boxes, spheres, cylinders, cones, etc).

(6/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Results were way better than no AO at all, and every earlier game shot you’ve seen used this method.

But... it was never perfect. Fixed textures have obvious limits.

(5/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

For the first version of the system, I used static textures to approximate the occlusion shape of some typical primitives.

Just 3 texture types - pulled on for every moving object in the game (could be more than 1 shape per object).
It worked!

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

4. Apply some shadow (occlusion) pattern on the area and draw the resulting geometry.

5. And yeah - do the above for every occlusion-receiver pair 😅

(4/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

The base idea is beautifully simple:

1. Define surfaces that receive occlusion.

2. Define objects that cast occlusion.

3. For each receiver–caster pair, compute the projected occlusion area that roughly estimates shadowing of the cast object.

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

So, I went back in time and revived a classic: blob shadows - the technique used in early 3D games that often mimicked ambient occlusion rather than true shadows.

(3/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

Since the game’s main platform is mobile, I needed a fast and robust AO solution for dynamic objects.
Screen-space AO? Not great for mobile-too noisy, not tile-based GPU friendly, inconsistent across devices, and needs heavy filtering.
Ray-traced AO? Same story-not (yet?) practical on mobile.
(2/16)

Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · 24d

A bit technical thread 🧵

I’ve been improving the in-game ambient occlusion system - and ended up with something I call:
Blob-based Analytical Ambient Occlusion on Primitives

Here’s what it does to the final image:
(more examples later in the thread)

(1/16)

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Florisium @florisium.bsky.social · Sep 20

So, how many flowers on one plant is enough for you?

#florisium #flowers #nature #homeplants #cozygame #indiegame #screenshotsaturday

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