Building Icebreaker Ship Game In Unity
Ever wondered how it works?
Game Developer OrbitingDisco recently shared their progress on a prototype for a game centered around ice breaking. They struggled to find a shader-based solution that would work, as they wanted the ice to have thickness and for pieces to break away when hit by the ship.
"So I tried brute force! Big tiles of ice that get replaced with smaller pre-cracked ones when the ship touches them. Then, when one of those is touched, a rigid body is added so it can be pushed around and sink, and then despawned. As you can guess, it's pretty GameObject-heavy. To create levels with any kind of shape, a lot of the tiles need to be pre-cracked."
According to the developer, performance is surprisingly solid, even if the approach feels a bit wild. See the original Reddit thread to explore the solutions suggested by other users and check out a similar prototype by RatioScripta:
For some inspiration, take a look at Matthieu Pujol's icebreaker ship simulation:
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