Developers Simulated Thousands of Fish for Their Coral Reef City Builder Using Unity's DOTS

Life Below should run smoothly.

Life Below is a city builder "set beneath the waves," which naturally means lots of fish swimming around. You might think that it's a nightmare for a PC, but the developers from Megapop didn't treat each animal as a separate object; they used Unity's DOTS (Data-Oriented Technology Stack) to streamline the flow.

"DOTS includes technologies and packages that deliver a data-oriented design approach to building games in Unity."

Megapop

This method is lighter on the CPU: it makes it look at the fish as data, numbers in a row, not complicated objects that need to be constantly referenced all over the place.

The team animated the animals in the shader using VATs for more complex animations, and procedural for the small fish.

"For the wildlife we're using a customized boid behaviour to have the different species interact & avoid each other, while for the water sprites that do the manual work in the game we have a 'task scheduler' of sorts. The task scheduler finds out which sprite can complete the highest priority task the fastest, and assigns it to do that task. Then it updates the priorities of different categories of tasks based on how long the task will take, so all types of tasks get a somewhat equal amount of time spent on them."

The developers say that 1,300 animals can swim with the game working at 30 FPS, so I expect it to be a smooth experience when Life Below launches on May 26.

Megapop

"The ocean is dying. Coral reefs are vanishing and ecosystems are breaking down. By the power of the mysterious reef heart you must restore balance, using the ocean floor itself as the foundation to build vibrant havens for sealife. Craft lures to entice different species to your reef and use their natural abilities to overcome underwater hazards. Experience Thalassa’s journey in campaign mode, then undergo new challenges in freeplay.

Advised by marine biologists and shaped with authentic underwater audio, Life below introduces realism into its world of fantasy. Gameplay reflects natural rhythms and interactions, bringing the ocean floor to life with motion, color, and possibility."

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