Wildlife/nature and set dressing in AoE4

^-- First off, welcome back to the forum! Looks like it’s been a while :smiley:

I appreciate the details with screenshots! Some nice observations there, and some great starts for the game! I hope to see even more wildlife and details added over time. The flower patches are a nice touch. And I just noticed the twigs under the berry bushes in your screenshot; sweet!

Darn! This is common in video games (too common, imo), and I hope devs can someday add animated models to actually emit the sounds at some point. I think Red Dead Redemption 2 might be the closest I’ve seen to having most wildlife sounds come from actual animals/creatures in the game that you can see, if I’m not mistaken. There have been a handful of times where I swear a creature sound is in a generic ambient audio track, but then I find the actual source – such as a a crow in a tree near me, or what have you.

That’s cool to see. Is a good start! I could use some random birds flying over the entire map, though… like AoE2, but with less linear/robotic paths. Same with butterflies, I’d like to see them in other places and not just over berry bushes. For example, over some of the flower patches that you pointed out might be cool :slight_smile: Dragonflies would be lovely to see near shallow water/brook or pond types of areas, or a meadow.

I see room for improvement with some of this, like butterflies. I see their animation isn’t very quick and ‘fluttery’… they’re pretty slow and deliberate. Would be nice if they danced and fluttered a bit more playfully with wings that flickered more; and this could be achieved without being overkill or distracting. Butterfly wings go a lot faster in real life than AoE4, as seen in this YouTube vid: “Fields of Butterflies and Flowers / Crickets, Bird Song,…”

I think you’ll like that this thread was created, then! Hopefully, chickens will get to move around someday :smiley:

Yesss!

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