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The other boats thing actually got me really considering it. It would be pretty easy to generate traffic between the ports. Spawn a boat and have it move along a straight line. Bonus points if it makes evasive maneuvers when you try to hit it. Or maybe you get points for destroying them? Two fun problems with this:

• In general, my engine doesn’t have the concept of models. Even in Periphery Synthetic, the authored terrain (like pyramids and portals) are just functions f(x,y) which return a z-value. I could probably just treat it as a point source, but to differentiate it from a bottle, wouldn’t it be cool if all those particles were emitted from the surface of some boat-like shape? I suppose could just use a cone, because cones are futuristic and cool. 😎
• I think I’m approaching the audio performance ceiling with this one. Lots of synths are playing all at once on the surface. But these boats should definitely have sound! Let’s say I add one and it sounds and performs great, but having two playing at once grinds things to a halt. Do I make the sound less interesting? do I only play the nearest one? or do I change how the spawner works so they never intersect?

Totally up for the challenge, but we’ll see! ✌