As I mentioned, this whole system is powered by my own simple software ray tracing renderer. And what's the point if you're not going to goof around with weird lens projections 📸
A before scene showing blue probes intersecting walls and other surfaces
An after scene showing the probes have been moved away from surfaces to cover the environment better. The lighting feels more accurate and there are fewer artefacts
A before scene showing blue probes intersecting walls and other surfaces
An after scene showing the probes have been moved away from surfaces to cover the environment better. The lighting feels more accurate and there are fewer artefacts
Here's a demonstration of how probes can relocate themselves for better coverage. Blue probes are found to be inside (or too close) to geometry, so we push them away from the nearest surface normal where they can be more useful. Notice how the artefacts disappear and the lighting feels more accurate
I’ll pretend I did this on purpose.
Unity!
Probes are spaced along a regular grid but disable themselves if nothing is found nearby (all depth samples miss). I’m just choosing to render the active probes only!
I was particularly pleased with how nicely it plays with my stylised time of day lighting system (a tool I've been developing for Summerhill and other projects) ☀️🌙
It was fun digging into that stuff with you — you should share any more recent experiments!
Another random clip I never shared from when I was debugging moving grids and other optimisations. Here you can see new probes spawning around geometry as the camera moves. Larger cascades are disabled for a clearer demonstration.
A 3D scene showing specular reflections from my global illumination system. A metallic rabbit is sitting in a sci-fi style room, with glossy reflections bouncing light and colour all around the scene.
A 3D sponza environment showing volumetric fog being illuminated by light bouncing around the scene from the sun and sky
It also worked pretty nicely for specular reflections and volumetric fog.
Ah, I mean it in the lightest possible sense — just a bit of a hobby project that threatened to consume me, so I put it aside to focus more on real life/work for a while.
A recap for the Bluesky crowd: my implementation was largely based on DDGI, which uses software raytracing to sample light into a grid of probes. I implemented multiple cascades, moving grids & dynamic probe states. It allowed for infinite bounces & (potentially) infinite environments.
A screenshot from Unity showing a 3D courtyard environment lit with my own DDGI style Global Illumination system.
Since I'm unlikely to come back to this any time soon, I figured I'd share some half-baked updates on where I landed with my realtime GI system a couple of years ago before burning out. Maybe one day...
Graphics with the Develop logo, Harry’s profile photo laid over a screenshot of game Summerhill
A black and white border collie called Patrick
Hey Develop 👋🏻 I’m in Brighton this week with my Border Collie Patrick! Hit us up for friendly dev chat and excited tail wags
A screenshot of Botany Manor showing a fountain and garden benches, with the text it won an accessibility award
We're so excited to share Botany Manor won the Accessibility Award at the #GamesForChange awards!
The team put a lot of work into accessibility features, colour-blind legibility for clues and designing the game to be gentle to the player. As a small studio, it means a lot to see it recognised 😊💚
Criminal that this is the first I’m hearing about it.
The herbarium book on the left side, and the xbox excellence award on the right side. In the background is a rose bush.
We're so honoured and excited to share Botany Manor received an Xbox Excellence Award for top store rating of 2024. It's amazing to see how our game has left a lasting impression on so many 💚🌳
Thanks so much to @xbox.com and @gamepass.xbox.com for all the support!
Thanks so much! I’ll give this a try!
Nice! Might need to take a trip to coast. Do you have a go to recipe?
I’ve always been curious about this after seeing it on River Cottage - does it actually taste like coconuts? Plenty of it around here, but rare to find any with a strong enough scent!
The nominees for Game Beyond Entertainment are…
BOTANY MANOR
KIND WORDS 2 (LOFI CITY POP)
SENUA’S SAGA: HELLBLADE II
TALES OF KENZERA: ZAU
TETRIS FOREVER
VAMPIRE THERAPIST
#BAFTAGamesAwards
Congrats again, and lovely to meet you!
Hard to believe it’s been a whole decade since Alto’s Adventure launched! I had no idea what to expect & was nowhere near prepared for what came next!
It changed my life, introduced me to so many friends, & 10 years later, I’m still making games I love.
Here’s to the next 10!
🌿Botany Manor is a cozy game but also a window into challenges women face in academia.
For #WomenInSTEMDay, we interviewed the devs @lauredm.bsky.social and @kittbyrne.bsky.social to explore how these issues were woven into storytelling and gameplay. 🎮
Read it @ jgeekstudies.org/2025/02/09/b...
Summerhill is currently featured in the #mythsandlegends2025 Steam event 🐑
Journey through an ancient, pastoral landscape in our upcoming sheep herding folk-tale and unearth the mysteries of a long-forgotten past.
Play Monument Valley 3 NOW!🥳
Join Noor as she explores mind-bending landscapes that unfold like origami, blending nature’s beauty with the impossible. ✨⛵️
On App Store and Google Play with your Netflix Membership
➡️https://go.ustwo.games/mv3
In our next Tiny Glade update we'll bump the light limit from 32 to 32k while keeping the cost more or less the same.
The small limit has been a cop out, as we didn't quite know how to render huge numbers of (screen-space) shadow-casting lights without severe performance degradation.
In 2016 I released Lieve Oma, a game about going mushrooming with your grandmother. My goal with this game was to make something that would be consoling, or soothing in some way.
"Cosy games" have become a whole thing in recent years and people are now developing games with "soothing" in mind!
A photo taken on Dartmoor National Park, near Venford Reservoir, on a foggy autumn evening
Dartmoor Therapy
Botany Manor is coming to PlayStation on December 17th! ✨🌺
🔎 Immerse yourself into the life of Arabella Greene
🏡 Explore your lush manor and gardens
🌻 Uncover the secrets to bloom long-forgotten flora
Coming to both PS4 & PS5! 😊
The atmosphere of our game
