Björn Ottosson - making Island Architect's Avatar

Björn Ottosson - making Island Architect

@bottosson

Making Island Architect, a cosy town building game. Also game programming teacher and consultant. Previously 10 years at Frostbite and EA DICE. Creator of Oklab. Whishlist now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3079100/Island_Architect

2,838
Followers
2,828
Following
192
Posts
26.02.2024
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by Björn Ottosson - making Island Architect @bottosson

Video thumbnail

I accidentally made a horror game!

NaNs happen randomnly when looking at large depth differences. Due to spatial-temporal denoising they spread, and they spread faster with lots of camera movement.

The only way to escape is to quickly find an uninfected part of the screen and zoom in.

26.02.2026 12:39 👍 34 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
SG Series Part 1: A Brief (and Incomplete) History of Baked Lighting Representations This is part 1 of a series on Spherical Gaussians and their applications for pre-computed lighting. You can find the other articles here: Part 1 - A Brief (and Incomplete) History of Baked Lighting Re...

If you want to learn more, this is a better starting point: therealmjp.github.io/posts/sg-ser...

Otherwise the gist of it is that I made a cheaper way to evaluate soft diffuse lighting (from a particular type of soft light sources).

12.02.2026 10:42 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Ah, yes, you are correct! Top left is mislabeled. I’ll fix that!

12.02.2026 05:24 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image

The most exciting bit is that this little expression approximates diffuse lighting from a SG very well, with R being the resultant mean length. This naturally maps to raytracing denoiser outputs, if you just store color and color*ray_direction.

11.02.2026 14:58 👍 13 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Video thumbnail

I've been working with Spherical Gaussians recently as a representation for irradiance in realtime raytracing.

Ended up deriving quite a few new approximations relating to SGs and diffuse lighting. Ended up with something both cheap and accurate. Check it out:

www.shadertoy.com/view/WX3fRB

11.02.2026 14:50 👍 77 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 1

Exciting to see Battlefield 6 launching and doing well 🚀. Looking forward to trying it out!

I’ve been involved in every Battlefield between BF3 and 2042 one way or another, so it’s a new experience to see a Battlefied game launch completely from the outside!

11.10.2025 08:14 👍 10 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

No geometry nodes involved, lots of specialized code for fast procedural generation!

01.10.2025 15:29 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Yes, something like that! Plus fully editable 3d terrain with caves etc!

01.10.2025 15:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Yes, the grid is shaped by the user’s actions and there are also tools to more directly affect it!

It is also affected by terrain, so the starting grid is aligned to match slopes

01.10.2025 06:03 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thank you Rui!

01.10.2025 06:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Video thumbnail

Been fixing lots of little edge cases in the roof generation for my cozy town building game Island Architect.

Really pleased with all the variety that is possible with some simple interactions!

#indiegames #gamedev #cozygames

30.09.2025 14:29 👍 137 🔁 16 💬 4 📌 0

That would be great, but also really hard to get right! Right now looking at other ways of making the world feel more alive

26.09.2025 16:46 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You just build what you feel like! Just explore your own creativity and the game’s system!

26.09.2025 16:45 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Thank you 🙏😊

26.09.2025 16:43 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thank you! ☺️

26.09.2025 14:43 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Video thumbnail

I reworked the camera to work better with all the verticality the game’s building tools creates.

Really fun flying through rock arches and up cliffs now!

#indiegames #gamedev

26.09.2025 14:26 👍 169 🔁 18 💬 4 📌 0
Video thumbnail

Finally getting back to posting about my cozy building game Island Architect.

I've made it so that you now select if you want buildings to have roof tiles or flat roofs. Makes walls with roof files and small pyramid shaped buildings possible, and feels better overall!

26.09.2025 11:33 👍 31 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Spelskaparna Lär ut spelutveckling med egenbyggd motor

Spelskaparna is a Swedish podcast, with interviews from all around the Swedish game industry.

In the latest episode I joined them to talk about teaching game development and a few other things.

If you understand Swedish, check it out here:
spelskaparna.com/episode/170/

24.09.2025 11:39 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Yes, it is what I currently use!

22.09.2025 17:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Thank you 😊

20.06.2025 06:09 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I’m not that easily fooled

17.06.2025 17:03 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Only kind of kidding, it does seem to work every time 😉

17.06.2025 17:01 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I've figured out a new trick for using AI to solve complex problems. I call it frustration coding.

Here's how it works:

When stuck procrastinating , I ask an AI for help.

When it inevitable fails I get annoyed and motivated to solve it myself instead. Works every time!

17.06.2025 16:58 👍 25 🔁 0 💬 4 📌 0
Post image Post image Post image

I did an interview with @80Level about Island Architect check it out! 80.lv/articles/isl...

16.06.2025 12:55 👍 32 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

Thank you 😊

28.05.2025 20:24 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Primarily Townscaper, a lot of this started from thinking about what you could do if taking its irregular grid further!

Tiny glade is great also and of course I’m looking at as well. Also trying to figure out how to best make sure my game is distinct enough!

28.05.2025 18:03 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Agreed, both as a player and developer!

28.05.2025 17:59 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thank you! can’t promise it yet, but I’ll definitely look into it. The game is built on cross platform libraries, so is mostly a question of being able to test and fix potential issues related to it.

28.05.2025 17:08 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thank you!

Better get to work then 😅

28.05.2025 14:04 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Thank you 🙏

28.05.2025 13:00 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0