Water Flow in
Alex Vlachos, Valve
July 28, 2010
Outline
• Goals & Technical Constraints
• How Artists Create Flow Maps
• Flowing Normal Maps in Left 4 Dead 2
• Flowing Color Maps in Portal 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Goals
• Visual
– Solve repeating texture artifacts
– Flow around obstacles
– Vary water speed and bump strength
• Technical
– Work with existing reflective surfaces
– Min hardware ps2.0b (6-year-old hardware) & Xbox 360
• Gameplay…
Gameplay
• Early Left 4 Dead 2 playtests showed players were confused and
got lost often in the swamps
– Soft non-directional lighting
– Trees provided too much cover
• My theory was that water flow would improve gameplay by
highlighting the correct path
• We tested this theory through playtesting
•
In practice, we found testers took 17% fewer wrong turns and
decreased the time it took to traverse the level!
Technical Constraints
• Already at perf limits on the Xbox 360 & low-end PC
• Already at memory limits on the Xbox 360
• Our water shader had limited instructions left for our
low end hardware ps2.0b