Floating Point Leviathan
Keyboard: WASD + Left mouse button. Space to jump,
A whale. A harpoon. A world on the edge of sane numbers.
[Warning: Shaky effects can lead to discomfort, more than in a usual first person game].
Floating point precision errors are something that many game projects have to deal with. It usually starts as a small jitter, a shaking animation, a foot not quite connecting to the ground. The further you move away from the game world's center, the more obvious it becomes. Models can deform, physics simulation might suffer.
I've always seen a certain charm in these kinds of errors. So I made a short game about it. Here, I fake a world drifting away from the world origin the more the player damages it. As it turns out, causing FPE for real leads to issues that I couldn't work around. Unity is also very good at mitigating floating point errors, which limits their visibility. Therefore I exaggerated them beyond reasonable scale.
https://twitter.com/floatingpointl1
To speed up development, I've made use of two store-bought assets. This game does not present them in the best light, so please check them out in their intended form below:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/blue-whale-d3d-17927...
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/landscapes/sunken-low-poly...
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Comments
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really cool! always found there to be a certain beauty in visual errors like floating point errors, z fighting, etc.
Took a photo of this from twitter a few months back, just saw it again and played it - very cool!
Pretty great concept. Embracing floating-point flaws and exposing them in the strongest fashion.
i completely agree !!!! this was really fun, i love this concept and the way you did it
This was a nice little art piece. I really enjoyed just wandering around. I didn't want to harpoon the whale, but it did make things a lot cooler.
Yarr, me commercial whale huntin' be visibly damagin' the world--perhaps I should heave to and ponder this . . .
Nay, me paycheck be dependin' on yon whale's blubber! D--n the glitches; harpoons away!
This is so interesting!! I couldn't help but just wander around the world for a bit just admiring the strange way the environment changes
idk what i just play but overall nice game there!!!
Very neat and enjoyable. Funky idea!
This was a fun experience, and I liked the ending too
kinda freeky but cool
cool small experience
An interesting game about an interesting idea. I like how the harpoons are the x y z rays, as well.
very interesting experience, kinda expected that at lower precisions the ui would at shaking around but still pretty neat
haha, I thought about it, but wanted to keep things slightly more stable :)
there be glitchy whales here!