Talos Engine
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Features

World building

Terrain, water, plants and paths for characters, built from recipes you can rerun.

Worlds are described as data: a terrain recipe, a body of water, a planting rule. The engine builds the same result every time, and painting forests with a brush arrives in the next release. Collision and navigation come from the same data, so what you see is what characters walk on.

  • Terrain from a recipe

    Describe a landscape as a stack of steps (shape, noise, erosion that carves real valleys, flattened pads, shorelines) and the engine builds the same terrain every time. Collision and navigation come with it. Materials that put rock on cliffs and snow up high arrive in the next release.

    • Shipped in v0.6.0
    • First version

  • Oceans with weather

    A sea that goes from calm swell to a gale, with foam, spray off breaking crests, sheltered harbors and waves running up the shore. Floating objects ride the real waves, and replays give the same result. Available in the high-definition renderer.

    • Shipped in v0.6.0
    • First version

  • Rivers and lakes that follow the land

    Rivers and lakes form from the terrain's own drainage, and floating objects are carried downstream. Several fresh-water looks are built in. Drawn in the high-definition renderer.

    • Shipped in v0.6.0
    • First version

  • Plants, grass and scattered forests

    Grow trees and shrubs from recipes and scatter them over the terrain. Grass and wildflowers move in the wind.

    • Shipped in v0.6.0
    • First version

  • Paint forests with a brush

    Paint or erase plants with a brush, and draw thousands as one instanced object, each with a stable identity. Tested with a million instances.

    • Coming in next release
    • First version

Coming in this area

See it on the roadmap

  • NowTerrain from a description. Generate whole terrains from a few words, starting from real height data.
  • NowGenerated towns and buildings. Generate buildings and small settlements from a recipe, ready to walk through.
  • NextHuge streaming worlds. Large maps load in pieces around the player, and pathfinding keeps working across them.
  • LaterCrowds and more ways to move. Crowds, and navigation for swimming, flying and driving.
  • LaterPrecision far from the origin. Positions that stay precise far from the center of the world, for very large maps.