What's New
Our island just went from a colour-coded height map to a living, breathing landscape. Welcome to biomes.
The terrain in Novus Terminus: First Flags is no longer just about altitude. A hidden moisture layer now shapes the character of every region. Low-lying areas with little rainfall become sun-baked deserts dotted with small sandstone pebbles. Where moisture is moderate, lush meadows roll across the lowlands -- thick with swaying grass tufts and scattered wildflowers that catch the breeze. And where the rain is heaviest, dense forests take over, their canopy casting cool shade across the ground.
Higher up, the biomes shift with elevation. Mountain slopes are strewn with rugged boulders and swept by faint trails of dust in the wind. Climb further still and you reach the snow line, where white drift mounds pile up and flurries of blowing snow whip across the peaks. Between all of these zones, the transitions are smooth and organic -- you will not see any hard lines where one biome ends and another begins. The colours blend naturally, just as they would on a real island.
We also gave the ocean a major upgrade. What was once a flat blue plane is now a proper animated sea with layered waves rolling across the surface, a subtle colour gradient from shallow turquoise near the shore to deep blue in open water, and a gentle foam line that laps along the coastline. Combined with the biome scenery, the island finally feels like a place you would want to settle.
All the little environmental details -- the grass, the flowers, the rocks, the snow drifts -- are placed automatically based on the biome type of each tile. Every time you generate a new island, the props arrange themselves naturally. No hand-placement needed; the world decorates itself.
Behind the Scenes
The biome system works by combining two layers of procedural noise: one for elevation (which we already had) and one for moisture. Together, they create a two-dimensional classification space -- height determines the broad zone (beach, lowland, mountain, snow), while moisture decides the flavour within that zone (desert, meadow, or forest). All the small scenery objects like grass and rocks use instanced rendering, meaning thousands of props are drawn in very few draw calls. This keeps the frame rate smooth even when the entire island is covered in vegetation. We deliberately held back on placing trees and large stones -- those will be interactive gameplay resources later, so we did not want decorative versions cluttering the map.
What's Next
The biomes are in place, but the colours still look a bit muted and the camera needs a few more quality-of-life tweaks. Time for a polish pass.