What's New
When we first dropped our little settlers onto the island, something felt off. The terrain was there -- rolling meadows, rugged mountains, sandy beaches -- but it all looked a bit... naked. This week, we finally gave the world its forests, and the difference is night and day.
Novus Terminus: First Flags now features two distinct tree types that populate the landscape based on the biome they grow in. Down in the lowlands and across the dense forest regions, you'll find broad-canopied deciduous trees with lush, rounded crowns. Venture higher toward the mountain ridges, and the vegetation shifts to tall, narrow conifers -- stacked layers of dark green needles standing in tight formation against the rock. The forests aren't just wallpaper, either. Each biome has its own density: deep woodlands are thick with trees, meadows have the occasional solitary oak dotting the grassland, and the lower mountain slopes carry scattered pines where the altitude allows it. The result is an island that feels like a real place, with natural transitions between open fields and dense woodland.
But the real magic happens when you just... stop and watch. Every tree on the map sways gently in the wind. The broad deciduous canopies rock and sway with big, lazy movements, while the stiff conifers barely nod -- exactly the way you'd expect a pine to behave compared to a birch. No two trees move in perfect sync; each one has its own subtle rhythm, so a hillside of trees ripples like a green ocean rather than swaying like a chorus line. Look closely and you'll notice the trunks stay nearly rigid while the treetops do all the dancing. Pull the camera back and the distant treeline comes alive with gentle, exaggerated motion on the horizon -- a small touch that makes the world feel vast and breathing.
All told, the island is now home to around 40,000 trees. Standing on a hilltop and looking out across the map, you can trace the biome boundaries just by following the treeline: round canopies giving way to pointed silhouettes as the land rises. It's one of those features that doesn't change how you play -- but it completely changes how the game feels.
Behind the Scenes
Generating that many trees by hand would be impossible, so every single tree on the map is procedurally created -- the game builds the geometry itself at startup, then scatters thousands of instances across the terrain in under a second. Each tree is placed precisely on the ground surface rather than hovering or clipping through hills, which is one of those invisible details you only notice when it's done wrong. Getting the wind animation to look natural took some iteration: early versions had trunks bending like rubber, so we settled on a physics-inspired curve that keeps the base stiff and lets only the upper canopy move freely.
What's Next
The trees are standing tall -- but they won't stay untouched forever. Next up, we're giving these forests a purpose: resources, harvesting, and the first signs of a living ecosystem.