Hi I'm a big surfer (or have been most of my life but doing less now at 40!) also building a mobile game in Unity/C# right now although it's not surf related like yours it's actually based on Chinese Wuxia cinema from 5 years spent in China. I considered building a surf one and was looking at potentially trying to 'gamify' a slightly different element of the 'surfing' experience which was to focus on predicting/catching and then staying on a wave at a busy break...so top down early GTA style graphics initially waves would come almost breaking in random spots in relation to previoius waves/sets, but never identical, and you'd have to kind of 'guess' ahead of other AI controlled surfers where to place yourself then paddle for position then try to dodge others on the way in....I thought it could be kind of fun in an arcadey way and not require so much of the physics you're describing, which is no doubt really hard to code...I'd love to see your game though!
replyI guess the trickiest part is fluid dynamics. Are you using a physics/fluid sim or handrolling your own?
replyI believe realistic fluid dynamics in the scale of a full breaking wave is unheard of for real time graphics, there's just no way to do it in 30-60FPS (I could be wrong tho!)
replyWhat I do instead is to transform a procedural plane mesh into wave-like geometry. For added realism, I base this transformation on bathymetry data (ocean floor height), so you can get left/right breaking waves, different breaking sessions, etc, just by defining different heightmaps.
How's it compare to kelly slater pro surfing
replyKSPS was my favourite surfing game growing up. What I dislike about it though is the infinite/perfect waves (always a truck-sized barrel opened, you can do tricks anywhere, almost no differentiation between waves) and the focus on impossible airs and tricks.
replyIn my game the waves start, break and end, with different sessions and hollowness, so there's more wave reading involved. Also the focus is on being able to stay on the wave and generate speed, doing cutbacks, snaps, off the lips, etc.