@@arkhalis3682 Vulkan is absolute horrible. It's a total failure of API design. Like everything Khronos group does. Very little about is is actually good. Which is why for example tiny glade has issues with supporting integrated GPUs. Which isn't really a technical issue but an issue with what Vulkan exposes. It's just what's available and well supported on Linux. But that doesn't make it objectively good
@@gideonunger7284 Isn't that a GPU vendor sided thing? A lot of GPU vendors skimp out on Vulkan support on integrated graphics. Vulkan is a low-level API with lower overhead than Direct3D 12, and it's also cross-platform with Linux and Android (and also Nintendo Switch) support, that alone makes it better than Direct3D.
@@TheMetaldudeX Not at all, more so that people want and try to recreate photorealism/retro/celshaded art styles because X game did it and was successful, instead of doing it because they have an actual original art idea that they'd want to achieve. There's plenty of games made on UE or Unity that you wouldn't guess they were.
The creative people have been creating utterly astounding dioramas.....but even noobs can create incredibly beautiful screenshot-worthy dioramas within a very short span. Absolutely amazing game.....
@@NegativeROG That's what CP2077 was like for me. I was hoping for Space Marine 2 to be like that too, but it's got no ray-tracing and isn't super pretty, only rarely you get an angle of something nice-looking.
The fact this is a *two person team* is mind blowing. I love it when DF covers tiny titles like these that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle; I’m sure getting eyes on this gem will only help sales. Great coverage Alex 👍
Right? Reminds me how doomed Dreams would've been on PC lol. Options like this made by a small team being able to be comparable to Dreams procedural creation engine is extremely reflective of just how many options on PC. Awesome to see such a small team have great success like this, and gives me hope we'll see more ambitious projects in the same vein soon!
I worked on a very similar game which was later cancelled and when i compare our wall, floor and building generation, their UI and UX, their graphics quality and effects of the the tech in tiny glade with what we made back then as a team of 8 its just impressive how much they have us beat at everything. and it was one of the technically most impressive projects i had worked on.
@@ahslanabanana I meant projects by smaller studios and indie devs - such games are not ground breakng in terms of 3D rendering but I'd rather see those covered instead of the next Assassin's creed game.
@@julianchillby1024 imagine having such intuitive tools as a part of a game engine. Still - the praise is deserved given the scale of the project - nobody is saying this is ground breaking. It's just nice and you're probably not the target audience and that's fine too.
Some other things I noticed: - Has a native Linux binary! It even competently handles hybrid graphics on Linux. - No controller support for now, but they may add it in the future - Most of the engine appears to be written using Rust - They are right now very responsive to bug fixing and updates (sometimes multiple updates in a single day) - It seems like they were going to make a Metal port for macOS; I don't know if they are still working it or not or if they will just use MoltenVK
With the majority of non-game development taking place on Linux or Arm Based Mac machines, I'm surprised we haven't already seen a disruption in the game industry of more native 'Nix builds. Hopefully Steam OS pushes that even further.
@@MiltonGeorges The problem mostly stems from Apple shafting Khronos for the Vulkan standard. Apple went all-in on Metal and pulled up the drawbridge on cross-platform graphics APIs, which would eventually lead (among other decisions eg. 32-bit depreciation) to the removal of MacOS as a target for Valve Proton. Without a major install-base to drive Vulkan adoption, this lead to DirectX remaining the proverbial king even after DirectX/Vulkan translation was discovered and became usable. As long as DirectX continues to dominate, neither Windows nor Linux users will have much motivation to let down a ladder for Mac users. They're reliant on contributors like Codeweavers to bridge the gap, and their contributions aren't always Open Source. This also highlights a big problem of the "traditional" UNIX model, though - outside of POSIX standardization, there is no motivation for even a certified UNIX to support cross-platform APIs. In the instance of computer graphics, the impetus relies entirely on platform-holders to make an attractive target for devs. If shareholders decide that the ecosystem is more attractive with fewer devs, then they can effectively make cross-platform development more trouble than it's worth.
Tiny Glade is awesome! And the devs really care about the game. They've been pushing out performance, stability, and even quality of life patches nearly every day since launch!
Yet when a Ubisoft does it or an EA internet goes: "WhY tHeY rElEaSe UnFiNiShEd GaMeS!? ThEy ArE ShIt!..... Yeah double standards. And everyone upvoting your comment is guilty of these double standards. Simply disgusting. And don't give me that bullshit with budget and what not. Bugs are bugs, QOL patches are QOL patches.
@@MMoer define bugs. if it performs well, and now performs even better, how is that comparable to AAA crap that evolve from "shit" to "works somewhat OK"?
@@MMoer Bro, there is a difference between a game that runs pretty good to running excellent, and a game that runs like shit to running somewhat decent.
@@KelseyHigham the guy is tomasz stachowiak, back in the day he also worked on EA SEED on some of the first raytracing techniques for realtime (ofc RT has been a thing for a long time, but they were some of the first to try and optimize a variety of techniques for realtime)
@@KelseyHigham the woman is Anastasia Opara, an veteran in procedural modeling, basically creating 3d art from simple inputs based on rules, she has multiple courses and talks on Houdini, the industry standard tool for procedural art. Tiny glade is a perfect example of proc gen, you give a bunch of artists tools like this to make their lives easier. I bet she was responsible for the building mechanic
@@sumdude5172that makes a lot of sense! I initially was wondering how 2 indie developers could make a game with such an intuitive yet indepth building system The majority of building/survival/crafting games still havent evolved beyond Minecraft’s grid based block stacking 😂
wow I am really impressed by that one clip of the duck swimming past a floating leaf, only for that leaf to be pushed aside like its an actual physical object there. That is some attention to detail...
Frostbite is a powerful game engine developed by DICE Company in 2008. This Game Engine is written in C++ and C#. Tiny Glade uses a custom engine written in Rust. The game uses a lot of its own technology, a lot of open source software, including Bevy's Entity Component System (ECS).
_Love_ to see Tiny Glade on Digital Foundry! They deserve kudos for going above and beyond on their tech, and it really improves the game feel as well!
This is why I support DF. they are a small talented team with a big voice giving 2 developers a big spotlight. I first seen their procedural tech a month or more ago on the facebook page '80 level'. Glad to see these devs are getting more exposure. Exposure they deserve.
It's crazy how it looks so good and runs so well on pretty much anything. I hope they give a talk at GDC. There's probably something other devs could gleam from what they've done.
Very nice to see a tech deep dive into Indie titles, there's so much novel approaches there worth looking into. On that note I highly recommend looking at Exanima, the physics based isometric game on PC (Steam & GOG). The lighting, object integration, cloth simulation and overall physics (Characters & Objects) is truly impressive
The tech is absolutely insane. Crazy talent and heavy work on it. Game looks lovely too! If I was a big company I'd bee paying millions to get that tech. It's been a long while I hadn't seen something so impressive.
I don't know what I enjoy more, watching this beautiful little indie game, which I was not aware of, being shown off or listening to the detailed explanation of Alex, which is well over my head, as to the work behind what I am seeing. Kudos to Alex and Digital Foundry on explaining and expanding our appreciation for works of art like this.
Most people don't seem to realize that ray tracing is just as beneficial if not more with cartoony graphics. Fewer polygons means easier to run. Also you don't need to do extra work to make it look just perfect, it does it all automatically, so indie games benefit from it a lot.
I love videos like this, showcasing a deserving indie game, and you can definitely hear the passion you have for the work that went into this game and the tech that makes it possible.
Props to the dev duo. Fantastic tech, beautiful visuals and no nonsense. Admittingly the tiny game doesn't do much but what it does is polished to perfection
Indeed, even their custom renderer (Kajiya) is open source. I've been watching the team work on this for a couple of years now, it's neat as heck to see it on DF.
I'd never even heard of Tiny Glade until I watched this video. Just lost a morning building my first diorama. Such a relaxing game and technically very impressive.
I love when people don't exist in the binary of "hyper realism" or "advanced fidelity features". It's like the video game world forgets every once in a while that pixar has been in the forefront of rendering for basically ever. Being advanced does not mean being photorealistic, and although there's a lot in this game that isn't advanced (geometric density is sparse by design, for instance), they don't shy away from crazy lighting tech.
One really cool thing that wasn't mentioned in this video is that Tiny Glade was built using the Rust programing language, as opposed to the usual C/C++ toolchain used in game development, its probably the most popular game written in Rust so far. Its also not an entirely custom engine, it is the open source Bevy game engine, though going by developer interviews they ended up modifying or replacing big chunks of it. (The rendering engine is entirely custom, for example)
this is one of the best videos from DF, very complete about tech but also presents an indie game that I've never heard of and presents it to a lot of people. thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
I'm delighted to see such small teams using bespoke engines and not just relying on Unreal. For RT in general I often prefer it's use in less visually demanding games like this or older titles such as Portal where the ray traced lighting can truly shine
i'm glad a channel like yours is covering the smart tech used by a small indie studio for a tiny beautiful game! We should keep appreciating these best practices to make sure more people get access to better optimized games and more devs get the praise they deserve for optimizing said games. Much love.
For someone like me, who has always loved dioramas, since when I was a kid, games like this, with this distinctive style and wise use of modern technologies are simply a "dream come true". I love this, I love Townscaper, I love Station to Station and many others. Indie developers can make some true gems and show the world what it means having good ideas and profound knowledge of your tools
This is the furthest thing from the type of games I play, and yet I've already played almost 6 hours in the last 3 days. I'm absolutely completely hooked on this little wonder. The sound design is amazing, the building and creating is just so much fun and a great way to relax and chill out. I think about it when I'm not playing it. I might have a problem...
@@chriscofer6780 It's not the first ray traced game to work on GTX or other non hardware RT GPUs. Teardown and Minecraft Java edition have voxel tracing to do their ray tracing
Well. I’m not a huge building sim fan. But this is enticing. And for $12.74(at time of launch) I am at least going to support this duo dev team and maybe get a bit of relaxation in this weekend
I'm nowhere near creative enough to be interested in a sandbox castle builder game but theres no denying that I'm absolutely blown away by these visuals. Would be nice to see a colony builder or even crafting/survival game that looked like this.
What I like about this game is that even the non creative types can find enjoyment. There’s daily themes which suggests a topic to you for inspiration and then puts you on a new build with some part of it done. Then you continue it how you see fit.
considering I like making things irl for DND and Warhammer, this seems right up my alley. Its just a chill time and its also running extremely well? Sign me up
i bought the game a few days ago and was surprised how great it looked while running smoothly. only when going in dark areas i noticed it uses some form of ray tracing technology cause it has the same noisy issues other engines have when using RTGI where low light areas look unstable. but then i thought "rt and performance this good? what kind of witch craft is this?". absolutely amazing.
Looking at the quality of the lighting and RT effects, I’m stunned by the presentation pulled off by just a few developers. Really makes me wish larger third party games or particularly, Sony first party games, took advantage of similar technology to get good RT effects on consoles.
When the project is driven by love and passion for the game rather than squeezing pockets for as much money as possible, the end result always speaks for itself. On the flipside, I can never imagine AAA giants taking on anything these days that looks inspirational and unique.
RT has been underutilized and the issues with RT are also stemming form the fact that many AAA games are unfinished. Now most other games do have other issues that would effect performance that this little title wouldn't have but it clearly shows the benefits of RT. Not the first game I've seen that supports ray tracing without needing hardware based RT
@@purenatural5736 Perhaps even better, an RPG maker (pun intended) of sorts using the accessible procedural level creation technology in addition to similarly polished mechanisms for scripting, asset import, etc. This could be incredibly empowering to new developers.
Lots of people underestimate the GTX series GPU's. They're still very solid pieces of tech. Been running a 1070, playing most new games on 2K res going at 60fps. Sure it may dip a bit, but still runs solid high frames for a lot of games, old and mordern.
3:00 that's not diegetic UI, just responsive UI. I'm impressed to see such a "tiny" project highlighted on one of your videos! Truly inspiring for indie devs.
Rich really gave Alex a rest with this one. "Here, cover this game that runs well, shows good tech use, and it's pretty to look at" 😅 With all the games coming in the next months, I feel Alex needed the brief rest.
@@geminijinxies7258UE5 games look amazing. There are a lot of bad things you can say about UE5, but the renderer is amazing; possibly the best available in 2024.
I’ve been waiting for this game since I first saw it! I can’t believe you covered such a tiny game but I’m so glad you did. This just seems like the most cozy and relaxing fall game ever.
This is like if you grabbed a bunch of 90s game developers with their great optimization skills, sent them to 2024, taught them Rust, and asked them to create a game. This looks VERY polished.
AAA devs almost always have a small team of great coders. the problem is those companies are so huge and have huge teams of artists and scripters writing code that can drag the entire thing down.
@@DanKaschel $200m class of problems has dozens of paid professionals in order to solve it, much more budget and man-power. It's a very fair comparison. Considering the current state of games/ports, why almost AAA studio burn our will with half-assed games is beyond me. We all know the reason, we don't need to play dumb.
@@Rafa-Silva-Alt "dozens"? Try thousands. That's why it's not comparable. AAA games are a strategy, management, & logistics challenge, not a technical challenge.
This is what I'm talking about! Been following this project on and off, it's very interesting on the technical side of things and there are obvious reasons why this little marvel is able to run on old hardware. But this is exactly the approach I'd like to see, it's very smart, accessible and it looks gorgeous. Another thing worth noting is that this is not an actual custom engine, it's more of a mish mash of various bits of tech, like parts of the Bevy engine, the Kajiya (yes I looked into google for the spelling) GI renderer and so on. Very happy for its devs, they deserve all the exposure and success. EDIT: I am now reading the video description "the PC space is rife with technological innovation": glad to see that you now consider this kind of approaches to raytracing to be technological innovation, glad to see we're finally expanding the horizons. Yet, you really couldn't refrain from taking the umpteenth dig at Unreal Engine 12:07, not even in this wholesomely nice little video. You just had to do it.
A well optimized, technically impressive, vulkan game with linux support? And its made by two people?! Well damn... I'll buy it just out of principle.
That's what I did. I'll wait for some more future updates, but I already bought it to help the devs.
I wish more PC games used Vulkan instead of Direct3D 12. Vulkan is literally the best graphical API.
@@arkhalis3682 Vulkan is absolute horrible. It's a total failure of API design. Like everything Khronos group does. Very little about is is actually good. Which is why for example tiny glade has issues with supporting integrated GPUs. Which isn't really a technical issue but an issue with what Vulkan exposes.
It's just what's available and well supported on Linux. But that doesn't make it objectively good
amazing work for a 2 man team
@@gideonunger7284 Isn't that a GPU vendor sided thing? A lot of GPU vendors skimp out on Vulkan support on integrated graphics.
Vulkan is a low-level API with lower overhead than Direct3D 12, and it's also cross-platform with Linux and Android (and also Nintendo Switch) support, that alone makes it better than Direct3D.
Custom engines like this are wonderful to see. Well done to the devs for creating such a beautiful game.
Indie Goty contender
Too much unity and ue and games start looking too much alike.
They are using the open-source Bevy Engine - although they've added a lot of custom features
*bespoke engine
@@TheMetaldudeX Not at all, more so that people want and try to recreate photorealism/retro/celshaded art styles because X game did it and was successful, instead of doing it because they have an actual original art idea that they'd want to achieve. There's plenty of games made on UE or Unity that you wouldn't guess they were.
Wow every single frame could be a wallpaper
I've been screenshotting every few seconds for the entire vid...
The creative people have been creating utterly astounding dioramas.....but even noobs can create incredibly beautiful screenshot-worthy dioramas within a very short span.
Absolutely amazing game.....
@@NegativeROG That's what CP2077 was like for me. I was hoping for Space Marine 2 to be like that too, but it's got no ray-tracing and isn't super pretty, only rarely you get an angle of something nice-looking.
Exactly thats what I have been thinking while watching !
The fact this is a *two person team* is mind blowing. I love it when DF covers tiny titles like these that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle; I’m sure getting eyes on this gem will only help sales. Great coverage Alex 👍
I heard it's a husband and wife team. How cool.
I agree, but there was a lot of hype surrounding this game, so it's not that surprising that they would cover it, tbh!
@NegativeROG the programmer is a legend from the first years of HW RT, he's been at my old school for a Q&A before
Right? Reminds me how doomed Dreams would've been on PC lol. Options like this made by a small team being able to be comparable to Dreams procedural creation engine is extremely reflective of just how many options on PC. Awesome to see such a small team have great success like this, and gives me hope we'll see more ambitious projects in the same vein soon!
I love small team projects. I think Hollow Knight was like a two person team also, and that game has a larger scope and feels much more ambitious.
I worked on a very similar game which was later cancelled and when i compare our wall, floor and building generation, their UI and UX, their graphics quality and effects of the the tech in tiny glade with what we made back then as a team of 8 its just impressive how much they have us beat at everything.
and it was one of the technically most impressive projects i had worked on.
This is why I love DF. You guys should cover more games like this little gem.
there are very few games like this unfortunately
@@ahslanabanana I meant projects by smaller studios and indie devs - such games are not ground breakng in terms of 3D rendering but I'd rather see those covered instead of the next Assassin's creed game.
This looks incredibly boring. Far from a gem other than it looking impressive for an indie game with very little going on
@@julianchillby1024 imagine having such intuitive tools as a part of a game engine. Still - the praise is deserved given the scale of the project - nobody is saying this is ground breaking. It's just nice and you're probably not the target audience and that's fine too.
@@julianchillby1024 Tiny Glade - Creativity Test. Creative People Rate the Game 10/10
Some other things I noticed:
- Has a native Linux binary! It even competently handles hybrid graphics on Linux.
- No controller support for now, but they may add it in the future
- Most of the engine appears to be written using Rust
- They are right now very responsive to bug fixing and updates (sometimes multiple updates in a single day)
- It seems like they were going to make a Metal port for macOS; I don't know if they are still working it or not or if they will just use MoltenVK
Rust games are going to be a big thing!
@@Gjarllarhorn1have you written anything in rust?
@@Gjarllarhorn1 Arguably the best best language for the task 🙌
With the majority of non-game development taking place on Linux or Arm Based Mac machines, I'm surprised we haven't already seen a disruption in the game industry of more native 'Nix builds. Hopefully Steam OS pushes that even further.
@@MiltonGeorges The problem mostly stems from Apple shafting Khronos for the Vulkan standard. Apple went all-in on Metal and pulled up the drawbridge on cross-platform graphics APIs, which would eventually lead (among other decisions eg. 32-bit depreciation) to the removal of MacOS as a target for Valve Proton. Without a major install-base to drive Vulkan adoption, this lead to DirectX remaining the proverbial king even after DirectX/Vulkan translation was discovered and became usable. As long as DirectX continues to dominate, neither Windows nor Linux users will have much motivation to let down a ladder for Mac users. They're reliant on contributors like Codeweavers to bridge the gap, and their contributions aren't always Open Source.
This also highlights a big problem of the "traditional" UNIX model, though - outside of POSIX standardization, there is no motivation for even a certified UNIX to support cross-platform APIs. In the instance of computer graphics, the impetus relies entirely on platform-holders to make an attractive target for devs. If shareholders decide that the ecosystem is more attractive with fewer devs, then they can effectively make cross-platform development more trouble than it's worth.
Love seeing cool tech in small indie titles! Im going to buy it just for the aesthetic and visuals!
Tiny Glade is awesome! And the devs really care about the game. They've been pushing out performance, stability, and even quality of life patches nearly every day since launch!
Yet when a Ubisoft does it or an EA internet goes: "WhY tHeY rElEaSe UnFiNiShEd GaMeS!? ThEy ArE ShIt!.....
Yeah double standards. And everyone upvoting your comment is guilty of these double standards. Simply disgusting. And don't give me that bullshit with budget and what not. Bugs are bugs, QOL patches are QOL patches.
@@MMoerwho hurt you?
@@MMoer define bugs. if it performs well, and now performs even better, how is that comparable to AAA crap that evolve from "shit" to "works somewhat OK"?
@@MMoer Bro, there is a difference between a game that runs pretty good to running excellent, and a game that runs like shit to running somewhat decent.
@@MMoer Would you expect a better experience if I served you a $6 omelette as compared to a $2 omelette?
the developers are both absolute legends within their fields
who are they, and what are they known for?
@@KelseyHigham the guy is tomasz stachowiak, back in the day he also worked on EA SEED on some of the first raytracing techniques for realtime (ofc RT has been a thing for a long time, but they were some of the first to try and optimize a variety of techniques for realtime)
@@nielsbishere oh cool!! thank you :)
@@KelseyHigham the woman is Anastasia Opara, an veteran in procedural modeling, basically creating 3d art from simple inputs based on rules, she has multiple courses and talks on Houdini, the industry standard tool for procedural art. Tiny glade is a perfect example of proc gen, you give a bunch of artists tools like this to make their lives easier. I bet she was responsible for the building mechanic
@@sumdude5172that makes a lot of sense! I initially was wondering how 2 indie developers could make a game with such an intuitive yet indepth building system
The majority of building/survival/crafting games still havent evolved beyond Minecraft’s grid based block stacking 😂
wow I am really impressed by that one clip of the duck swimming past a floating leaf, only for that leaf to be pushed aside like its an actual physical object there. That is some attention to detail...
I think it's worth mentioning that one of the two devs worked at EA/DICE for many years as a Frostbite engine developer!
This explains a lot :D
Frostbite is a powerful game engine developed by DICE Company in 2008. This Game Engine is written in C++ and C#.
Tiny Glade uses a custom engine written in Rust. The game uses a lot of its own technology, a lot of open source software, including Bevy's Entity Component System (ECS).
And was one of the key engineers behind Alien: Isolation lighting tech, Tomasz is extremely talented engineer
Thanks Alex for covering this game, you sold me. It's incredible what people can create if they are passionante and dedicated, great job!
I'd really like to see DF do more showcases of indie games, there's a lot of very cool tech being made by small teams.
12:03 bespoke moment
Bought it just out of principle, these Devs deserve success.
_Love_ to see Tiny Glade on Digital Foundry! They deserve kudos for going above and beyond on their tech, and it really improves the game feel as well!
This is why I support DF. they are a small talented team with a big voice giving 2 developers a big spotlight. I first seen their procedural tech a month or more ago on the facebook page '80 level'. Glad to see these devs are getting more exposure. Exposure they deserve.
Bought this game less than half way into this video, based solely on this video. Finally, a game built seemingly just for me.
It's crazy how it looks so good and runs so well on pretty much anything. I hope they give a talk at GDC. There's probably something other devs could gleam from what they've done.
I think there is a talk floating around out there about how they made the custom renderer
There is now a talk online, search for Tiny Glade ray marching.
That CD-i Tetris soundtrack is so damn good, Ive been binging it the last couple of weeks so was nice to hear it here
Very nice to see a tech deep dive into Indie titles, there's so much novel approaches there worth looking into. On that note I highly recommend looking at Exanima, the physics based isometric game on PC (Steam & GOG). The lighting, object integration, cloth simulation and overall physics (Characters & Objects) is truly impressive
The tech is absolutely insane. Crazy talent and heavy work on it. Game looks lovely too! If I was a big company I'd bee paying millions to get that tech. It's been a long while I hadn't seen something so impressive.
I don't know what I enjoy more, watching this beautiful little indie game, which I was not aware of, being shown off or listening to the detailed explanation of Alex, which is well over my head, as to the work behind what I am seeing. Kudos to Alex and Digital Foundry on explaining and expanding our appreciation for works of art like this.
Most people don't seem to realize that ray tracing is just as beneficial if not more with cartoony graphics. Fewer polygons means easier to run. Also you don't need to do extra work to make it look just perfect, it does it all automatically, so indie games benefit from it a lot.
It's really magical how much realism comes from lighting. This sort of realism ages so much better than polygons and textures.
A long-form interview of the people behind it would be great to see on here!
I love videos like this, showcasing a deserving indie game, and you can definitely hear the passion you have for the work that went into this game and the tech that makes it possible.
Probably one of the best builders I have played in a while, the automation is what makes it so satisfying.
Props to the dev duo. Fantastic tech, beautiful visuals and no nonsense. Admittingly the tiny game doesn't do much but what it does is polished to perfection
Let's go Tiny Glade!
Still blows my mind that it's written in Rust and running on Bevy's ECS.
What's ECS?
@@cube2fox Entity Component System.
Indeed, even their custom renderer (Kajiya) is open source. I've been watching the team work on this for a couple of years now, it's neat as heck to see it on DF.
@@Kroogles Do they use their own solution for RTGI or go they use e.g. AMD FidelityFX Brixelizer GI?
When the tech stack is as beautiful as the visuals
Absolute gem of a game. We need more chill games like Tiny Glade. Not everything has to be 100 percent narrative or action based.
I'd never even heard of Tiny Glade until I watched this video. Just lost a morning building my first diorama. Such a relaxing game and technically very impressive.
I love this game. Elegant and beautiful. Spent hours last night just making a Bavarian cottage.
Saw someone make whole Skyrim cities and guilds on reddit. It's such an amazing game.
I've been following this project for a while, super happy to see it featured here :)
super impressive game by two very talented devs
Alex gets to play a well made PC game finally :)
And bought. Looks great, can't wait to jump in.
Super relaxing have fun 🙌
This art direction does way more for me than hyper realism. Absolutely beautiful.
Edit: This will be my new wallpaper generator 😊
I love when people don't exist in the binary of "hyper realism" or "advanced fidelity features".
It's like the video game world forgets every once in a while that pixar has been in the forefront of rendering for basically ever. Being advanced does not mean being photorealistic, and although there's a lot in this game that isn't advanced (geometric density is sparse by design, for instance), they don't shy away from crazy lighting tech.
@@iurigrang Toy Story 4 was very photorealistic! Absolutely incredible work mimicking real cameras.
That's what i call optimization! Not my type of game, but for a 2 people studio this is a fantastic game!
I'd love to see a 3D platformer in this visual style. Doesn't need to be fast or flashy, I just want to wander and jump around in puzzles.
@@DigitalJedi And being this easy to build? That'd be pretty sweet.
@IntegerOfDoom Exactly! This building UI and art style would be so great for a little chill puzzle platformer.
@@DigitalJedi, a 3d Mario with a shotgun would be great.
One really cool thing that wasn't mentioned in this video is that Tiny Glade was built using the Rust programing language, as opposed to the usual C/C++ toolchain used in game development, its probably the most popular game written in Rust so far. Its also not an entirely custom engine, it is the open source Bevy game engine, though going by developer interviews they ended up modifying or replacing big chunks of it. (The rendering engine is entirely custom, for example)
Yeah it's great to see something so polished coming out of the Rust gamedev community already.
I read that they're using the ECS from Bevy.
this is one of the best videos from DF, very complete about tech but also presents an indie game that I've never heard of and presents it to a lot of people. thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
I'm delighted to see such small teams using bespoke engines and not just relying on Unreal.
For RT in general I often prefer it's use in less visually demanding games like this or older titles such as Portal where the ray traced lighting can truly shine
This has to be one of the most pleasing to look at games I’ve seen in a while. Gorgeous.
i'm glad a channel like yours is covering the smart tech used by a small indie studio for a tiny beautiful game! We should keep appreciating these best practices to make sure more people get access to better optimized games and more devs get the praise they deserve for optimizing said games. Much love.
For someone like me, who has always loved dioramas, since when I was a kid, games like this, with this distinctive style and wise use of modern technologies are simply a "dream come true". I love this, I love Townscaper, I love Station to Station and many others.
Indie developers can make some true gems and show the world what it means having good ideas and profound knowledge of your tools
Also check out Summerhouse and Dystopika!
@@bassemb I'll do, thank you!
This is the furthest thing from the type of games I play, and yet I've already played almost 6 hours in the last 3 days. I'm absolutely completely hooked on this little wonder. The sound design is amazing, the building and creating is just so much fun and a great way to relax and chill out. I think about it when I'm not playing it. I might have a problem...
I could see this being a good way to make quick maps for DnD.
Superbly optimized
Fr the fact they got rt working in a gtx 1060 is witchcraft
@@chriscofer6780 It's not the first ray traced game to work on GTX or other non hardware RT GPUs. Teardown and Minecraft Java edition have voxel tracing to do their ray tracing
@@crestofhonor2349 there are RT demos for PS2, dreamcast, gamecube and even older systems.
It makes me so happy to see such a little passion project get the attention of a huge channel like Digital Foundry. 🙂 I love when talent is recognized
Beautiful video for a beautiful game. I would love see more indies in DF.
What an incredibly performant game
Kudos to everyone involved
Both of them!
I remember being blown away seeing this on tiktok years ago in pre alpha. I was even more blown away to see how far it has come!
Well. I’m not a huge building sim fan. But this is enticing. And for $12.74(at time of launch) I am at least going to support this duo dev team and maybe get a bit of relaxation in this weekend
I can binge these videos all day!
I'm nowhere near creative enough to be interested in a sandbox castle builder game but theres no denying that I'm absolutely blown away by these visuals. Would be nice to see a colony builder or even crafting/survival game that looked like this.
Happy that DF is covering this! What the devs achieved is truly remarkable!
absolutely beautiful, artistically and technically, i hope this game gets the attention and sales it deserves.
What I like about this game is that even the non creative types can find enjoyment. There’s daily themes which suggests a topic to you for inspiration and then puts you on a new build with some part of it done. Then you continue it how you see fit.
Tom from Pounce Light will be giving a talk on the rendering tech next month at our Graphics Programming Conference.
considering I like making things irl for DND and Warhammer, this seems right up my alley. Its just a chill time and its also running extremely well? Sign me up
Each new scene in this video was beautiful. I would love them all moving as wallpapers
amazing work by the devs! Also, it's great seeing DF covering "tiny" indie titles :)
So stoked you covered this! ❤❤❤
Played the demo of this ages ago and loved it, really relaxing gameplay
i bought the game a few days ago and was surprised how great it looked while running smoothly. only when going in dark areas i noticed it uses some form of ray tracing technology cause it has the same noisy issues other engines have when using RTGI where low light areas look unstable. but then i thought "rt and performance this good? what kind of witch craft is this?". absolutely amazing.
Love seeing you guys highlight a wee gem like this!
Looking at the quality of the lighting and RT effects, I’m stunned by the presentation pulled off by just a few developers. Really makes me wish larger third party games or particularly, Sony first party games, took advantage of similar technology to get good RT effects on consoles.
When the project is driven by love and passion for the game rather than squeezing pockets for as much money as possible, the end result always speaks for itself. On the flipside, I can never imagine AAA giants taking on anything these days that looks inspirational and unique.
@@Dam0nSingh I was honestly thinking how good Ghost of Yōtei would look with this kind of RT GI and reflections solution.
RT has been underutilized and the issues with RT are also stemming form the fact that many AAA games are unfinished. Now most other games do have other issues that would effect performance that this little title wouldn't have but it clearly shows the benefits of RT. Not the first game I've seen that supports ray tracing without needing hardware based RT
Sony published stuff like Dreams and The Tomorrow Children
Not a few, just 2, they did amazing.
Thank you Digital Foundry for letting me know about this game. It's looks so beautiful and calming as well as optimized. I'll be surely buying it. ❤
Truly a beautiful game, did not think yall would cover it. Weird for a game to have RT and not boast about it.
I need this in my life.
Looks better than every Unreal Engine 5 game and doesn't need a 4090 to run. Will check this out!
I love the visuals but now I want this to be an RPG! 😄
Yeah, they could build an isometric RPG. I also love this idea.
@@purenatural5736 Perhaps even better, an RPG maker (pun intended) of sorts using the accessible procedural level creation technology in addition to similarly polished mechanisms for scripting, asset import, etc. This could be incredibly empowering to new developers.
@@no1DdC that’s also a great idea! 💡
Plenty of people (myself included) asked the dev duo for tools to use it as terrains for TTRPGs.
It's a hidden gem 💖
2:47 Man, the poor sap who’s gotta light those lanterns, especially during winter…
Lots of people underestimate the GTX series GPU's. They're still very solid pieces of tech.
Been running a 1070, playing most new games on 2K res going at 60fps. Sure it may dip a bit, but still runs solid high frames for a lot of games, old and mordern.
Loving this sudden surplus of chill builder games like this, townscaper and disktopia etc
Glad you checked this out, I've been enjoying it for a while and it's cool to hear your take on it.
3:00 that's not diegetic UI, just responsive UI.
I'm impressed to see such a "tiny" project highlighted on one of your videos! Truly inspiring for indie devs.
Absolutely beautiful game! Have had so much fun playing and streaming this one. Couldn't agree more with everything you've said!
I just bought this game on Steam after watching your commentary. Looks like a cute little experience for when I want to chillax.
Rich really gave Alex a rest with this one. "Here, cover this game that runs well, shows good tech use, and it's pretty to look at" 😅
With all the games coming in the next months, I feel Alex needed the brief rest.
It looks great and runs really well! In comparison how often can you say that about an Unreal Engine 5 title? Probably never.
@@geminijinxies7258UE5 games look amazing. There are a lot of bad things you can say about UE5, but the renderer is amazing; possibly the best available in 2024.
So awesome to see this covered :) the tech is so good!
Very happy to see you cover Tiny Glade, it deserves more recognition for how tehcnically impressive it is!
Would love to see you cover Subside VR
I’ve been waiting for this game since I first saw it! I can’t believe you covered such a tiny game but I’m so glad you did.
This just seems like the most cozy and relaxing fall game ever.
Watching the devlog video for time to time, I never thought the result will be this good.
I need a pretty & chill game like this in my life. Give the extremely stress-inducing norm a break...get cozy for once. Nice vid, DF.
Amazing video, great to see more RT used in different ways and still targeting great performance! Keep these videos up!!!
Thanks for giving to coverage to a small developer! I played to demo a lot and got the game on release. They put so much effort into the game.
Holy CRIKEY this is impressive...! And seeing the interactions with the game world constantly puts a smile on my face.
That is definitely some of the best DOF I've ever seen in a game. Looks like a photo I took with my DSLR.
Cozy gaming has a new shining example for reference now. Awesome.
I wishlisted this immediately after seeing the first minute of this video. Looks amazing!
the developers have an incredibly good eye for aesthetics
This is like if you grabbed a bunch of 90s game developers with their great optimization skills, sent them to 2024, taught them Rust, and asked them to create a game. This looks VERY polished.
AAA devs almost always have a small team of great coders. the problem is those companies are so huge and have huge teams of artists and scripters writing code that can drag the entire thing down.
@@jc_dogenI hope we're not pretending that performance optimization on a $200M project is the same class of problem as the one solved by this game.
@@DanKaschel tell everyone else in the comments
@@DanKaschel $200m class of problems has dozens of paid professionals in order to solve it, much more budget and man-power. It's a very fair comparison. Considering the current state of games/ports, why almost AAA studio burn our will with half-assed games is beyond me. We all know the reason, we don't need to play dumb.
@@Rafa-Silva-Alt "dozens"? Try thousands. That's why it's not comparable. AAA games are a strategy, management, & logistics challenge, not a technical challenge.
This is what I'm talking about! Been following this project on and off, it's very interesting on the technical side of things and there are obvious reasons why this little marvel is able to run on old hardware. But this is exactly the approach I'd like to see, it's very smart, accessible and it looks gorgeous. Another thing worth noting is that this is not an actual custom engine, it's more of a mish mash of various bits of tech, like parts of the Bevy engine, the Kajiya (yes I looked into google for the spelling) GI renderer and so on. Very happy for its devs, they deserve all the exposure and success.
EDIT: I am now reading the video description "the PC space is rife with technological innovation": glad to see that you now consider this kind of approaches to raytracing to be technological innovation, glad to see we're finally expanding the horizons. Yet, you really couldn't refrain from taking the umpteenth dig at Unreal Engine 12:07, not even in this wholesomely nice little video. You just had to do it.
This game looks absolutely gorgeous. Amazing what these two guys have created here. ❤
Delightful coverage. Thank you.
Lots of high praise, Alex. I hope this game does well for the devs, hard work pays off.
Looks nice. Cheers Alex.