In mid October I gave myself two days for nothing but looks, and it changed the feel of the game more than any feature that month.
Light first. The sun now follows its real path across the sky and changes its colour through the day. Shadows are soft out to 120 metres, corners get ambient occlusion, and shiny things reflect the sky. I rendered five looks side by side and picked a mix: warm, clear and calm, never gritty.
Then the ground. The lawns are drawn blade by blade with a little relief, the grass tufts take the lawn's colour, and along the coast the lawn blends into a sand beach on a ragged line instead of a hard edge. At the harbour the land ends in a concrete quay wall.
And then the sea. It is real water now: waves, the sky reflected in it, the sun's glitter, turquoise shallows and foam where it meets the beach or anything floating in it. Out of five looks the winner was the one I called Caribbean.
The style rule behind all of it: low poly with soft textures. Broad soft shapes, no grain, no single bricks, and every building a hair its own shade. It is the look I hope people will recognise from a single screenshot.
