DEV Community: ALIS — World Reborn

Digital Whisper

ALIS — World Reborn — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 09:02:07 +0000

Digital Whisper

Uncompressed textures quickly eat up VRAM, drop FPS, and break scene smoothness, so we strictly control their compression for stable performance.

We pick the right format for each job: masks - single channel with minimal detail loss; normals - efficient two-channel compression; color textures - a balance of quality and speed.

We enable virtual textures with prioritized streaming: nearby objects get textures first, distant ones stream on demand and only their visible parts. We use mip levels - at distance the texture detail is reduced without changing geometry, which saves memory and speeds up rendering.

Unreal profilers give us snapshots of memory usage - which textures/materials and objects are heavy. Based on this data we adjust scenes, keeping the balance between visual richness and smooth gameplay.

Build the Game

ALIS — World Reborn — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:01:37 +0000

Build the Game

Use one pipeline for many cities and world extensions: playable, deterministic, open source.

Watch https://youtu.be/zZOI2uBskSA

Heavy Grace

ALIS — World Reborn — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:04:28 +0000

Heavy Grace

We continuously run scenes and objects across different locations and scenarios to keep the project stable.

In Unreal Engine we use profilers - GPU/CPU, Nanite and texture/streaming visualizers, plus material/shader complexity. They show FPS, hardware load, memory usage per texture and per object, and how light, shadows, shaders, and material layers (MLB) behave. This lets us quickly spot bottlenecks - dense foliage, heavy materials, or overly detailed models.

We then adjust scenes and assets based on the metrics: tune LOD/Nanite, materials, and lighting to keep the balance between photorealism and smooth performance. The player gets a living, natural world, and we get confidence that every element runs reliably.

Explore real cities in ALIS — play release 2.0.0

ALIS — World Reborn — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:02:09 +0000

Explore real cities in ALIS — play release 2.0.0

For players:

Pick Kazan or Manhattan right from the main menu
Fly over vast city territories with fast overview controls
Terrain, water, roads, greenery and buildings rebuilt from real geography

For developers:

A deterministic pipeline that builds both cities from real geographic data
Unreal Engine 5.8, with the same generated world assets the release ships
Automated gates for world generation, streaming, gameplay routes and performance

Still an early prototype, so expect rough edges. Download, source and signed checksums:
https://github.com/fallintodusk/alis/releases/tag/v2.0.0

ALIS will be featured at PlayB3yond Indie Game Fest 2026

ALIS — World Reborn — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:02:12 +0000

ALIS will be featured at PlayB3yond Indie Game Fest 2026

ALIS — World Reborn will be featured at PlayB3yond Indie Game Fest from September 21–27.

Explore a survival world built from real places, where streets, routes, terrain, metabolism, vitals, inventory and world interaction shape how you survive.

ALIS is an open-source Unreal Engine 5 project with a free Windows prototype available now.

https://playb3yond.com

PlayB3yond2026 #indiedev #survivalgame

Exchange

ALIS — World Reborn — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:01:23 +0000

Exchange

One of the key locations is an abandoned shopping mall, based on a real place. We conveyed an atmosphere of desolation and looting - silence, dust, and traces of haste.

Rare resources may still be hidden here; exploring the supermarket remains tense and necessary for progression.

Nanobots

ALIS — World Reborn — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:04:42 +0000

Nanobots

Previously, having many detailed objects caused sharp FPS drops and required manual LODs. Now Nanite renders highly detailed models in real time without manual LODs: the engine streams detail where the player looks and simplifies distant objects, keeping the scene smooth.

Nanite prebuilds an optimized hierarchy of geometry and splits it into clusters, dynamically adjusting their detail by distance and visibility. We enable it deliberately - we profile and use it where it delivers real gains.

In Unreal, we use visualization modes to see how Nanite groups triangles into clusters, how detail changes with distance, where overdraw occurs, and which clusters are occluded from the camera - and we fine-tune rendering and scene performance based on that.

Lumen and Nanite are flagship Unreal Engine technologies for real-time lighting and ultra-detailed geometry

Black and white dances

ALIS — World Reborn — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:03:44 +0000

Black and white dances

The rhythm of the scene is set by a dynamic day-night cycle that runs on a combination of technologies - Lumen handles indirect light and reflections, VSM handles shadows, and post-processing polishes the final palette. This lets the player feel the natural passage of time - the essence of an open world - without precomputed light and sky maps.

The sun and moon update lighting in real time, shadows stay soft and detailed, and post-processing adapts color, contrast, and light effects to the current lighting - bringing to life a cold, fresh morning, a bright, clean day, and a warm, soft sunset.

Flexible settings let us control transition speed, atmosphere, clouds, fog, and flares.

Control Randomness

ALIS — World Reborn — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:01:30 +0000

Control Randomness

To preserve variety in the environment without losing scene cohesion, it’s important to balance randomness and spatial harmony.

We achieve this with flexible Foliage Type settings - a special asset that links to vegetation meshes and small props. By tuning fine parameters - density distribution, scale, random rotation, surface alignment with slope and height in mind, as well as view distance - we can quickly and efficiently populate scenes, as if ‘painting’ the landscape with objects.

This approach delivers an organized, harmonious, and optimized environment without templated sameness, staying faithful to our references.

ALIS 1.0.0: first free playable Windows build — walk a reconstructed real city district

ALIS — World Reborn — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:10:48 +0000

ALIS 1.0.0: first free playable Windows build — walk a reconstructed real city district

The first free playable build of ALIS is out for Windows.

ALIS is an early single-player prototype — not a finished game. It reconstructs a real city district you can walk through, with a metabolism simulation running underneath: vitals follow real medical timelines, and a dying state cannot simply be powered through.

In this build:

a walkable reconstruction of a real place
the vitals and metabolism system driving survival
the full source, open for inspection and contribution

Not in yet: polished gameplay loops, tuned performance, final content. This is a prototype for early testers and curious developers, and it will misbehave in places — reports are welcome.

The build ships as a release on the project's GitHub, under fallintodusk/alis, with signed checksums so anyone can verify exactly what they downloaded.

If you walk it: what broke, what confused you, and what made you want to keep going?

Shadow Wisdom

ALIS — World Reborn — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:05:25 +0000

Shadow Wisdom

To achieve clean, believable shadows, we use Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM). VSM computes shadows primarily where the player is looking: nearby areas render in high detail, distant areas are simplified and streamed in on demand, without keeping full shadow maps in memory.

Flexible settings let us control resolution, edge softness, draw distance, and anti-aliasing - keeping the scene lively and readable.

In our tech stack, roles are split as follows: VSM provides direct lighting and shadows, Lumen handles indirect light and reflections, Nanite - renders ultra-detailed geometry, and post-processing polishes the final frame.

This approach delivers stable, artifact-free quality and preserves scene realism at a reasonable performance cost.

Life Echoes

ALIS — World Reborn — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:45:31 +0000

Life Echoes

In the game, we capture the atmosphere of people’s lives and carefully weave realistic household items into the residents’ stories.

We show untouched, cozy comfort through family details, neat furniture, and appliances.

The mood of an apartment abandoned in haste is anxious and unfinished, with scattered belongings and furniture - as if life suddenly went on pause.

We depict an elderly couple’s apartment with a typical Soviet interior, using timeworn details: a rocking chair, carpets on the walls, simple curtains, and medical supplies.

We show the decline of everyday life through broken furniture, trash, and dirty belongings. This setting underscores neglect, hopelessness, and the hard lives of those who have hit bottom.

Players - after facing the intrigue and challenge - can explore these locations, soak up the atmosphere, and find useful resources.