Any ideas on how to simulate a tidal system in unity?

Any ideas on how to simulate a tidal system in unity? Should i just raise height of a water plane? Should the plane tilt in relation to the moon (or is that a gross misunderstanding tides)? Do I need a volumetric sort of water system?

Is this question unanswerable without more context? I think I heard one of the last 2 (the power suit one) CODs had a map where the tide came in, how did they do it there?

Haven’t worked with water in unity but some years ago in old unity i saw that you have a “water level” which you can set, for a tidal system you have to lower and raise this level by code if you just have a level, if you want to simulate something like that on a “planet” don’t know the kind of game, you will have probably much more “fun” setting up a working system :smile:

You’re not going to need anything more complex than a plan that rises and lowers unless as martin says you are working on a global scale.

For something the size of a COD map that will be fine. The tide takes 6 hours to come in and is fastest in the middle so if you want to make it more realistic use an ease in ease out lerp.

The only complication with a simple “raise and lower” script would be if your map has tide pools - little divets in the landscape that fill up when the tide is hide, but become independent pools when it’s low. You’ll have to make these independently and you probably want to disable them as the tide reaches them, and you may want to do something weird to make that bit of the water plane disappear until the tide pool appears…

Probably not something worth worrying about, just a consideration.