Bats in some dungeons or caverns

I was just watching the R47 Postmortem Telethon, and in the new cavern under development I thought it would be great to have some bats flying around certain portions of it.

I happen to be a Unity developer, so I suggest this Asset which I've purchased for my own project: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/roaming-bats-2899

It is inexpensive in both money ($14.95) and processing power (good for the frame rate), and the bats will automatically do collision avoidance, and their animation and flight is very realistic looking. They will automatically perch upside down at the landing spots you specify. You can also specify how many bats you want and where the bats will roam, etc.

The bat asset is also part of a bird package sold by the same seller for only about $30, and honestly they improved the look of MY game quite a bit, and I think having some birds and bats flying around Novia will significantly improve the feel of the game.

 

It's little details like this that make me stop and say; "Ooh, neat."

 

I noticed that the bird package is on sale in the Unity Asset Store right now, so you can get 6 flying creatures for only $19.95. Here is the link: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/animals/bird-flock-bundle-2-71740

I do not work for this seller in any way. ;-)

Unless you want to, you probably don't even need to network these small flying creatures, so they won't even take up network bandwidth. Optionally, you can just have them flying around on their own, powered by the users' own systems. It's really easy to control how many flying creatures will be instantiated by script, so you can even detect the user's frame rate, and instantiate as many birds or bats as the user's system has the power to do so. In other words, you can improve the realism and atmosphere of many places in the game with almost no negative trade off.

As you know, some locations in the game have faster frame rate than others. These locations typically have less game objects in them, such as an empty hallway in a dungeon. Well, these empty hallways can have some bats flying around them. The frame rate will still be fast, and these hallways (or similarly empty places) will feel less boring. The same idea can apply to towns, forests, and encounter instances. Where the frame rate is not an issue, there can be many birds and such to make the locations more interesting.

 

Would be nice to see some tall buildings in towns with birds flying around and possibly landing on the roof. Not many per house, 2 or 3, but my Kobold Great Hall still lets the rain in so I'd probably need to call an exterminator.

 

Here's the YouTube of the bats @Truthveyor refers to in the OP:

 

It's actually quite easy to do with the bird asset to have the birds fly around and land on the roof from time to time. Just drag and drop couple landing spots onto the roof in the Unity Editor.

 

there are already bats in several caverns in the game.

 

Really? My bad. I didn't notice them... Please disregard my suggestion then.

 

not necessarily. i don't know which bat package they used: what you suggested may be better.