[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/36089318/216087c31ac900eed9c8f32c1d72e1198f388714.jpg[/img] Deep snow is a visual effect we always wanted to have in Red Frost. Since snow influences so many aspects of the gameplay itself, chief among which is making you travel slower through snow the deeper it is and consuming more stamina while doing so, we are now tweaking its implementation. [previewyoutube=6gpqkZepOcs;full][/previewyoutube] As you can see in the video above, deep snow is a visual effect where you see the depth of the snow as opposed to the snow on the ground just being a flat terrain texture. While the system can handle snow that is really deep, we will limit its usage mostly to snow that is about knee-high. There are good reasons for us to not make snow any deeper, such as being unable to spot many objects in the snow or even simple things like being unable to hunt a rabbit as considering its size it would look and feel very odd. Making the snow about knee high presents the perfect compromise between realism, visuals and gameplay. You still get the feeling of wadding through snow, the visuals make certain to increase the immersion of moving slower and exhaust quicker while not missing interesting things that would otherwise be covered by the snow. Deep snow is also great for another thing: tracking of animals. Rather than create an artificial tracking system, we rely in Red Frost on a more organic and immersive approach: foot tracks. What wouldn’t really work well in most games, in the winter setting of Red Frost foot steps remain visible most of the time allowing you to track animals and enemies alike, without the help of additional systems. This obviously gets really interesting when the snow becomes deep as you won’t often be able to determine the foot steps themselves, but rather see paths and may often not be sure what you track since the size of the tracks left will mostly be the only indicator about your prey.