hedgepets

HedgePets

A tiny Godot 4.7 (GL Compatibility, portrait 1080 × 1920) garden-creature lab. The design notes are hedgepets, part.md (“we’re going to care about these things way too much”).

The garden (the main scene, garden.tscn)

A messy back garden: clear junk 🪏, plant and water 🌱💧, and pets peek through the broken fence, visit, then move in when the garden suits them. docs/GARDEN.md. Transitions: docs/MOTION.md. Mobile / web export: docs/MOBILE.md. The backyard: docs/BACKYARD.md.

Gerald in 3D (the pet viewer, main3d.tscn)

Art direction, parameters and acceptance: docs/ART_DIRECTION.md. Developer view: F1.

Pets: Gerald (beaver, ivy), Clover (sitting bunny, clover, a cotton tail of blossom), Juniper (hedgehog, fern), Bramble (tortoise, a flowering jasmine shell), Spruce (moose, pine, wooden paddle antlers), Hazel (squirrel, autumn oak with acorns, a huge tail), Smudge (raccoon, silvery sage, a mask and a ringed tail), plus 40 New England animals made from data (pets/species.json via scripts/art/species_builder.gd; see docs/GARDEN.md) - each a profile in pets/*.tres on the same renderer. Switch with ‹ › or the arrow keys. Drag to turn the pet (turntable with momentum), drag up/down to tilt, wheel to zoom, tap for a hop and a heart.

Seen from above and to the side like hedgepetsGoal.jpg. Everything is built in scripts/hedge_pet_3d.gd: leafy masses for the body and head (deep shade inside, no fur), about 2,000 ivy leaves as MultiMeshes placed on the surface (the same sprites and normal maps as the 2D version), vines hanging off his sides, a woven-twig tail, root feet, berry eyes, a seed nose and seed teeth, leaf ears, a warm sun with real shadows. The wind runs on the GPU (shaders/leaf.gdshader): gusts roll across him, leaves bend, flutter and twist. He blinks, turns his head a little toward your pointer, and hops with a heart when you tap him. ~59 fps.

The 2D version is still main.tscn (open it in the editor, or set it as the main scene).

What is here (2D)

• Gerald, a fully botanical beaver - a plant in the shape of a beaver, not an animal under plants - seen three-quarters (the target is hedgepetsGoal.jpg). Base layer (scripts/hedge_pet.gd): a paddle tail of woven twigs with leaves sprouting from its edge, root clumps for feet, deep leafy shade under the ivy (no fur anywhere), moss over the muzzle. Top layer: a glossy berry eye, a seed nose, two pale seed teeth, a vine mouth, a cupped-leaf ear.
• The ivy (scripts/growth_renderer.gd): an ivy cover over the body and the back of the head, vines from the growth curves trailing off the edges with curling tendrils, white flowers. Every leaf is lit by where it sits on the round body and foreshortened at the rim. The layout is built once; every frame the leaves rustle in a wind that rolls across him (rim leaves most; a tap shivers them all). Leaves are baked sprites (assets/sprites/*.png from tools/bake_leaf_sprites.py; real lobed ivy from tools/make_ivy_sprites.py), so 670 rustling leaves run at the display’s frame rate.
• Light and shadow (Godot 2D lighting): every leaf sprite has a normal map (tools/make_normal_maps.py: a gentle dome and pressed-in veins) and is drawn as a CanvasTexture; a warm PointLight2D (“Sun”) from the upper left over a slightly dimmed CanvasModulate shapes each leaf, and leaves glint as they turn. Each leaf on the body drops a soft shadow on whatever lies beneath it.
• Realistic wind: a breeze plus gusts that roll across him left to right (wind_at()); leaves bend with it, flutter on their stems, lift, and twist so their paler edge shows for a moment; deep leaves barely move. A strong gust or a tap sends a small shiver through him.
• He is alive (scripts/pet_life.gd): breathes (barely), blinks, follows your pointer with his eye and glances around when you’re idle; every so often a gust goes through his leaves; tap him and he hops, his eye squeezes shut, his cheek flushes and a heart pops out. He himself does not sway - the leaves do.
• The renderer lab (growth, amplitude, frequency, leaf spacing, overflow, plant): press Tab.

Checking it without a window

xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 1080x1920x24" godot --path . --rendering-driver opengl3 --script tools/capture_screenshot.gd   # /tmp/hedgepets-headless.png
xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 1080x1920x24" godot --path . --rendering-driver opengl3 --script tools/capture_frames.gd       # 6 frames with a tap
DISPLAY=:0 godot --path . --script tools/fps_check.gd                                                                        # frame rate on the real GPU