Devlog 6: Steam Game Festival, Dungeon, and Archaeology

Steam post image

Steam post image

It’s been a while since the last devlog, so let’s get straight to the good news. Good news is that a Steam demo is coming in a few weeks. Yay.

Another good news is that we’ve been busy last months so much because I’ve been contacted by ~36 publishers? All sizes. It kept us busy. But we're still independent, and self-funded. No decision yet. Still cool.

Also, this devlog exists as a video as well on Youtube, here:

DUNGEONS

In this devlog, I’d like to start with dungeons.

I’ve been asked many times how extensive our dungeons are, how they work, what their purpose in the game are which is a great question, especially if we have generated cities at the same time, right? I am very much into dungeon crawlers myself, especially the old ones, so I’ve always planned to add “some kind of dungeon system” into Nimoyd.

We’ve managed to create not only tall cities, fully destructible, but those dark dungeons filled with riddles and loot are generated too – and fully destructible as well (so far). It means, our procedurally generated dungeons are quite extensive and unique too, and practically serve as their own game. You need a key to enter the dungeon. You need to craft that key. Then you go down, down, down, and return to the surface with some new shiny stuff and whatnot. And there are plenty of dungeons on each planet. And dungeons even have gods which might take revenge!

Do those dungeons have end bosses? Not yet.

What about loot? Yes, loot is there.

What about enemies? Yes, with enemies, though not well balanced yet, of course.

TUTORIALS

Tutorials might be not the sweetest game feature, but I believe that it is important to properly explain and show the game to the new players, especially those who are not familiar with survival and sandbox games. So, we’ve added more tutorials, messages, explanations, tooltips, and help functions to the game, allowing you to learn the game faster.

I’ve never been a fan of games that force you to keep a wiki open, in the case you’re wondering where a certain item or resource is from or dropped by whom. So, we’ve added even an Encyclopedia to the game which, hopefully, supports the tutorial system during those early game phases where you learn the basics, and slowly move towards the advanced stuff.

STRANGE BIOMES

Fungus is a special biome in the game because it is dynamic. It is, kind of, “alive”, and has its own game mechanic, so it is not just another terrain biome such as forest or desert. And since last time, we’ve greatly improved its appearance, so now the Fungus biome looks even cooler.

By the way, Fungus is bound to the goddess of nature, Gaia. If you pray to Gaia, as seen below, you help her and your planet to recover from the Fungus menace. But more on the Fungus mechanic another time in the future.

SCALE OF VOXEL WORLD

Another question sometimes asked is, how many cities are there? How far are those from each other? The following footage hopefully gives you an impression of how big the world can become. The more you “discover”, the more icons and NPC locations will appear on the world map. But you can seamlessly zoom between those locations, and eventually uncover the whole planet.

I also plan to add an Earth-shaped planet to the game. That would be cool. Earth, in 2702, where you can visit past New York City or London.

CLAIM TERRITORY

An interesting game feature is the “Claim” building. It allows you to “claim” NPC territory for yourself, essentially making it possible for you to “conquer the planet” – and to upset the NPCs.

The conquest of the planet is one of the “victory conditions” which I will discuss next devlog. Because, as we can imagine, lots of players simply wish to farm and play a life sim, and there are victory conditions for those in the game too.

NPC factions react hostile to territorial claims, and the closer it is to their territories, or even within, the worse. But in the video, I’m showing how easy it is to claim areas. Of course, over time, we’ll expand this feature, adding turrets and other defensive measures, to make this more fun, especially in multiplayer (as soon as multiplayer is done).

LET’S GO INSIDE

A question that is asked from time to time is how a building looks from the inside. Lots of games do fancy buildings in 3D, but aren’t procedurally generated buildings tricky? Yes, it was one of the hardest game features, actually; it is not perfect yet but hopefully, the footage below helps you to see what we’ve been able to achieve so far.

Each building can be entered. By “building” I mean, in this case, everything that has a roof, so caves, player-made “hills”, or simple cottages, or even a player-made “voxel tent”, too.

The goal is to make it easier, and easier to use so that house decoration in good ‘ol life sim fashion is a cool thing to do in Nimoyd.

ARCHAEOLOGY

I always found that many survival games become not only a little boring in mid to late games, but their lack of storytelling (and storytelling features) made me feel as if something was missing. Obviously, storytelling in a procedurally generated game is not an easy challenge but I’ve been wondering for a long time how to solve this issue, aside from some NPCs with quests.

Therefore, a feature that we slowly add to the game now is different “archaeology” or “excavation” mechanics. Basically, sometimes you stumble across sites or buildings that are excavations. You spend resources on them, then they proceed. Each excavation site has multiple phases. When you reach the final step, it finally reveals the final reward to you. But it also tells you a story in each phase. So, hopefully, this becomes eventually a cool feature.

OUTRO

I hope this was an interesting read. I try to create the next devlog in 1-2 weeks, where I talk about the other features. Until then, I hope that you enjoy the rest of the day. Do not forget to like this post. And if you like, you can join our Discord, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, where I’m sharing more info on a more regular basis.

Cheers, Rafael @imlikeeh