New Voxel Cities, Player Buildings, Aliens - Devlog Oct 2022

Hey everyone,

how are you doing?

Well, originally, I thought this devlog would be about a nice introduction to our lore, story universe, and factions. But after questions about the buildings arose on Discord, I’ve changed it. Because it is a good question. After all, the game changed visually. So, let’s do the following: I’ll talk later briefly about the lore and a few factions, but we’ll let’s start with an update on the “voxel cities”, as well as on the “player buildings” and the new building system. Because why not, and it is cool anyway.

Steam post image

Steam post image

Video Devlog

As usual, you can find this devlog also as a YouTube video here too:

Voxel Cities

The voxel engine improvements are an ongoing process, largely due to optimization and to make the voxel style look better.

It means we do not only improve the overall lighting and shading, the “see-through system” (which occludes wall when you enter a building), but also the overall look and feel of the voxels. For that matter, you’ll notice round voxel edges on the terrain ground. However, non-terrain voxels are still supposed to have no round edges, i.e., tables or doors.

You can still enter these buildings, construct your buildings in the building editor (and share your creations with your friends or strangers). Those buildings are the place where you also meet the NPCs, encounter quests, and some bad guys. The voxel cities work the same as the dungeons but let’s talk about the dungeons another time.

However, it takes time to alter all the building textures to non-pixel-art textures. You may have noticed the difference. The texture look is cleaner and of higher resolution now. Since every faction has its city theme, well, that takes time. But I will update you on not only the old city themes but the new factions as well, such as the African, Japanese or Chinese factions or the evil alien faction (which has a distinctive look and feel to their voxel cities).

Player Buildings

The player buildings, such as crafting stations, factories, or even farm buildings, were previously non-voxel buildings. Now, switching to full 3D allowed for a major change here.

I’ve pitched the idea to introduce production lines, power, and water systems, as well as a transportation system to the game. You now connect these buildings. A factory requires not only a power supply but also certain resources and items, which in turn have to be transported via the transportation tubes.

And everything remains destructible in a voxel-based world with custom-made cities. As you can imagine, this proved to be challenging because once your visible area moves elsewhere, what happens to all your production building “voxels” that are invisible? The game world is, after all, dynamic and can change at any time. In multiplayer, it can change even by other players. Minecraft modders, for instance, had to come up with a somewhat workaround for this problem. And we found our solution based on graph theory, by the way. So, a bit of computer science brain juice there.

But overall, working on and with the new building system excited us. It opens so many new possibilities. Imagine running transportation tubes across long distances, from a distant underground mine to the surface factory, to the cities which require certain items to be delivered! It is one of those features where the switch to full 3D showed its strengths and opened new opportunities to make Nimoyd more unique and distinctive.

This part of the game I will explain in future devlogs in detail because building your city (or village or base) now became the center of Nimoyd.

Aliens and Magic

Unfortunately, this devlog section had to be shortened this time, and I will present every faction in detail in future devlogs, but what I can tell is: Nimoyd started originally as a non-pixel-art 2D game with a comic and quite some worldbuilding.

Initially, my idea for the Nimoyd universe was a universe with a few factions – each distinctive, a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, like in the old 1980s TV shows and films. All play in 2702 on Earth but have a different arc perspective on the events, which in turn allows the player to play each time differently. As of now, it is 11 factions. Some factions are natural enemies, which in turn opens up several new mission types, as well as general faction goals.

At the center of the lore is alien colonization starting in 2702. The Oyo faction, the friendly alien faction, lands on Earth to colonize it. But surprisingly, some human factions still existed at that time, though they went through some hardship in the past (it is a post-apocalyptic game, after all) and seem to be stuck at the tech level of the 20th century, except for one more tech-heavy faction. Not only that, but the planet also changed, with demonic creatures coming to the surface and at night, with elves-like factions (the Wardens) having cities. And in the middle of it, the planet’s biomes are slowly turning into a toxic dark biome, slowly but steadily, every night, one piece at a time.

Depending on what hero or heroine you choose and which faction you play, your task will be either to enforce the colonization, to defend against the alien colonization, or to fight the Underlord and his minions who seem to be behind that toxic dark biome. As an average human, you will need to find a solution that fits to your faction – and one human faction, the Naga (Maya-like green-skinned humans with pyramids) have allied with the Underlord, while others reject all magic and aliens (like the Alliance faction, which is an undemocratic steampunk-ish Western-like faction). Not to mention all the other human factions that may have other goals. And, as a player, you can, of course, try to appease multiple factions or to play one faction against another.

Questions

In the video devlog, I also answer a few frequently asked questions as a form of QA – questions and answers round. The questions are:

• Release date? Mid to late 2023. Yes, largely due to the visual changes. But also improvements.

• Mobile? Still a thing but we focus first on PC, then consoles, and then mobile.

• Paid or free-to-play? Paid. But more on that when the time is due (because I know that a few folks would like to see some form of backer tier system where they get access to goodies, such as beta access, or, uh, the Nimoyd board game *when it is done* or the Nimoyd novel, or those self-made mini figures we did a long time ago *cough*). But, for the average player, it will be an Early Access paid release in mid to late 2023, and we'll see about everything else in time.

• Steam achievements? Yep. I plan to do a poll among the beta testers in 2023 for achievement ideas. Most achievements need to come from the community once you play the game yourself.

See you in December or late November! :)

Cheers, Rafael @imlikeeh