Hey, fellow Nomads!
Today, we’re excited to share some insights into the procedural generation aspect of Mr. Nomad. It’s one of our core tools, allowing us to shape the numerous challenges ahead of you while leaving us in control of the specifics of what you’ll encounter in the post-apocalyptic world.
Beware! Some technical jargon is about to appear on your screen, but it’s all basically about how we make things random.
How it's made?
The procedural aspect of Mr. Nomad is powered by Vista, a useful tool that we’ve tailored to our needs. We’ve used it to generate the terrain of the game’s main locations, where the initial Points of Interest (POIs) are located.
While doing this, we’re able to pre-determine certain rules for the game world. We set elevation maps, decide where certain rock formations should appear, preset biomes, set spawn locations for different assets (i.e. lootable cars near a national road) or what the initial resources accessible to players should be so that they can start the game properly (like Agave plants spawning to provide the player with a source of fiber).
Our use of this Procedural Content Generation forms the foundation of what Mr. Nomad offers and how it will change and adapt over time. We’re a passionate team, but we’re not an AAA developer, so managing our available resources is crucial. This system allows us to develop and seamlessly integrate major additions while staying fully in control of everything. Presenting you with a sprawling world of possibilities and balancing it at the same time is a lot simpler with proper tools.
We’ve also implemented Forward Plus Rendering to enhance the visual experience. What does it do?
Before...
...and after!
Simple version: Forward Plus lowers memory overhead because it doesn’t require storing intermediate data in G-buffers like deferred lighting does. Ok, this doesn’t sound all that simple to me, let’s try again.
Also a simple version, but for a different audience: this means there’s very little in terms of limit on the light sources in the game, nicely illuminating both you and the zombies coming to get you without compromising performance.
The simplest version: better light, same FPS What’s not to love?*
You dirty, dirty dirt, you!
Another field where we implemented procedural generation tools is textures. We’re using stochastic texturing, meaning that the exact color of each pixel is randomized, to a degree, leading to something that looks unique and irregular, instead of resembling a repeated pattern (you know, like when you look at something distant in a video game and the textures looks as if someone copypasted them in regular intervals). Our tools allow us to also do triplanar texturing that prevents visible seams between textures on 3d objects.
Some of the textures represent for example slopes or erosion, to increase the variation further. Terrain tiles that we create this way can later be used to create large, rich, and diverse environments to explore with your trusty RV, without making different locations too similar.
That’s it! We hope this gives you a glimpse into the process behind Mr. Nomad. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to prepare our RV to ram straight through the horde.
Make sure to let us know what topics you’d like to see us cover next and in the meantime, stay alive!
*Let us know which version you liked best, nomads, we’ll make sure to write ALL our devlogs this way!