Vuntra City

Back from the conference at back at work! And it looks like I'm getting to one of the most exciting parts of my project... #gamedev #indiegame

Played Scarlet Deer Inn earlier this year and I absolutely loved the art, the atmosphere, and the characters! And the best part was this fun track that played at a very appropriate moment in the game: youtu.be/aD8wnwAbDiw So I just wanted to praise this game and recommend it to anyone who sees this

I made the NPCs react to being blasted with a fire extinguisher or having drinks spilled on them. They will be a lot more forgiving in the case of an actual fire though. #gamedev #indiegame

It seems no matter what I do I just can't get these NPCs to keep their feet off the furniture 😖 #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiegame

The parties in Vuntra City just get out of hand sometimes! #gamedev #indiegame

I am trying to improve my skin and hair shaders. The challenge is that I don't have access to anisotropic highlights or subsurface scattering on forward rendering, so I am trying to fake both of those things. The effect is more subtle than if I could actually use them, but it does make a difference.

I am in a good mood today because something I was prepared to fight for was freely given to me. It was just a small thing, but in a world where you have to deal with increasingly complicated (and mostly automated) bureaucracy, it's such a rare and delightful occurrence!

New devlog on the NPC reactions and conversations that I added recently! www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0fl... #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

Someone suggested that I make a forest out of the procedural trees that I made for GIC. So here it is. A forest walk, but the parameter range gets gradually wider. Don't mind the low view distance, the trees aren't optimized at all 😅 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF9I... #gamedev #procgen

I made a super simple tree generator to demonstrate how different parameter spaces (ranges of allowed values, basically) affect the outcomes of the same algorithm. This is for my upcoming talk at GIC. #gamedev #procgen

The NPCs can now have conversations! Don't mind the text, it's a placeholder. #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

I will be speaking at GIC this year (gic.gd) with a talk called "The Possibilities And Limitations of Procedural Generation". It will be a fairly general talk about procedural generation where I will be using Vuntra City as a case study to make my points. Come check it out if you're there!

Having an absolutely amazing time with Nivalis Nights, especially after installing a mod that slows down time. The original 60x time scale feels way too fast for a game where things happen on a schedule, and slowing it down to 15x actually allows for a chill exploration and life sim experience.

The NPCs will now evacuate if an uncontained fire gets past a certain size. For now I made them go to the other floors of the building and avoid the floor with the fire for 2 ingame hours. But if the fire is on the ground floor, they and other NPCs will avoid the whole building. #gamedev #procgen

I made the NPCs react to the fireworks using my new event system! #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

Grow your business, uncover strange stories, and write your own future in the city that never sleeps 🌃 Nivalis Nights is out now on Steam! Your ambition is your greatest weapon. How far will you go? 🔗 505.games/NivalisNight...

I'm so excited! Been looking forward to this one!

I've added a way for the NPCs to say things outside of the player dialog. So they will be a lot more chatty now! There will be many situations in which they will voice their opinion, and their comments will depend on their personality. #gamedev #indiegame

New devlog on how I made 4 million NPCs playable in VR. Now, this performance is not ideal, it's more of a baseline, so the optimization work is not quite done. But it's a huge improvement from where I started. Check it out! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkiA... #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

This NPC got herself trapped in an art piece somehow (bug). #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiegame

Ok I think I did it. 60+ FPS in VR on max settings, with 4 million total NPCs in the most crowded area of the city. Still not as stable as I'd like it to be, but it is quite playable so I'm happy! #gamedev #indiegame

Enjoying the last warm days of this year at the local park's jazz festival, and I can't help but feel that I need more cozy outdoor spaces like this in Vuntra City. I already have bean bags and string lights, but none of them spawn outside 🤔

The increased population certainly changes the city's feel in VR! #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

My NPCs have invented this weird dance. Does this count as emergent behavior? 😆 #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

Debugging the NPCs can look hilarious sometimes! #gamedev #indiegame

Everyone is playing around with DLSS5 and debating whether it's good or not, so here I have a totally legitimate comparison of Vuntra City with DLSS5 off and on. See for yourself!

You can't? Why did no one inform me? 😆

A room with a view. #indiegame #gamedev #procgen

The parties are getting pretty packed with the increased population. #gamedev #indiegame

Just dropped a new devlog where I outline my struggles with increasing my city's population from 1 million to 4 million. It's kind of a work in progress devlog, but I hope it'll be interesting nonetheless. youtu.be/XsyYkEZF0rQ #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

I messed up one of my camera scripts while working on a new devlog and it sent me to the upside down, literally🙃

Full moon over the neon city. #gamedev #indiegame

Just heard about a cool pattern generator website bookofshapes.com. I wish they supported tiling patterns as well, then I'd totally use it to generate some new wallpapers for Vuntra City.

We recently got accused of using AI for music in our game and, while it's disheartening, it encouraged me to make a thread about making music for games, what it takes, and why it can be heartbreaking to be accused or even suspected of something we detest. 🧵Long thread follows:

I made the NPCs take their clothes off when relaxing at a spa and get into the hot tubs. Implemented an entire outfit system for it, so I can later use it to give them other temporary outfits. Also added steam to make the hot tubs actually look hot! #gamedev #indiegame #procgen

By the way, I am working on optimizing the game to run with >4m NPCs instead of ~1m that I started with. I'm still not sure I will succeed, as there are several performance bottlenecks that make it very hard, but the city sure looks so much livelier with quadruple the population! #gamedev #procgen

Apparently, when there are too many NPCs in the same interior, they start playing a game of musical chairs of sorts. Watching them fight for a seat is pretty hilarious! #gamedev #procgen #indiegame

After rewatching Cyberpunk Edgerunners I got the urge to render something colorful and cyberpunk themed. Here's an environment shot WIP.

Just published a new devlog where I talk about the daily rhythm that I've given my city by adding work hours to the interiors and distributing them in a realistic way. Check it out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3zC... #gamedev #indiegame

When the janitor is just sick of it. #gamedev #indiegame