Nimian Legends Empires - Procedural RPG

Protopop

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My name's Rob, also known as Protopop, and I'm working on an indie Procedural RPG made in HTML5, so you can play it in your web browser. It's called Nimian Legends Empires, and it's the update to my original Nimian Legends game. I wanted to talk a bit about what motivated me to make it, and some of my process. The biggest changed between this and the old version is the procedural design - a lot of the game is handcrafted but a lot is also procedurally generated.

You can see a short gameplay video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kz5NL7rrXY

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After creating Nimian Legends I wanted a way to deliver more of the world faster. I realized how difficult it was to populate kingdoms, let alone continents with content. But I had a lot of legends and lore from the Nimian Legends universe. I ended up creating what I call the AdventureGen Engine™. It creates locations, names, weapons quests procedurally, but allows me to add handcrafted ‘nodes’ for important cities and citizens from the world.

Procedural Quests

I’m currently finishing the quest generator and then will be ready to launch the new version. The quest generator (and the AdventureGen Engine in general) uses a fractal structure to make itself aware of world elements above (continental) and below (individual beasts) each node. Im taking care to develop the quest and dialogue engine to be lively and filled with character. I found that generic quests can fee cookie cutter, so a lot of effort has been so the engine takes into accounts the lives and motivations of various citizens and create interesting interactions between them.

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3 Cards

One problem with the original was that i sued many different systems - beasts were presented as cards, but inventory was a standard drag and drop. My original version had been card based, so i went back ti that, with the idea that everything was now a card and worked in sets of threes. Now shops offer 3 items (weapons, magic, armour, shields and more) procedurally generated and based on the areas level. Beasts acre created procedurally and different kinds populate different areas (Frost daemons in snowy areas, Undead in swamps etc…).

Card Decks

You have three decks and each deck can hold 3 cards. You collect cards by travelling around the world and drawing them from locations, or purchasing them in cities and villages. Some cards are given to you as rewards for completing quests. Battle decks hold anything you can use in a fight - weapons, armour, spells. In general battle cards are permanent until you sell them. The Perk Deck hold special one-shot cards that modify your abilities or give you special powers. Finally the Rune Deck holds special permanent blessings that affect your hero’s abilities. Career cards give you a special permanent skill based on the career you chose. For example, Swipes can attempt to steal items from shops (and you can amass quite a fortune stealing then selling goods - just don’t get caught), and Rooks (powerful fighters) gain +1 attack damage fro each level they achieve. You also get runes from choosing your path - Speed, Strength and Spirit. Choose Spirit and your Karma, used to cast some cards, is doubled. Choose speed and you can dodge enemy attacks, reducing damage.

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Your Hero

You’re character can choose a career, path, gender (male, androgyne or female) and species - with your character portrait updating depending o what you choose. You gain experience and gold by defeating beasts and completing quests, allowing you to level up, which increase your stats and skills.

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Free and Inclusive

Nimian Legends Empires is free and is being released online in Fall 2015. i created it in HTML5 for a few reasons. Since my days as a flash developer I have always wanted my games to be as accessible as possible, and HTML5 achieves this. HTML5 is also very flexible and relatively simple to code. I like the open nature of it and there is always a lot of help nearby.

The world is also inclusive. Male, female and Androgyne choices are available for your gender, and your hero can engage in romances with any gender. The world of Nimian Legends itself may be filled with danger, intrigue and corruption, but the spirit i am making the game in is one of inclusivity.

As for me, I’m a solo game developer with a few games on the app store. And since my Dungeons & Dragons days (check out 5th edition - great art and inspiration!) I have enjoyed creating games and worlds. This world itself is the background setting for Nimian Legend BrightRidge, a 3D Open World wilderness game on the app store (it is getting an HD update this fall as well). I hope you’ll get inspired by Nimian Legends and keep an eye out for it this fall:)
 
Joined
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'm working on the procedural quest part of Nimian Legends Empires. Because a large part of the world is generated procedurally, it already has a handy backbone to ride the quests on. I'm basically expanding inside the procedural algorithm and the world gets more detailed. in this case i am able to generate procedural citizens for all the cities. But i have alot of hand made hero citizens from the Nimian lore, so ive made it possible to override the procedural stuff on a node by node basis.

For the quest generation i did a lot of thinking about how to generate quests that had impact. Decided that it is human values that drive good stories. Thankfully i already have an alignment system in place. I decided on 3 major world spheres of life: Economy, Religion, and Power&Politics. Citizens and areas have an interest in one of these spheres. And then their alignment combines with it to form their world outlook, And it's this outlook that is the basis for that particular characters quest. Because of the fractal nature of the data structure, there are already pathways to link nodes together at different levels. My aim for the story element is to use this along with generic granular sub actions (attack, fetch, raise money, bribe etc) to create a full and interesting quest that is aware of the world around it.


What's fun is seeing it working so far. I know the personalities and home cities of the major characters, so ive input them into the algorithm and overridden it in these places (the rest have procedurally create citizens). I input their alignment and sphere of interest, and their world outlook shows up in a realistic way. In one of the attached images the character of Jackdaw is honorable, tough and her sphere is the economy. So her interest is Taxes. How the particulars of her quest end up (beat up deadbeats? raise tax money?) will be up to the AdventureGen Engine:)

By populating a city with similar citizens, we get a pretty consistent set of values for that city, giving it a unique flavor. For example, In the other image these citizens are from religious, political spheres and Imperial or honorable in nature. It generated 3 characters that have outlooks of Religious rule, Crusades and Military Might. Perfectly in flavor within the crumbling religious walls of the grad city of Vandgels.

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Joined
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Very excited with my AdventureGen engine, its almost complete. It creates adventures procedurally. every citizen in the world has a set of values, and the places they live in have a set of values as well. They look at each other and where they live to find their enemies and friends, and then generate quests based on that and their values. A coldblooded citizen might ask you to assassinate their competition or bribe an official. Honorable characters may ask you to hunt down chaotic beasts to restore law and order. Humane characters will never ask you to kill, but might ask you to donate charity to the poor or heal others.

The core engine is complete and now i am working o the Natural Language engine - the part that takes the base quest and turns it into descriptive English (Dungeon becomes the frigid depths of basinwood for example. Im still on track for a September launch, then I will focus on Nimian Legends BrightRidge HD - the updated version of my Open World Wilderness.

In these screenshots you you can see an example of the overiding goals for the nation you are in - in this case the Rebellious nation of Nuju. The game looks at the 3 spheres - Economy, Religion and Politics - and generates its overall goal. In this case a rebellion against economy is about abolishing the slave trade (rebel is a good value). The adventure part requires questing for citizens and gaining support for either side.

In the second image you can see quests in progress. Manis Manta in the middle believes in the slave trade and pure profit, and asked me to assassinate his tivals. Ive done so and now he hs made a vote that affects the world. All of this is handled procedurally by the computer leaving me free to "hand paint" details in he world without being overwhelmed. I just set the values of people and places (or generate them) and the cpu does the rest:)

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Joined
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