Daniel Aagentah

Programmer & audio-visual artist. Founder of Rendah Mag; author of nw_wrld software; currently developing NOMIAD.

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

open-sourcing my audio-visual software after 3 years

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

wtf

NOMIAD just hit 10k wishlists on Steam. I have no words

it’s barely been a week since entering this entirely new space so tysm for all the love!

pressure is very much on to put absolutely everything into the game.

FYI: I don’t yet have a release plan in place. the intention is to go at my own pace, but will say that I intend to move fast and not scope-creep into a forever project.

play-testing will happen soon

🤍

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

in a game about being a droid on an off-world mining planet, it only made sense that, through progression, you could eventually get hold of some droids of your own and programme them for specific tasks. The way that I've incorporated this is heavily inspired by the Gambit system from Final Fantasy XII, if anyone remembers it.

it's effectively an easy way to set up roles for various entities based on sets of conditions. You can say, "When X happens, do Y." X could be any number of conditions, such as enemy, target range, various health or ammo statuses on the ship, and Y could, of course, be manning certain turrets, calling in certain airstrikes, and various forms. Eventually this feels like a nice way to do progression and then also helps solo players do some of the harder objectives without needing to do coop necessarily.

#nomiad #indiegame #webgl #scifi #openworld

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

whilst completely optional I've been wanting to flesh out the combat systems for NOMIAD over the past few weeks, adding in: new gunner pod turrets; various weapons; various modules for combat. other aspects of the game allow you to effectively do logistics, research, and covert ops contracts, but ultimately events of this world will have you stumbling into large-scale battles on occasion. knowing how to navigate those in a fully simulated economy will be important and critical for you and your crew.

#nomiad #steam #indiegame #scifi #openworld

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

this means even for the things not currently rendered for the player, there are events being managed in offline data tables such that when the player gets close enough to those areas, they're rendered graphically in the derived state that you would expect

#nomiad #indiegame #openworld #alife #scifi

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

NOMIAD isn't about making choices as much as it's just about bearing witness to a never-changing world. The planet will function as a complex economy, whether you're participating or not.

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

from a technical point, this means keeping track of all of the lifecycle events for entities, ships, mineral deposits, ammunition, guns, and even the weather in both an online and offline dual system.

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

adding a gunship terminal!

i'd be lying if I wasn't inspired by that classic modern warfare mission in the AC-130. I'm very happy to be able to add a somewhat similar concept into my game here.

to share a bit of technical information: when the player activates the terminal, it will holler the nearest dropship to your location, usually around 10 seconds away from wherever you are and, in any given moment, based on the ratio in the map. At that point the WebGL instance will create an additional canvas, which is the camera you see on the terminal screen.

in this moment you're essentially running two renderers for the game. It's important that there's a lot of stuff excluded from the one in the terminal, which you probably wouldn't see because of the fog. There are also a few shaders to show exactly where enemies and friendlies are and things like this

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

that's a wicked point, and it seems you're thinking farther ahead than even I am haha! community-built maps will be ace. In the game, there will be opportunities to build player-owned bases in addition to ships in the future so there's no reason why a blueprint repository couldn't work :)

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

with the game being built entirely in WebGL, figuring out how to do base and building design has been a challenge. I eventually landed on creating a basic editor that reuses the same components that a player uses to build their own hovercraft. It's turned out well as part of the process that I massively enjoy.

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

this is the industrial complex, which the player should come across much later in the game. Housed here are: an industrial faction, mining contracts, mining equipment, life cycle events for how minerals are deposited and processed here for off-world collection

#nomiad #indiegame #scifi #openworld #webgl

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

one of five facilities that have been added to the game so far; each with their own life-cycle events, terminals, objectives, and purpose in the world.

#gamedev #scifi #indiegame #threejs #nomiad

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

in NOMIAD; small things like this are progressively adding to the world-building, making sure everything has a lifecycle event, even the interactions between building your own hovercrafts and how they appear in the world

#threejs #nomiad #gamedev #indiegame

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

ultimately the events of NOMIAD take place on an otherwise massively hostile world with frequent storms and radiation. The fauna here has been designed with lifecycle events that react to the planet itself, regardless of what you're doing as an individual

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

NOMIAD is about choices, not only in terms of playstyle but in the way in which you react with the world. You frequently come across these distress facilities and how you choose to answer these calls will affect your progression downstream with the various factions in the game

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

answering the distress call..

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

adding fully-diegetic menu systems into the game :)

It's been a long few weeks to decouple a typical traditional menu system to this diegetic one. It's small things like this I hope will add to the immersion of an otherwise graphically limiting game, playing within the limitations of WebGL. It doesn't have to just mean obfuscating and adding veneers to things. It can also mean trying new mechanisms for how the player makes decisions in an open-world dystopia

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

In NOMIAD, what you can do is a by-product of how you build your hovercraft. Fit for covert-ops, heavy hauls, mining operations, salvage runs, scouting, blockades, drone barges, or literally anything based on a combination of dozens of modules and play-styles.

#steam #game #alife #webgl #nomiad

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

adding black-ops mining to my game

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

Hello friends, I am thrilled to announce NOMIAD, an open-world sci-fi game built entirely in WebGL and TypeScript.

Over the past year, this project has been taking shape as a proof of concept for adding true simulation mechanics, lifecycles for all entities, and a fully immersive experience within the limitations of this technology. I intend to push NOMIAD to its absolute limits as an example of what is possible using web languages.

In this game, you are a droid assigned to an off-world mining operation. Build and pilot a hovercraft with full autonomy, take on contracts, and serve the benefactors of this world. In NOMIAD, your service is indispensable. Fortunately, you are not.

#webgl #steam #scifi #game #openworld

[Daniel Aagentah @aagentah]

for the past 6-months I’ve been developing an off-world SCIFI game that runs entirely in JavaScript.

no engine, no editor, 100% WebGL with full multiplayer capability.

the game pulls from many of my inspirations and includes A-LIFE simulation theory as a fully open-world non-linear concept.

a huge project for me to take on; I intend to push this technology to its absolute limits in both utility and world-building.

looking forward to finally sharing more on the concept 🤍

FYI: this game is called NOMIAD; and whilst it won't release until next year, the steam page is already up for anyone curious :)