Nimian Legends : Vandgels is the sequel to Nimian Legends : BrightRidge, my open world fantasy wilderness game for IOS and Android.
The landscape, wildlife, and new shapechanges are working great, and performance is even better than BrightRidge so far. I’ve learned a lot from my last game, which I’m still updating, and I’ve worked hard on the story. I’m looking forward to releasing the game this fall 
Here’s a few screenshots from my travels on iPad Air 2
Very nice. I can’t even get my iMac to look that good at a decent frame rate
Thank you:)
Lol - i was shocked when Diablo 4 played smoothly on my macbook air - Mac sometimes has a rep for not being game friendly (i still love Mac though:)
If you’re interested send me your email - if you have a 64bit IOS device ill send you a free copy when it’s out and/ or add you to the beta list:)
On related to Nimian news…
I just heard the news that Unity is dropping UnityScript support.
I have to convert all of my code base or stop developing the game. Oh boy!
Unity award contender! Awesome work @protopop
I know this was a typo! Right?
LOL - i must be eager for the next version:) I didn’t think I’d like Diablo, and then Bam - i was hooked for months.
Thank you for the compliment. I am a solo dev working very hard to optimize open worlds for mobile, and it feels like it’s paying off. I hope i get to do this full time some day, and not just at night after work.
It was actually one of the best moment i had in years the other night when I put it on the iPad Mini 2. You always hold your breath when you test on a mobile device - will it load? will it crash? has this been for nothing? - and i was thrilled when the performance was even better than the first game (and it’s 4 times the size).
It only got better from there on my iPad Air 2, and i have beta testers ready with iPad Pros.
I have to admit, i think it’s looking pretty good too, and it’s moment like that, and comments like yours, that make solo devs like me happy as a clam:)
I’m currently replaying because I set it down to play Skyrim and haven’t played it for over a year, so I totally forgot the story arc - just started over from scratch. D3 loads so quickly on PS3 - they did a great job with it, graphic, gameplay, smooth - all aesthetics - just perfect.
I hear you brother! Working at night after work - is tough! I also do this, and look forward to one day - having the option to say - I think I’m just going to quit that other day job. 
I reference BrightRidge and Nimian Legends whenever a thread pops up about once or twice a month about how crappy Unity lighting and terrain is. Showing your games really shows that great terrain, lighting, outdoor visuals can be created within Unity, regardless of the platform.
I totally agree about the perfection of Diablo 3 (that’s THREE!) aesthetics:) I keep saying its like Blizzard is so good at polishing things to within an inch of their life. And the always have a very, very tight color olette and art direction. Blizzard is a huge insoiration to me for trying to get a lot of personality in small packages.
Skyrim on the other hand was literally a big breath of fresh air, and probably the most direct inspiration for Nimian Legends games in terams of open world wildernesses. There was a lot of jaw dropping and me showing family member "wow look at this grass outside whiterun, trust me its a big deal and its yellow holy cow!
Thanks for referencing BrightRidge - the game needs all the exposure it can get. I know Unity is in a graphics arms race with Unreal right now (wish they werent ) but i think its really how you use the program and not necessarily what it can do out of the box.
you know, about 15 years ago i used to work at night after i got back from my convenience store job at about 3am (it was at night and i met pimps and prostitutes and all kinds of fascinating characters) and i would work until dawn, and that was doing graphic design, and then one day my boss was like “come in Thursday” and i was like " i cant come in Thursday, you know im not available that day" and he was like " come in" and i was like “youre great but i think its time to leave” and my friend was like “you’ll end up on welfare” and my boyfriend at the time gave me flowers and said “to a new adventure” and i left and i’ve been doing graphic design in the day ever since. And now history repeats itself and i am trying to make game design full time.
Good luck to both of us with our after work work:)
Meet Sentri - He’s extremely capable, and quite no-nonsense, even for a robot. He does love a good sunset though.
Here’s the teaser trailer for Nimian Legends : Vandgels - running on an iPad Air 2
Woah, did you really have to convert your code base from UnityScript?! No wonder you’ve been quiet on here since last year 
Don’t forget to post about the upcoming release. Can’t wait. Was very glad you replied to my play store review, otherwise I’d never have known to search for Vandgels to find out more. Very impressed that you’re not even using any additive scene loading for streaming your world, and that ‘clever tech’ takes a back seat to evoking feelings through careful design.
You really should consider a VR title for your next project… you’re obviously a master at the technical art of optimisation, but that concept of ‘what feeling do I want to invoke’ being central to the game’s design is key to all of the best VR experiences. You’d do well in that medium.
Wishing you all the very best with completing and releasing Vandgels.
Thank you:) I think it would well in VR because its already optimized. After i release Vandgels i should have more of an idea if i can do this fulltime. that would really let me open up the options.
And yeah, the conversion to C# was CRAZY. Thanks to CSharpatron asset it was possible. Now i love C# so all is good.
Thanks for this creation!
I just purchased it on Google Play.
a few things:
1- I noticed, after increasing the resolution to solve the rasterization looks, that both my character and landscape show some pixelation (looks grainy).
If you look at the shade on the rocks in the background, the same pattern happens on the character as well as on the trees in certain angles.
What constitutes to this?
I think it has to do with the shadow, however also Bloom and fog generate this pixelation effect.
2- I have an essential phone (Snapdragon 835), and am trying to optimize the settings.
25fps is good, on this phone, 20fps or below, and it gets a bit laggy.
Is there a thread on this forum, with best settings per phone?
Generally speaking, most phones either have a modern Snapdragon, exynos, Mediatek, or Kirin chipset, or the Apple A10 to A12 in them. They all get around the same performance, so despite there being thousands of phones out there, most of them (that can run this demo/game), will be based on either one of the above 7 varieties of chipsets.
Another bit of feedback:
1- It would be nice when pinching the character on a touchscreen, one can zoom out or in (make the camera further/closer to the character)
2- the blades of grass are rather long. They also move quite much with the wind. And they move in large patches, all in the same direction. It looks a bit unnatural.
In reality, grass moves in many more directions, and only the top, while the bottom stems should be more firm. I don’t know if there’s a way to program this, or if it’s a fixed setting in the program you use? No criticism or anything, it’s been done in most games; but just checking if there’s perhaps no way to make it look more realistic?
Real life grass in the wind:
3- It would also make for a very nice addition, to be able to add ‘fine grass’ to some areas, and moss in caves. Moss or fine grass doesn’t move in the wind, but gives a very nice texture; especially when it’s fresh green young grass (brighter green colored).
And when the sun shines on it, it becomes even brighter, and translucent.
4- There are games out there that use some sort of ‘landscape generator program’, that uses an algorithm to calculate the most common places for types of grass and trees to grow together; and where trees are most likely to appear.
5- On patches where grass shows, there are clear patches of dirt (sand) underneath. The contrast is quite sharp. I think most grass has a much darker soil underneath it, unless it was dune grass. Perhaps in lower quality settings, the soil can be colored more dark or even green?
6- The water also needs a small bump up in realism. Not sure what others games use for hyper realistic scenes, but if you have bodies of water, inside a cave or trench (cutting off the view of the horizon), a lot of the graphics processing can focus on making the water look more realistic (especially where it splashes), without having to spend GPU on both water and horizon. They are mobile chipsets after all…
A lot of gaming companies use tricks, to make it look more realistic (like how CSR2 or Asphalt 9 use reflections. They’re not real reflections, but look realistic).
I don’t know what Asphalt 9 is using to generate their games, but it’s some crazy realistic looking stuff, and that all running on a mobile chipset:
Other games using water:
7- I can’t wait for this game to be finished!
Would you be interested in creating other projects after this one; with similar mesmerizing stretches of nature, on other planets?
There are quite some nice ideas out there, on glowing mushrooms, extravagant purple and blue colors and wildlife (think Avatar, the movie).
It’s been done before, but not at this quality (No Man’s Sky (PS4), or Cydonia, a Myst/Riven-like puzzle/adventure game, that plays off on different planets).
Another thing, how does one save his progress? There’s no obvious way to exit the game, without losing the progress 
Thank you for the support. That’s a lot of good feedback:)
I made notes of everything you said. Im one person so im not able to do everything on a fast timeline, but i do try to add what i can.
I dont know that much about the technical parts of Android so im not sure why those shadow issues are happening unfortunately, and I dont know what kind of phone would run it at what speeds.
The pinch to zoom is coming in the sequel. After its released ill be adding that feature into BrightRidge too.
The progress saves automatically in the story mode, and your position saves automatically in the explore mode, so you can close it any time. You can also go into options-settings-chapters and go straight to any chapter at anytime, so you wont get stuck. The Quality settings do not save automatically and im working on fixing that.
Im working on a sequel called Vandgels so there are more worlds coming: https://www.instagram.com/protopopgames/
Desperately trying to try and be able to play the beta but test flight app says it’s full can you please help out if possible?
Cool:) After TouchArcade mentioned Vandgels the beta spots filled up, so i upped the limit and you should have no problem trying it out. Thansk or the help and please let me know if there’s any breaking bugs.
oh u used my robot 
i dont even have the original anymore, it got lost when switching to new computer
that sucks about losing the file. Do you mean the giant mech, or the humanoid robot. Both are really cool, but i didnt use the mech in the final game, only because i went with inverse kinematic mech instead. If iy was in separate pieces though i would use the parts in the new ik mech:) Anyways let me k ow if you want a copy of your robot because i have the files here, and whichever one it is, thanks for making it. Theses assets inspire me and i couldnt make the game without the asset store:)
