Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

All my problems in game is from that

It is what it is, if you can't overcome controls then move on - no one can help you with that. One last thing you can do before giving up is manually backing up saves.

Movement controls are just bad.

I thought the same starting out, thought "fuck the devs and their stupid tank controls". But I wanted to go further. Now I move like fish in the water.

LIGHT FUCKInG SOURCE!

They did? I don't remember that. You are thinking light thaumaturgy which will not come until SG. Force will have some emitters for effects but nothing to grant you light to hover around.

But I pumped taumaturgy skills - have 5 already. It's my priority.

You can have a maximum of 15 skills so don't gimp yourself too much. Some of the skills are not working at all yet. Playing wizard in this game means you need to survive the early game without bodyguards, which implies proficiency in combat.

 

[Fenix]

if you can't overcome controls

I can't overcome shitty controls that's rigth.

Now I move like fish in the water.

But not near the walls and furniture - just like I am.

Force will have some emitters for effects but nothing to grant you light to hover around.

Shieeeeeeee... there is Ligth also? I though it's Force + Mind.

which implies proficiency in combat

All I need is armor handling. My main at arena was succesfull with that skill first - master while rest were Apprentice? second rank no matter what.

 

[Fenix]

Also - am I rigth and there is TWO stairs to third level? What?
Completed second floor.
Also - do you get exp fro when one zombie enraged by @ eliminated other?

Is it good idea to be greedy avd explore 3d floor with 25% hp left? I have 2 heal potions.

Also how Loyalty work? Do I need to Calm them first? Do I need to point them as with Calm?

 

[Technomancer]

But not near the walls and furniture - just like I am.

Not really, I just don't have a problem with it anymore. Zombies die in one or two hits, every fight lasts less than 10 seconds. Sometimes I kill them in one hit. When I stumble on something that means I made a mistake in combat and pay for it by losing balance.

I though it's Force + Mind.

For Exanima, yes. For SG there are Light, Displacement, Energy and Body in addition. They will be backported to Exanima eventually.

Also - am I rigth and there is TWO stairs to third level? What?

IIRC one set of stairs leads to a small sub-area called catacombs that connects to the third level. So yes, two in a way. One way is just longer.

Also - do you get exp fro when one zombie enraged by @ eliminated other?

XP gain information is obscure but I don't think so. You need to land hits to gain XP.

Is it good idea to be greedy avd explore 3d floor with 25% hp left? I have 2 heal potions.

Your progress is saved in the beginning of every lever so you could try. Threre are three dangerous enemies though, you will know when you see them. Catacombs will be too dangerous for that, heal and equip a blunt weapon.

Also how Loyalty work? Do I need to Calm them first? Do I need to point them as with Calm?

It makes them follow and protect you. You don't need to calm them unless they are enraged at you. You can see mind state with sense mind or by observing behavior. And same as with other targeted casts you need to target heads.

 

[Fenix]

You don't need to calm them unless they are enraged at you

So not in fight.

 

[Technomancer]

13/9/21

We're wrapping up the new combat AI now, we ended up making some pretty important core changes. The AI prediction is all new and more detailed. It's now based on what's actually happening with the physics rather than assumptions about how actions behave. This is less prone to error and also more future proof as we introduce more weapons, grips and fighting styles. It should be less easy to exploit the AI with simple tricks like unconventional attack angles.

We only just got the new combat AI up and running, so we're still tuning it, but it looks promising already. The AI feels smarter and more aware, which immediately makes it more fun to fight. With the more detailed prediction and tactical data we should be able to train the AI much more effectively, which we will continue to do with more testing and feedback.


With all this testing we became increasingly aware of problems with the sometimes massive procedural greatswords, they can hit the ground and sometimes attacks don't flow well and come out weak or at awkward angles. This is pretty much just physics, and why in the real world greatswords are generally swung from above the head and in broad circular motions. We decided to tackle this real world problem with a real world solution and try giving greatswords their own dedicated motions based on this idea. This turned out really well, these ponderous huge weapons now feel very fluid to use, the motions look great and more realistic.

We've also made a few more procedural weapons, and we're now very close to having replaced every existing arena weapon with a procedural one. We've already started introducing all new weapons, and from now on we'll be doing more of that.

We are very nearly ready for a new beta patch with new AI and a lot of new weapons now, and we're keen to be properly testing and tweaking this.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Fenix]

I hope they have different AI mastery level for different enemies, rigth?
So some fight bad, and some good.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Pink Eye that was pretty hardcore. A pugolist move I greatly recommend, is performing and upper-cut from a crouch--like you're goddamn Ken from Street Fighter. You can take 90% of an enemies health if you solidly connect to their jaw, and it will stagger them for an easy follow-through finish.

 

[Technomancer]

Another update, no patch notes yet.

new combat AI (it's all new at the core and it will need some time in the oven), 13 new proc weapons, new motions for GS and shields, changes to thrusts, and a whole lot of other smaller changes

 

[BlackGoat]

If only all this incredible effort could be harnessed for good

 

[fork]

If only all this incredible effort could be harnessed for good

What effort you retard?
This is a scam lasting for a decade now, everyone who is advertising or shilling for this or even looking forward to this should be impaled.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If only all this incredible effort could be harnessed for good

What effort you retard?
This is a scam lasting for a decade now, everyone who is advertising or shilling for this or even looking forward to this should be impaled.

The same level of effort that it takes you to go into every game thread and post the same derivative shit over and over. You should ask for your name to be changed to BSB.

 

[Fenix]

Another update, no patch notes yet.

new combat AI (it's all new at the core and it will need some time in the oven), 13 new proc weapons, new motions for GS and shields, changes to thrusts, and a whole lot of other smaller changes

Beta branch?

 

[Technomancer]

Exanima 0.8.2.5 - Beta Branch


New Combat AI

As you may know we've been putting some work into combat AI as it's critical to the core gameplay and entire arena game mode. The existing AI was too mechanical and exploitable, it could be beat by just repeating the same well practised action again and again, leading to boring, repetitive gameplay. We hoped to address this by layering alternating tactics on top of the current AI, but we quickly realised this wouldn't be enough, so we set about rebuilding the foundations.

The new combat AI has better prediction based on actual positions and movement of objects, not just some predefined rules. This makes it more robust, future proof, and less easy to exploit. The AI now observes and makes tactical decisions based on many factors instead of just reacting in the same way.

The core AI is all new, and while it should immediately feel smarter, more fun and engaging it will take some time and observation to tweak and refine it. Some aspects of the AI such as group behaviour and prioritising targets are separate and need their own treatment. We are not really looking to generally increase difficulty, but AI skill exists on a broad scale, and if we can make specific NPCs particularly challenging that is a useful thing. Either way give us your feedback and share your experiences so we can continue to improve it.

New Attack Motions

The often very big procedural greatswords had issues with sometimes hitting the ground or swinging weakly at weird angles. After various failed attempts, we decided to fix this with new dedicated attack motions, these giant swords are now held high and swung in a wide arc to give them proper momentum, much as they are in the real world for the same reasons.

Shields have also received new attack motions, specifically under the Ward skill. We felt that the attacks were weak and the shield positioning poor. We want to make further improvements to shield combat going forward.

We have also tentatively made some changes to thrusts across all weapons, in particular they should be smoother and faster to combo with other attacks.


Procedural Weapons
Huge drop of 13 new procedural weapons in this update, we're rapidly closing the gap to having all weapons in arena procedural. There's also been more improvements to the system and existing weapons, more and better deforms, stat modifier mechanics and material improvements.


Changelog for 0.8.2.5:

• Core combat AI overhaul
  
  
• New greatsword combat motions
  
  
• New shield combat motions
  
  
• 13 new procedural weapons:
  
  • Spiked clubs
    
    
  • Bardiches
    
    
  • Halberds
    
    
  • Two types of spiked maces
    
    
  • Two handed spiked maces
    
    
  • Simple battle axes
    
    
  • Great axes
    
    
  • Two handed battle axes
    
    
  • Two handed war hammers
    
    
  • Two handed swords
    
    
  • Two handed flanged maces
    
    
  • Cleavers
  
  
• More mechanics for stat modifiers on procedural weapons
  
  
• New weapon components and deformations
  
  
• Improvements to NPC outfit generation
  
  
• Reduced number of unskilled shield users
  
  
• Improved NPC skill selection
  
  
• Reduced number of shields found in trade
  
  
• Various fixes and tweaks

Thanks and have fun,

Bare Mettle

 

[Pink Eye]

Technomancer Does that enemy AI affect exotic creatures such as the troll in story mode and skeletons? Or is only humans?

 

[Technomancer]

Technomancer Does that enemy AI affect exotic creatures such as the troll in story mode and skeletons? Or is only humans?

Only humans. Not sure about skeletons, maybe.

 

[Technomancer]

20/9/21

We released version 0.8.2.5 on the beta branch this week, with new combat AI, new and updated combat motions for greatswords, shields and thrusts, 13 new procedural weapons and a few other improvements. Feedback on this update has been very positive, the new AI feels a lot smarter and more fun to fight. As expected the AI is less simple and exploitable, but not all that difficult to beat. It's sort of a new platform for AI and we'll continue to build on it, but if difficulty increases noticeably then we will use the most challenging AI only for more special encounters.

The AI overhaul was more involved than expected, we'll tweak and adjust it over time, but we can move on to other development. We might release some small updates to the beta branch with fixes and tweaks, but basically now we're going to focus on completing the tournament system and a couple of other things for the main release. These will appear along with some new arena content on the main branch only, no more significant changes to the beta branch.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

27/9/21

Right now we're focusing fully on wrapping up the update for the main branch. Tournaments are the final feature for the new arena, but there are a few things that need to be properly completed.

We finally updated all the remaining user interfaces to the new style. The settings screen and the character creation and continue screens for various game modes are done, which are the most complex interfaces and required various new UI assets and mechanics. This includes a newly implemented global XP system, the continue screen allows re-assigning global XP to different skills and unlearning skills, which with shared XP pools and cost dependencies gets surprisingly complex and was prone to errors and exploits. All this puts a wrap on the user interface overhaul.

We've been going through various other outstanding issues and bug reports and we did a number of important fixes for both arena and story. Also some fixes and tweaks for the new combat AI. We have a few more procedural weapons ready, very few remain now to cover every important weapon in arena, having already covered more than we thought we would initially. We will gradually be adding more weapons that have not appeared in the game yet.

And so we're left with just tournaments and the arena content additions. Tournaments have a lot of potential to support and add value to new features, but for now we're going to keep things quite simple so we can finally update the main branch. The core elements are there, and we have a good foundation to keep improving the arena mode.

There should be a small update this week with completed user interface, lots of fixes and some new proc weapons so we can continue testing as we try to wrap things up.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

Another update is out.

Some new UI elements:

How it was before:

 

[Technomancer]

Exanima 0.8.2.6 - Beta Branch

One more update for the beta branch. The user interface overhaul is complete, interface scaling now goes all the way up to 4k, there's some new procedural weapons in low ranks and early story, a bunch of important fixes and various improvements.

Changelog for version 0.8.2.6:

• Updated all remaining user interface to new style
  
  
• UI scaling up 4k resolutions
  
  
• 5 new procedural weapons: long knife, hand saw, 3 types of billhook
  
  
• Various adjustment to weapon stats and mechanics
  
  
• Fixed procedural weapons carried by characters in story not randomising
  
  
• Combat AI fixes and tweaks, particularly for and against story encounters
  
  
• Improved AI weapon selection
  
  
• Fixed global XP mechanics for retroactive assignment
  
  
• Fixed incorrect procedural materials on low texture detail
  
  
• Fixed low texture detail not affecting procedural weapons
  
  
• Various bug fixes, optimisations and improvements

 

[luj1]

If only all this incredible effort could be harnessed for good

What effort you retard?
This is a scam lasting for a decade now, everyone who is advertising or shilling for this or even looking forward to this should be impaled.

Unfortunately you are most likely right. It also has been looking the same since 2012

 

[mkultra]

One of the first games i backed on KS.. I tried it like 4 years ago(?) and i was a bit surprised of how much i enjoyed the combat. It is annoying how long its taking, it's troll level at this point..

Edit: No, it's been 6(!) years since i played it, I checked my review on Steam.. god damn, and when i tested it i remember i had been waiting quite a while, several years, for it to get into a decent state. lol...

 

[Fenix]

They improved combat recently mkultra.
Still njt enough but much better than it was.

 

[throwaway]

Is the new renderer still borked on Linux?

 

[Technomancer]

4/10/21

Since the last major update there have been some big shifts in priorities with major unplanned development goals, some of this was due to unforeseeable technical issues, and some of it is just us being us and putting some extra effort in. Sometimes if you're going to do something at all, there's a right time to do it. Right now we're working on finishing the tournament system and finalising assets. These are the final major additions that we feel are necessary to wrap up this update. But there's always more and when things move up others move down.

There's a lot of potential to expand and improve the arena mode further. Not all our ideas will make the cut, and a lot depends on how things fit into the bigger picture. This is a major step for arena in terms of content and features; it also involves a save wipe that we'd like to avoid repeating again. Making decisions about core mechanics or features that shape the experience is important when releasing a major update. Right now we're trying to decide what additional features should definitely be developed and when.

This includes things like a balanced economy, dyes, trade system, reward and progression systems, companies and persistent NPCs and various others. If we dilute feature additions they might lose their value. We want to prioritise these features carefully and introduce them in an order or grouping that counts. We don't want to delay the update longer than necessary, so we're looking for a middle ground between now, small incremental updates and possible larger future updates.

We've also made some interesting developments with the tournament system. We weren't too happy with the reward system, it seemed too random and restrictive. What we've decided to do is basically double up on rewards, with smaller prizes being given for individual tournaments, and full matched sets of tournament armour given as a prize for winning a whole "season", which is 4 tournaments.

Have a great week!
-the BM team