Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Lim-Dûl]

Since they seem deeply concerned about realism, how is a huge inventory space justified with in-game logic? If they can't answer this plausibly, should they not accept the reality that the game will never be perfect, and therefore release it immediately?

 

[Pink Eye]

That's some skyrim shit.

Yo momma is skyrim!

Anyways. Don't blame my imagination. That was the first thing that popped to my head when I read "force shield".

 

[Technomancer]

Since they seem deeply concerned about realism

Fake news.

 

[somerandomdude]

They got some good ideas, and the way the physics/combat works is interesting and unique in its own way, but I have serious doubts about whether this team will be able to deliver on something large scale, like the proposed Sui-Generis. It seems like pie in the sky to me. Development has been very slow on this game, and I seem to recall a period where the game went more than an entire year with no patches or updates?

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Fake news.

Yes. What you posted is fake news. What they said does not match what they've been doing.

 

[Pink Eye]

Sometimes I think Technomancer is a secret Exanima developer who covertly shills his own game while using the Codex as a resource dump to get new ideas for his game.

 

[Technomancer]

Sometimes I think Technomancer is a secret Exanima developer who covertly shills his own game while using the Codex as a resource dump to get new ideas for his game.

If I was capable of something gamedev worthy, I would apply to Iron Tower.

Yes. What you posted is fake news. What they said does not match what they've been doing.

If you say so. Exanima feels immersive to me. And they are working on dynamism. While we won't see procedurally generated levels, they did add weapons and will continue working on similar things. Like random equipment chest spawns, enemy variations etc. They pursue realism where it makes sense, looks cool or adds immersion. But plenty of things are abstracted in the game, like mentioned inventory.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I would be satisfied if they simply finished the features, asset library, etc. and then started leasing it out to people who make games. If I were a betting man, that's what I would wager. Their autism is best is probably best spent that way anyhow.

 

[Technomancer]

1/8/22

The previous week we got the ball rolling on Force thaumaturgy, getting very basic functionality in place. We had some promising first results for visual effects too. But now the real work begins, and the difference in complexity between a basic first version of something and a complete, fully featured, optimised one is generally astronomically huge.

We are using Force Blast as our development launch point, your starting power which knocks things back in a small area in front of you. This being Exanima, we can't just add some swoosh graphic flying across the screen and call it a day. As with everything else, Force needs to have some realistic physical behaviour. No part of the blast can pass through solid objects, nor should the whole blast dissipate because it hit something. Instead the blast must break apart on collisions and deflect off surfaces, a bit like a blob of thick fluid.

We knew that getting these mechanics to work and look half decent even on low end system would be one of the biggest challenges for force, and probably the biggest unknown. We'd been trying to figure this out for a while, we did have a plan and we've now made great progress on this, everything so far has worked out well and we're mostly trying to clean up the visual effects. These core mechanics will be useful in a number of powers beyond the basic blast.

Another important development goal we hit this week is the lighting system for these effects. With force breaking up and the powers having various shapes we wanted to leverage the new GI system to have lighting follow the exact shape of the effect. We now have an efficient system for complex emissives like this and we've also significantly improved performance for emissives in general. This is something that is useful not just for force, but for pretty much anything we do that emits light.

We're not sure yet how we'll prioritise further development goals with Force, we might continue to focus on more technical aspects for other powers or shift focus more towards mechanics and getting some basic powers fully functional. Either way we'll keep you up to date and we'll probably be able to show some video of force in action before long. Hopefully we can maintain this rapid pace as there are quite a few other things we'd really like to include in this update.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Pink Eye]

This being Exanima, we can't just add some swoosh graphic flying across the screen and call it a day

That made me laugh.

 

[Technomancer]

8/8/22

Work continues on force thaumaturgy, with some good progress made. The force blast power is now in many ways close to complete, though there is still some important work to do. It charges up and then blasts forward expanding, shattering, splitting and changing direction as it impacts the environment and objects. We're happy with the visuals, lighting and sound design; casting animations and targeting are also functional, though in terms of mechanics some things need more work.

Getting these core effects for force to look like a physical 3D mass that breaks apart when it hits things was one of the main challenges we faced and held a little uncertainty, so getting results we're happy with this quickly is great. We can definitely see the method being useful for other plasma-like effects, with fire and explosions in general being obvious ones. The additions to the lighting systems are also generally useful. In the immediate everything we did for force blast pretty much translates directly into 3 other force powers, and possibly a 4th yet unconfirmed one.

Now we're mostly working on how force affects what it hits, particularly characters and how they respond to weaker hits that might cause them to stumble or fall without being fully thrown. This is more of a character behaviour and animation problem with implications that go well beyond force and as always these things are tricky and a good amount of thought needs to go into them. We hope to keep the steady progress going here, but these things can be a bit unpredictable.

The bulk of force specific development beyond this is things like shields and barriers. These don't seem nearly as fancy or complicated as the explosive effects, but we do hope to get some refined visuals that will present their own set of challenges.

We are going to keep focusing on force thaumaturgy for a while still, but there is more we hope to include in this update and various general improvements, which we'll shift to talking about eventually, though some of it will need to be kept very vague to avoid spoilers.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Siveon]

I can't help but feel that if magic feels as cool as melee does sometimes, I won't ever go back to melee.
Who wouldn't want to mess with all that CPU-shattering PHYSICS?

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I stopped playing for now. I haven't been able to resolve the graphics glitches that appear at random. They make the screen unreadable.

Also, the more I play, the more characters get tangled up in their own limbs. I am having more trouble with executing a remise with this new movement too. I will check back in when force thaumaturgy is released in 2024.

 

[Technomancer]

force thaumaturgy is released in 2024

It will come out a lot sooner than 24.

 

[Sacibengala]

This game gets updated on GOG at least in the same year it goes live on Steam? I want to try it, but GOG's delay to release updates is really bothering me. I'll probably get it on Steam, after all.

 

[Technomancer]

This game gets updated on GOG at least in the same year it goes live on Steam? I want to try it, but GOG's delay to release updates is really bothering me. I'll probably get it on Steam, after all.

Get it from their site. That way all money go to the devs, steam doesn't get a cut, you get DRM free version AND steam key.

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Technomancer]

15/8/22

Last week we mentioned our next goal was about the way force interacts with characters. Obviously here we wouldn't resort to some animation, ragdoll or other scripted effect, it's strictly physics and dynamic behaviours of characters when they are pushed off balance or lose control over their momentum. We also can't fine tune this to specific conditions, force varies in power and the velocity at which it travels, the amount of it that hits the character, where and at what angle all mean very different results. Of course none of this is specific to force anyway, but just the game's physics in general.

If you've played enough Exanima then you probably noticed that 99% of the time characters stumbling looks great, but there's that one time that's less convincing. We've been really stress testing this with force, as we know you will all soon do too. There is a very tricky balance to maintain between character's fluid and controlled movement and them properly dealing with motion that they did not intend.

We've been taking a long hard look at how the legs generate forces that move and keep the character upright, how they flex, how the feet grip the ground and so on. We've been experimenting with some fairly big revisions to all this, with mixed results. We did make improvements in some areas, with a more realistic model which also results in smoother movement.

Unsurprisingly this is time consuming, and while not strictly necessary, realistic physical behaviour is one of the game's greatest strengths for what it offers in terms of emergent gameplay and immersion. There are still some specific things we want to look at, but it's not like we have any real problems to solve here so we'll be moving on soon enough.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Dadd]

Realistically is it likely for this be released anytime soon? Are they still working on Sui Generis?

 

[Technomancer]

Realistically is it likely for this be released anytime soon? Are they still working on Sui Generis?

Not particularly soon. I estimate Exanima hitting 1.0 in 2 to 4 years. 1.0 version however simply means out of early access status and core features complete, it doesn't mean 100% finished game and there will be further updates.

As for SG we don't know if any specific progress is made on the game but it's unlikely since developers can't work on two games at the same time. But nearly everything created for Exanima will find it's use in SG as well. That being said, Madoc revealed that many sets that were created for SG ended up appearing in arena mode so at least some work on SG is happening behind the scenes.

 

[Technomancer]

22/8/22

This week we've trying to move forward with a few different things. The art and content guys are currently split between making some furnishings and unique elements for the new level, working on the level that comes after this and updating some of the weapons and armour for the new procedural item systems. Madoc has also been making some quality of life improvements to the development tools to streamline some of this.

In terms of Force thaumaturgy we've got the core interactions with physical objects working well. We're still hoping to improve how it interacts with characters when applied to their legs, as currently some powers can be accurately aimed at any part of the body. Due to the small surface area of legs, how force works and various factors this isn't currently very impressive. We did go down a bit of a rabbit hole here, with testing new mechanics for feet sliding and a whole new sort of inverse kinematics system which could have some cool future applications, but didn't really solve our immediate problem.

Inverse kinematics is kind of like reverse animation, where instead of having an animation to produce a result, you dynamically create an animation to achieve a certain result. Usually this is used when you want to do something like make a hand reach out to a specific point in space or place feet in a particular position. Exanima doesn't use traditional animation as motion is generated by virtual muscles with less predictable outcomes, and especially the legs play a more functional role that goes far beyond putting them in certain poses, and requires a good amount of "magic" (something that works, but you can't really explain why) to make it all result in good smooth movement. This new hybrid IK system could possibly with more work be adapted for leg motion with a bit less "magic", but as it is it's not really suitable. It is however something that should work quite well for precise arm movements such as gesturing, some direct interactions with the environment and perhaps even have some combat applications.

Things are coming together, but there's still a few things to tackle for the full update. We're currently looking to make progress on as many fronts as possible to get a better idea of where we need to focus our efforts or just get certain things out of the way, and spend less time trying to further improve what's already there. We'll keep you updated as always.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

29/8/22

We made a bunch more progress on force thaumaturgy this week, specifically on visual effects for powers that involve shields, barriers and enveloping things. These aren't inherently as complex compared to what we wanted to achieve for powers like force blast, but as always there's a huge difference between just doing something and doing it well, and also maintaining good performance.

Without resorting to prohibitively expensive methods, it's hard to get away from the texture-slapped-on-polygons look. Using a combination of 2D and 3D effects presents a lot of challenges in terms of animation, interaction with objects, seams in transitioning from 2D to 3D and generally maintaining an illusion of depth. We also want a consistent, detailed, organic look to the effects, not something overly plain or just messy and blurry. We found some really nice solutions to most of these problems, and we've generally gotten through the bulk of the effect work, but there's still some things we're experimenting with and haven't settled on.

Developing these effects is the most challenging part of force thaumaturgy, and we should be mostly done with it soon. However there is still plenty to do in terms of adapting them to all the individual powers, building their specific mechanics and also some general thaumaturgy mechanics with the introduction of multiple domains and generally more depth to the system.

Something else we got started on this week is some improvements to the pathfinding system. There's a few important goals here as well as some general upgrades and fixes. One goal is to improve how AI navigate around hazards, particularly in avoiding steep falls, but even being able to take advantage of things like makeshift bridges, or willingly crossing smaller drops if necessary. The most important change however is much better handling of multiple levels of depth, which is something that will be important in the upcoming new area.

That's all for now, we'll be back with more in a week as always.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[agris]

Realistically is it likely for this be released anytime soon? Are they still working on Sui Generis?

Not particularly soon. I estimate Exanima hitting 1.0 in 2 to 4 years. 1.0 version however simply means out of early access status and core features complete, it doesn't mean 100% finished game and there will be further updates.

As for SG we don't know if any specific progress is made on the game but it's unlikely since developers can't work on two games at the same time. But nearly everything created for Exanima will find it's use in SG as well. That being said, Madoc revealed that many sets that were created for SG ended up appearing in arena mode so at least some work on SG is happening behind the scenes.

Well, we know this team is really focused on the details of the engine. That's why Examina is taking so long. So the fact that SG will inherit the Examina engine is good; there should be minimal work needed under the hood. Thankfully we know these guys are content creation machines - they just pump it out - so all SG will need is content and no engine tweaks. That's the team's strength!

 

[Smashing Axe]

Just ten more years!

 

[Technomancer]

Well, we know this team is really focused on the details of the engine. That's why Examina is taking so long. So the fact that SG will inherit the Examina engine is good; there should be minimal work needed under the hood. Thankfully we know these guys are content creation machines - they just pump it out - so all SG will need is content and no engine tweaks. That's the team's strength!

SG is way too ambitious, it will take a long ass time. Content aside, core idea of dynamic quests and NPC roles will take years of coding and design. This is the part that worries me the most because nothing like that was done before.