Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

20/3/23

We've done lots of work on AI this week, properly modelling the various responses to and interactions with force powers, but also some more general purpose new combat related behaviour. The AI are a lot better at understanding when they can't reach a target, and then they will wait, try to stay out of harm's way or look for alternate routes. They're also now able to prioritise targets based on more tactical concerns than "emotional" ones. These things play a part in dealing with force powers, but also solve other problems including ones caused by the new pathfinding which allows players to do things the AI didn't know how to deal with. This makes the AI more effective, but it also feels smarter and more life-like which we appreciate for how it contributes to immersion.

Everything seems to be working well enough and now we're trying to get more force powers completed. There's a lot of them, but some aren't relevant until we add some other features and some will just come later. We want a good few ready to make up a cohesive portion of the tree and representing the core mechanics for some insider testing soon. There have also been a few important back-end changes now between AI, pathing related ones and the terrain system, and we've got some general fixes and improvements to add so we're planning to update the test branch again too.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

27/3/23

This week has been laser focused on implementing more force powers. There was a bit of an initial hill to climb with developing some core visual effects, but these turned out looking great. Our focus with the effects is making them look somewhat realistic and "solid", also in terms of how they move and interact with things, rather than just some visual indicator. They did turn out looking quite impressive though and keep improving as we do more, so we then go back and look at what we've already done to keep it consistent and up to the same standards.

We've since been working through specific power mechanics and controls, polishing and optimising. There's still a few powers we want to add for testing, but we've got the main foundational stuff developed for all of them. Right now we're working on adding some more casting animations and the character related mechanics, such how they interact with other actions, how casting might get interrupted and so on. Where appropriate we're trying to introduce somewhat of an action skill element in terms of timing, distancing and other inputs or controls.

As usual we like to tackle what seems most challenging and uncertain first, we're in a good place with force now so we might briefly turn our attention to sorting out a few other things so we can update the testing branch before completing force.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

3/4/23

This week we've mostly been working on various aspects of "casting" mechanics and controls, as unlike Mind, Force thaumaturgy is often used actively in combat, it has an action and skill element to it, with animations that can be interrupted etc. This led us down a bit of a rabbit hole as we reviewed the core mechanics behind how different actions interact, respond to physics, transition into each other, delay each other, what might interrupt them and so on. Previously this only really concerned specific attack mechanics, so we felt we needed a more unified approach. We standardised a lot of behaviour for voluntary and involuntary actions, making the system a lot more robust and easier to work with, with animation data now also carrying more information about action states rather than it being hard coded. These are good changes that will be useful in the future and look promising for some core improvements.

Part of this, because it is closely related, has been testing and refining how characters are affected by and deal with being hit with force powers, at a fundamental physics and animation level. Fortunately our character simulation means it mostly just works, but the physics always has to be accompanied by a degree of intelligent control by the character, and there was clear room for improvement. These are general improvements and not specific to force powers, so we'll likely see more uses.

We've been evaluating controls and input handling for Force and other more action-focused thaumaturgy. For now we've gone with one approach and focused on making it responsive, easy to control and generally polished, but things are subject to change as we get some initial feedback from testing, and there are some control additions and improvements that we already have in mind. This is also particularly important because how easily you can use different powers affects how you will effectively build and use your character.

We've tackled these difficult problems this week and ticked various other items off our to-do list. Things are looking good and we're working through some reported issues now, we should be able to get a general (no Force) test version update out some time this week, with the first insider test of Force soon after.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

Exanima 0.8.5.4 Beta is live

This version is largely about back-end changes made in preparation for Force and new content, but it includes some general improvements and important fixes. We covered the bigger changes in some detail in recent coffee diaries, but basically we wanted the testing branch to be properly patched up and up to date.

Changelog for 0.8.5.4:

• Numerous AI changes and improved tactics and pathing in combat
• Pathfinding system additions
• New terrain brush system
• Updated character animation and physics state system
• Procedural copper alloy materials (right now only used for things like buckles and buttons)
• Fixed a significant pathfinding issue that prevented walking under dynamic objects
• Fixed some errors related to characters falling into voids
• Fixed "ultra" shading setting not applying after restart
• Fixed reticle sometimes targeting things obstructing the view
• Fixed errors related to interaction while losing consciousness
• Fixed moving between areas restoring focus to full
• Dragged objects will now be dropped if too far out of interaction range

 

[axx]

Their next game should be called vapourware development simulator.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Their next game

lmao

 

[agris]

This led us down a bit of a rabbit hole

leaked documentary footage from inside dev studio

Spoiler

Edit: can’t believe I missed this.

“Procedural copper alloy materials (right now only used for things like buckles and buttons)”

That’s right, who needs maps and quests when you have PROC GEN BUTTONS AND BUCKLES!!

 

[Lyre Mors]

That’s right, who needs maps and quests when you have PROC GEN BUTTONS AND BUCKLES!!

Pffft, gameplay? I'd rather have ultra-detailed procedural texture generation in my zoomed-out isometric RPG, thank you very much. *squints super hard* Ahhh, satisfying.

 

[Technomancer]

That’s right, who needs maps and quests when you have PROC GEN BUTTONS AND BUCKLES!!

Because obviously it didn't have a purpose beyond it, right? It was done for underworld content. All copper weapons will have different procgen models instead of static ones, same treatment as early game weapons received. And there is also a confirmed redesign of (dated and ugly) ancient brass plate.

 

[Technomancer]

10/4/23

We updated the testing branch this week which went very well, with basically no issues despite significant back-end changes to various things. We did accidentally cause characters to die very quickly and basically fall like a sack of potatoes, and while investigating this we realised death "animations" hadn't been working as intended for a while, so we redid the system with some nice results. We've seen a lot of clips shared by the community and feedback and have made various adjustments already.

We have also made some improvements to our level design tools, but we're back to focusing entirely on Force. We developed two more powers, both of which presented some unique challenges, and they're looking great. We worked on a lot of important thaumaturgy mechanics, added more casting animations, made the Sustain and Iteration skill techniques work properly with all powers and just many things that are needed to make the powers actually game ready. We've got a decent spread of powers now that cover the more complex mechanics and effects and it looks like there's very little left before we can start insider testing. We're currently trying to decide what else to include in the very first test, we won't be releasing the new area just yet, but there are some notable changes to existing content that we might include before that.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

17/4/23

This week we've been getting some content ready for the update, in particular items that are being remade and adapted to the procedural system. The aim is to make every item based on it, as it supports some itemisation mechanics, accurate weapon behaviour, realistic variation in detail and has various other advantages. The procedural item system was designed with other important goals than just randomisation. This kind of turned into a procedural items 2.0 as we included features and additions that we had planned, but not finalised when we first introduced it. Some of these changes affect apparel and armour, but mainly we are talking about weapons for now, however in future we plan to use the system for other objects that are not "equipment" too, as the variety, added realism and the ability to quickly create unique things is useful in many contexts.

One of the most important additions is new and randomised materials. When part of an item was perhaps always say steel, iron, or leather, we can now specify a range of different materials to choose from. This could for example result in a sword hilt being made from a colourful copper alloy rather than steel. This comes with selection criteria for when such materials are suitable, what we call "design parameters", which will also affect what physical designs fit a particular weapon. This means that we can for example ask the system to make a simple and functional looking sword, or a more ornate one. We can then introduce many new and more ornate designs without them ever looking mismatched or out of place.

With new materials and new applications for unique and special items, we also wanted fine control over material properties. The procedural material and randomisation systems have been extended with more parameters to control appearance, apply different finishes and guide randomisation for specific items. This includes things like polished or satin metals, matte or glossy paints, opaque or translucent coatings, different wood lacquers and so on. This will finally allow us to get some things looking exactly the way we wanted rather than having to find a compromise and is also an important part of the future dye and item customisation system.

Another very important change to procedural items is that they are no longer reliant on a seed value, but rather once generated an item is explicitly described in detail. This means we are now free to change how the factories that produce items work, add brand new components and materials without affecting items generated previously. Importantly this allows us to fully design specific items by hand, rather than relying on randomised outputs. We also added an additional layer of randomisation for smaller variation in shape and materials, so that items that are manufactured in series to be similar, designed by hand or unique can still have realistic differences between them.

Making these itemisation changes is a delicate process that requires a lot of thought and planning to make sure that they are future proof and support everything we will need. Most of this was things we knew we wanted and tried to prepare for, but weren't sure how yet and didn't feel ready commit to specifics. A lot of extra work also went into converting existing items to the updated system, so that next time you load your game you favourite weapons aren't completely different. We now need to wait for people to update their saves before we can start adding completely new designs to weapons, so we wanted to finalise the system and get the cycle going with this update.

This was perhaps a bit of a last minute shift in priorities, but we're very glad it's all done and it adds immediate value. Madoc is now back to making some final adjustments to force powers with one less problem looming over his head while the team finishes up the new and updated content.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

24/4/23

We've released our first insider build for Force to test the most important mechanics and get some initial feedback before we finalise things across all powers. Besides some silly mixups with some file versions, this has gone very well with basically no unexpected issues. There's a lot of new mechanics involved in force, and physics interactions and AI interactions which can be quite unpredictable. We're getting a lot of useful information as insiders share their experience and videos and we're going to be iterating over various adjustments in the next few days.

Feedback so far has been extremely positive, insiders are having a lot of fun mucking about with it and seem impressed with everything, physics, visuals, sounds, AI and controls. We generally focus much more on details that contribute to immersions than things like game balance, but we do want the game to feel challenging at times, and as we add more tools to the player's box this changes significantly. A lot of existing content was always supposed to be a lot more difficult than it currently is, and there will be new encounters and new abilities given to them, but for the time being difficulty is in an odd spot. Something else we need to support increased difficulty is new ways to save your progress, which we want to introduce soon if not already in this update.

The current insider test also includes the procedural item changes discussed in last week's diary. This seems to be working flawlessly, with no issues and no unwanted changes to legacy saved games. We're already seeing some nice new material combinations come up on items and we're looking forward to start expanding the item factories again with completely new designs.

There will be another insider test soon with more powers and all the updates to existing content, which includes a couple of redesigned levels and many reworked items. A final insider test will follow, to test the complete update before final release.

Getting all the pieces of force working together in a release is a major milestone and the engine feature set we developed for all of this has many broad applications that go well beyond just the thaumaturgy system mechanics. We'll probably be busy this week making various adjustments to some of these systems, but things are looking really good.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[mpuppetier]

Exanima 0.8.5.4 Beta is live

This version is largely about back-end changes made in preparation for Force and new content, but it includes some general improvements and important fixes. We covered the bigger changes in some detail in recent coffee diaries, but basically we wanted the testing branch to be properly patched up and up to date.

Changelog for 0.8.5.4:

• Numerous AI changes and improved tactics and pathing in combat
• Pathfinding system additions
• New terrain brush system
• Updated character animation and physics state system
• Procedural copper alloy materials (right now only used for things like buckles and buttons)
• Fixed a significant pathfinding issue that prevented walking under dynamic objects
• Fixed some errors related to characters falling into voids
• Fixed "ultra" shading setting not applying after restart
• Fixed reticle sometimes targeting things obstructing the view
• Fixed errors related to interaction while losing consciousness
• Fixed moving between areas restoring focus to full
• Dragged objects will now be dropped if too far out of interaction range

Hi, how can i download the beta 0.8.5.4? In steam i set public beta branch , but the game still at 0.8.4c. Tnx in advance

 

[Technomancer]

Damn, now I'm tech support too? BM hire me.

Hi, how can i download the beta 0.8.5.4? In steam i set public beta branch , but the game still at 0.8.4c. Tnx in advance

Not sure tbh, my own version is 0.8.4c as well. Just wait for a bit, those little patches are not really worth it and with closed testing already started, big content update and version change patch can't be too far away.

 

[mpuppetier]

Damn, now I'm tech support too? BM hire me.

Hi, how can i download the beta 0.8.5.4? In steam i set public beta branch , but the game still at 0.8.4c. Tnx in advance

Not sure tbh, my own version is 0.8.4c as well. Just wait for a bit, those little patches are not really worth it and with closed testing already started, big content update and version change patch can't be too far away.

Ah sorry , i tought you were with BM. BTW thanks a lot for the info!

 

[Technomancer]

1/5/23

Insiders have been testing Force for over a week now and we've seen a lot of what it can do, great feedback and very thorough testing. We've already made many changes to how force powers work, trying to find that sweet spot of balance, fun and skill. This hasn't just been limited to Force, we also made some important adjustments to AI and improvements to the dynamic balancer on the back of some fixes. We fixed many issues, both old and new, and the latest build is looking solid.

Even with just these few initial powers there's important new ways to approach things in the game, big core gameplay additions and finally some meaningful build choices. It's clear that Force is by far the most transformative addition to the game yet, it really takes advantage of some of the more unique features and is a great showcase of our design philosophy. Much like combat and other things, this isn't your typical "graphical effect does X damage", but naturally complex and realistic interactions that are all meaningful in their own way within a detailed simulation. It's immersive, it's fun and it lets you be creative with what you do instead of just going through the motions.

The powers we've been testing are by far the most mechanically complex, involving a lot of difficult physics, AI and combat interactions as well as just visual effects, lighting, controls and general mechanics. We'll be testing more powers soon along with some content, and while these may not be as challenging from a development point of view, they still have interesting gameplay implications. We do still need to work on how some powers interact with each-other, introducing some restrictions, but sometimes synergies between them as well.

Right now we're working on another key aspect of the thaumaturgy system, the Potential mechanics. This is very important for both build diversity and progression. You will no longer simply unlock powers and that's that, but earn Potential in ways that tie into content and gives you objectives. This can then be assigned to specific powers to make them stronger, as well as their entire domain (e.g. Mind or Force). Your powers will initially be weak, and you will be striving to increase your Potential to see them grow.

It's exciting for us to see these things we've put so much thought and effort into, finally coming together. It's like we've spent a long time making really nice bricks and laying down foundations, but finally we're actually building the house and furnishing it too.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

8/5/23

This week we've mostly been working on getting the remaining force powers and updated content ready for the next insider release. Basically a third of all force powers rely on a certain type of visual effect, that could be done in a simple way or an annoyingly complicated way that would look better. We were set on the simple way, but when it came to it we ended up doing it the complicated way so it took some work, but it did turn out great. We're still dealing with some tricky control and input interactions for one power specifically, but we're very close to our target for this update now. There are as many as 16 powers planned for Force, but not all of these will be in the update, some will come later along with other game features.

We're also just about done with updating story items to the procedural system, at least the ones we're introducing in this update (which is most of them). As we did this we found the procedural system wasn't always giving us the exact aesthetic we wanted, so we also worked on some general improvements to the materials and further ways to customise them. This again is something that trickles down to all other items too. It's a huge inherent advantage of the procedural system that we're able to improve materials, add features, make adjustments, and all items instantly benefit from the changes and remain consistent in quality and style as materials are generated on the fly. Without this we'd have to individually update every single item, which isn't even feasible.

Recently we fixed an issue with leg-environment interaction that could cause legs to become "broken". While this did fix a cause of this, at its core this is an issue that can affect any object and has always been present in one form or another. We haven't had any more reports of it, but internally we found ways to still reproduce it, especially using Force thaumaturgy and even the new object interaction methods. This has been kind of a fundamental flaw in our unique physics engine, it is very stable under stress, but with this one fault. We've tried to solve this several times over the years, but never found a solution that always works, until now. Finally we figured out a way to seemingly solve any instance of this, overcoming what was probably our physics engine's biggest weakness.

As we get a bunch of content and other things in game and ready for release we inevitably spend a lot of our time just making final tweaks and adjustments and generally working on many little things that are not worth mentioning here, but we're getting through a lot and overall things are looking good.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

15/5/23

We're still working on the last couple of force powers and of course various bits of content for the update. We mentioned last week that one of the powers we were working on had some troublesome input system interactions and indeed this took some effort. We've made some important changes and additions to our input system and casting mechanics that allow powers to temporarily take over or modify certain control functions, both in and out of combat. This allows for all sorts of specific input methods that will see more use with powers being quite diverse, and that we've even considered for some of the simpler powers. It also supports a bit more multi-tasking, for example being able to use certain powers while running. We added our first true power synergy, where using one power during another changes its behaviour and gives it a new purpose. This was one particularly cool interaction and we couldn't not do it, but we have ideas for various other power synergies and we really like the gameplay and build implications of these interactions. Force is looking great overall, we're not quite done just yet, but we're very close now.

While working on force we also made some improvements that are not entirely specific to it, like some cool new lighting features and improvements to the new lighting system and more AI features, such as the ability to understand who's responsible when a miscellaneous object hits them, or say a door slams into them.

We've been updating more and more items and converting them to the procedural system, now including various unique items that we hadn't planned to do just yet. We're getting quite close to our target of making all items procedural, and we've also finally added in some items that we made previously, but had some technical issues that we only managed to solve now thanks to some engine and tool updates. We're also working on some small, but nice features to generally make itemisation a little more interesting.

We've made a lot of progress, but we're not exactly rushing to get the 2nd insider test out as it is, we got a lot of useful testing and feedback from test 1, the testing branch builds before then, and we're keeping ourselves busy anyway. We'd rather test as much as we can in one go as we get close to the full update release and we don't really want insiders to burn out on testing smaller incremental changes.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

22/5/23

It's been another busy week working on many different things as we try to get everything ready for the release. We always want to avoid spoiling things you'll discover playing the game, so we can't go into much detail, but most of this ties into new content and Force powers. We have all the powers we wanted ready for the next insider test, one of which ended up getting a bit of an overhaul as we figured many players will use it almost constantly, making it their new default Exanima experience, so it had to look and feel right. We've got some new mechanics and effects from this that should prove useful for more powers and itemisation features too.

We've been adding more character animations for Force, which are mostly short and simple, but need to be carefully matched and timed to the powers themselves and need different versions depending on what weapons etc. the character is holding in their hands. Getting through this work we found some things about our animation authoring tools could be improved, so we did that too.

As we transition some of the more unusual items to the procedural system and add new story items we're trying to further expand what we can do with materials, both procedural and in general. We're working on adding ivory, resins, embedded gemstones and dynamic illuminating elements to items. Adding these things to our repertoire is always nice, it means many things that are shelved because they just don't really work or are too difficult or inefficient become easy to do.

The early game is still receiving some big changes. The goal here is to make it feel more diverse and interesting, as it is linear and doesn't have the freedom and variety of the late game. There will be a story save wipe with this update, and we also want the game to feel somewhat fresh and exciting to play through again. We do have various plans to improve replayability in general, but most of this will have to wait as we're already packing a lot into this update.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

29/5/23

We're basically at the point where we've accomplished our major goals for the update as well as many extras and a good portion of our backlog of things to improve, fix and update, but the level designers are still making some additions and improvements and we have our usual list of things that would be nice if we have time. We now need to decide where to draw the line and call it done. Some of these additional features we consider high priority and of particular value in the context of this update, but we can't do everything so we need to pick and choose, figure out exact requirements and consider how it fits into our development flow. Sometimes things get prioritised just because we see an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, even if we could let one live a little longer.

There is one thing in particular that we'd really like to see in this update, it's a new type of encounter and the first case of AI using special abilities or attacks. This is something we've been keen on for some time, not only for new creatures, but for some existing ones too. It would add some much needed gameplay variety and provide a context for various mechanics. We wouldn't be immediately adding all the special abilities we have planned, but introducing this new encounter now would be great, and so would be paving the road for more abilities in future. We're still figuring this one out, but we're optimistic.

Right now we're still doing some things with Force and general thaumaturgy mechanics. We're developing a new type of effect system which would improve one of the Force powers, but would also be the basis for more powers in future, some creature abilities and potentially other advanced effects for a variety of phenomena.

We also made another important improvement to our tools, which is the ability to "paint" specific holes in the terrain. This solves a lot of difficult problems for our level designers, giving them a lot more freedom with how they shape and integrate terrain with custom geometry and removing the need for complicated workarounds. It can also improve performance in many situations. This is one of those things we always wished we could do, so it's great to have it.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

5/6/23

Last week we mentioned we were working on a new type of effect, both as a better approach to do one of the Force powers, but also to support a host of other powers, special attacks, natural effects and all sorts. This is essentially a better alternative to your typical particle effect, we can do much more advanced and specific motion and rendering, it looks more 3D and stable and it's much more efficient which actually becomes very important for large scale effects. This took a lot of work, which included things like physics interactions and lighting, but it looks great and we're looking forward to making all sorts of impressive things with it.

With Force we really tried to create unique effects that have more realism and substance to them than your typical game effects. Exanima often lies more on the side of simulation than game, we care more about nuanced behaviours and interactions than typical game stuff like whether something is balanced or produces a specific gameplay outcome (though we do make some concessions). This tends to make our work infinitely more complicated than the old "play this static effect or animation and do x damage", but it's core to our game and we think it's worth it as it just makes everything feel a bit more real and immersive and less "gamey", and it produces a different kind of emergent gameplay that we value more. More work for us also means more waiting for you, but we hope you can appreciate our effort to push for something different and special.

On the content side, we're now up to 40 new and remastered items that are all procedural, this is a lot, and combined with extensive changes to the early levels, should breathe some new life into the older content as you play through it again and unlock Force powers. It also fixes most of the inconsistencies with items that aren't procedural, can't be upgraded or don't have you looking for good examples. These are now important parts of itemisation and loot that weren't being leveraged in much of the game yet.

We're still refining various things and we've been a bit too busy to really figure out what else we might still be able to fit into this update, but we're now quite certain we'll be following it up with a smaller update as we have a bunch of relatively low effort but still meaningful things we'd like to add ASAP.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

12/6/23

Our main focus this week has been on adding special abilities to AI characters. We're approaching this in a very general way to provide for a wide range of abilities that could have very different uses. It's not just a matter of "use ability every few seconds", but proper tactical considerations to decide what ability should be used when. There's obviously a big difference between using a charge or spitting something at a target, each has ideal conditions, limitations and compromises which just like a poorly timed attack could have very poor outcomes. Good tactics are essential, and we also want ability use to feel natural and organic, rather than scripted and predictable, which is always a little tricky. There's a good mix of ability specific and general considerations and tactics that fall into a shared framework, as well as considerations like conserving resources.

As well as tactics, AI skill level is also important in the same fundamental way as other combat behaviours are. Positioning, range, accuracy, trying to predict what the opponent is doing and so on varies dramatically between a low and high skill AI, which in some cases is very important and completely changes the difficulty of an encounter.

The context here is also broader than some creature with a hard coded attack. It makes a lot of sense to handle this case and AI using various thaumaturgy powers in the same way. We're going to be giving each AI individual its own selection of abilities or powers at their disposal and allow them to decide what to do with them. We're basically unifying the whole system and essentially treating creature innate abilities as if they were unique thaumaturgy domains and going through the same systems and mechanics that players are subject to when using powers. This approach has a lot of advantages both now and going forward.

We're off to a solid start with this, solving key technical issues and getting the fundamental AI behaviour in place, which we've already been testing and seems to work well. We have a bit more work to do for the specific abilities you'll be seeing, but as usual we can't really go into details here without spoiling things that we'd rather you discovered playing the game.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

19/6/23

Recently we've found it difficult to communicate what we're working on and why while avoiding details and spoilers. Partly this is because we don't want to drip feed information without context and painting the whole picture. So, we've decided to do a deeper dive this week and properly explain what we're doing. Some of this could potentially be considered spoilers, but if you've been around then you've probably known bits and pieces for a long time and we'll still try to avoid details. Some of this will be deliberately vague, so try not to jump to conclusions.

We're going to give you a broad overview, which includes some slightly longer term goals. Not all of this will be featured in this coming update, but we're focusing on things that we think add the most immediate gameplay value, while setting the foundation for the rest to follow soon after. There's always more to build on here and more longer term goals, but we'll focus on what we have planned for the near future here.

The basic topic here is thaumaturgy. Currently in Exanima you gradually learn new powers, but a very important part of the progression has been missing: your powers growing stronger. There is a measure of your character's overall power which is called "Potential". This will be increased in various ways, and then you can choose which powers to invest it in, making those stronger, while also making all powers in that domain stronger. If you've played the test branch you may be familiar with some changes to the tree and this new UI element, which allows selecting domains, but also shows how much unspent potential you have in the middle, and how much potential is invested in each domain:


The new UI element which allows selecting thaumaturgy domains and shows your Potential and how much is invested in each domain.

Potential and its investment provides not only a new progression mechanic, but also build diversity as you choose which powers to specialise in, even across multiple domains. Already in early testing we saw how new skill requirements and usage cases for Force can lead to quite different skill choices and builds.

This is all a little complex because the ways you increase potential are varied and reliant on content that has not yet been introduced, some of which are specific to Unknown's story. Most of this missing content is now being introduced with this update, as well as a second domain, and the pieces are coming together. Another reason this is complex is because each power scales and changes in unique ways, this is very rarely anywhere near as simple as increasing some numbers. In many cases it becomes quite involved and can also be difficult to test and balance. It's something we'll probably do in increments.

One fundamental way in which potential is increased is by absorbing it from other "thaumaturges" as they die. There will be a kind of thaumaturge encounter in the late game that increases your potential when defeated. There are other sources of potential, but this is certainly one of the more interesting ones. In time a number of these will be found throughout the late game, and they will use various powers against you, including ones from different domains to yours. As a further progression mechanic and a sort of "rare drop", defeating these thaumaturges may teach you basic powers from these other domains.

So, this is what we've been working on, introducing AI thaumaturges, teaching them how to use various powers, surrounding systems, mechanics and tools, and even starting to introduce some powers from domains beyond Mind and Force. This means new challenging and diverse encounters, new progression, builds, rewards and objectives for the player and a way for us to gradually introduce other thaumaturgy domains while expanding the player's toolbox. It's a huge addition to the game that touches on many areas that are still lacking.

Again, you won't see all of this as a complete system just yet, but we've tackled the biggest challenges and properly established how everything works, so we can gradually expand on it from here.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

26/6/23

Last week we talked about lots of exciting stuff we're doing with thaumaturgy, if you missed it check it out, it provides lots of context and details of what's coming to Exanima. Right now we're very focused on working towards these goals, or at least as much as we can accomplish short term for this update.

We finalised two more powers, both of which are quite impressive and unique, one of which belongs to a domain other than Mind and Force. We did a lot of work on two core effects systems, making some big improvements in terms of graphics, physics and lighting. We're also making these into modular and configurable systems as these are things we'll be using quite extensively for more powers, abilities and other effects. Force now is quite complete. We have a good number of diverse powers, with most of the powers still to come being tied to future features like ranged combat.

Now we're focusing on teaching AI to use different powers and we're doing this by building a sort of shared tactics framework so that we don't need to develop all the logic again for every power the AI can use. The idea is to give AI a "quickbar" with slotted powers just like the player's, then they need to prioritise what to use and when as well as consider preserving resources etc. All the skills that affect these things also affect AI and it's all quite a lot more involved than just using random abilities every so often. Right now we're not really concerned with using a lot of powers, but we still want to develop the right system that we can improve on over time rather than something temporary.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[HoboForEternity]

5 years later this team will say something like this: we are not satisfied with how the AI groundwork go, it's too limited for our grand vision. so the next 10 year, we will be building the basis for general intelligence, then simulate their lives from birth to the time they appear in the game, so when you kill them you're essentially killing a simulated living beings with feelings and regrets.

have a great week!
-the BM team