Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Kruyurk]

I don't think this is how life expectancy statistics work

At my age you don't expectancy much from life anymore. I just want to play Exanima in its finished state then I can die happy. I hope to play Sui Generis in the afterlife.

 

[udm]

I've been sitting on the fence for a long time as to whether I should get Exanima. Like one of the earlier posters, I haven't followed much of its development after they changed the name from Sui Generis to Exanima, but looking at some of the screenshots, this game looks based as hell. Plus it looks close to completion.

And then there's this video:

 

[HoboForEternity]

Before you all get excited, member there are practically an infinite amount of number between 0.9 and 1.

This can release next year or 2077

 

[Strange Fellow]

I've been sitting on the fence for a long time as to whether I should get Exanima. Like one of the earlier posters, I haven't followed much of its development after they changed the name from Sui Generis to Exanima, but looking at some of the screenshots, this game looks based as hell. Plus it looks close to completion.

And then there's this video:

If you don't mind playing a game that's in Early Access you should get it right now, because the game that exists is already great. If you're planning on waiting until release to play it, don't buy. The dev is too busy making procedurally generated basket weaving patterns to finish the thing this decade.

 

[mindx2]

It has probably the coolest looking/accurate physics combat style I've seen. My concern is how many buttons I'll have to press simultaneously to make it look that cool. There is a stat/progression system correct? If so does anyone have a quick summary?

 

[Lhynn]

It has probably the coolest looking/accurate physics combat style I've seen. My concern is how many buttons I'll have to press simultaneously to make it look that cool. There is a stat/progression system correct? If so does anyone have a quick summary?

These fuckers look like they can barely stand. Even toddlers have a better sense of balance than the characters here. Its like everyone is drunk or has jelly limbs.

Not saying that the game doesnt look fun, but realistic or accurate it is not.

 

[vitellus]

It has probably the coolest looking/accurate physics combat style I've seen. My concern is how many buttons I'll have to press simultaneously to make it look that cool. There is a stat/progression system correct? If so does anyone have a quick summary?

the wacky waving inflatable arm tube man game is super fun, it takes some real getting used to the controls though, but once it clicks, it becomes pretty natural and you'll be zooming around the halls at a good clip until you misjudge and trip over a wall support and end up ass over teakettle. controls are at most three buttons on kb and one on the mouse. combat control is a little different, best way to get a grip is to activate it and strafe around the red circle using 'd' and you'll intuit the scheme. there is a universal xp level that lets you start out with progressively stronger characters that you slowly level up by leveling up your character (i.e. you start with a slash and then you can unlock the next ability on that guy, the next template has the xp added to it). i bought it after the recent update that added in magic, but i tend to suck at games like this so i am slowly getting somewhere. it's pretty fun. much to the relief of the consternation of codexers, you cannot create a chick with a dick. you'll have fun in the dungeon mode or the arena, which it is exactly what it says it is.

 

[Incognito]

It has now been 9.5 years since the estimated delivery date for Sui Generis of May 2014. Living in the relatively safe conditions of North America, a 25-year-old man has about a 98.1% chance of reaching the age of 34. 1.9% of them die in that decade. For simplicity's sake, I will make the assumption that all of Sui Generis' 6931 backers were 25-year-old men living in North America. Of the 6931 backers, approximately 134 of them have died since the estimated delivery date. I understand that when Sui Generis releases, it will be the best game ever, but I think Madoc has an obligation to take a break from rendering 4K zombie models to track down the families of his dead backers and provide them posthumous refunds.

I backed this shit! Last time I tried Exanima it wasn't very entertaining. More like an interesting proof of concept. Is it any good now?

 

[Kruyurk]

It has probably the coolest looking/accurate physics combat style I've seen. My concern is how many buttons I'll have to press simultaneously to make it look that cool. There is a stat/progression system correct? If so does anyone have a quick summary?

These fuckers look like they can barely stand. Even toddlers have a better sense of balance than the characters here. Its like everyone is drunk or has jelly limbs.

Not saying that the game doesnt look fun, but realistic or accurate it is not.

The video shared by udm is an extreme case of someone exploiting the physics to make opponents fall. This kind of goofy tripping and ragdoll rarely happen if you don't play like that.

The characters stopped appearing drunk a few versions ago. If your character appears drunk, it is because you move your mouse too wildly or because you keep moving against the flow of movements.

 

[Joggerino]

I've been sitting on the fence for a long time as to whether I should get Exanima. Like one of the earlier posters, I haven't followed much of its development after they changed the name from Sui Generis to Exanima, but looking at some of the screenshots, this game looks based as hell. Plus it looks close to completion.

And then there's this video:

It's 100% worth the price for what it is right now.

 

[Infinitron]

As part of this month's dev diary we're including a video focusing on the improvements to terrain.

 

[Technomancer]

Lol, I am late. Yeah, the format is changed. And this really messed up what became a routine at this point. I'm used to doing it on every monday

 

[Technomancer]

December 2023

TERRAIN IMPROVEMENTS


Last month we briefly mentioned we wanted to improve terrain and our tools. There are more improvements we could make, but this quite large body of work is done now. There's a lot to cover that's not easy to explain, so we recorded a quick video to show it better.



There's a lot here to help us push development forward and very obvious visual improvements that you should be able to see first hand in game soon.



STONEWORK TOOLS


Basically all of Exanima's stonework, the walls and floors, are designed and created inside our tools. We generate very detailed 3D models with all the individual bricks or tiles, and then do a whole series of things to convert this into in game assets. This allows us to make very specific stonework with a very consistent style and results. This process and the quality of the assets has improved over time, but so far we've been limited to regular or simple geometric patterns. Now we've made new additions to these tools that allow us to generate irregular and more "organic" stonework as well. This allows us to make a wide variety of new types of floors and walls using the same methods. This is actually a really important addition to our tools and there's lots of things we plan to do with it. You can already see one of these irregular floors we created in the terrain improvements video.


64 BIT


When we started developing our engine it was still important to support 32 bit systems, but at this point it certainly isn't. So we decided it's finally time to make our engine and Exanima 64 bit. This means access to way more memory and more modern hardware features for low level optimisation. The memory has mostly been an issue in our development tools where we work with many millions of polygons and many high resolution images, but with the most recent update we started to feel the limits in the game too. More optimisation is also something that we need for new features and content we plan to add soon, but this is a different path to more performance that should remove the need for that, while also multiplying with it when we eventually do it. Essentially we get to kill two birds with one stone, this had to be done eventually.

Moving to 64 bit isn't usually a big problem, but everything in our engine is made by us, and it uses a very large amount of assembly code. This is code that deals directly with hardware level instructions rather than a more concise and human friendly language that a compiler converts to hardware code for you. The reason for using assembly is because we can write much faster code than the compiler. However it's very difficult to work with, and code written for 32 bit won't work in 64 bit.

These 64 bit hardware features provide some great optimisation opportunities, and so does working alongside a 64 bit compiler that is based around the same more modern hardware features in general. Madoc has been working tirelessly on new 64 bit versions of our code and testing optimisation strategies. The bulk of the work is done, and while we still don't know what the final result is, early tests promise a very significant improvement in performance. Performance is a currency to us, which we can spend on more and better physics, and as this is a multiplier to other optimisations we had already planned, we're very excited about the possibilities.


We should have all this properly wrapped up pretty soon and as a team we're busy working on many different things and making good progress. We are still looking at an intermediate update before the next big content release, but we're not sure yet about the scope of it. Check back with us next month for more.

Thanks!

Bare Mettle

 

[Technomancer]

January 2024

Last month we mentioned we were migrating our entire engine, game and tools to 64 bit, as we really don't need to support 32 bit anymore and this gives access to practically unlimited ram and many big optimisation opportunities. This was a massive undertaking as our engine uses a lot of very low level (close to the hardware) code and we also took this opportunity to improve and optimise many core systems as we reviewed so much of it.

You may be wondering, the game already runs great, why optimise it further? First off, these are not rendering optimisations, as that's GPU territory, but in terms of everything else, and especially physics, these optimisations are extremely important. Unlike graphics which just runs at different framerates and different settings, physics always work in the same way, and for this to work and be any good in the first place, it must always do exactly the same thing at exactly the same rate. This means better performance isn't a matter of higher framerates and better settings, it's simply a hard limit on what we can do with the game.

Physics in Exanima isn't just for show, every element of gameplay, every interaction, every motion and outcome is a direct result of physics, no exceptions. Character motions are driven by virtual muscles and are made dynamically, even the slightest collision can completely change outcomes, everything has physics, everything is fully persistent. We never use simple shapes like boxes or cylinders for collisions, but always accurate representations, even when objects have complex shapes that are notoriously difficult to simulate.

All of this detailed simulation is expensive, which puts limits on things like how many characters we can have, how many objects, and just generally how detailed and accurate the simulation can be. Greater character density is an important requirement for what we have planned for the game's conclusion, but we also want more physics interactions to add gameplay elements and improve immersion which was the main goal of our fully physics driven approach. This includes things like cloth physics, plant physics, soft bodies, animated tentacles and water to name just a few.

This huge migration is now complete and we've also done lots of low level optimisation and a slew of improvements, especially to our tools. We've been using and testing things for a while now and it's all very solid and very fast. The results have exceeded our expectations, with physics performance being doubled, and collision performance specifically almost tripled with room for further improvement. Collisions are particularly important, because while things like character and other motions are expensive, they have a fixed cost, but collisions keep scaling as more objects are involved and the game doesn't place any restrictions on what you can do.

Most recently we've been working on cloth physics, which is really the technology which drives cloth, hair, vegetation and soft bodies, so this is a big important thing and it accounts for a very big chunk of our performance budget. We also use cloth physics to help generate models for clothing in our tools. We came up with a new method that produces much better results and is much less restrictive in terms of modelling. After some thorough optimisation, it's also up to 10 times faster than what we had before. This is a really impressive result which is great for all the things we plan to do with these features.

These kind of major engine and tool revisions are par for the course after a major update, and often involve many months of work. With this and our terrain system overhaul we're done and already back to focusing on content and gameplay features. The team is busy with major content additions for the next update as well as some nice improvements, as some existing content is gaining new importance with the introduction of new features. We plan to start insider testing of the updated engine and terrain (which affects all content) soon, and we should be following this up with a public update that includes some new features and content updates.

Have a great year!

Bare Mettle

 

[AdolfSatan]

Has anyone ever enjoyed a game less because its plant physics simulation wasn’t accurate enough? I respect the man’s commitment to his vision, but get a fucking grip. It’s a game, in the end, all it needs to be is fun.

 

[thesecret1]

Most recently we've been working on cloth physics, which is really the technology which drives cloth, hair, vegetation and soft bodies, so this is a big important thing and it accounts for a very big chunk of our performance budget.

Can't wait to deal damage using just hair physics.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Its been over a decade. I don't think I have any snarky comments to share which haven't already been said.

 

[vitellus]

Has anyone ever enjoyed a game less because its plant physics simulation wasn’t accurate enough? I respect the man’s commitment to his vision, but get a fucking grip. It’s a game, in the end, all it needs to be is fun.

simply put, exanima is a fun game.

absolutely hacky/slashy physics based goofiness with odd controls and an even odder combat system that takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of it, you can trounce motherfuckers and that is absolutely satisfying when you get it right and put 'em down. will it ever be finished to whatever the dev's vision is? don't know, don't care. i've had fun with it, got my currency per hour down to an acceptable limit at 12 hours and could never play it again and be fine with that. i've payed more for games with less time played in the past.

 

[AdolfSatan]

I know, I love the game, and would go as far as saying it’s the best modern dungeon crawler. And arena too. But I’m also one of the players kinda frustrated with all the irrelevant mechanics, wishing that content got finished sooner instead.

 

[KD6-3.7]

I'm holding out for urination fluid dynamic physics and globular real-time multi-thread bukkake physics.

 

[agris]

I'm holding out for urination fluid dynamic physics and globular real-time multi-thread bukkake physics.

thixotropic fluid dynamics simulation is only 3 microissues from implementation

 

[Technomancer]

A rather flattering video.

 

[Technomancer]

February 2024

For this month's diary Madoc made a video again. We mentioned previously how we hoped to use more performance for more and better physics, and this is the result of those efforts. This gets a bit technical, but we think real time physics isn't a very widely understood topic that needs a little explaining.

These are some very significant improvements and additions to the game's physics that support a lot of things in terms of gameplay, world building and our development process. They make the very foundations that drive everything in the game better.



Best,

Bare Mettle

 

[Technomancer]

Madoc also teased tabards for arena that will display your company logo. But it won't arrive any time soon, not before dye system. Currently devs are focused on last two levels for story.

 

[Mud']

Is this game not moddable at all?