Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

Out in early access for 9 years, dude. I don't give a shit.

Yeah, I know. And you know I don't give a shit if it takes 9 years more. So it is what it is.

 

[Lyre Mors]

It's fine that you don't care how long it's going to take. Just don't act like it's unreasonable or crazy for a lot of us (especially those of us who paid for the game in 2015) to be perplexed or annoyed at how things have and continue to go.

 

[Technomancer]

Just don't act like it's unreasonable or crazy for a lot of us (especially those of us who paid for the game in 2015) to be perplexed or annoyed at how things have and continue to go.

Bad game remains bad forever as they say. I act as if it was not unreasonable for some games to take this long to develop. Exanima is certainly not unique in that aspect.

 

[AndrewCC]

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.

First of all, it needs to come out.

 

[Kruyurk]

I made my peace with the development pace and the "side" features. Maybe the devs would not stay motivated if they took the shortest path towards a complete Exanima, since their ultimate vision is much more than a dungeon crawler.

My only hope is that they get an increase in sales when Exanima goes out of early access, so that they can scale up their production (either allowing part-time devs to work full-time or new hires). I think Exanima has good chances to get a lot of word-of-mouth when it is complete, just because of how unusual and good it is. It also makes good material for clickbaity videos or articles that could reach outside of the current niche. Of course the game won't sell like a Bethesda title, but some of the best and most innovative "autistic" games do reach a relatively big audience (e.g. Factorio, Kenshi, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress).

 

[Lyre Mors]

Again, my point is being missed here. The reasonable solution here was for the developers to focus their efforts entirely on finishing the level design, encounter design, item placement, and implementing any magic they wanted to be in the final version, even roughly. Once they had a game that a player could finish, then they could go crazy with the autistic minutiae and bring the tech demo to grand fruition over the next decade, or two, or three. The game wouldn't have to leave early access, none of this other stuff would be rushed, but the game would at least be completable for those who want to do so. Technomancer, you act like the game even in its current state is god's gift to man, so how could it be a bad game if the fairly simple expectation above was fulfilled? It wouldn't be a bad game forever. It'd just be a good "unfinished" game that could actually be played through to the end while we wait for the rest of the divine masterpiece to be painstakingly brought into existence someday.

Every time I decide to engage in this thread again every year or so, I feel like I lose another sanity point. It seriously feels like a fever dream or something.

 

[Dadd]

Where's my fucking game?

 

[agris]

Predictable joke is predictable. And even pointing out it was mostly a thing of the past by the time Renaissance came over, didn't shield me from your inexhaustible wit @agris

unfortunately for everyone wishing to play a completed version of this, the largest joke of all is the perpetual procrastination manifested by the developer in the form of micro-simulation autism :/

perfectionists often do not like finishing something, because then it can be judged as a whole. until then, it is all a work-in-progress and subject to change. that's psychological cover for the perfectionist who fears they cannot execute their vision up to their own standard and is worried about the end result.

Bad game remains bad forever as they say. I act as if it was not unreasonable for some games to take this long to develop. Exanima is certainly not unique in that aspect.

while the first sentence is true, an incomplete game is never a complete game - is it? and while the reasonable-ness of development time is obviously subjective, those that financially back the game have the greatest claim to be the judge of that. i understand this is the result of a KS, how satisfied are backers? i see a pretty even split in this thread between discontent and good-for-what-it-is mentality

taken together, I can't help but feel it is a shame what has happened to this game. i hope it's released one day, but whether it's: procedural velvet, historically accurate dye simulation, or corrosion simulation of procedurally generated items; one can't help but feel like for the majority of this game's development history, focus has been everywhere but where it is needed most: in finishing the story, levels, quests and content.

 

[Technomancer]

an incomplete game is never a complete game - is it?

Only when company is shut down and no other work is possible. If progress is made, then it is not 'never' is it. Same as with bad game that was released as is and dropped for good, the aspect of finality is important in this context. Its only fair to claim never if they fail to deliver and close the doors. Instead, we are two levels away, version 0.9, hello? I get the frustration over waiting but I don't get the doom and gloom overall. The content updates were never disappointing for those who cared to play them instead of complaining.

the largest joke of all is the perpetual procrastination manifested by the developer in the form of micro-simulation autism.
taken together, I can't help but feel it is a shame what has happened to this game. i hope it's released one day, but whether it's: procedural velvet, historically accurate dye simulation, or corrosion simulation of procedurally generated items;

I feel like this is massively overblown. The velvet you invoke as if it was some major hurdle on progress took a few weeks at worst. It is just the most tricky material, which gave it some unnecessary spotlight. Materials update was a distraction needed because there was a renderer update forced by technical limitations (because of some obsolete elements it was impossible to continue development without overcoming these issues since they would need to be solved later anyway at greater cost). And with renderer update done, materials and assets needed mandatory remaster too because those that were made ten years ago looked like complete ass and created sharp ugly contrast. This was the biggest hiatus on recent memory and it happened two years ago.

There is no dye simulation. It is just item coloring system with some vaguely historic elements (massively simplified compared to the real thing because the main intent for it is flavor and immersion, not complexity for the sake of it) to liven up the grind of arena and offer more customization options. And I don't see how it is relevant, I repeated several times it is not actively developed because arena is secondary to story and so it is postponed. But you continue to insinuate it is an active issue, as if devs were working on it in secret instead of toiling on story content, despite hearing about it for the first time a few days ago.

There is no corrosion sim, you just imagine all of these complex systems in your jests then start thinking them as real. There will be no real time item degradation under rain or whatever. You won't need to fix crap every five minutes like in oblivion. You simply find items in various procedural conditions. There is no complex sim involved, its just set up procgen modifiers and a bit of rng.

one can't help but feel like for the majority of this game's development history, focus has been everywhere but where it is needed most: in finishing the story, levels, quests and content.

That's true. A lot of time was spent on tech, especially in the beginning when all they had was basically a rough and janky prototype. At the time, focus on it was to be expected since the game was intended to be Sui Generis' technology and assets fundament. But I think the last update, which was the biggest content expansion to date, clearly showed their current direction.

 

[Technomancer]

The reasonable solution here was for the developers to focus their efforts entirely on finishing the level design, encounter design, item placement

What makes you think none of this is done? With most of the levels already in game, level design is likewise mostly finished. For upcoming levels too, devs are busy with constructing them as we speak for the future update. And recently they finished updating last old levels that remained (catacombs and foundry) with a mini update coming out soon for closed testing and release. Encounter design is present on every level. Most of the enemies in the game are roaming but there are certain situations that are preset since characters are locked by circumstances to areas. The only thing that can be considered unfinished here is idea madoc had for various randomized "events" you could stumble on in the dungeon. Item placement is as well complete. There are several quest items that do not do anything because they require content from the levels that are not in game yet but absolute majority of items have function, purpose and place. There are keys to find, secrets to discover and lore to puzzle together. When it comes to gear items, they are fully procedural, there are hidden arcane tools that modify items you find and there are unique weapons and armors that have special attributes. The only unimplemented idea when it comes to itemization is randomized chest placement on levels.

implementing any magic they wanted to be in the final version, even roughly

And magic as well is 90% done, its way beyond rough version. And this is my point, those who wait for the game but do not play it, often assume a lot without really knowing anything. Current magic has two fully implemented magic trees (misses one or two spells), lacks code for mass casting and power scaling system. That's it. 4 other schools of magic were never intended to appear in Exanima before SG.

@Technomancer, you act like the game even in its current state is god's gift to man

Nah, its just a game. I like it a lot, and its innovative in many aspects but I barely play it these days. Only so much you can do in a dungeon crawler, you know? I memorized most of the levels at this point and I gave up on arena once rare unavoidable save wipe destroyed all of my progress. Now SG, if that will ever come out and it will succeed on implementing their grand ideas, yeah, I think I could call it that.

 

[motherfucker]

Is there romance in this game?

 

[Incognito]

Is there romance in this game?

Yes, Madoc Evans fucks you for over ten years.

 

[Kruyurk]

Is there romance in this game?

At first there was no proper romance in the game, it was only seemingly drunk people fucking each other in a comical way. But it got much better over time.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is there romance in this game?

Waiting for hug and kiss physics. Don't get me started on the sexual intercourse physics. There's a long way to go.

 

[Technomancer]

Waiting for hug and kiss physics

Already in, git gud scrub

 

[Ladonna]

Is there romance in this game?

Just that beast raping you on level 4.

 

[Tyranicon]

Is there romance in this game?

Waiting for hug and kiss physics. Don't get me started on the sexual intercourse physics. There's a long way to go.

Hnnnnnnng.

I think I got carpel tunnel from playing arena. I can only imagine actually having intercourse in this game. Would probably break my hand.

 

[Spike]

Is there romance in this game?

Waiting for hug and kiss physics. Don't get me started on the sexual intercourse physics. There's a long way to go.

Hnnnnnnng.

View attachment 46962
I think I got carpel tunnel from playing arena. I can only imagine actually having intercourse in this game. Would probably break my hand.

Your hand would surely break for more reasons than that...

 

[Technomancer]

March 2024

This has been a month of mostly wrapping things up and getting them ready for a release. There have been a lot of important core improvements that affect the entire game and content, so we want to get the game in testing and updated before moving on to other things. This includes the switch to 64 bit and optimizations to many parts of the engine, the overhauled terrain system and all related assets, improvements our physics engine and important new features, a complete graphical overhaul of the golem area, a huge rework and expansion of the Catacombs map and a few other smaller, but still important improvements. It's a lot.

Most recently we've been working on improvements and additions to our physics engine. These are things we've been wanting to do for some time and are extremely important for the future of the game. The core physics improvements are immediately obvious in gameplay, they make weapon interactions feel and function better in combat, they solve many problems and we're already noticing how they allow us to do more with level design and interaction. Last month we released a video where we showed what was basically a prototype version of new cloth and soft body features. This is something we hope to use extensively for things like clothing, plants, those creepy fleshy growths, sheets of paper and generally the many things that should be soft, flexible, floppy and squishy. This would allow a new level of immersion and interactivity. Dynamic physical interactions are at the core of Exanima's gameplay and immersive world, and this is something we want to extend to every part of it.

The key breakthrough we demonstrated in our video was a performant way to do polygonal collision on deformable bodies. While it's great that we're able to do realistic interactions between cloth and things like weapons, this provides a versatile solution for all sorts of soft bodies beyond cloth, where simpler methods could be considered sufficient. Since the video we've further improved our model, stress testing it and making it very functional and stable under many conditions and applications. We can drape cloth over objects, hold objects in nets and sacks and do all sort of tricky things that require a very stable and accurate model.

Performance is of course a major concern, we identified good, fast methods, but we still had to optimise what we showed then. We knew our prototype implementation could be made roughly 10 times faster, and we joked about making it 20 times faster, but that's what we did. Then we optimised it even more, and made it 40 times faster. This being physics, it means a bigger performance budget for more cool things. Another important optimisation was making deformable bodies that aren't currently doing much and actively interacting with anything, or visible, or casting a visible shadow etc., go into an idle state where they cost virtually nothing. This is ultimately what allows us to have a huge number of these complex objects in an environment.

In keeping with Exanima's full interactivity, we also added the ability to move and drag cloth around with the cursor. Besides that consistent immersive feel, this has a number of gameplay implications that we're eager to explore. Another of Exanima's more unique features is perfect persistence of everything, this means that if you leave a piece of cloth draped over something in a particular way and exited your game, it has to be in the same exact position when you return to it.

We've also extended our development tools to support these new features and generally improve our workflow for all physics. We've been constantly making improvements to our tools and also making them more intuitive and user friendly, for eventual modding use and also if and when we expand our team.

There is so much we can do with these new features and we're very excited by the possibilities, but as usual much will be revealed when we add new content and gameplay where you can experience it fully first hand. Everything we listed up top and these core improvements are in the polishing stage now and we hope to begin testing in the next few days and get it all released for everyone soon after.

Best,

Bare Mettle

 

[SlamDunk]

Incredible.

This may actually be released, some day.

I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you.

Still holding, after three years since making that post...

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Awesome. Now we can pull wedgies out of our knickers and finally have an accurate purse physics. Lets see if anything useful comes of it. Being able to literally pull a rug out from under an opponent, or snare them with a table cloth like an improvised net would be hilarious.

 

[Cohesion]

Release in 2060? I won't make it probably. Maybe my grandsons would enjoy this game and Scam Citizen.

 

[motherfucker]

Speaking of Cum Citizen, did any of my fellow slavs make a Hui Generis joke yet?

 

[gabel]

12 years later and this thing is still a floating turd.
Poor man's Star Citizen.

 

[Technomancer]

April 2024

We've been testing the many changes to the game and our engine with insiders this past month, which especially considering the extent of the changes to engine code, has gone very smoothly. It all seems very stable and we didn't really run into serious issues, though some proved tricky to fix. Insiders are always very thorough and meticulous, uncovering minute flaws and obscure little problems. We've done a few patches already, with many fixes and improvements to things both new and old.

We do still want to try to make a couple of improvements and additions for the full update, but things are in a pretty good place already so we're thinking to update the public test branch within the next few days to get things tested by more players and on more hardware. This basically includes physics engine improvements, some cloth physics, 64 bit, updated terrain system and assets, golems area graphical overhaul, a big expansion of the catacombs and a few other bits and bobs.

The physics are working better than ever, with more improvements we made during testing, and the performance increase is big, giving us a lot of headroom for more upgrades, new features and richer content. We are currently looking into some very interesting further core improvements we might be able to make, but it's a bit uncertain still and we are trying to move on to other things. There have also been general performance improvements, and better loading times too.

One of the features we're actively working on is the late game "save system", which is something that ties into the content and the player needs to discover and interact with, and comes with a few other additions. To support this we need new interaction mechanics, which we're implementing through a "placement zone system" which will support many things, like socketing items into elements of the environment, snapping objects into logical positions (e.g. torch in a holder, bar across a door) and just triggering all sorts of events when a particular thing or type of thing enters or is placed in a specific location. This opens up a bunch of new gameplay elements and interactivity. The concept is fairly simple, but the physics and persistence of the game do introduce a few complications, and we're going for a very versatile system, with core features that can be useful for other things too.

We did the thing again, where we invested in big core technologies and features for the future of the game, but we're wrapping this up now and moving on to gameplay systems and content additions. A lot of what we did here will be invaluable for some future content, and we like to tackle the most difficult problems first. The role system will be our next major focus, but we have a long list of features and additions to suit everyone's taste.

Best,

Bare Mettle