Floating turd is unfair, but "poor man's Star Citizen" is a fair criticism. At this point, I have accepted this as an artists magnum opus that will never be finished. I'll check in every now and then and probably play it through every 3-4 years. It's definitely worth the money as is. The game runs great, looks great, has fun mechanics, and a big gritty dungeon to
PLEASE. FINISH. THE GAME.
May 2024
PHYSICS 2.0
We recently re-wrote a lot of our physics engine and optimised it for 64 bit, in the process we also made big improvements to collisions and some complex interactions. This has been in testing for a while now, and of course everything physics came under a lot of careful scrutiny, every little flaw exposed. Originally we designed our physics engine to tackle specific difficult problems, and we accepted that this came with some limitations and compromises. We should know by now - that just won't do.
The level of physics simulation in our characters and combat isn't easy to do, we've improved it a lot over time, but of course it can always be better. We also have a dedicated portion of our playerbase that engages in "grappling", using weapons and shields to trip and throw opponents, pushing the limits of what the simulation can handle.
The collision improvements are big and definitely help, but there's a lot more to it. A quite evident flaw is things separating from each other. This is most obvious when a weapon separates from hands during difficult collisions because it's got nowhere to go. With collisions becoming more solid, this problem became more obvious, and when a weapon is used as a lever to throw an opponent, but it separates from the hands, then the opponent can slip between the weapon and the hands, or the weapon between the opponent's joints and body parts.
Another difficult problem is static friction. This is basically the increased friction between surfaces that are not moving relative to each other, and prevents any movement at all. In many situations correctly eliminating all movement and slow drift or jitter is very difficult and leads to all sort of problems. We had already improved friction, but while this addressed some important cases, others were still not very good, and objects slowly drifting when active remained a problem.
A related issue, but also a separate problem, is vertical stacking. Creating something like a pile of books or plates is a good example of this, which wasn't really possible and particularly erratic when disparate masses are involved.
This being a real time sim, we could improve all these issues with just increasing the simulation rate, but it would be very expensive and only an incremental improvement. With the recent upgrades and optimisations, we felt we had the foundations here to make some dramatic changes to how our physics engine works, to address all these issues and generally take our physics to another level. We considered these things already long ago, but it seemed too difficult and expensive, especially with our character physics, and we couldn't see how to do it without losing our engine's "special sauce". With these new foundations and uncompromising attitude we made a new effort and had a breakthrough.
This is a fundamental transformative change to our physics engine. We dramatically improved on all our problem areas. Collisions are even better still, the separating parts problem basically eliminated, friction and stacking vastly improved. We basically went from our physics engine being quite good at specific things to being much better at those and good at everything else too.
Great! But we weren't done yet. With everything being more "solid", the next link in the chain took all the stress and sufferring. Character's joints and muscles, when placed under extreme stress, could overextend and dislocate. This was an existing problem, but exacerbated and highlighted by these changes. We also have a problem with weapons being light and nimble in the hands, but artificially heavier in the world, to make impacts feel stronger. This disparity in masses obviously causes some problems, and exerts even more stress on the joints.
To deal with this problem we made new tools that allow us to interactively modify and test joint and muscle configurations on characters. With these tools we were quickly able to improve muscle structure and overcome these issues too, while making characters feel much stronger and more controlled.
All these changes have dramatically improved the feel of combat, it feels tighter, more precise, more real. All hits and exchanges are extremely solid, footwork is more quick and precise and it can all take some serious abuse and still function correctly. It's not just combat that's improved, all physics interactions are much more robust and realistic, making the whole experience better, allowing us to do more with environment design and generally making our lives easier as developers.
We have made a few specific changes on the back of this, mainly to combat mechanics, and we also improved things like object interaction. We're still tweaking things, with so many core changes there need to be some adjustments, but we've set a great baseline already and this is a process that continues as we observe things and receive feedback. This better physics foundation is obviously huge in importance and scope for this game, and supports key mechanical improvements and future additions to combat, and everything else.
SOME GRAPHICS AND CONTENT STUFF TOO
As much as we've done on physics, we have been working on a few other things besides. We've been making more updates to the game's content and we've been improving and adding graphics features to support new content. We've made some general improvements to lighting and post-processing, which particularly benefit outdoor environments, but also make everything a bit brighter and clearer without compromising the mood and darkness.
There's been a bit more in the works here in terms of graphical features and content to support the next major area to be added, which is a bit different from what you've seen so far, but we're not quite ready to show those things just yet.
LIVE ON TEST BRANCH (SAVE WARNING)
This and everything we've discussed in recent diaries is live on the test branch and has already received a few hotfixes. We're still tuning things and ironing out a couple of kinks, but overall things are stable and in good shape and feedback so far has been very positive. You can find changelogs, more information and a place to give feedback on our discord: https://discord.com/invite/Z5aV2bF
Be warned that existing story saves will not work correctly due to the extensive changes to terrain and level assets. Once the update goes live on the main branch, there will be a full save wipe, so any progress you make in the story now will be reset. To access the test branch you need the password: BMXATestB915
Best,
Bare Mettle
i don't know about 7 days, but df and kenshi are fucking awesome, i got my fun out of all of them. exanima is what it is. if it's early access, expect to pay exactly for that. not the 'finished' product. if someone wants a 'finished' project, wait til it's done. i've gotten my 'time entertained' to money ratio under $0.50 per hour so i am satisfied. i'm too old to believe shit a person selling something says. i didn't buy sui generis, i bought a janky dungeon crawler for slightly more than the cost a six-pack of good beer, and entertained me longer.
June 2024
Since updating the test branch we've been doing a lot of tuning and adjusting things, the extensive changes to the core physics affected a great many things, and while absolutely a huge fundamental improvement, a lot needed to be updated to take advantage of this, or even function properly. We also ran a few experiments, iterating over some core combat and character physics and getting feedback from the community. A lot more has changed for the better thanks to this and core combat is in a really good place, with very positive feedback from players.
This means we needed to do yet more changes and adjustments. Muscle structure and other changes have made characters effectively much stronger and more rigid, less prone to limbs failing, able to apply more leverage and better supporting emergent gameplay, like grappling. The somewhat "floppy" feeling they could have is gone. These changes however really affected all our existing combat motions, and while we did make some adjustments right away, over the last couple of weeks we've been properly updating and redesigning most of the attack motions. We found we now have more control and are able to make the motions more complex, but it also takes a bit more work now to make them look fluid and transition smoothly. There's a lot of these motions, and dynamic components to them, but we're' finally done and we think they look and feel noticeably better. We'll be updating with these very soon.
Footwork is also in a great place right now. However, we do think that where uneven ground, obstacles and vertical movement in general is involved there is still room for improvement. Navigating environments can also feel a bit clunky, and all this seems like something that needs to be addressed to make the gameplay flow and feel better in general. We've been investigating this and we think we have a clear plan to address it, however it will take quite a development effort and for the time being we feel there are other priorities. It is on the horizon.
All in all this has been a huge transformative upgrade to the combat and the physics in general. We'll always be polishing and ironing out the kinks, and there's still some notable combat features to add, but we'll be building on top of a much more solid base.
We've got a bunch of other fixes and tweaks ready to go now and the test branch update is in a good place. We also got controllers working again and Steam Deck too, however there are still issues with the current version of SteamOS and if you want to play this on the Steam Deck you need to be on SteamOS beta preview until they go live with it on the stable branch.
With this chapter closed, it's time to move to other topics. You may have noticed a pattern recently of us working on things for natural environments. We overhauled our terrain system, we dramatically improved our rocks, improved 3D grass, lighting, we extended our generative tools with features for more organic assets and various things besides. This will all be critical when we move on to overworld content, but the reason we're doing it now is because the next area that will be added is The Gardens, and as the name suggests it will feature lots of nature. One difficult problem remains, which is vegetation. Recently we've been working on adding high quality trees and plants to our repertoire, and also on realistic, but performance efficient foliage rendering, which includes some additions to our global illumination and translucency effects.
It took a lot of tinkering to get things looking and working the way we wanted, and we've still got a bunch of assets to get through, but we're off to a very good start. The following screenshots are not from the new gardens area, but they make for a good showcase of the new assets and features.
Best,
Bare Mettle
"We're off to a very good start"June 2024
Since updating the test branch we've been doing a lot of tuning and adjusting things, the extensive changes to the core physics affected a great many things, and while absolutely a huge fundamental improvement, a lot needed to be updated to take advantage of this, or even function properly. We also ran a few experiments, iterating over some core combat and character physics and getting feedback from the community. A lot more has changed for the better thanks to this and core combat is in a really good place, with very positive feedback from players.
This means we needed to do yet more changes and adjustments. Muscle structure and other changes have made characters effectively much stronger and more rigid, less prone to limbs failing, able to apply more leverage and better supporting emergent gameplay, like grappling. The somewhat "floppy" feeling they could have is gone. These changes however really affected all our existing combat motions, and while we did make some adjustments right away, over the last couple of weeks we've been properly updating and redesigning most of the attack motions. We found we now have more control and are able to make the motions more complex, but it also takes a bit more work now to make them look fluid and transition smoothly. There's a lot of these motions, and dynamic components to them, but we're' finally done and we think they look and feel noticeably better. We'll be updating with these very soon.
Footwork is also in a great place right now. However, we do think that where uneven ground, obstacles and vertical movement in general is involved there is still room for improvement. Navigating environments can also feel a bit clunky, and all this seems like something that needs to be addressed to make the gameplay flow and feel better in general. We've been investigating this and we think we have a clear plan to address it, however it will take quite a development effort and for the time being we feel there are other priorities. It is on the horizon.
All in all this has been a huge transformative upgrade to the combat and the physics in general. We'll always be polishing and ironing out the kinks, and there's still some notable combat features to add, but we'll be building on top of a much more solid base.
We've got a bunch of other fixes and tweaks ready to go now and the test branch update is in a good place. We also got controllers working again and Steam Deck too, however there are still issues with the current version of SteamOS and if you want to play this on the Steam Deck you need to be on SteamOS beta preview until they go live with it on the stable branch.
With this chapter closed, it's time to move to other topics. You may have noticed a pattern recently of us working on things for natural environments. We overhauled our terrain system, we dramatically improved our rocks, improved 3D grass, lighting, we extended our generative tools with features for more organic assets and various things besides. This will all be critical when we move on to overworld content, but the reason we're doing it now is because the next area that will be added is The Gardens, and as the name suggests it will feature lots of nature. One difficult problem remains, which is vegetation. Recently we've been working on adding high quality trees and plants to our repertoire, and also on realistic, but performance efficient foliage rendering, which includes some additions to our global illumination and translucency effects.
It took a lot of tinkering to get things looking and working the way we wanted, and we've still got a bunch of assets to get through, but we're off to a very good start. The following screenshots are not from the new gardens area, but they make for a good showcase of the new assets and features.
Best,
Bare Mettle
I think I'm still in Bargaining.
I believe it is the key system that was behind the idea of SG. Roles would allow them to build open world RPG where most NPCs would react to various circumstances dynamically instead of usual approach of having limited and very narrow outcomes.
Zomboid is a special case since the laptops with the game's code were stolen at some point which set them back.
