Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Zariusz]

This game needs Co op. Imagine drunken playthroughs with your bros.

 

[Technomancer]

This game needs Co op. Imagine drunken playthroughs with your bros.

Coop is planned, LAN at the very least, probably some other low latency connection options.

 

[Technomancer]

18/5/20

The new procedural material system for weapons, and other things, is finally working nicely. We will no doubt continue to improve on this - but as of now, the system works; so we can focus on producing all the new weapons, and move on to developing other features for the upcoming update.

Here is an example of the same procedurally generated sword in five levels of condition:


The same procedurally generated sword in 5 condition levels.


On the topic of textures; we've further improved our texture authoring tools so that the changes dynamically update in game textures in GPU memory. Making textures is usually very complex and involves hundreds of steps. Some time ago we made node graph tools that allowed us to modify any one of those steps, and reapply every other step in an automated way; quickly producing the modified asset. Now we can preview the results of any change fully in real time, on in-game objects, or even levels. This creates a truly interactive workflow, removing all the hassle and guesswork, and greatly boosting productivity.

Everyone's hyped about multiplayer - we've done a thorough analysis of the major issues with physics and general game synchronization for networked play and have come up with a detailed strategy. We're really pleased with the solutions we've found, it all seems quite promising. Our plans are now detailed enough that we should be able to start implementing and testing things in the near future.

We also discussed lighting - we've taken another look at our proposed solution for volumetric lighting, which would rely on our existing (simple) global illumination. While trying to figure out how to overcome some limitations of the GI system, we came up with a much more accurate solution that could even have better performance characteristics. We already prototyped some aspects of it and it looks very promising!

A few problems reared their nasty heads; we are still having some image quality issues due to how GPUs process clusters of pixels and an ugly driver bug. It seems these can't be solved without significant changes to our renderer. We're setting up some tests and investigating what it would effectively take to make these changes, and how else we can maybe benefit from the revision along the way.

In the end there's quite a lot of things going on, and work on new content, roles etc. continues. It's all coming along nicely and we're very excited to see all the new features and improvements come together.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Love how the fine detail from the pommel and guard seems to get worn down and disappear.

 

[Zariusz]

Maybe all those tools that are lying everywhere will have some use.

 

[Technomancer]

25/5/20

In the past weeks we've mentioned how we've been trying to tackle various graphics driver performance and quality issues. The quality issues are particularly stubborn, and it seems they can only be fixed by making major changes to our shading pipeline.

Madoc got tired of trying to work around these problems and decided to buckle down and overhaul our shading system. This is complicated because we rely on our rendering being scalable and flexible (runs well on low-end systems, can do a lot of different stuff). To do this we can't just write some shading code, we generate hundreds of very specialised shaders for every situation.

To overhaul the shading system and continue work on all the rendering updates efficiently, Madoc developed a sort of meta shading language that allows us to do all this much more easily. This is all done with an in-engine code editor, so we have instant results and a really nice workflow.

The system itself is up and running, and we've already made good progress on all the new shading. The interactive workflow allowed us to easily fine tune various things, so we've already got some really nice quality upgrades from that alone. We're confident we can fix all the issues we're having, and hopeful that we can get some nice performance improvements.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Aemar]

This project needs less aging ferrous materials and other assorted highly autistic features and more proper progress towards the completion of their initial game, for which they managed to raise 160K pounds back in 2012, through Kickstarter.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

You know, it's very tempting to compare this to Star Citizen sometimes, given the time it takes to complete the games. Except that Exanima is a pretty stable game, with very, very nice handcrafted single player story, and a lovely arena mode, while SC is still a fucking unplayable mess even though it got like 20 times the money. Sad that Sui Generis looks to be super far away though, but at least I believe I'll see Exanima 1.0 by the end of the decade.

 

[Harthwain]

Considering that Exanima is basically what they are doing to generate assets for Sui Generis, I would say that when Exanima is out Sui Generis shouldn't be developed as long as Exanima was. Unless they want to generate a very large world with a lot of places and people who have to be placed by hand. But assets-wise they should be set for faster development. The real question is how far into a finished game they are with Exanima. I don't think they have a public roadmap for that?

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

AFAIK, still need to finish all the thaumathurgy spells (it's incomplete), and finish the whole story as well. I'm sure Technomancer has more details.

I do want to say however, that even if Exanima stays in the state it is now, I will be perfectly happy with the amount of fun I got for my money. I do really wish that it gets done though, as it really feels like a game I wish other RPGs (at least action RPGs) were, in terms of world building, attention to detail, and combat.

 

[Aemar]

It wouldn't be fair to compare Bare Mettle's autistic vision to Roberts' used car salesman approach. Sui Generis/Exanima are clearly very ambitious projects, while Star Citizen is first and foremost a cash grab.

 

[Matador]

I backed the game originally on kickstarter.

It's impressive all the simulation technology that they have built. But there are a lot of details not necessary for the game they pitched at the start. In fact they have been driven away by this endless simulation feature creep.

Maybe Exanima is a good game, I never had the urge to play it. But the original vision was an open world RPG, with very interactive enviroment and unique combat thanks to an impresive physics engine, and reactive and interesting quests. In their words a successor for Ultima.

Let's not rationalize that they have been driven away from this, because they are building some complex systems. They are escaping forward building stuff that each moment makes them farther from making the RPG they promised. Nobody wanted all this autistic stuff when they backed the game.

That said I don't regret backing. I hope at least they consider to license the engine so developers more focused on gameplay can use that great technology.

 

[Technomancer]

I backed the game originally on kickstarter.

I never had the urge to play it.

Your loss. As a backer, you get to be an insider - player with an access to prototype builds and systems in progress months before public releases.

I'm sure Technomancer has more details.

"Madoc02/23/2020 most basic strict requirements for 1.0 are 4 more levels, force thaumaturgy and ranged combat but we're doing a bit more than that, some form of multiplayer, procedural weapons and a few other bits and bobs"

Mind thaum is still work in progress. 2 spells missing, mind control stuff and spell variations incomplete.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Combat in exanima is fun enough that I would consider dragging my massive gaming pc and monitor to a lan party to play it. Would prefer if it's playble with people close by, should get good pings at least in the London area

 

[Technomancer]

Combat in exanima is fun enough that I would consider dragging my massive gaming pc and monitor to a lan party to play it. Would prefer if it's playble with people close by, should get good pings at least in the London area

Yeah...no way in hell IRL friends will play that game with me though, the goddamn casuals. I would wreck them anyway.

 

[Matador]

I backed the game originally on kickstarter.

I never had the urge to play it.

Your loss. As a backer, you get to be an insider - player with an access to prototype builds and systems in progress months before public releases.

I tested some hours in combat Arena and played a little Exanima years ago before Steam in the builds you mention, but not much. I also backed like 40 or 50$, so I must have some extras.

 

[Matador]

Technomancer looking for your reports!

 

[Technomancer]

Technomancer looking for your reports!

Yeah, I kinda forget I'm supposed to post news every monday. I noticed some regular fisting activity from a fellow reporter, your work is hard Infinitron! I would go nuts if I tried regulary updating more than 3 titles.

They are escaping forward building stuff that each moment makes them farther from making the RPG they promised. Nobody wanted all this autistic stuff when they backed the game.

Well, I sort of agree. While this effort for extras will surely benefit SG when it will be done it is slowing down things very much. Like arena stuff, I like it very much but originally it was just a combat demo to test stuff and train once you got tired of story mode. Then it evolved into a separate game mode that also requires upkeep and content updates. Next update will be arena focused for example, and they will add so much content to it. There will be rival guilds and stuff, tournaments, and unique prises. While good fun this will delay progress for story. Then again SG will have arenas so this stuff is progress too...Nothing can be done from our part, devs will do stuff according to their own snail-ass schedule.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

I actually kinda envy Bare Mettle. They are making the game they want, don't care about deadlines, don't have any sizeable revenue (as BM). Would love to be in a situation where I could do something like that and not worry about paying the bills or feeding my family.

 

[Technomancer]

I actually kinda envy Bare Mettle. They are making the game they want, don't care about deadlines, don't have any sizeable revenue (as BM). Would love to be in a situation where I could do something like that and not worry about paying the bills or feeding my family.

I thought about it too. Where's the money coming from? The kickstarted cash was a long time ago. Steam sales? They only started going up recently when some YouTubers gave the game spotlight. I doubt madoc can afford to spend time on external work to keep it all funded, most of the devs are probably full-time too. Although I think I heard that some devs live together or something, life can be cheaper if you pull resources and pay for food and rent together.

 

[Technomancer]

1/6/20

For some time now we've been wanting to update our GI system to overcome some of its limitations. It can't really deal with large open spaces, or smaller objects, particularly dynamic ones. We've even considered layering SSAO into it, yuck!

Madoc has been thinking about these issues for a long time now, but it wasn't until about a month ago that he had some promising ideas. As he thought about it, more of the pieces were just falling together. Now with the entire shading pipeline being reworked, and the new tools allowing the rendering to be programmed in real time, we decided to put these ideas to the test.

What started as some preliminary tests became an almost complete implementation inside of a week. The results are better than we could have hoped, it looks really good. It solves all our problems and meets our requirements. It's fast, it's fully dynamic, it scales to large environments, it adds detailed indirect lighting, so we don't ever need to consider crappy AO again. It even already outputs everything we need for some good volumetric lighting.

There's a lot of improvements being done to the rendering, but this alone will add a huge amount of depth and realism to the graphics. It will also greatly improve visual effects for the upcoming force thaumaturgy and other things.


Kieran is working on updated assets for humans to solve some problems and restrictions we have, and greatly simplify the process of making apparel and layering it. He's making quite a few quality improvements too. The updated core assets can be developed gradually in parallel, and when they're ready we'll make the switch. Then we'll be able to improve many things and add new types of clothing that we previously couldn't do.

The new arena environments and assets are nearly complete, and work continues on story content too. Hopefully we can wrap up all the graphics systems improvements soon, and then focus on completing the gameplay systems for the overhauled arena and other features.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[JarlFrank]

life can be cheaper if you pull resources and pay for food and rent together.

Maybe he owns a place and doesn't have to pay rent.

 

[Technomancer]

life can be cheaper if you pull resources and pay for food and rent together.

Maybe he owns a place and doesn't have to pay rent.

Thought about it too. Pretty cool if so, a close group like that can only have a positive effect on development.

 

[Technomancer]

8/6/20

Last week we talked about how we prototyped an updated indirect lighting system, and how it turned out really well. So we decided to go ahead and implement it right away as part of the other renderer updates. We've gotten through all the tricky stuff now, made it scalable and optimised the critical bits. At this point it's mostly a matter of some dynamic scene management stuff to go ahead and fully replace what we have. The results are better than ever, and we can't wait to see how much the graphics will be improved and what cool stuff we can do with it, especially with the upcoming force thaumaturgy.

The other renderer updates are also coming along nicely, the whole new pipeline is complete and working well, we mostly need to port some lighting code and with a completed GI system we can switch over completely. We implemented and tested our previously prototyped optimisation strategies, which we hoped the new system would support even better, but you never know. The results are great, in our stress test we got close to an 80% increase in framerate on max settings.

Content wise, recently we've been figuring out approaches to making etched and embossed armours for those tournament rewards, and have come up with possible solutions. Everything else is proceeding normally, procedural weapons, other new items and new arenas are being made and in parallel story content for the following update, too.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

15/6/20

Work on the GI system continues, we started off strong with a completed solution for injecting tilesets and architecture which is very fast and improved quality further. Then however we finally ran into some problems. As we said one of our main goals here was to properly cover much larger scenes, the current system can only cover an area about 50 meters across and 3 vertically around the player. We thought we had a solution, but when it came to actually measuring our worst-case view distances we quickly realized it wasn't going to cut it. No matter how fast the GI system is, the workload and data grows exponentially with volume.

Take as an example the Ardent citadel shown in one of our early videos. We have a tower on a castle on a hill overlooking the land below. The volume of space here is huge, and there's no cheating, you can always go there, it could be a village with dozens of light sources and an ongoing thaumaturgic battle. We can't just turn the GI off, it's a crucial component of our lighting and visual effects. It all has to be dynamic, and we don't want to sacrifice performance or support for lower-end systems.

This seemed like a big problem, and for a few days it had us quite worried. We got lucky though, we realized that some properties of the GI method and interactions with our existing scene structure and content streaming allowed us a different approach that solved all this, and would make the whole system even faster while supporting massive environments.

This will take a bit more work, there's a fair bit to do, though at this point we're sure we won't run into unexpected issues. Hopefully next week we'll be able to show some of this off with some screenshots or perhaps even a video.

Meanwhile work on content continues, and we're currently looking at finally introducing some proper vegetation into the game. The GI should give that some really nice depth, as well as support various other assets and effects that have been waiting to go into the game.

Have a great week!
-the BM team