Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

12/4/21

Procedural weapons have been in the beta for a week now, and the feedback has been really positive. We have more weapons on the way and this week we've been looking at updating damage mechanics and how weapons behave on impact. This should make various weapons feel better to use, and more accurately model differences between weapons and how procedural components and properties affect their behaviour.

Part of this is the long promised update to slash damage mechanics. We are trying to model slash in two different ways: hewing and cutting (or chopping and slicing). Hewing is what you typically get with something like axes (which are currently a bit underwhelming) and when hitting with the centre of percussion of a sword, whereas cutting occurs with more grazing or slicing hits. These would translate motion and force into damage differently, and interact with armour mitigation differently. Individual slash weapons and how you use them should give quite distinct results.

Procedural weapons give us very detailed info about the shape and purpose of every part of a weapon, so we want to leverage this to generally model impacts more accurately and predictably. We're also wanting to introduce additional properties for these parts. For example a more spiky crushing head will bite into and grip surfaces delivering force more efficiently, while a smooth head more easily disengages to deliver a remise or transition into other actions.

We've also been looking at some attack motions that didn't feel right and tweaking them to feel and flow better, looking at how to integrate dynamic grip changes into combat and various other things. With the procedural weapon system in game and functional we're generally looking at various smaller things we'd like to see come together for the full arena update.

For the next beta patch we'd like to introduce more weapons and some of what we just discussed, but we're also looking at overhauling individual interfaces and getting some feedback on those. Our priority here is the currently quite messy loadout and arsenal systems, for which we have some pretty extensive changes planned. We'll let you know in detail what these are soon, possibly including them in an upcoming beta patch.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

19/4/21

We're currently working on quite a few different things, wrapping up the key features for this update so we can focus entirely on the new UIs and gameplay features for arena.

We are of course still working on procedural weapons, mostly focusing on the how the weapons function in game. The individual componets now modify weapon stats, so a spike on top will add thrust to a weapon, and different shaped heads etc. can have varying stats. We are also doing more with deformations, modifying stats based on size and shape changes of all components. Part of this is also the system that allows different stats to apply depending on how the weapon is held.

Still on procedural weapons we're building up a solid library of all the components for various weapons types, and optimising our workflow as we do so. By standardising how many components work, we can complete a lot of weapons at once. Given various types of hafts, grips, queues, hammer heads, axe heads, spikes etc. we can combine and adjust those in different ways to create a surprisingly large number of different weapon types, and even use them as common components in more unique weapons. The number of weapons we can create for the components we make is something that grows exponentially.

A fairly important milestone for this week was finally getting outdoors fully working in the new renderer. We've added light from the sky to the GI system, adjusted all the lighting and day/night cycle, weather effects etc. for the new renderer and it's all looking rather nice. We should be able to reintroduce the existing outdoor arena soon, and there's some nice new ones we've been making for the arena update too.


New renderer outdoor lighting
Finally the outdoor lighting, day/night cycle and everything is fully working with the new renderer and GI. Important stuff!


Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Lyre Mors]

How about don't focus on the arena at all, for fucks sake. Finish the actual game, and then work on the side-content, i.e. the arena. Absolutely baffling.

 

[Technomancer]

How about don't focus on the arena at all, for fucks sake. Finish the actual game, and then work on the side-content, i.e. the arena. Absolutely baffling.

Arena is just a convenient way to develop systems for SG and Exanima. Nearly all that work means they will have a foundation later. And more likely than not arena systems will be part of SG world one day instead of being standalone mode.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Arena is just a convenient way to develop systems for SG and Exanima. Nearly all that work means they will have a foundation later. And more likely than not arena systems will be part of SG world one day instead of being standalone mode.

I'd rather they have a game that is completable from start to finish, THEN work on additional systems they want to implement. The way this is going to go is six months from now, they'll be announcing that they are pushing the new arena improvements into beta. Then a month or two from then, they'll feel confident to start working on additional lighting effects and foliage simulation. Finish your level design, work with an improved save/checkpoint system, improve the actual UI in the game, and then work on things that are going to maybe be implemented in Sui Generis 20 years from now when it enters its own 10 year early access period. It's just hamster running in its wheel shit.

 

[karnak]

Arena is just a convenient way to develop systems for SG and Exanima. Nearly all that work means they will have a foundation later. And more likely than not arena systems will be part of SG world one day instead of being standalone mode.

I'd rather they have a game that is completable from start to finish, THEN work on additional systems they want to implement. The way this is going to go is six months from now, they'll be announcing that they are pushing the new arena improvements into beta. Then a month or two from then, they'll feel confident to start working on additional lighting effects and foliage simulation. Finish your level design, work with an improved save/checkpoint system, improve the actual UI in the game, and then work on things that are going to maybe be implemented in Sui Generis 20 years from now when it enters its own 10 year early access period. It's just hamster running in its wheel shit.

I suppose they're trying to compete with Project Zomboid in order to see who's the "E.A. Rogue-RPG" Champ.

The first who gets out of Early Access loses.

 

[Talby]

Any more funny drama from these lolcow devs?

 

[Technomancer]

THEN work on additional systems they want to implement. The way this is going to go is six months from now, they'll be announcing that they are pushing the new arena improvements into beta. Then a month or two from then, they'll feel confident to start working on additional lighting effects and foliage simulation. Finish your level design, work with an improved save/checkpoint system, improve the actual UI in the game, and then work on things that are going to maybe be implemented in Sui Generis 20 years from now when it enters its own 10 year early access period.

It does not work like that, if they finish the game right now and then develop systems "later" they will be silent for years so SG will be abandoned in the eyes of most. People will say "who cares about your arena, do me a SG!" UI is being worked on at this moment, I saw some mock-ups and prototypes from insider. The goal is to "move away from the PC software look". New level is finished already but it is missing some stuff, like new thaumaturgy and the new character. Both require some work but new character will come with realized role system - the fabled system destined to set apart SG one day. Madoc promised new level this year and actually, he says they are not far from 1.0, he aims for the game to leave early access in two years. Not sure it will go that smoothly myself but this is the intent.

Anyway, many do not realize just how hard it is to make such a game and think devs sit on their asses most of the time, couldn't be further from the truth, it basically is a constant crunch fueled by devotion to the craft.

most of us work on the game full time
this is a complex project, and we're a small team, I'm not sure how we could do what we do any faster
I work literally all day 365 days a year
this isn't a unity game with basic graphics, it's a ridiculously ambitious game built entirely from the ground up

 

[Lyre Mors]

It does not work like that, if they finish the game right now and then develop systems "later" they will be silent for years so SG will be abandoned in the eyes of most.

Well, that's kind of the problem. They are prolonging the early access as a marketing move, so that they can continue to earn a trickle of income on it while building the foundation for their bigger planned project. That was awesome when the game was supposed to come out a short time after launching the early access, and I even supported that whole concept by buying into the EA in the first place. I was even patient 4 years into the project, despite that being a ridiculous over-shot of the initial projected release.

But again, I bought the early access being quoted "six to nine months" as an estimated completion time. That's pretty fucked up that 2 years from now is the optimistic release date. It's not even the money I spent on it that I'm concerned about at this point. I'm just actually perplexed that the estimated release for what was supposed to be small platform project for a larger game was this extremely far off. I don't doubt that the developers are still working hard, but I do doubt that their priorities are always in the right place for the people who supported them in 2015.

 

[Technomancer]

But again, I bought the early access being quoted "six to nine months" as an estimated completion time. That's pretty fucked up that 2 years from now is the optimistic release date. It's not even the money I spent on it that I'm concerned about at this point. I'm just actually perplexed that the estimated release for what was supposed to be small platform project for a larger game was this extremely far off.

Read my post with madoc's comment on that, page 29, it will give you the best idea. TLDR - devs asked backers if they wanted something more simple but faster or something grander but which they need to wait for. Most wanted to wait so that was that. Ultimately backers are the people who they owe and give power over such decisions, not regular players. As you can read there original scope: "Exanima was supposed to have 8 smallish levels, using only 2-3 different tilesets, no arena, no terrain features or anything" - the game is clearly way beyond that. Over time they fully embraced it and made the game a fully-fledged testing platform for the bigger game and a standalone exceptional product.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Read my post with madoc's comment on that, page 29, it will give you the best idea. TLDR - devs asked backers if they wanted something more simple but faster or something grander but which they need to wait for. Most wanted to wait so that was that. Ultimately backers are the people who they owe and give power over such decisions, not regular players. As you can read there original scope: "Exanima was supposed to have 8 smallish levels, using only 2-3 different tilesets, no arena, no terrain features or anything" - the game is clearly way beyond that. Over time they fully embraced it and made the game a fully-fledged testing platform for the bigger game and a standalone exceptional product.

They shouldn't have sold it as an Early Access project if it was reliant entirely on kickstarter backer feedback then. Of course that's going to create a disconnect. Now they have people like me and a bunch of other users on this site annoyed and confused about it all. And as someone who bought it in early access, yes, I am still annoyed and would have been absolutely fine with the originally planned product regardless of the opinion of the kickstarter backers.

 

[Technomancer]

They shouldn't have sold it as an Early Access project if it was reliant entirely on kickstarter backer feedback then - of course that's going to create a disconnect.

And how would they get what little resources they have to develop it further then? Not entirely just decisions that shape the development and similar high-level things, in Madoc's eyes without the backers there wouldn't be a game so he has respect for those few who believed in them when they showed so little but promised so much. They will still listen for feedback on gameplay from regular players, in fact not so long ago Madoc elevated about a dozen of long-time players to insider status on the discord server, status originally meant for backers but this clearly is not an exclusive club. Anyway, that decision was so long ago that backers were likely the biggest part of the playerbase back then so asking them to choose made sense in any case.

 

[Rarre]

It does not work like that, if they finish the game right now and then develop systems "later" they will be silent for years so SG will be abandoned in the eyes of most.

Well, that's kind of the problem. They are prolonging the early access as a marketing move, so that they can continue to earn a trickle of income on it while building the foundation for their bigger planned project. That was awesome when the game was supposed to come out a short time after launching the early access, and I even supported that whole concept by buying into the EA in the first place. I was even patient 4 years into the project, despite that being a ridiculous over-shot of the initial projected release.

But again, I bought the early access being quoted "six to nine months" as an estimated completion time. That's pretty fucked up that 2 years from now is the optimistic release date. It's not even the money I spent on it that I'm concerned about at this point. I'm just actually perplexed that the estimated release for what was supposed to be small platform project for a larger game was this extremely far off. I don't doubt that the developers are still working hard, but I do doubt that their priorities are always in the right place for the people who supported them in 2015.

I think devs could create an ending for Exanima rigth now and say "Game is finished" and many would agree that you get lots of hours of fun... But they are looking for excellence, exanima is unfinished because they are creating a longer replayable game too... not only creating the tech... I think they will spend 3 years with the AI ... but once finished... OMG!

And... MP plzzzzzzzz 3 more years to play exanima coop?



3 years are nothing...

 

[Technomancer]

Madoc is working on procgen falchions right now. They will be doing entire Elmslie typology with the exception of forward curves.

Some early WIP examples:

 

[gurugeorge]

Now that's a very cool use of procedural generation (referencing the recent thread on the topic).

 

[Harthwain]

Madoc is working on procgen falchions right now. They will be doing entire Elmslie typology with the exception of forward curves.

Spoiler

 

[Aemar]

Madoc is working on procgen falchions right now.

He should be working on an advanced AI that can be employed on finishing the actual game on its own, allowing the rest of the human devs to concentrate their efforts on creating procedural curved swords.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Madoc is working on procgen falchions right now.

He should be working on an advanced AI that can be employed on finishing the actual game on its own, allowing the rest of the human devs to concentrate their efforts on creating procedural curved swords.

The monkey's claw heard you.

 

[Technomancer]

26/4/21

Last week we talked about how our procedural object workflow is allowing us to create more and more weapons as our library of components grows. With relatively little work we are creating millions of unique items. However the process of creating the 3D components is quite complex and tedious. There's a lot of extra technical steps that bog down the creative process, makes it difficult to get into, go back to, change or improve things, it's easy to make mistakes etc. At the end of last week we were trying to think of ways to streamline this process.

Some time ago, when we found ourselves creating many more and more complex assets than anticipated, we invested in creating node based tools for texture authoring and image processing. This was the best decision we've ever made. It's what allows our small team to create high quality assets, it's what made procedural objects at all possible, and what allowed us to remaster thousands of assets for the new renderer in a very short time. This tool can turn days of work into minutes, and it reproduces and documents every step for anyone on the team to repeat, understand and imitate. We've been integrating more tools with this workflow, and it's really paid off.

It was obvious that the solution to our procedural workflow problem was to expand our node tools to also do mesh processing. If you're worried that we're going to spend more time on our tools now, you're too late, it's already done. We've added a whole new layer of designed automation, we can now create objects and these are mapped, split into components, adjusted for use in factories, deformations, procedural materials and outputted directly to game files, in just a couple of clicks. No more going through many confusing steps, numbers and names for each of the many components.

It only took a few days, but this will really speed up and improve how we make and maintain procedural objects. It also has lots of other applications in our content development pipeline that we'll probably be discovering for some time.

This week we also did quite a bit more work on outdoor rendering. We've made some nice improvements to lighting, we've got some new rain and wetness effects, and we've added fog, not the fancy volumetric thing yet, but it's inexpensive and leverages the GI to look quite nice.

We're still adding the library of procedural weapons, notably we've done all 17 falchion blade types which was quite a tricky one. We're thinking we'd like to add a bunch of weapons at once in the next patch, as releasing them in small batches kind of undermines the whole system. We're also working on the revised arena features, which at this point is the only development focus until the full update drops.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Decado]

Holy shit is Sui Generis back to active development?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Holy shit is Sui Generis back to active development?

Always has been.

 

[Decado]

Holy shit is Sui Generis back to active development?

Always has been.

Well maybe technically, yeah. But from the position of a guy looking forward to seeing more of the game, they clearly went dark for a long time -- several years, if I remember correctly. Website hasn't been updated since 2019, etc.

 

[Technomancer]

3/5/21

This week we've been trying to finalise the new arena systems, and most of this is defining the user interfaces and how players interact with them. These are pretty complicated and clunky in the current arena, and while we can't remove all the complexity, there's a lot we're doing to make them more intuitive and nicer to use.

We realised there's a lot of difficult layout issues that could be easily solved with the proposed visual overhaul to the GUI, and also that it would make a lot of sense to develop these large and complex UIs with the new system in mind so we don't have to do it again later. Because of this we decided to prioritise the visual overhaul, so we've been designing all the graphical elements and figuring out how it all works. We had a few false starts, but we're pretty happy with the whole design and function now, so we've started actually implementing this new UI system.

The most troublesome aspect of the arena management systems are the loadouts and arsenal, which we know people find quite uncomfortable to use. The arsenal will now basically be a huge container that you can access independently. Each category will be split into 5 space / tabs and you can manually arrange your items. You can take items in the arsenal and use them in your hub or decorate with them, but they also remain accessible in the arsenal for loadouts and other uses and won't be lost if the hub changes for whatever reason.

The loadout screen will be simplified. There's no more need for inventories here, so there will be just one large space showing all items used by the character. Items used in the current loadout will be highlighted with a coloured outline so you can easily tell what's equipped. The tabbed arsenal will also still display items that are in use by other characters, but highlighted, so you can easily equip them on a different character without having to move them back and forth. There's a few other changes, but basically it will be a lot less confusing and fiddly.

We've also fully migrated our whole procedural weapon workflow to the new system, which really has improved it dramatically and allows us to very easily use the same components in many factories. This should allows us to make the bulk of major weapon types quite quickly. Combined with various new armours and new arenas this will be quite a substantial content addition.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

10/5/21

A while ago we teased some new UI design concepts and some proposed changes. Last week we mentioned that we're making significant changes to the extensive arena UIs and the proposed redesign would make things a lot easier, and better. It will also save us changing things yet again in future. Right now we're trying to fully implement this new UI system and start using it right away.

We felt that the current UI is ugly and very computer software-y, it didn't fit the game visually at all. It's also not very legible, confusing to look at and intrusive. A very important advantage of the new design though is that we can overlay large interfaces on the screen seamlessly and without having to worry about filling every space and packing everything tightly, which solves a lot of problems with UI design.

There are still some technical details to resolve, but we have the core UI system working in game and we're very pleased with the results. It's more pleasing and graphical, but also clean and very versatile. We've also implemented efficient full 3D renderings transparently integrated into the UI, which is not as simple as it might sound.

Here's a screenshot of some common UI elements using the new GUI system. Note that we plan to allow users to tweak the transparency to their preference.


GUI Overhaul
New graphical user interface working in game. Still a little more work to do and some brand new UIs, but going strong.


This will work as a direct replacement for most existing UIs, but we are making some more significant changes to various screens. The skill UI in particular is being replaced with a large full screen overlay which is much nicer to look at and easier to navigate, but still very unobtrusive.

We hope to have the new user interface fully integrated into a new beta patch very soon, as well as various other changes an improvements. We're still making lots of procedural weapons using our new improved workflow, and we've resolved some final technical issues with generating materials for very large weapons, so we should be ready to do all weapon types now.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[BlackGoat]

Man, I was hoping they'd change the UI to something fixed. I hate fiddling with the windows in this game