Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Aemar]

It was more than 10 years ago, I believe.

2012 was a great year for Kickstarter-funded vaporware.

 

[Aemar]

Lesson to learn. You will accomplish and complete nothing in your life if you wait for perfection and stop being realistic.

Qft, unless you're on the spectrum. Then there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[Modron]

Garbage early access enablers. Enjoy your barely-gamelike experience. These guys will never get another dime from me.

I don't always buy early access stuff but when I do it's to enable cool stuff like Colony Ship, Dead Monarchy, Exanima, Battle Brothers, Savage the Shard of Gosen, Deedlit in Wonder Labrynth, Exoplanet First Contact, Stoneshard, Survivalists Invisible Strain, et cetera. You're certainly right that some of them will be taking quite a while to deliver. I'd rather a game take forever to come out and be of quality than have them pull a Doublefine and just shart out a 7% feature complete product and move on.

 

[Technomancer]

It´s much better to start small, complete, improve, iterate.

Wasn't this how it happened, in a way? First there was just drunken fighting 'Sui Generis' demo with nothing but 8 fights to play test the combat. Then they decided to do a prelude game to start small somewhere and since then from one basic level it grew massively into a project of its own but with fundamental goal remaining the same, to complete, improve and iterate on various systems that will form technological and asset backbone of SG. And this approach will continue when time comes for original game, with Island coming in parts and bioms.

True SG never happened. But it was never cancelled, and everything they continue to do is aimed at that game.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I don't always buy early access stuff but when I do it's to enable cool stuff like Colony Ship, Dead Monarchy, Exanima, Battle Brothers, Savage the Shard of Gosen, Deedlit in Wonder Labrynth, Exoplanet First Contact, Stoneshard, Survivalists Invisible Strain, et cetera. You're certainly right that some of them will be taking quite a while to deliver. I'd rather a game take forever to come out and be of quality than have them pull a Doublefine and just shart out a 7% feature complete product and move on.

80 percent or more of them either had something to show previously or delivered in a timely manner. I'm all about supporting developers that have something good to show, or have delivered in the past. What I'm against is early access titles that lure you in with promise but take nearly a decade to deliver, if they can even do that. I support developers I can trust in early access these days. I was foolish enough to put my trust in these guys when early access was just kicking off.

 

[Aemar]

It´s much better to start small, complete, improve, iterate.

Wasn't this how it happened?

The complete part hasn't happened thus far. Their first ever project is nowhere near the completion, at least 11 years into the process.

 

[Matador]

It´s much better to start small, complete, improve, iterate.

Wasn't this how it happened, in a way? First there was just drunken fighting 'Sui Generis' demo with nothing but 8 fights to play test the combat. Then they decided to do a prelude game to start small somewhere and since then from one basic level it grew massively into a project of its own but with fundamental goal remaining the same, to complete, improve and iterate on various systems that will form technological and asset backbone of SG. And this approach will continue when time comes for original game, with Island coming in parts and bioms.

True SG never happened. But it was never cancelled, and everything they continue to do is aimed at that game.

Trying to do a historic revolution in gaming physics, animations, and more areas is not starting small with their lack of resources.

They could have completed a good game with non perfect but interesting implementation of the points above, make good money and iterate in next game.

The systems/tech should be an end to making a good game. With his lack of focus he is not either building a complete tech package that others can build upon.

It´s a disaster given the intelligence and talent Madoc has.

 

[thesecret1]

I enjoy it, the systems are fun. Just sad it will never be a good RPG since the devs clearly don't give a shit about that aspect of the game. There's no C&C, no branching dialogue, barely any NPCs, all the skills are combat-related... it's going to be more in the vein of Diablo than Fallout, assuming it ever gets made.

 

[Technomancer]

Trying to do a historic revolution in gaming physics, animations

Well if they didn't go with that pitch I doubt KS would be a success. Because the engine and physics were the things that caught the eyes. Since that was Madoc's expertise it only made sense to front load it.

They could have completed a good game with non perfect but interesting implementation of the points above

Easier said than done, was more plausible in 2012 but people are not too keen on funding random RPGs, they fund what excites imagination. See recent Biosynth KS failure. Looked like decent old school CRPG all around but it was just not good enough. Sui Generis was not the first game btw. Few years before KS Madoc and his friend developed a little top down indie space game called Sol, and it too had advanced physics elements. But it was clear the little game wouldn't perform and it was not a game they were passionate about.

Anyway, what you say was the plan originally. The official reason for doing Exanima instead according to Madoc, is because nearly all of their backers nit picked the game apart, everything had to be perfect. People refused to understand limitations. So devs thought that if they would release "reasonable" indie SG, made on a budget and filled with jank, it would just disappoint everyone. And this is how this long journey started, how unreasonably high production standards came to be.

 

[Technomancer]

31/7/23

We did a big patch for the insider test release this week, fixing up and improving some of the new force powers, a tonne of mostly minor issues and content fixes. Insiders seem to be really enjoying the update and getting some serious playtime and testing in, we have some reports still trickling in and that we've been fixing, including a few really old bugs that are finally getting some attention. Things are looking good and we're mostly polishing and doing basically QoL type stuff, but some of the things we are trying to improve on are on the difficult side and part of our constant effort to evolve things like AI and physics interactions.

One difficult problem we're looking into in particular is part of AI pathfinding within the new system. On the one hand we want AI to do things like drop off relative heights to reach an area below, to take precarious paths like a plank placed over a gap and to attempt to climb steep slopes, but often these same conditions lead to death or points of no return, as this is part of our level design. This quickly turns into very large scale problems that are difficult to solve without lots of computing power, and this is a real-time problem with a pathfinding system that is dynamic and works on raw level data without any precomputation or human intervention. It's an ambitious goal to accomplish all these things at once, but we are keen on this difficult combination of features and reluctant to compromise so we're doing our best to make it "just work".

Ultimately this sort of stuff is polishing and improving that Madoc will continue to do until the new area for this update is ready for release. The changes to the early levels were very extensive and complex with a lot of new and updated assets that needed testing and fixing, and because there's going to be a (story) save wipe we've been taking the opportunity to implement many general content fixes that may have caused issues with saves. This is all done now, so we can really focus on finishing up things for the new level. Hard to say exactly how long this will take, but hopefully we can start insider testing soon and put in some finishing touches in parallel to save time.

Basically we're working on many "little" things at once, so there's not a lot that's interesting to report, but the update is coming together very nicely and it's definitely our biggest and most transformative update yet.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

From the Kickstarter...Sui Generis Estimated Delivery - May 2014

lol

"On the one hand we want AI to do things like drop off relative heights to reach an area below, to take precarious paths like a plank placed over a gap and to attempt to climb steep slopes, but often these same conditions lead to death or points of no return, as this is part of our level design....It's an ambitious goal to accomplish all these things at once, but we are keen on this difficult combination of features and reluctant to compromise so we're doing our best to make it "just work"."

Mission/scope creep is one of the deadliest sins in project management. I bought this on steam sale in 2014 for $12 and have no regrets, but these guys deserve all the criticisms they get.

 

[Technomancer]

7/8/23

From here until the update drops we won't really have much to report in the coffee diaries. We're basically just finalising assets, improving and polishing things up in general. With the core features for the update established, there won't be anything new and exciting to report on. We will update you on overall progress, and talk about a few specific things, but most of the work we're doing now is something that would belong more in a detailed patch changelog than a coffee diary.

We think we have a solution to the pathfinding problems we discussed last week, but there's still some difficult implementation details to figure out for a high performance solution, so we've temporarily set this aside to focus on more pressing matters. It is something we want to fully solve, but it concerns fringe cases and already things are working better than in previous versions of the game.

One feature we're looking at completing before the update releases is something we call the "narrator". This is basically just text presented to the player which can convey things, give feedback or even provide interactions that can't be represented with the game's normal functions of graphics, sound and controls. This could for example be a smell or sensation, a detailed assessment that can't be linked to something like an item description, a specific action or choice etc. We plan to use these features sparingly, and so far we've avoided it entirely, but sometimes it's useful. We prefer to think of this as a "narrator" because it can address the player or their character as if they are one and the same. The more common approach in games where the character addresses the player as if they were an observer seems a little odd and immersion breaking to us.

One feature we just added that's been frequently requested is the "play dead" mechanic. This means that when you've been knocked unconscious your character won't attempt to move until you give an input and nearby characters won't be alerted. You can then either wait for them to leave the area or simply get up quickly by taking time to recover.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

14/8/23

Things are very busy and a bit chaotic right now as we try to get many things fully ready for the update. As predicted in the previous diary, there's not a lot for us to report on right now, we're not really adding features or designing new things, just making sure that everything we've done so far for this update is finished and complete. Because there's a story save wipe, we're also doing things like transitioning many assets and level content to updated versions and purging deprecated things.

One thing we've properly completed now is thaumaturge AI, the functionality of (for now) AI exclusive powers, the tools we use to configure these thaumaturge AI combatants and so on. This involved a fair bit of testing, where we also got an idea of what it would be like to go up against a thaumaturge who uses a large array of powers. Fortunately for the foreseeable future encounters will only have access to a very limited set of powers, as this was hilariously brutal, but we are excited about what these fights could mean and making them even smarter.

Meanwhile we're also working on the narration system mentioned last week. We've made good progress here, but we're essentially doing this by expanding the dialogue system, which is a bit of a minefield as it's already very complex in its core design to support things like multiple concurrent real-time dialogues, dynamic participants etc. We need to modify how some things work, or can work and add to its already difficult feature set, so we are reviewing a lot of this, also in preparation for the next update which should add more and more complex dialogue interactions.

The new level is looking fantastic, but there are some parts that still need a little work, and we had an unfortunate setback due to data loss. It's hard to say exactly how long before we like it for a release, but hopefully not too long and there's plenty to keep the team busy.

-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

21/8/23

We've done a lot of work on the narration system and the dialogue system in general, in terms of making the system more functional and versatile. We have interactive narration prompts, and the first instance of more structured events and story interaction. For now this involves one short, but critical moment in the Exanima story, but we're adding the features to do more. This includes more scripting functionality, some specific effects and a kind of "emote" feature, as in gestures of short animations that can be triggered by dialogue or other events. Another addition we're working on as a general feature is the ability to inspect bodies, in a way that ties into the role system. This has a variety of applications from assessment of corpses and creatures, which could change based on your character's knowledge of anatomy or other subjects, and character or event specific roles that could tie into various narrative elements or activities. This is exactly the sort of thing that the narrator feature allows, providing more exposition and unique interactions.

It's a bunch of fairly small things, but they add up to a more complete experience, and it feels like we're getting back on track to making an actual RPG. It's not until the update following this one that, with a more complete role system, we'll add more characters, dialogue and other story driven interactions, but it's a nice change to be adding new and small things that make up the big picture. Finally we're breaking free of iterating on what's already there, the seemingly endless feedback loop and nitpicking at details that don't matter very much in this bigger picture. A lot of our recent efforts have been front-loaded with huge, sometimes unexpected, development hurdles, like with procedural weapons and the new renderer, or the GI and pathfinding systems for more complex environments. It's not like we'll stop tweaking and improving things, but major overhauls should be behind us, and while there's still some tough work ahead, it will translate to lots of new value.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Kruyurk]

I wish Bare Mettle would go the route of Kenshi. That game was also really ambitious and took more than 10 years to make, the developer was alone and had no money for many of these years, yet it shipped and is a huge critical and commercial success given the scope (61k reviews on steam with 95% positive). Now Kenshi 2 is in development with a full studio working on it; I have no idea of how many persons but my guess would be at least a dozen.
The first Kenshi has a good amount of jank in it, but players are ready to forgive that if the game is ambitious and innovative, if the core mechanics work, and if genuine efforts went into making it. Also the graphical fidelity it dated but the game looks nice because the artistic direction is good.

I hope that Bare Mettle will be in this situation at some point, that they release a finished product then get enough money to hire more people, be a proper studio with enough people working full time on a game.
I don't know enough about Madoc, but could it be that he would not want to delegate too much? Which would be a huge limiting factor for his chance at creating a game worthy of his ambition.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Which would be a huge limiting factor for his chance at creating a game worthy of his autism.

Fixed for thee

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Madoc would never be able to run a studio. He would go bankrupt so quickly that Tim Schafer would blush. His uncompromising nature and poor ability to prioritize means he will always be a suffering artist.

 

[Technomancer]

I wish Bare Mettle would go the route of Kenshi. That game was also really ambitious and took more than 10 years to make, the developer was alone and had no money for many of these years, yet it shipped and is a huge critical and commercial success given the scope (61k reviews on steam with 95% positive). Now Kenshi 2 is in development with a full studio working on it; I have no idea of how many persons but my guess would be at least a dozen.

Chris made a good job solo developing but as a coder he is not that great, game runs like shit, looks only decent and modified Ogre engine he used for the game was the first thing they ditched going forward because he understood it was unsustainable and obsolete. While game turned out to be really fun it still is a pale shade of original design and ambition, all advanced sim had to go and there are tons of crutches (like disabled hunger on many NPCs). It also is quite barren, unpolished and buggy, overall simply unfinished. There is a lot of potential there but ultimately game was dropped in favour of second better attempt.

Madoc's thing was to turn this on its head. He created advanced engine from scratch. Once they realized they can't deliver non janky SG without avoiding way too many compromises, they decided to do exanima first instead as staging ground game to avoid cutting corners. But unlike kenshi first project evolved to be full scale game made with highest standards in mind and there are years of post release support already planned for it, and even further beyond with things like backporting techonology and features from SG back to exanima. Another difference, BM had full team from the beginning even if at first they only could work part-time.

players are ready to forgive that if the game is ambitious and innovative

Probably would happen with SG too if it was prioritized but Madoc didn't believe it would happen because expectations on their forums were immense. So everything went a different way.

I hope that Bare Mettle will be in this situation at some point, that they release a finished product then get enough money to hire more people, be a proper studio with enough people working full time on a game.

Very unlikely. Not the money part, I think it will sell just fine. Money and people part, Madoc said that basically "more money" wouldn't help them in any way. Because he can't manage even more developers. And working with people coming from the industry is generally a nightmare (most of the dev team are childhood friends who imagined creating their own game from teens times).

I don't know enough about Madoc, but could it be that he would not want to delegate too much?

Most definitely. Madoc is some kind of coding genius. Had government coming to offer him a job which he turned down, used to have connections with NVIDIA, told some stories. Like once upon a time NVIDIA said that something was impossible to program and Madoc programmed a solution that proved them wrong. They didn't like it because it was "too complex" for their taste or something like that. The point was made though.

Well and just look at the game. His nameless engine looks amazing and runs great on every potato. Outstanding amount of effort went into optimizing the game. Madoc cares a lot about his code. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if exanima was the most optimized/graphics ratio game there is.

Which would be a huge limiting factor for his chance at creating a game worthy of his ambition.

So yeah, with above things in mind the most limiting factor is 100% code. Exanima is extremely code-heavy game. Madoc is primarily the core game design guy but all of code is on him too. Means he has to split his attention a lot. All other new hires they can do without, at least the bases are covered, only once they contemplated an idea to hire an extra modeller for clothing and minor stuff but there is no rush since nothing can progress until Madoc completes coding fundamental tech that makes new content possible. And yeah, like you said, he doesn't want to delegate at all. He said that general coding ability of modern developers is horrible and he would not let anyone near his code.

So even if we imagine a situation where Madoc would think about hiring extra coder, it becomes clear is just too unlikely. First they would need to impress him with their coding skills, which is not easy because Madoc would want to see someone on his level, then they would need to be a great person who is easy to work with (most difficult part of hiring is that too many people have a massive ego or are not receptive to feedback or follow instructions poorly etc), then despite being this amazing specialist they would need to agree to work for a fraction of salary they could earn elsewhere, in the AAA gamedev or beyond the industry, so they would need to be strongly motivated by the vision of the project like other members, which already shaves off most pros. And finally it would be ideal if they had good knowledge of advanced game physics and did some complex exanima modding/reverse engineering of the game because it would familiarise them with Madoc's style of code and his engine. Otherwise, it would take Madoc many, many stressful months of coaching and showing how exactly he wants things written. And keep in mind that this hypothetical new guy can just become intimidated by workload and decide in the end that its not for them and leave, effectively wasting a lot of time. Means it would be a gamble. And as you can see the odds are not good. So it's not something that he contemplates, because miracles don't just happen for most and instead you need to work your ass off to make stuff happen.

Well those are my thoughts as a long time lurker, could always be wrong. We will see how it happens.

 

[Kruyurk]

Thanks for the long reply Technomancer. I understand that Exanima is a special beast, and that you can not simply throw money or people at it to see it grow. What is there is already so impressive and fun to play anyway.

 

[Technomancer]

What is there is already so impressive and fun to play anyway.

So much more is coming. Complete exanima will have a lot of new content. And I'm not just talking about new levels. The update after force will be great.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Well and just look at the game. His nameless engine looks amazing and runs great on every potato. Outstanding amount of effort went into optimizing the game. Madoc cares a lot about his code. TBH I wouldn't be surprised if exanima was the most optimized/graphics ratio game there is.

Gotta grant him that, Exanima is the most optimized game I ever played, it runs well even on my integrated gpu. But for fuck’s sake, are any of us going to see the game finished before we die of old age?

 

[ItsChon]

If the game is done in ten years, I will be perfectly happy with that timeline.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If the game is done in ten years, I will be perfectly happy with that timeline.

Bruh we can't wait another 40 years for Sui Generis

 

[Technomancer]

28/8/23

The main goals for this update have been reached, we've had some time to polish things too, add some smaller features and QoL, deal with some old issues and all sorts, but the new content is still being worked on, and so development must continue.

With this update we introduced features to support the Potential system, which is how your thaumaturgy powers scale and how you choose which powers and domains you specialise into. For this system to be fully functional however we also need various ways to acquire potential that are quite involved, and we also need to introduce scaling for every single power, which often requires whole new mechanics for them. The former of these requirements should be partly built on top of new role, event and scripting with persistent state functionality, which we're not adding until the following update. It's a lot to do at once, so we've been gradually working towards it, if possible we'd like to get it mostly finished in a smaller follow-up update along with a few other things.

Right now we're working on various elements of this, and going into some depth with how it will be supported by the role system etc. features. There's a lot to analyse in terms of requirements and how we can transition into this, and we can already take some steps. This stuff will be the main development effort for the next update, and the sooner we can climb that hill the more we can do. This is the core feature set that will support the more structured interactions and gameplay that we discussed in the last diary.

Madoc's also finally had some time to do some work on improving loading times, this was on our radar for a while, and the new content in this update is particularly large or dense so it's more of an issue. Things are generally well optimised, we do asynchronous IO, dynamically prioritised streaming of GPU resources and split workloads, but still some levels are very large and filled with diverse objects, characters and items are unique and procedurally generated, everything is dynamic and computed on the fly, so loading can take several seconds. The first optimisation we wanted to attempt is kind of a raw performance one, where assets are being immediately processed for use in parallel to more assets being loaded, and can even function in a lower performance mode until fully processed, which can continue in the background even after loading. This already shaved a huge 40% off our loading times, a good first step, but eventually we'd like to get the times much lower still, so that transitioning between areas feels almost instant. This will need some aggressive streaming strategies, which are different and not as easy to do here as they are for outdoor environments, but we know we can make it work.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Looks like they were in danger of getting around to making content for a game. Time for an engine optimization excursion!