Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

team is working on finishing the content, mostly I'm working on things that might partially make into this update and bleed into the next one

 

[Aemar]

What's the current info on Sui Generis? Have they posted some info somewhere on their Steam forums?

 

[Technomancer]

What's the current info on Sui Generis? Have they posted some info somewhere on their Steam forums?

Current info can be summed with Jack and Shit.

Ain't gonna be no SG news until exanima is done.

 

[Technomancer]

4/9/23

Work continues on getting the new content ready for release, but other than that we've kind of been mostly working on Mind Thaumaturgy, but with a broader scope too. Part of this was something we had to check off our list for the update anyway, our first Revelation based power, a mind power. This was long planned and fairly simple to add, but we're adding it now because, through Revelation, it is tied to this update's content. We took this a little further looking at similar interactions in a general way and how to support other revelation powers which have varied discovery methods, as adding new special interactions is something we're actively working on. For now, we have revelation mechanics and another mind power.

Still on mind, you might already be aware of how control over minds isn't supposed to be simple and absolute, but that trying to coerce someone to do something they really don't want to do could break control, also depending on how powerful the mind thaumaturge is. We're now working on Potential scaling, so these mechanics are needed, but we wanted to focus on Loyalty and Possession in particular, because they are quite exploitable as it is, and also the solution to one difficult problem has many other applications. The exploit here is controlling someone just to strip them of their items to weaken them. The AI should understand what is happening and rebel, but there's some nuance here, legitimate equipment changes and conditions that make them more tolerant.

This requires AI being able to analyse all items, decide how useful they are (to them), know what items they would replace in their loadout and how that would compare, basically just deciding how much of an upgrade or downgrade something would be all things considered. It's quite a broad problem, there's a lot of factors and items are procedural and varied so it's not like we can assign any values by hand. This deserves some care as it doesn't just affect a couple of mind powers, it allows AI to understand the practical value of equipment for many purposes, like deciding whether it's worth picking up or looting and using, how well geared another character is and so on.

We know ya'll just in "when update?" mode right now, that's coming when the content is ready, but we're still doing important development work and letting you know. This sort of stuff has been talked about in the community before and we think most of you will probably appreciate it when it comes to it. We're trying our best to wrap things up, but we need just a little more time.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

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.

Kruyurk lmao, here I go on spending 20 minutes to write a wall of text explaining why its basically impossible to happen while the big hat goes on and does just that in the background



The most unlikely thing happened. Word on the street its someone from the community, someone who did custom things for the game and knows Madoc's code. Basically all above, apply it to them, what were the odds?

 

[Aemar]

https://steamspy.com/app/362490

He's talking about financial issues, yet according to Steamspy the game has sold extremely well for what it is, at least 500K copies were delivered on Steam alone.

 

[Technomancer]

according to Steamspy

Madoc mentioned it a couple of times over the years. Doesn't seem to be all that accurate. I will never believe the guy is lying. It would be so easy to milk that game with various predatory bullshit but they never did any money chasing decisions after Kickstarter.

After steam closed access to player data the thing basically became a guesstimate. Can easily be completely wrong.

https://kotaku.com/steam-spy-is-back-but-not-as-accurate-as-before-1825608646

 

[agris]

https://steamspy.com/app/362490

He's talking about financial issues, yet according to Steamspy the game has sold extremely well for what it is, at least 500K copies were delivered on Steam alone.

as I understand it, those numbers are based on steam-wide aggregate trends. back when their API leaked 32 bit floating precision values that certain people used to work out very precise ownership numbers. From those numbers, an average reviews to owners and max players to owners ratios could be established, for example.

so while accurate in a broad sense, they are less accurate for say a game that has a more rabid following. if a higher % of players leave reviews, play concurrently etc than the broad average, the sales numbers will look higher than reality. same thing yet inverted can happen, making sales numbers look lower.

 

[Aemar]

The game has almost 9000 reviews on Steam, so they must have sold A LOT of copies.

 

[Technomancer]

11/9/23

We are mostly finalising some of the more unique assets that appear in the new content right now, even Madoc is taking a break from his regular work to help with getting these assets ready. We should be pretty close to the full insider test now, and some final touches can be added while that's in progress. We've already been doing a bit of testing and fixing and more polishing internally, we've fixed even minor issues reported in previous insider tests as well as many older on unreported ones, so we expect things to go quite smoothly, though there are certainly a lot of additions since the last test.

We've also added a particularly difficult new procedural material, it's a crystal/gemstone/glass material that has refractive and translucent properties and supports all the procedural parameters like quality, damage and dirt. This places various new requirements on procedural material mechanics, formats and shaders in general so we had to update many things in the system and tools to support it. It looks very impressive and will be useful for many more exotic underworld items as well as any item that might have features like embedded gemstones. Some of the procedural item system updates here add some general features and versatility which will also be useful in other advanced material effects and items.

We don't want to make specific promises on when the update will release just yet, but we're definitely getting very close.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Technomancer]

That crystal material. The weapon is obviously just for demonstration, it was not meant for it.

 

[Aemar]

How viable is actually the parrying feature at this point? This guy must have been doing Exanima videos on a daily basis for ages, and he's far from being prolific at it.

 

[Technomancer]

This guy must have been doing Exanima videos on a daily basis for ages, and he's far from being prolific at it.

Despite this he never quite gotten good at the game. What's written on the tin is actually true in this case.

First time I heard about this cursor tracking nonsense. Parry is automatic, you just learn to feel it. Never once I tried to aim it, it destroys the flow and distracts you too much.

 

[Aemar]

Showcasing the current state of the melee combat and its main features, parrying included, clearly requires some skill. Using the parry feature to the best of one's abilities, instead of simply trying to anticipate and dodge every hit, makes the combat look much better and varied.

 

[Technomancer]

Showcasing the current state of the melee combat and its main features, parrying included, clearly requires some skill. Using the parry feature to the best of one's abilities, instead of simply trying to anticipate and dodge every hit, makes the combat look much better and varied.

There are way batter players but few of them bother to upload on youtube. All action is mostly happening on discord. They have a thread with combat clips.

 

[Aemar]

Can you point out to any of these people who post on Youtube?

 

[Technomancer]

Can you point out to any of these people who post on Youtube?

I checked before writing since I wanted to link one. But none of them had anything especially worthwhile there compared to their clips on discord, nothing recent too. Plus spoilers and hackery thanks to modded content.

If you don't care for spoilers, Avstah, Konrax_TV.

The reddit moderator guy should be spoiler free:



In this case, the username is not representative.

 

[Technomancer]

18/9/23

We're getting closer to having all the new content ready for the update, some work is still being done on the new level, some updates to the 3rd level and new items in parallel. We expect to have a release candidate for insider testing within a couple of weeks, and hopefully testing won't take too long as we've already done two big tests for most new features and addressed everything reported so far, some feedback and many items off our backlog.

Meanwhile Madoc's been taking a deep dive into some aspects of character animation, specifically how the feet interact with obstacles and uneven ground, which has been a frequent source of technical and gameplay issues throughout development. This is a surprisingly difficult problem due to physics interaction, with issues like characters dragging their feet, having poor balance, tripping unexpectedly or even the legs exceeding intended pose parameters and causing violent spasms or becoming locked in broken positions. We recently tackled some of the worst problems, some at a fundamental physics engine level, but there's still plenty to improve. Leg and foot movement is at the core of all character motion and such a difficult and time consuming problem that we keep coming back to, it's hard to imagine we'll ever be completely done with it. There are several things that we know we'd like to make specific improvements to, this is one part of the problem that we can improve in isolation and can help support further improvements.

Have a great week!
-the BM team

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I wonder if their system would be turn-key to implement Undergrowth style body damage type mechanics. I'm a bit surprised that isn't already a feature, given their autism.

 

[Technomancer]

Undergrowth

Is that a game? Google shows some ants indie.

Anyway, Madoc doesn't care for gore or dismemberment despite them being really popular requests in the community so that's why.

They do have some WIP for rotten underskin layer for zombies, I believe it will be procedural (skinless parts on zombies).

 

[gabel]

Pathetic scammers (devs) and disgusting shill (Technomancer).
Re-ignoring this thread now that the option is back (thanks Twiglard).

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Technomancer Sorry, I meant Overgrowth. I wasn't talking necessarily about gibs, but about wounds. I would expect Madoc would like the idea of strategically disabling limbs. Attacking someone's hands to force them to drop their weapon, for example, would be cool.

 

[Technomancer]

Technomancer Sorry, I meant Overgrowth. I wasn't talking necessarily about gibs, but about wounds. I would expect Madoc would like the idea of strategically disabling limbs. Attacking someone's hands to force them to drop their weapon, for example, would be cool.

Well like I said, he thinks that gruesome dismemberment is gamey nonsense since in most games dismemberment is way too easy, unrealistic and silly. With amount of layers most NPC's have, it would be pretty rare as well. Even if we ignore armor, you can't really cut off someone's arm if they are wearing chainmail or even good gambeson. And when you get your limb "disabled" you are in no condition to continue fighting.

In addition there is a massive headache with design. Core of both Exanima and SG is that everything you do in the world is saved, which means no despawns in the gamespace, and items stay where you left them. Including examples where you throw them in some hole and that hole happens to lead somewhere and is not just death pit. So what happens, say with a shirt item if you cut someone's arm while they wear it, and that arm flew into another area? So the shirt is now in two places and in pieces.

For the same reason skeletons don't shutter anymore unlike KS vids. Madoc said he would like to revisit it at one point and make them break again which would also mean support for dismemberment tech since its basically the same. But he never confirmed if he would indeed add it for fleshy creatures.

Personally I of course would love to behead some motherfucker, shit would be awesome. But I know its complex topic.

 

[Alienman]

That is one well-done zombie.

 

[thesecret1]

Is there something like a roadmap for this game?