Vapourware Sui Generis + Exanima Early Access

[Technomancer]

September 2024

In our last diary we talked about some of our immediate goals for AI and the role system, this is a series of things that provide NPCs with better awareness, more behaviours and interactions. Since then we've been gradually implementing and testing these features, and as we did this we ran into some complex dialogue issues. Right now we're mostly focusing on improving the dialogue system to handle these more complex and frequent interactions.

The dialogue system is designed to be very dynamic. Rather than well known scripted events and dedicated dialogue modes and moments, communication is something that can happen naturally at any time and during any other activity. There's a lot of factors contributing to when and if certain dialogue is used, not just simple triggers. You can even talk during combat or anything else, and so might NPCs, but only if it's appropriate, with context, urgency, relations and emotional states and all sorts affecting these things. There can even be multiple dialogues running at once between different people, and people can join and leave or interject into conversations. On top of all this, all role interactions are remembered by characters, the status and details of their relationship are being constantly updated by multiple things at once and stored permanently.

All this is to make characters feel alive and intelligent with lots of potential for cool emergent behaviour. That last part is particularly important to us, it shouldn't feel like scripted moments, but things that actually happen organically.

One of the first problems we had to tackle is NPCs dealing with multiple dialogues at once, knowing what to prioritise, when to wait before saying something else and so on. Synchronising the various relation updates from multiple dialogues, activities and events was also a back end issue we had to solve and optimise. Because the system is so open and broad in scope, we need to try to account for every hypothetical scenario, even if rare. We're working on other features too, like NPCs repeating urgent requests and becoming annoyed or concerned if they don't receive a reply, with a reaction that is appropriate to the specific context. In general we've made a bit of a shift in functionality, with less focus on raw scripting of roles and dialogue and more on AI handling common behaviours so that we can support a better emergent style while also removing some of the burden of scripting complex role interactions.

As we tackle and explore these things and develop features we see the potential for many more applications. They are sometimes quite niche, and currently we don't often have the right content to feature a lot of them, but it opens many doors for content to come, giving us more tools to create interesting gameplay elements and situations.

Beyond progress on roles and dialogue, we're working on new content, and a few other things besides. The new area is a pretty big departure from previous content and we've been making many changes and additions to support it. Right now we're also focusing on our vegetation art pipeline to produce many high quality and efficient assets. We're also continuing to improve many assets throughout the game, and we're completely overhauling many older overworld / arena items, improving them dramatically.

Best,

Bare Mettle

 

[almondblight]

They are still making this game? lmao

Isn't this supposed to be a mini combat simulator game for their super-ultra-game that they're working on?

 

[Technomancer]

They are still making this game? lmao

Isn't this supposed to be a mini combat simulator game for their super-ultra-game that they're working on?

Its not open world so inherently a more limited, focused game by design, but it is no longer a "mini" in any shape or form.

 

[luj1]

Well, what is it? When?

 

[Technomancer]

Well, what is it? When?

Dungeon Crawler? Can play it already. Sure it will get better with next update that will feature final NPC, new story elements, late game save feature, dialogue and garden-level. And it will be better with the next update after that. Same with the final one when it hits 1.0. And post release support and updates after that. It's obvious it will take forever waiting for that though. Three levels more so it's mostly done even though you cannot 'beat' the game yet. Will still take you weeks to clear current content if you count in the learning curve and difficult late game encounters. Instead of waiting, should try it and see if it is worth the wait at all.

 

[luj1]

Guess I'll wait another 12 years.

 

[BruceVC]

Well, what is it? When?

Dungeon Crawler? Can play it already. Sure it will get better with next update that will feature final NPC, new story elements, late game save feature, dialogue and garden-level. And it will be better with the next update after that. Same with the final one when it hits 1.0. And post release support and updates after that. It's obvious it will take forever waiting for that though. Three levels more so it's mostly done even though you cannot 'beat' the game yet. Will still take you weeks to clear current content if you count in the learning curve and difficult late game encounters. Instead of waiting, should try it and see if it is worth the wait at all.

Exanima was excellent, I have never played a game with such realistic combat physics

They really did a fantastic job at making combat exciting and challenging and this applies to every battle. And the dungeon was very hard around finding resources and getting healed. Great game and highly recommended

I hope they release Sui Generis one day. If its anything like Exanima it will be a " day 1 purchase " for sure

 

[Spike]

September 2024

In our last diary we talked about some of our immediate goals for AI and the role system, this is a series of things that provide NPCs with better awareness, more behaviours and interactions. Since then we've been gradually implementing and testing these features, and as we did this we ran into some complex dialogue issues. Right now we're mostly focusing on improving the dialogue system to handle these more complex and frequent interactions.

The dialogue system is designed to be very dynamic. Rather than well known scripted events and dedicated dialogue modes and moments, communication is something that can happen naturally at any time and during any other activity. There's a lot of factors contributing to when and if certain dialogue is used, not just simple triggers. You can even talk during combat or anything else, and so might NPCs, but only if it's appropriate, with context, urgency, relations and emotional states and all sorts affecting these things. There can even be multiple dialogues running at once between different people, and people can join and leave or interject into conversations. On top of all this, all role interactions are remembered by characters, the status and details of their relationship are being constantly updated by multiple things at once and stored permanently.

All this is to make characters feel alive and intelligent with lots of potential for cool emergent behaviour. That last part is particularly important to us, it shouldn't feel like scripted moments, but things that actually happen organically.

One of the first problems we had to tackle is NPCs dealing with multiple dialogues at once, knowing what to prioritise, when to wait before saying something else and so on. Synchronising the various relation updates from multiple dialogues, activities and events was also a back end issue we had to solve and optimise. Because the system is so open and broad in scope, we need to try to account for every hypothetical scenario, even if rare. We're working on other features too, like NPCs repeating urgent requests and becoming annoyed or concerned if they don't receive a reply, with a reaction that is appropriate to the specific context. In general we've made a bit of a shift in functionality, with less focus on raw scripting of roles and dialogue and more on AI handling common behaviours so that we can support a better emergent style while also removing some of the burden of scripting complex role interactions.

As we tackle and explore these things and develop features we see the potential for many more applications. They are sometimes quite niche, and currently we don't often have the right content to feature a lot of them, but it opens many doors for content to come, giving us more tools to create interesting gameplay elements and situations.

Beyond progress on roles and dialogue, we're working on new content, and a few other things besides. The new area is a pretty big departure from previous content and we've been making many changes and additions to support it. Right now we're also focusing on our vegetation art pipeline to produce many high quality and efficient assets. We're also continuing to improve many assets throughout the game, and we're completely overhauling many older overworld / arena items, improving them dramatically.

Best,

Bare Mettle

I'm going to get married and have children before this game is actually released

 

[Lyre Mors]

People don't like playing unfinished games because you can only play a game for the first time once. There's something very special and exciting about that first experience with a game - particularly when it ends up being good. Usually you want feel like you're getting the best of what that game is offering during said experience. So "play it now anyway, it already has tons of content!" isn't really a good response for a lot of people.

So yeah, continue waiting 12 more years, to all of you out there who don't want to serve as someone paying money to be a beta tester. I think they were getting ready to start in on those last 3 levels of the dungeon about 6 years ago, so maybe we'll get one of them in 4 or so? Absolutely absurd.

 

[Spike]

People don't like playing unfinished games because you can only play a game for the first time once. There's something very special and exciting about that first experience with a game - particularly when it ends up being good. Usually you want feel like you're getting the best of what that game is offering during said experience. So "play it now anyway, it already has tons of content!" isn't really a good response for a lot of people.

So yeah, continue waiting 12 more years, to all of you out there who don't want to serve as someone paying money to be a beta tester. I think they were getting ready to start in on those last 3 levels of the dungeon about 6 years ago, so maybe we'll get one of them in 4 or so? Absolutely absurd.

It really borders on infuriating. FINISH THE GAME, MODOC. FINISH. THE. GAME. You have PLENTY for Sui Generis. Please, Modoc, please...
EDIT: I toned myself down because I was tipsy at the least when I typed my original message

 

[Technomancer]

So "play it now anyway, it already has tons of content!" isn't really a good response for a lot of people.

Well, droning on and on about how long it takes isn't either when it is obvious it won't come out faster or in any way soon. Because it is clear developers do their own thing and do not give a fuck about what anyone says, refuse publishing deals, 'profit-oriented savvy advice' etc. They have their vision and their limitations and they work within these brackets, doing it in a way that works for them, no matter how many years of dev time they invest into it. So in my mind its simple, if you can't wait anymore and feel frustrated, play it and scratch that itch already. If you can wait, then be patient and play something else instead.

Personally I am glad I tried this game relatively early (in the middle I think) and saw the massive reworks of early levels, assets and various other things big and small that changed and added over the years but also skipped the extremely rough, janky and barren first versions. Wouldn't experience it if I stayed on the sidelines. Got to see the game evolving over time. I also think that my first play without any thaumaturgy was more fun because back then you had only your skills to rely on to progress further. These days you can always use busted psionics to roll over 90% of game's combat challenges (which will only get more OP when they will implement spell power scaling). More power to new players, more options is good I guess, but yeah, some part of me thinks its a shame first time players of the future will never receive the more hardcore gameplay I did.

 

[Technomancer]

October 2024

While we're making good progress with new content and a few other things besides, development is still very much focused on AI and the role system. We've been particularly focused on searching and looting behaviour, as it uses many different things that have other applications, the building blocks for being aware of and interacting with the world, and it's a really good case for highly complex role interactions. Importantly, looting is also a really big part of the core gameplay loop, which gives NPCs plenty to do outside of combat and makes them more active participants. We also recognise that searching every container and inspecting every item really becomes one of the more tedious aspects of the game long term.

Companions that can be genuinely useful in searching and looting alleviates a lot of the work from the player and adds a lot of value. If NPCs are also able to equip themselves they become much more self-sufficient and capable, for companions it means it saves the player a lot of micromanaging their equipment and inventories, particularly in the early game where upgrades are frequent and temporary. Another benefit is that companions can help players navigate and learn the complex equipment system, by pointing out useful items and upgrades that the player may have missed or not recognised. There's lots of good practical reasons to flesh out these behaviours, but we think it's also one of the most important steps to making the NPCs feel alive and intelligent, not just as companions, but in general.

Probably reading that you've raised your eyebrows a few times and wondered how it could work and what sort of problems it might cause. Indeed we've been navigating the many difficulties and complexities of all this and there's a lot, more than those that immediately stand out. We've been adding many features and improving a lot of core AI behaviour and interaction to support this and make it feel right.

Companions need to be able to move around somewhat independently now, and promptly understand when it's time to leave to not get separated. They need to see and recognise objects around them, understand what items might be useful, or interesting to the player, even what combinations of items might be useful if worn together, or make matching outfits. NPCs should not easily spot hidden or hard to see objects, remember what they already searched, know when something was discarded, be able to discard items that are no longer useful, not spam the player with insignificant finds and so on. They must also be able to name or describe any object in dialogue, with correct grammar and ideally varied and contextually appropriate dialogue. There's lots of details to consider to make this behaviour seem believable and natural.

We want NPCs to behave much like a human player, show awareness and interact with the world at a very high level. A lot of this comes from dynamic and narrative roles that can be played by anyone, and a lot comes from complex natural behaviour like this. With more AI and role features in place we can keep expanding the AI's capabilities. Our goal is to make them lifelike and create an emergent narrative that feels like it's actually happening, not predefined or scripted. This is often in direct conflict with conventional player-centric design, and we do need to find a delicate balance and make some concessions. It's a difficult and now familiar line we tread, but it's something we really miss in games and we want it.

To completely change the topic, we've also finished our new round of overworld and arena items. We've added new items and plan to better distribute some things across ranks, and we've completely overhauled some older items that weren't up to our current standards, which has been a point of feedback from the community. We've also made some notable improvements to the most prominent procedural materials like metal, leather and cloth. For the time being we are still limiting how many brand new items we add, as we are slowly working towards an overhaul of our characters that will improve the fidelity of all character assets and greatly improve our workflow for them, as well as introduce new features like dynamic cloth to them. When that happens we will add a large number of new clothing items in particular, but that's still some way off.

That's all for now. We are always working on a few other things and longer term goals, but we can't cover everything we're doing in our dev diaries. AI and roles are the current focus and a great big complex thing with many facets, we've been laying a lot of foundations which is always a process riddled with difficult problems and decisions, but now we're seeing the results and soon we should be able to start testing and polishing the main features.

Best,

Bare Mettle

 

[Zariusz]

More autonomous behavior to companions? Why do i feel like this will end with Derrin falling in pits and holes more often.

 

[Spike]

October 2024

While we're making good progress with new content and a few other things besides, development is still very much focused on AI and the role system. We've been particularly focused on searching and looting behaviour, as it uses many different things that have other applications, the building blocks for being aware of and interacting with the world, and it's a really good case for highly complex role interactions. Importantly, looting is also a really big part of the core gameplay loop, which gives NPCs plenty to do outside of combat and makes them more active participants. We also recognise that searching every container and inspecting every item really becomes one of the more tedious aspects of the game long term.

Companions that can be genuinely useful in searching and looting alleviates a lot of the work from the player and adds a lot of value. If NPCs are also able to equip themselves they become much more self-sufficient and capable, for companions it means it saves the player a lot of micromanaging their equipment and inventories, particularly in the early game where upgrades are frequent and temporary. Another benefit is that companions can help players navigate and learn the complex equipment system, by pointing out useful items and upgrades that the player may have missed or not recognised. There's lots of good practical reasons to flesh out these behaviours, but we think it's also one of the most important steps to making the NPCs feel alive and intelligent, not just as companions, but in general.

Probably reading that you've raised your eyebrows a few times and wondered how it could work and what sort of problems it might cause. Indeed we've been navigating the many difficulties and complexities of all this and there's a lot, more than those that immediately stand out. We've been adding many features and improving a lot of core AI behaviour and interaction to support this and make it feel right.

Companions need to be able to move around somewhat independently now, and promptly understand when it's time to leave to not get separated. They need to see and recognise objects around them, understand what items might be useful, or interesting to the player, even what combinations of items might be useful if worn together, or make matching outfits. NPCs should not easily spot hidden or hard to see objects, remember what they already searched, know when something was discarded, be able to discard items that are no longer useful, not spam the player with insignificant finds and so on. They must also be able to name or describe any object in dialogue, with correct grammar and ideally varied and contextually appropriate dialogue. There's lots of details to consider to make this behaviour seem believable and natural.

We want NPCs to behave much like a human player, show awareness and interact with the world at a very high level. A lot of this comes from dynamic and narrative roles that can be played by anyone, and a lot comes from complex natural behaviour like this. With more AI and role features in place we can keep expanding the AI's capabilities. Our goal is to make them lifelike and create an emergent narrative that feels like it's actually happening, not predefined or scripted. This is often in direct conflict with conventional player-centric design, and we do need to find a delicate balance and make some concessions. It's a difficult and now familiar line we tread, but it's something we really miss in games and we want it.

To completely change the topic, we've also finished our new round of overworld and arena items. We've added new items and plan to better distribute some things across ranks, and we've completely overhauled some older items that weren't up to our current standards, which has been a point of feedback from the community. We've also made some notable improvements to the most prominent procedural materials like metal, leather and cloth. For the time being we are still limiting how many brand new items we add, as we are slowly working towards an overhaul of our characters that will improve the fidelity of all character assets and greatly improve our workflow for them, as well as introduce new features like dynamic cloth to them. When that happens we will add a large number of new clothing items in particular, but that's still some way off.

That's all for now. We are always working on a few other things and longer term goals, but we can't cover everything we're doing in our dev diaries. AI and roles are the current focus and a great big complex thing with many facets, we've been laying a lot of foundations which is always a process riddled with difficult problems and decisions, but now we're seeing the results and soon we should be able to start testing and polishing the main features.

Best,

Bare Mettle

"When that happens we will add a large number of new clothing items in particular, but that's still some way off."

 

[Joggerino]

I guess this is more of a hobby to them than a serious project.
Been following since the kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1473965863/sui-generis/
Ten years at this point...

 

[Technomancer]

November 2024

Previously we mentioned how we'd been reworking many items, and how in future we want to add many new ones, particularly clothing, and make various improvements along the way. Adding more clothing as we expand on our world and content is important, quality improvements are also nice, but really more of a by-product of other things. The main motivation for "an overhaul of our characters" is that we desperately need to massively streamline and improve our workflow. We already made some important advancements here with our tools, but clothing is especially problematic because there's a huge number of different items of varying shapes that can be worn in any combination. Every combination needs to change the shape of clothing, and so something like a shirt needs to come in thousands of shapes. These are dynamically assembled, but even so we need as many as 500 3D models in very specific configurations. For one shirt. This part is all done by hand, and it can take weeks of confusing and tedious work, testing and adjusting. There are many things that can go wrong and they are slow and difficult to fix. Despite our efforts, we still have various issues like clipping and holes and sometimes have to give armours unflattering shapes in order to make them fit.

This proposed overhaul is something we've been talking about internally for a long time as "human 2.0". It's been kind of a distant dream, something we don't dare tackle until after a 1.0 release. We couldn't even consider such an overhaul unless we could solve the fundamental problem of how much work it takes to make just one item. Meanwhile, this is costing our artists lots of time that should be better spent elsewhere, for results that are still inadequate. Just recently, while trying to figure out how to make some items work, Madoc decided he'd had enough and put the role system temporarily aside to figure out what could be done. Even if we're not doing some big overhaul yet, solving some fundamental issues and streamlining the workflow was just too important.

Many curses and a few keyboards later, we have a new system and tools with lots of automation and a simplified workflow that turn weeks of work for one item into just a few hours. Quality character assets still take time of course, but the tedious, confusing and problem ridden part of it is basically gone. It solves a lot of problems, it's a huge relief to us and brings many benefits already. The way bodies and clothes deform for animation is better, things are far less prone to errors and issues like clipping, artists can focus on the real work, it's intuitive, it can be iterated on quickly, there's a lot of implicit future compatibility in assets and even loading times are improved. To really reap all the benefits we will eventually need to do our big "human 2.0" rework of many assets, but now we've already solved the biggest and most critical problems to support it.

This was a temporary shift in priorities, but a very important step that was well worth the time investment. We won't be adding lots of brand new clothes or generally upgrading characters just yet, but we're ready for it now. In the meantime you can expect some very nice visual upgrades to some of the most commonly seen items in the game. Updating these foundational items is how we solve our armour etc. fitting problems. We've also made more nice improvements to materials and randomisation. Here's some examples of some clothing type items that we're already reworked using the new system:

Despite this detour, we have made progress on AI and role features. Our approach continues to be to focus on the most difficult problems first and solve them well before we do many things with what we have. This will be the focus of initial testing, to properly identify what players notice most and any issues, so we can finalise the systems that will support more roles and interactions. There's practical elements here, and of course expanding AI capabilities has many gameplay implications, but we're mainly focused on immersion and lifelike NPCs. We really don't want any of this to feel like gamey features.

This means we're quite detail orientated, the little things such as how characters move and look around and how they describe what they found, that don't fundamentally change the functionality, but makes all the difference in our eyes. Dialogue in particular, with common and repetitive speech, has been quite difficult. We want to make it varied, flow from previous remarks and responses, while accommodating diverse grammar required by dynamic elements. This creates a large scope problem that needed new approaches. It does need care and effort, or we could break immersion rather than contribute to it. We might not immediately land where we'd like to be, there's always room for more nuance and variation, but the important thing is that we're building it in the right way and not cutting corners early.

It's been a very busy month, working on many different things besides and tying various loose ends. From here we should be able to focus on getting the role functionality ready for a test release, while we continue work on the next major content release.

Best,

Bare Mettle

 

[Spike]

 

[d1r]

Are there Succubi in the game yet?

 

[AdolfSatan]

to properly identify what players notice most

Like the texture and buttons on a fucking shirt that will take 2 pixels of space once zoomed out? Jesus fucking Christ

 

[Technomancer]

Are there Succubi in the game yet?

I don't get the reference? Not happening without mods. Setting is low fantasy. In SG there will be some horned humanoids (labeled as demons while not being demonic but something else entirely), tribal and primitive ogre-like giants and that's it for non-human sentient races. No elves or dwarfs or orcs or any other common archetype from conventional fantasy.