Dogs Of War Vu

Sim/Strategy/War => Games Discussion => Topic started by: Asid on February 10, 2017, 12:28:18 PM

Title: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 10, 2017, 12:28:18 PM

(http://cdn3.baremettle.com/bmelog360.png)

(http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/header.jpg?t=1463346240)

Official Site: Here (http://www.baremettle.com/)
Official forum: Here (http://www.baremettle.com/forums/index.php)
YouTube Channel:Here (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCG0LnFuFvyT8EkcM9HA7Tw?sub_confirmation=1)
Steam: Here (http://store.steampowered.com/app/362490/)
Facebook: Here (https://en-gb.facebook.com/Exanima2015/)

Single-player


Official trailer
https://youtu.be/WuwSKCahTWU

About This Game

Explore, fight, survive and unravel mysteries in this unique and unforgiving 3D isometric RPG set in an original dark, low fantasy world. Exanima's exceptional attention to detail and realistic simulation of all things aim to provide a deeply immersive and dynamic gameplay experience.

Features include a deep skill based combat system, complex and smart AI, fully interactive environments, an advanced damage model with accurate collisions and locational protection, roguelike elements and an arena mode to hone your combat skills.

"Those who would enter the underworld shall not only forfeit their lives...
...but bring oblivion to all mankind."

(http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/extras/InsFight01.png?t=1463346240)

WARNING: THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY DIFFERENT!
This game features a very deep, truly physics based combat system. This is not just some animation feature, it is a fundamental difference that is central to gameplay. Real momentum, forces and collisions are always at play here, every nuance of your inputs is crucial to the outcome. This will likely be unlike anything you've played before and may take some practice, but can be hugely rewarding and the skill cap is virtually infinite. It is not particularly fast paced or difficult but it does require you to pay attention, it is very tactical and just casually pressing buttons won't get you very far!

Our goal is to create a deep and immersive RPG world based on a more advanced simulation supporting an unprecedented level of dynamic and emergent gameplay. All of the technology we use including the game engine is our own, developed from the ground up to realise this vision.

Exanima is born as a prelude to Sui Generis (SG), our ambitious open world RPG that has been in development for over two years following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Exanima is a smaller yet complete game in its own right, a dungeon crawler that takes place in SG's Underworld some twenty years prior to its events. Both games are being developed in concert, many of SG's more ambitious features will make an appearance in Exanima as development continues.

Exanima provides a reasonably complete and meaningful game experience, but many more features are on their way! We have met our most challenging and significant development goals, now we are ready to bring new features to light and make an even more fun and compelling adventure. Here are some of the planned features, with many already being close to completion:
•   Per session and global character skill progression
•   Large non-linear main game following early content
•   Build and permanently save characters by completing early content
•   New encounters, items and environments
•   Ranged combat and new close quarter manoeuvres
•   Numerous moddable thaumaturgic powers
•   More complete arena game modes featuring outdoor arenas
•   Complex NPC interactions and dialogue
•   Cooperative and competitive LAN multiplayer

(http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/extras/InsHrOg01.png?t=1463346240)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Attila on February 10, 2017, 07:06:14 PM

Very nice game and for good price, thanks for the info.

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 10, 2017, 07:09:12 PM

Quote from: Attila on February 10, 2017, 07:06:14 PM

Very nice game and for good price, thanks for the info.

This is the game I have been telling you about. Real physics  8)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 17, 2017, 05:33:39 PM

Exanima 0.6.5.4f

This hotfix brings a few fixes and improvements, more importantly it introduces extended terrain functionality that is necessary for the upcoming story content. The terrain system changes are things that you should (hopefully) not even notice, they are needed to support larger terrains and greatly reduce video RAM usage.

Changelog from 0.6.4.4d to 0.6.5.4f:

•   Terrain texture streaming system
•   Terrain texture dynamic LoD
•   Fixed weapons jolting when changing grips
•   Improved smoothness of some motions
•   Adjustments to brightness correction for night time matches
•   Improved arena help / tutorial system
•   Various fixes

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on August 17, 2017, 01:59:32 AM

What's taking so long?

We've been focusing on work and as usual we've neglected to keep you properly updated. I'm going to make an effort now to give you a brief overview of what we've been working on.


As you well know we've been adding content at a slow pace, with only 5 of the total 14 levels/maps released so far. This is not however because just creating more environments is time consuming or difficult, but because we need to progress the game's core features to properly support further content and the story.

When we came to Steam with Exanima we rapidly fell into a cycle of constant refinement in response to feedback. We spent an enormous amount of time reiterating exisiting features and trying to improve what was already there, rather than moving forward with the features that were still missing. This is a cycle we've been determined to break, but it has already left us with a huge amount of work that has yet to be tackled. We also find ourselves wanting to develop a solid and aready sophisticated foundation for new features, immediately building things to higher quality standards, in order to avoid wanting to revisit previous work yet again.

We've taken all the feedback we've received and endeavoured to build new content to new standards. We're trying to break free of the sometimes monotonous environments, to involve the player more directly in the story and do many other things besides. The game has grown greatly in size and scope since the initial Early Access release, involving some very substantial additions and refinements.


The upcoming update features the first part of a large non-linear environment that will make up the rest of the game's content. We're using new environment building features and we're adding a lot more intricate and unique detail. We have improved both visual quality and variety in our level design.

In order to do this we had to make substantial additions to our level building tools, and we've also created some new advanced tools for general asset creation. These tools allow us to make higher quality visuals while hugely boosting our productivity and avoiding many pitfalls that have caused us to waste a lot of time in the past.

With these important additions to what we're able to do, we've also been revisiting the early game content, taking advantage of new environment building features, introducing new unique elements and remastering key assets.


Perhaps the most important addition coming to the game is dialogue and NPC companions. You may now have someone by your side to share in your misery, and perhaps even carry that damned torch. This will introduce important new gameplay dynamics and provide an avenue to better expose the story and your own involvement in it.

While perhaps most of this could have been done with simpler methods, we've tried to build an important foundation for NPC behaviour and dialogue that has many applications within the game, and many more to explore and build upon. This has been the biggest obstacle towards a release as we are attempting something quite ambitious and there was much work to be done spanning AI, dialogue and authoring tools, even a native OO scripting language. In the long term, it is one of our most important goals to create NPCs that have believable dynamic behaviours with meaningfully diverse player interaction.

With this complete overhaul of the AI we're also trying to tackle many other issues and add depth and variety to even the most basic interactions with the denizens of Exanima.


While we're not quite ready to include it just yet, we have also been working on Thaumaturgy. We will be adding up to a final total of 6 forms of thaumaturgy, with many powers and related skills. Mind is the first, as it is central to the plot. It also ties in with a lot of the work we have been doing with AI.


There will of course be many new items and various refinements to the game in general. We are not comfortable with giving you a release date for the update just yet, but we are at the end of a gigantic endeavour and doing our best to piece it all together and wrap it up.


(We generally avoid spoilers and publicly showing things before they are looking their best, but I will try to add some kind of screenshot here soon.)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on August 17, 2017, 10:05:39 PM

Net tileset before/after comparison

This shows the current version of Exanima vs. the improved version created using the new dev tools (thanks to Brandrixco for making the comparison).

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/853849837140182140/A770010E0D77694F1C59F248B01E6E3C8EC0F76C/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|2048:576&composite-to%3D%2A%2C%2A%7C2048%3A576&background-color=black)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on August 22, 2017, 03:42:53 AM

In engine asset tools

Part of our new in engine tools. Thanks to these new tools we're able to create higher quality assets with ease and work much more efficiently as a team.
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/842591243236412227/4A702801B752D2AF3D36D0B7A9DA0E79CEE71B38/)


Caves

An example of what we're able to do with the new level design features.
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/842591243236426356/32FFDB3E2285862546234BA0F575CB2CA576B8F4/)


New level design features

Remastered assets and much improved ground detail and variety thanks to the new features.
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/842591243236434001/5743F51D8ED0CEBF1EDB22816E4C209D8E6C4A54/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on January 21, 2018, 05:37:13 PM

Closed Beta Testing Vids/Streams


Master Pugilism Match - Testing New AI

https://youtu.be/ZFxad24pigg

Published on Jan 20, 2018

Testing recently improved pugilism AI in Exanima version 0.6.6.6.

Exanima Inept Pugilism Match - Beta Test

https://youtu.be/oCxDfR9VHgA

Published on Jan 20, 2018

Testing the recently improved pugilism by being very aggressive.

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on January 21, 2018, 05:39:32 PM

Did someone ask for bevors?

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/918040328121448082/E20F9F2585453CD9170403F0DE4B4493BAA5E124/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C*%3A0)


More bevor fashion

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/918040328121449913/6429320F851A7534D171974F50BB6C5E87F85307/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C*%3A0)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 27, 2018, 02:35:10 PM

Dev Coffee Diary 26/2/18

Beads of water slick off the cold tunnel walls like golden tree sap, in the light of the torch.

The undead was not moving. Zetheros nudged it's head with his sabaton. Nothing. Motioning a gauntleted hand, his companion followed behind him, carrying the torch.

"Time for breakfast." Zetheros murmured through his gilded visor.

"What do ya' mean? We're gonna eat this poor sod?"

"Gods no, you fool. We have this delicious medley of grains. I call it cereal. And cow's milk, cashews, and powdered coffee. Why do you think I've been hauling this large metal contraption behind me? It's to keep food fresh you idiot. There's half of a deer in there for dinner, too."

"I-I-I I have an... an apple, it's a little bit dried and grubby though... also some hard flat bread... a bit of smoked pork..."

"Hah. You non-thaumaturges."

Zetheros mixes the 'cereal' together with the cashews, then sprinkles coffee into the ceramic bowl he also happened to be carrying.

"Where'd you get that bowl, good ser, and why do you mix coffee with your cereal?"

"What? You don't?"

With that, Zetheros mysteriously uses his body thaumaturgy to eat the breakfast, without ever lifting his visor.

"H-h-how..?"

"By Skallagrim's beard this companion is dull. Pray to our lord Madoc for a smarter one."

"...P-pardon me, ser, but to whom are you speaking to?"

Hey you exanimates!

Are you lost in the darkness, wondering what will this bring? Fear naught, for the weekly update is here!

------------------------- Madoc says ---------------------------

Some pretty significant improvements and fixes in this version, and some important back end additions in the form of the locale system, which is used to track the location of characters and other things in the game world. This is more of an event system and advanced role thing, however not having it implemented was already causing problems even in Exanima's currently simple conditions.

AI fixes and improvements here should make a significant difference to companion gameplay and group encounters

-Improved companion movement AI

-Companion will now break off confrontations to follow the player

-Various AI pathfinding improvements

-Fixed AI often not correctly evaluating some characters in group situations

-New flee mechanics implemented and functional (may need tweaks)

-UI Scaling up to 1440p (4k is coming)

-Cursors now scale with the GUI too

-Fixed NPCs vanishing or cloning on location changes

-Fixed a dialogue related bug causing various issues

-Fixed characters becoming unresponsive

-Fixed characters enganging in overly long staring contests

-Fixed issues with blood sprays

-Various small fixes and improvements


WARNING Due to substantial back end changes affecting game data you may want to back up saves you care about, and also start story mode games from scratch.

Once again this is completely untested, I'll try to hotfix any major issues you might encounter right away.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is for the insider companion build which is being playtested, and I'm working on armour as per usual.

That's all for now, have a great week!

-Zetheros

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on March 20, 2018, 02:17:45 PM

Quick Status Update
Bare Mettle (Exanima)  [developer]   7 Mar


"I've been crunching like crazy since the update has gone into beta, this is the first time I feel like things are calming down a bit, so I thought I'd take a little time to tell you how it's going.

In terms of new features everything's in place and seemingly working well. We've been doing several patches a week since going into beta, sometimes multiple ones in a day, and the beta guys have been doing a great job with testing and reporting issues, thanks!

Going into beta testing, and the generally higher level of activity on discord, brought on a fresh wave of feedback, not only regarding new features, but also pre-existing aspects of the game, and countless issues we weren't aware of. As usual this led us to spend a lot more time polishing and improving things than we thought we would. So, We've also been addressing a lot of quality of life issues and making improvements to many aspects of the game that didn't quite seem up to par anymore.


As you know this update introduces a first NPC companion, a completely new and very complex AI system, and dialogue. After adding the companion in beta we thought we'd be fleshing out their behaviour and dialogue, but inevitably we spent most of our time so far focusing on the core aspects of companion gameplay. As you know, Exanima is a fairly complex game to play, and this is no different for an NPC attempting to be the player's equal.

So, for now, the focus in terms of companions has been on making the little the companion does as good as possible, rather making them do more. However most of the work done in all this time has been geared towards supporting varied and dynamic NPC behaviours. This is something that we definitely want to expose, however we think we can add this gradually now rather than further postpone the update. It is a primarily content driven system, so now we're left with the relatively easy task of taking advantage of it.


There is a tonne of stuff in this update besides this, and right now we're just finalising the newest level for the public release. This new level is visually much more elaborate than previous content, but in terms of fuctionality there's nothing that hasn't already been tested. This is one of two new levels, the other being very different from other content and presenting us with many unique technical challenges, which is already complete and tested. The first 3 levels of the game have also been extensively reworked.


The work done for AI behaviour was by far the biggest development hurdle ahead of us. It is in reality where our most ambitious goals are, but we fell far behind with it as we worked to improve core aspects of the game that were more immediately important to an active playerbase. We've been a bit dismissive of all this, and vaguely hoped to work on it gradually, but in reality this needed a huge cohesive effort to become a reality. Moving forward we only have relatively much smaller things to tackle. In terms of assets we've also very nearly completed everything needed to make Exanima content complete, and we've also greatly expanded and improved our development tools, allowing us to make much better content much faster.


That's already turned out a bit longer than I expected, so I'll stop here for now. To sum up, the update is very close now. I think you'll be very pleased with just how much the game has improved across the board. If there's something you want to know more about please ask, it's not very easy for me to understand what you'd like to know about."

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on March 20, 2018, 02:20:42 PM

Dev Coffee Diary 19/3/18
Zetheros  has Exanima


More hats:
(https://i.imgur.com/hyckJoD.png)

Hypothetical scenarios #1
(https://i.imgur.com/cVxaajA.png)

The things I do in my free time:
(https://i.imgur.com/LQ5qwAt.png)


Madoc:

"I'm in the middle of some things, so there's a few reported issues related to what I'm working on that I haven't fixed yet (and hopefully I didn't leave anything in a broken state).

-Improved turning behaviour and animation during locomotion

-Improved random item colouring and outfit generation

-Hats...

-Improved and fixed chain coifs*

-New leather cuirass

-New full helm

-Entering the catacombs now creates checkpoints if enabled

-Fixed companion duping and related issues

-Fixed NPCs jumping off heights to attack someone below

-Fixed Sprint to Dash not working correctly

-Fixed NPCs briefly becoming unresponsive after downing an opponent

-Fixed Sir not roaming around as intended

-Fixed crouch preventing some strikes from executing

-Fixed characters sometimes looking at someone other than their combat opponent

-Fixed some rendering issues with parts of the ground

-Fixed text caret missing from 1440p GUIs

-Fixed some memory leaks

-Numerous content fixes and tweaks

*The volume of data required to update all assets that were affected by this change is large and hence some glitches will likely remain until the next full install is released."

Have a great week! :D
-Zeth

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on May 25, 2018, 04:16:07 PM

Dev Coffee Diary 21/5/2018
Hey Exanimates,

No update yet, and it seems I'm taking a break from armour (the multi-layered armour system is in need of work), and am now working on something that I'm super thrilled to work on, but can't talk about. It's like one of those projects you specifically learn 3d modeling for.

I've heard some really fantastic snippets of WIP music from Bethain, the composer for Exanima, for the upcoming levels, but unfortunately I think it's an insider perk that I'm not allowed to share here...

However, I can share the shields I was working on!

front:
(https://i.imgur.com/iwHO9YS.png)

back:
(https://i.imgur.com/knvRIY0.png)

I saw even more styles of shields at The Royal Armouries, so I can probably use those for reference, if more shields are called for.

Speaking about The Royal Armouries; I've spotted a real-life golem still standing guard at it's post, and that crazy famous Maximilian hat. There's also a really nice place to get shawarma and chips here.

Have a great week!
-Zeth

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on June 14, 2018, 10:50:39 PM

Dev Coffee Diary 11/6/2018
Hey Exanimates,

Kind of a bit in a hurry, have some IRL stuff going on.

And sorry, not a lot of news - I'll be doing retopology today. Update when??

You guys know the reason why horses aren't in Morrowind right? Because Khaijits find them delicious. This is why we can't have good things.

Have a great week!
-Zeth

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on June 27, 2018, 01:35:06 AM

Dev Coffee Diary 25/6/18
Hey Exanimates,

Have you ever planned a surprise party for someone, but the surprise party is so awesome and imminent that you want to tell them, but you really shouldn't; otherwise it wouldn't be a surprise party?

Anyway, there's a lot to do; I need to crunch actually, and bank in some work for the week since I'm flying to Turin for the Armeria Reale, then after a few weeks taking a train to Florence for the Museo Stibbert.

This week I'll be working on some simple weapons, and additional stuff that I can't talk about.

See you guys next week!
-Zeth

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on June 27, 2018, 01:43:20 AM

New Closed Beta Version 0.6.8

Today a new closed beta test version was released that includes the upcoming post portal level. Once this version is finished being tested the update will go live for the public build.


(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/956335063013497542/3869A3DC1F7B480C69065D0CD03C9188DD492EC7/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on April 04, 2020, 12:48:03 AM

Exanima 0.8 Released
Wed, 1 April 2020

(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/a4ac49f9c964e35609745255be7fc61d630c388f.jpg)

EXANIMA 0.8

Exanima 0.8 is out, and it's our biggest update yet. The thaumaturgy system is here, the largest content addition to date, new creatures, new features and many improvements.

Thaumaturgy is the last major system we needed to make Exanima's planned content work and make it feel like a complete game. It's Mind now, Force is next. Mind is by far the most challenging form, and with the gameplay systems, mechanics, UI, controls etc. done adding force will be a blast! :#

We do still have some big items on our roadmap, like multiplayer and to a lesser extent ranged combat, but none of that is needed to finally start making Exanima feel like a complete game with purpose and structure, to take advantage of the foundations we've been building and improving.

(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/eda3bc8c010f35673b221a905c0fe1ab4e27b34b.jpg)

MIND THAUMATURGY

Thaumaturgy is here, and we're starting with Mind. This adds a whole new dynamic to the game, new tactics, strategies and builds. Mind is all about influencing and controlling the actions of others, necromancy and more.

Our concept for thaumaturgy is not just a collection of abilities that do very specific things, but a way of interacting with the world. It encourages creative problem solving, situational use and synergies. You should also pay close attention to the world and its characters, not just what your own abilities do in isolation.

With thaumaturgy also come the Insight and Concentration skills, with 16 techniques in total.

We did run into some last minute issues, so note that one of the core powers and some mods and minor mechanics aren't currently working. We decided to patch those in over the next few days rather than keep you waiting.

(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/27b4978d5eb2dbc02204e0527d7eb3f8dc97a1e7.png)

ANIMATION IMPROVEMENTS

We're not quite done with improving things. Our physics driven character motion has come a long way, it works well and in the hands of a very experienced player it can look very good. It will realistically always feel tricky and look a bit silly for a new player, because you have such direct control over how your character moves.

At this point we only have a few specific things we want to improve. In this update we're introducing a sort of better "AI" control over how tense each virtual muscle should be at any time. This creates generally smoother motion, removes a lot of jittery moments and improves physics interactions with characters. Importantly, it also offers a bit more control over motion using physics. As we've tightened up the animations over time, they lost a bit of their physics feel, and this brings some of that back.

We've also improved how characters negotiate uneven ground, stairs etc. Characters are better at remaining balanced under harsh conditions in general, resulting in less tripping and generally more responsive control when in difficulty.

NEW FIRE EFFECT SYSTEM

With new features we're adding to the game we needed a better way to simulate fire that is more versatile, better performing and looks better under different conditions. Currently only some newer assets use this system, but we'll gradually replace most of our fire with it. There's a lot of cool things we'll be able to do with this new fire in future.

NEW CREATURES AND FEATURES

We've taken another step in simulating more than the basic human form and now we're able to add extra body parts, or take them away. No, this doesn't mean we've added dismemberment and quadrupeds (yet), but it is an important step for our character assembly an motion systems. We are going to be doing a bit more with this in the near future.

(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/070f9fc693f791063b105711cf51ad536687b9a3.png)

ENCUMBRANCE REVISITED

This has been on the way for a while. We've been changing encumbrance values on armour to be more realistic and balanced. The largest changes concern full plate armour, but also which areas are encumbered. You should no longer want to wear chain under full plate, and alternatives to the heaviest armours aren't simply worse in every way.

The aim is also to make the upgrade path to the best armour a bit more considered than just always replacing whatever you have with something better. You'll have to consider your armour as a whole a bit more. We've also introduced a set mechanic, whereby pieces of armour that were designed to fit together will encumber you a bit less when combined.


Major changes in Exanima 0.8:

•   Mind Thaumaturgy, with many core powers and various mods
•   2 new skills, Insight and Concentration (16 new techniques)
•   Two new large interconnected areas to explore
•   New encounters
•   Support for new body structures and character types
•   Improved character physics and animation fluidity
•   Improved character balance and negotiation of uneven ground
•   Improved undead animations
•   New fire effects
•   Rebalanced skill progression
•   Many AI social and behavioural improvements
•   Combat AI improvements
•   New AI visibility and detection mechanics
•   New ground rendering features
•   Armour encumbrance value rebalance
•   Armour set bonuses reduce encumbrance of pieces designed to fit
•   Improved clipping with armour for weapons resting on shoulders
•   Item description texts have full formatting
•   Undead no longer take wound damage
•   Improved loading times and initial performance
•   You can now follow characters by clicking on them when spectating in arena
•   Performance improvements
•   Many bug fixes and small improvements

Best,
Bare Mettle

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on May 18, 2020, 01:21:04 PM

Procedural weapon conditions
Mon 18 May 2020

The same procedurally generated sword in 5 condition levels.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1004811457517462728/5D2DB3298C5CE06EE26D3BAB1078C293947387B4/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on July 21, 2020, 12:20:46 PM

20 July 2020 Update

Updated Chain Armour
New procedural steel material for items, this time in the lowest condition level.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1455177151329195298/E3E8548E12494F734C9AE890D26EEF62CAA1D8BE/)



Procedural Steel Damaged

New procedural steel material for items, this time in the lowest condition level.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1455177151329181558/DE4FC3558C889198D9BAD7DC64C3C4EF6E43CB07/)



New Procedural Steel

This is what a top quality and condition armour looks like with the renderer and procedural material update. Same in game asset as before, same amount of textures at the same resolution, no tricks. The improvements largely come from our new tools and being able to program everything with interactive results for every step.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1455177151329176292/21F6963DD0A95CCDB7308C6C6AAD7E2BFD92071D/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on August 04, 2020, 12:02:39 AM

Vegetation Rendering
03 Aug 2020

We just put features for vegetation in the new renderer. We're working on lots of vegetation assets, and we've established some good methods for dense vegetation with good performance. It will look even better in a scene using our new GI.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1458556084364639431/77BC1B933C9575782AA25624DFAC89F6456144F4/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on September 14, 2020, 11:48:20 PM

A Few Swords

Some procedurally generated swords. Still a few tweaks to make and always things to add, but we're got the basics covered.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1613934103783495795/B20D901200A1C102B8EB38F060E92316385C27F7/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on October 19, 2020, 02:46:18 PM

Body Decomposition Revisited
19 Oct 2020

Some example decomposition levels from the procedural character systems updated for the renderer, and improved morph targets. Bodies and undead look more detailed and realistic, and this is the base from which we can add more serious damage showing subdermal layers, bones and organs.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1644336516812876871/D62EFB58A437ADD3E9ABC1000F52739A02D5D135/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on October 27, 2020, 02:59:09 AM

New Hair Shading
26 Oct 2020

New renderer needs new hair shading. We had to use a lot of fancy methods to get some dynamic lighting that doesn't just look wrong on hair.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1671358804988795971/93BFE7E2387494B931FAC23CFC377C266306E72E/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on November 09, 2020, 11:31:21 PM

New Procedural Leather
09 Nov 2020


Still updating and improving some of our procedural materials. this is the latest leather. These materials are applied to all our items automatically, and now also used in other content development, so it pays off to do them well. As seen in the screenshot, the same material can have various levels of quality, wear and different colours. There's also dirt which is not shown here.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1672486004809735977/A97AE52138A4B08273263887E1FE424FF345D21C/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on November 09, 2020, 11:32:39 PM

New Belts
09 Nov 2020


It was time to update our belts and add some new ones.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1672486004809741218/05D7857A49EE7C8381B07BEE9180161DA6ABC2D4/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on January 12, 2021, 01:41:47 AM

Update news
10 Jan 2021

Randomised Theme 1

An output from the new item system with a randomised theme.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1657855029964716313/B107F3F1E2482F7BA6F0C8B71443FB6FC62ADBFC/)



Randomised Theme 2

More examples of randomised themes.
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1657855029964719793/0B4E51655AA55B6206C7E97E537482F5E7092AAC/)



Condition

The same randomised item in different conditions.
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1657855029964723495/9AECDEFBBF4B0864299921DF170D8ADEE1B62036/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 02, 2021, 04:01:44 AM

Renderer Comparison 1

A screenshot comparing the old renderer to the new taken by one of our testers, Sorbo.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1746802855092758888/A6A3FC7D20C896E8C58E477C843BE342899279D6/)



Renderer Comparison 2

A screenshot comparing the old renderer to the new taken by one of our testers, Sorbo.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1746802855092760862/1260655A6FE83864FF41D2DF0249FE56392C3E41/)



Renderer Comparison 3

A screenshot comparing the old renderer to the new taken by one of our testers, Sorbo.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1746802855092765402/F3B1717B9B41034901365ECBDBA2A9A13F32192F/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 16, 2021, 02:49:54 AM

More Remaster
15 Feb 2021

The first post-portal level has had all its texture and material assets completely remastered for the new renderer.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1750181936822947427/983D4B4007C655B1054595AB881AE90588C667C0/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on April 19, 2021, 11:27:41 PM

New renderer outdoor lighting
19 April 2021

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

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1745684082460552378/926F47923ECD8924B5B448C09ECDAE561BC4AEEF/)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on October 11, 2021, 11:57:30 PM

The bottling
11 Oct 2021


A liquid in glass effect that we implemented for dyes, but also alchemy and other future features. It can do translucent or opaque liquids at various levels and interacts nicely with the physics.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1729937184837583876/8BCF2900CAEF27A8D9B5FE0DECAB96FBF5AA5AC7/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on December 13, 2021, 11:47:42 PM

Company Emblems
13 DEC 2021

The new company creation screen for arena. A wide selection of backgrounds and designs with colouring provide a lot of choice and variation.

The emblem generation will also be used for designs on procedural shields, banners and tabards in future.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1816637110761682370/62A73A1400D84F4EC2368C6BC8B84A55BB64F078/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on December 19, 2021, 11:52:17 PM

Exanima 0.8.3
Sun, 19 December 2021

(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/ss_a72030cc5e3d118f0026e2a7e898ba710a274386.1920x1080.jpg)

Procedural weapons, massive update to arena mode, new graphics, new user interface and much more.

The game has undergone extensive changes and received many updates on the beta branch over the past year or so, but it's finally time to bring it all into the main branch again. There's really a lot to cover here even if we just focus on the big stuff, so please bear with us.

ITEMISATION CHANGES

Exanima for all its physics and realistic approach to armour and weapons is still an RPG, itemisation is important, and loot is the carrot in a game with a lot of stick. But the usual approach of ever increasing tiers with unlikely bonuses has no place here. So what can we do to keep us interested in finding new items, to make them feel special and us invested in them?

We have been finding ways to make items as unique and mechanically interesting as possible while remaining grounded in reality. Procedural methods and detailed properties to guide them allow us to do that. This has big gameplay implications, and can also be leveraged in many ways to create a much more realistic and immersive game world.


PROCEDURAL WEAPONS

(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/a308759df6746d99bd63bb1caf0832f7ee712213.png)

Every weapon that was previously a fixed item like "the poleaxe" is now being replaced with a "factory" that can generate a certain type of poleaxe. This is a large collection of different hafts, langets, bolts, axe heads, rear spikes, top spikes, guards and queues which can be randomly combined to make a unique poleaxe with unique qualities and features.

This alone can generate sometimes billions of combinations for a single weapon, but that's just the start, there are also variable deformations. The same haft type can vary in length and thickness, spikes can have varying lengths, curves and tapers, an axe head varies in the angle, curvature, width and length of the blade and has different hole patterns cut into it and so on and so forth.

These things give every weapon a unique shape and characteristics. These have important implications with physics, both in terms of collisions and inertia (how the mass is distributed), which is very noticeable. They all handle and behave differently.

That's not all. Each item is made and textured with unique generated materials. Different parts of the same weapon might be made from different metals, woods etc. The quality of those materials also varies, and so does the condition.


All these weapons are generated from the same one handed falchion factory:

(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/5d5625861230dc5805ac95d081d997177b52d87a.png)

The end result is that there are practically infinite weapons, each has its own characteristics and varies in quality, condition and appearance. Part of our objective was also to make weapons more realistic, and indeed the new weapons both look and behave much better.

This already makes weapons so much more interesting, but there is a lot we can do now. We are working on giving each weapon different grips and orientations it can be used in, giving more purpose to its unique features and more meaningful variety for weapons in general. We are actually building weapons from individual components now, this is detailed information we can use to improve how they behave too.


ITEM GRADES AND QUALITY

(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/a69ce37b717ec9c585cc93bc621a5388862bc575.png)

Much of the new procedural itemisation doesn't only concern weapons, but everything else too. Previously items could vary in colour and had a few fixed modifiers such as "rusted" or "superior". Now all items use procedural materials and factors like quality and and elegance affect the choice between different types of fabrics, leathers, buttons, coatings, paints and finishes. All materials have varying quality with visible differences.

Build and material quality are accompanied by traits, which may be material specific. These are things such as heavy, light, reinforced, hardened etc. which further modifies the item's base properties.

Finally you have a third independent factor, which is condition, adding wear and rust to items and affecting how they perform in various ways. Condition does not degrade over time, however in story there is now a way to improve the condition of items you find. This means that the many old rusted items in the game which were previously all junk, might now be diamonds in the rough, worth taking a closer look at. Items of particularly good quality and having desirable configurations or traits are something you can invest resources in.


NEW RENDERING ENGINE

You're probably wondering, but why? The game looked fine, this was a truly massive undertaking and not something we wanted to be doing at this stage in development. There were various things we had to or wanted to improve, but individually they did not justify making a totally new rendering engine. However, already deep into the work with procedural items, we started running into serious problems we had no control over, and with great reluctance we finally accepted that if we didn't do this and do it now, we'd just be wasting time and energy and the game would have an uncertain future.

We're going to explain the problems we've solved with the new renderer, as well as some important benefits that came with a fresh design and take on every part of rendering.

Compatibility and driver issues
became a serious problem, particularly as we worked on our new procedural systems. Exanima has a unique and unusual rendering engine, and the things we were trying to do just weren't being properly supported by GPUs, and we couldn't expect them to. We really tried to find workarounds, but everything failed and a drastically different approach to rendering was the only fix.

Driver CPU bottlenecks
have always been a problem, but over just two years we'd lost a huge 30% performance to driver updates as they moved away from our less trodden path. With GPUs and monitors advancing very quickly, while CPUs mostly just get more cores, this was becoming a very serious problem. With our new rendering engine we were able to literally triple framerates or even better in the more CPU bound cases.

Our material system
, while competent, was very difficult to use. Artists were faced with choices that required a physics degree and a calculator. Complex materials were also resource intensive. In practice either due to complexity or for the sake of efficiency, things rarely looked as they should. Our new material system is much more streamlined, easy to use and efficient, it removes the uncertainty and makes high quality materials simple and cheap, with lots of support from our tools.

A hard light source limit
was an issue with our old renderer, particularly with multiplayer on the horizon, where we'd have less control over how many lights would be in one place at once. The new renderer is still a forward renderer, but isn't strictly limited in how many lights it can handle.

Global illumination
(GI) or indirect lighting is a fundamental part of rendering. Without it shadows would be black voids rather than just dark. Exanima's dark environments require at least a basic version of this, but our solution wasn't great. It didn't scale well to large open spaces, didn't support much verticality; while indirect light didn't pass through walls, it ignored everything else, even doors, resulting in very flat and weird looking areas of shadow. It also performed very poorly for moving lights, once again an issue for multiplayer and a limitation in general.

This is a notoriously difficult problem to solve. Baked solutions can't deal with dynamic objects and lights and are a huge burden on content creation; ambient occlusion only darkens corners, it doesn't deal with actual light and darkness; other solutions tend to be cumbersome and slow, with extreme hardware requirements.

We were able to come up with our own GI solution which solved all our problems and drastically improved the game's visuals. Our solution is completely real-time dynamic, blindingly fast and works in any situation, whether it's a dark little room or a valley viewed from a tower with the open sky above. It captures even small details adding lots of depth and doesn't care how many objects or lights are dynamic, it just does its job.

Here's what things would look like with no GI at all:

(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/2c71e6aec346054fc531008007b3ce213625227d.png)

Read on: https://steamcommunity.com/games/362490/announcements/detail/5612046175808103529

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on March 21, 2022, 10:22:16 PM

Weapon Component Effects
Mon 21 March 2022

New detailed weapon properties allow us to give each part of a weapon more unique functional roles, diversifying weapons and their behaviour with impacts more. We're also introducing support for some important new combat features and skills.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1809890338543551533/A98C3E7EBF6A2CDCAB57474F64FD039BE7A5F166/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on July 17, 2022, 04:37:25 PM

Exanima 0.8.4
Sun, 17 July 2022

(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/8614037/c0d69bdf6507bd619de93ca8d0d132903b6871a8.jpg)

Big combat changes, general improvements and some arena goodies.

Since our last update we've made some major improvements to core gameplay systems and many incremental changes and additions based on feedback and our own goals. There's also some nice late content additions for arena. Our next update is entirely story focused, so we wanted to wrap all this other stuff up and get these very important changes out now.

The highlight of this update is the most major changes to combat yet, as well as some smaller, but still very important ones. The combat is faster, more responsive, more solid and realistic, many lingering quirks have been properly addressed. These are transformative changes and we're excited for what it brings to the combat and what it allows us to do going forward as we finalise more skills, itemisation and gameplay features.

We've been through a lot of major development hurdles, making our own engine, tools and complex unique game systems, exploring with players the implications of these fundamentally different approaches and how we can make the most of them. With the game being in uncharted territory it's hard to imagine a time when it won't seem like things should or could be improved, and constant community feedback and requests ensure our to-do list is always growing. The major content goals for the game are now few however, and our road map to 1.0 includes a whole lot of gameplay and quality of life additions, many of which we've now covered here. We will continue to improve the game after full release, but it's good to check some of those boxes.


NEW COMBAT MOVEMENT SYSTEM

Movement and footwork are the foundation of the entire combat and probably the single thing we've iterated the most on. Making the movement physics driven, reactive, somewhat realistic and responsive to the player all at the same time is something we've always battled with, without a clear idea of what might ultimately be possible.

For a while now we've been trying to figure out how to fundamentally change the movement so that it's not limited to a fixed step pattern and returning to stance before moving again. If characters could move freely and without pausing the combat would be much more dynamic, faster paced and responsive. Our plan looked promising, and we decided this was too important and had to be attempted.

These things don't always work out, we've a hit a few dead ends in the past, but this was a huge success on many fronts. You can now change direction, cancel movements or continue moving without waiting for the previous movement to complete and without pausing between steps. There is also more granularity to how far you move based on inputs. In order to support this we had to also work on the dynamic footwork and animation systems, making for better balance, control and cleaner animation under all conditions. These changes combined offer a level of control we previously didn't think we could achieve.

This is a massive change for combat, with huge implications. We have also had to do significant work on the AI to adapt it to this, and tried to make it more engaging and tactical in the process. It will likely take you some time to learn how to make the most of this new movement and everything it allows. As with everything, you do need to work in harmony with the physics and body motions. We've been having a lot of fun testing and polishing these changes with the help of our Discord community, they've been met with very high praise and we're really excited to see the combat evolve in such a big way.


WEAPON AND DAMAGE MECHANICS REWORK

We recently introduced procedural weapons, but this was an important first step of a larger itemisation and weapon mechanics overhaul. In this update we've got a huge rework of how weapons work, the damage system, armour mitigation, how everything interacts with physics and more. We've added a lot of detailed data to weapons to describe their features and how each part of a weapon should behave, there's many new weapon and weapon part classes and subclasses.

This allows a much more detailed model for how weapons behave and supports many new and future features. Weapon are more diverse and balanced with specific advantages and uses, various long standing issues with the damage system were properly solved, there's support for new itemisation features and skills and generally brings important improvements to gameplay and realism.

There was a big focus on more realistic physical behaviour of weapons, but always with the goal of improving gameplay and balance, playing to the specific strengths of different weapons, breathing new life into some underperforming weapons and categories. There have also been improvements to core physics, character animation and attack mechanics to support this. Some weapons can now also be dynamically flipped to strike with the reverse side, something which will be extended to more weapons and different grips over time.

Beyond the immediate improvements, this new platform with very detailed weapon data combined with component wise procedural generation allows us to do much more still going forward. The goals is to give weapons ever more mechanical differences, techniques, motions and gameplay features that distinguish them well beyond what stats can do.


CONTROLLER AND STEAM DECK SUPPORT

Despite the lack of proper support some of you were already using controllers and it's a frequently requested feature. Steam Deck support was also requested and we worked on Proton compatibility, special UI scaling, control schemes and various input and performance optimisations with surprisingly good results.

Exanima is a game that does not naturally lend itself well to controller input, some aspects of interaction by necessity remain cursor based, but we developed dedicated control schemes for all core gameplay and user interface. The game can be played fully on controller and it's quite a fun and different experience.


Cumulative changelog for version 0.8.4:

•   Weapon mechanics and damage system rework
•   New combat movement system
•   Two new arena environments
•   Remastered courtyard arena
•   Nine new armour pieces making two full sets
•   New procedural weapon: glaive
•   Velvet procedural material added
•   Detailed physics data for different parts of weapons
•   Specific behaviour and damage from different parts of weapons
•   Many new weapon and part subcategories with different behaviour
•   Haft types with different behaviour and sounds
•   Reworked weapon damage and armour mitigation mechanics
•   Major slash rework with hewing and cutting damage
•   Some weapons can now be flipped to strike with the reverse
•   Improved thrusting mechanics
•   Improved remise behaviour
•   Core physics engine improvements
•   Animation system improvements
•   AI combat improvements with adaptive behaviours
•   Smart overhead targeting based on cursor relative to opponent
•   Dynamic swing height adjustment, preventing very low or high swings
•   Improved edge alignment control
•   Improved greatsword handling
•   Added fading feature for objects obstructing the camera
•   Improved camera obstacle avoidance behaviour
•   Improved cursor behaviour for look function
•   Smart selection for small objects and inventory icons
•   Steam Deck support, performance, UI and control optimisations
•   Proton and Linux GPU driver compatibility fixes
•   Full controller support via Steam
  o   Dedicated movement and aiming controls
  o   Feathered object and UI cursor interaction
  o   Full menu and UI navigation and interaction
  o   On screen keyboard support
•   Controls to quick cast a selected power
•   The roster can be rearranged via drag and drop
•   The roster is now colour coded
•   Shop items are neatly and persistently arranged
•   Shop items displayed from newest to oldest
•   Shop stock rotation rate increased
•   Arsenal tabs can now be scrolled
•   Arsenal correctly scales to different aspect ratios
•   Brushes can now be used from inside the arsenal
•   Added a confirmation prompt for forfeiting tournaments
•   Performance improvements

Best, Bare Mettle

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on March 07, 2023, 09:19:46 PM

Procedural Copper Alloys
06 March 2023

Different qualities and conditions of our new procedural material for copper alloys like bronze or brass, finally completing our lineup of dynamic materials. Note that we're just using this armour as a spoiler free object to show the effect, but it will be used for various new remastered items in the coming update.

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2009206331503236613/0FC1E5BCC13B55E27E5176B00AD8830E7515C0B4/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on June 19, 2023, 08:55:41 PM

Thaumaturgy Domain Wheel
19/06/2023

(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2017097230058666174/90D35F85CFBA94988D9874F99A625F9D474853AE/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false)

The new UI element which allows selecting thaumaturgy domains and shows your Potential and how much is invested in each domain.

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on October 15, 2023, 01:05:45 AM

Exanima 0.9
Fri, 13 October 2023

(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/8614037/ec106db49b018a1e0db11636264bde27350d33c0.jpg)

Force, story content and many improvements.


EXANIMA 0.9

It's finally here, our biggest and grandest update yet. We go deeper still into the underworld on the heels of a recent disturbance to discover its source. Explore a huge new area to discover its secrets and face formidable foes therein. Unlock new powers as you traverse redesigned locations and seek out hidden places and new and updated items. New gameplay and storytelling mechanics and a slew of improvements provide the best Exanima experience yet.

(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//8614037/a203677e7ac836be33ecba10fb3e5bcc2f3dd568.jpg)


FORCE THAUMATURGY

The Force thaumaturgy domain is here adding a variety of new powers that change how you approach the game. Force is all about physics which is Exanima's forte and we've worked hard to make this something special not just in terms of physics, but also effects, AI interactions and all those things that give Exanima that extra depth and unique gameplay.

With Force introduced there are now very meaningful build choices. Both domains are accessible, you can specialise in either one or be a hybrid, more skills are implemented and come into play both in terms of requirements and making the most of Force, with the balance of combat and mental skills also being more important than ever.

The thaumaturgy UI has been updated to support all this and other new mechanics. An important mechanic we're introducing is Potential for the scaling of powers, which while still not complete, already provides new story elements and objectives, and will support more build variety and strategic elements. There is also a new Mind power unlocked through the Revelation skill technique.

(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//8614037/5de3a18f2a091927e77541aff6a7d67f26663530.jpg)


LOTS OF NEW CONTENT

A huge new area is included in this update, the largest one yet, packed with new and unique features and taking advantage of how our engine has evolved to support more complex environments. This is an important area in terms of lore, progressing the story and featuring some special new encounters.

The first 3 levels of the game have received a big overhaul, with lots of unique features, details and many new secrets to find. New items have been introduced as early as the first levels, and many items throughout the game have been completely overhauled and adapted to our procedural system. The procedural systems itself has also been updated and improved, important new materials have been added giving new variety to all items.

(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//8614037/3e26eb7175b6717c42e6377aefea4c738716d96f.jpg)


NEW 3D DYNAMIC PATHFINDING

We've developed an all new pathfinding system to improve movement, AI, support more complex level design with more verticality and layers and more interactions with the environment. This new system is dynamic and 3D, based on the actual shape of objects, this means for example a table is a completely different obstacle when flipped on its side, or could even be used as ramp. You can walk on any surface and create new paths that even the AI can understand, you can walk over and under things and AI can navigate complex environments with multiple layers.

Player movement in general is also improved, it is more fluid as there are no more artificial obstacles and everything is accurate to the shape of the environment and objects. You will no longer get snagged on corners or stopped in places that you should be able to cross.


IMPROVED OBJECT INTERACTION

There have been some important additions and improvements to how you're able to interact with objects. We know this could feel fiddly and unintuitive, and we've made many improvements to solve these issues.

Objects will no longer snap back to their original position when you try to place them in an invalid position, but rather will move to the last valid position you defined. You can still cancel the movement to snap objects back to their original position by pressing the right mouse button. Placing objects over voids is also much easier, it now always works intuitively without having to target something with the cursor.

There is a new way to move objects triggered by holding Interact when picking them up. This will physically drag the object with the cursor rather than select a new target position. This is useful for making smaller adjustments to an object's position, but importantly can also be used to drag objects with you as you walk using the movement keys. Dragging of bodies and now objects has also been made much more intuitive, accepting position inputs even if they're outside of your interaction range.


ENVIRONMENT IMPACT AND FALL DAMAGE

In a game with as much physics as Exanima, and especially with the introduction of Force, it was important that general impacts could deal damage, not just ones tied to combat actions. This was something we attempted before, but had to abandon because it behaved too unpredictably. This time around we've developed a stable and detailed damage system for general collisions and various core improvements to our physics engine support it well.


NARRATOR AND SCRIPTED EVENTS

A new, but long planned, feature we call the "narrator" is an important new tool in story and gameplay. This is of course text based, it provides information, feedback and special interactions to the player. It comes with various new important scripted events and lore exposition, but we still have many more uses for it in future.


AI SYSTEM UPDATES

Exanima features a unique AI system where characters aren't scripted to do specific things but are driven organically by emotions and other mental states. They can become distracted, curious, agitated, concerned, angry, scared, surprised etc. by varying degrees and can form specific relationships with every other character they encounter. So far this has all been limited to responding to other characters, but now we have rebuilt it on a new framework that allows AI to perceive, understand and engage with anything in their environment, with lots of new tools to guide their decisions and behaviour.

This was important for intelligent interactions with things like Force powers, and we made some core improvements along the way, but it is the foundation for many new AI behaviours that also extend far beyond combat situations. This is a particularly important step for Exanima's 0.95 update, which will focus on more NPCs with more complex behaviours.

There have been various other specific improvements to AI, high level tactics and importantly the ability to use special abilities and powers, which will feature more and more in the game. In general though AI is important to us as we think it's fundamental to a compelling and immersive experience. We will always continue to improve and expand on it.


AND MANY OTHER THINGS

We've hit some major development milestones with this update and as always we've added that extra depth and attention to detail with everything, which is what makes Exanima special. Exanima is built on our own custom engine and we have done much work on physics, AI, graphics and much more to support these new features and to provide an ever improving, more immersive gameplay experience.

We have polished a great many aspects of the game and we have worked hard to build and update systems that may not always add much immediate value, but support the constant evolution of the game and the many features we still want to add. The pieces are coming together and we are focusing more and more on content and features as this platform we've built becomes solid and complete.



Note that due to the very extensive changes, current story saves will be wiped. Arena saves will be converted and should result essentially unchanged.


Changelog for version 0.9:

    Force thaumaturgy, with 11 new powers and more to come

    Huge new area to explore, new lore, encounters and items

    Big overhaul of first 3 levels

    Over 50 new and remastered procedural items

    Multiple thaumaturgy domain mechanics

    New Mind power through revelation mechanic

    New 3D pathfinding system with dynamic paths

        Allows for multiple overlapping layers of depth

        Walk on any surface without artificial obstacles

        Create dynamic paths that even AI can understand

        More fluid and accurate movement

    General impact and fall damage system

    New "Narrator" gives information, feedback and special interactions

    AI can now use powers and special abilities

    Important AI general tactics improvements

    Many AI behavioural improvements

    Improved object interaction

    New drag object interaction mode

    New procedural materials and item features

    Improved item description systems

    Item captions are now coloured to indicate quality

    You can now play dead after recovering from unconsciousness

    Big performance improvements

    Core graphics engine and material improvements

    New "ultra" shading setting with specular GI

    Improved dynamic "death animations"

    Various improvements to footwork and character motion

    Important fundamental physics engine improvements

    Greatly improved loading times

    Greatly improved latency with vsync enabled

    Improved selection and interaction with small objects

    Brushes can now also clean weapons

    Core physics engine improvements

    Huge number of fixes




Best,

Bare Mettle

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on November 07, 2023, 12:01:17 AM

Coffee Diary - November 2023
Mon, 6 November 2023

(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/ss_a72030cc5e3d118f0026e2a7e898ba710a274386.jpg)


Hey Exanimates,

Welcome to our first monthly coffee diary. Until now we posted a weekly dev diary on the forums, talking about what we're working on and how development is progressing. We're switching to this monthly format now, and going forward we should be able to make these more interesting and maybe include media when appropriate. Keep in mind that we are always careful with spoilers and we prefer it if you experience things in game, so we can be a little secretive.


We have just released a huge update, so we've been pretty busy just getting feedback, making improvements and fixes. We're still tracking a couple of issues, but the game now seems to be in the best shape it has ever been. This is the time in the cycle when we properly assess our next major development goals and work on things like systems and tools to support our workflow. At this point though our roadmap is mostly things on a small or medium scale, mainly gameplay features and content rather than major engine or tool development.

Our one bigger goal and focus for the next major update is the "role system". We'll likely talk about this more in future diaries, but for now we'll give you a basic introduction. The role system is very broadly what gives characters identities, behaviours, relationships, memories and interactions. Characters might have hundreds or even thousands of active roles, acquiring new ones all the time as they experience things, meet other characters and engage in activities. Roles are often situational, such as "person in shop", through which relational roles like "customer - shopkeep" can be acquired. Any NPC can acquire these roles, they will remember the experience, be able to relate information about it and so on. There's quite a lot more to it, but we won't get into all the details.

It's a powerful system that is mechanically quite simple, but requires us to gradually add more and more roles to make the AI smarter and understand more things. We already have a version of this in the game, but with only a few placeholder roles that rigidly script behaviour, not at all how this is supposed to work. Exanima's AI is so far almost purely driven by emotional states and personality traits. This alone is almost enough to model a wide range of behaviours, but the roles are another layer providing much needed context. Essentially the intelligence to guide the emotions. Roles should not override core emotional responses, but rather just nudge them in the right direction and ultimately be driven by them.

This sort of thing is our true passion, we want to create a believable world, and to us that's all about how it behaves. We originally didn't make our game physics based because we wanted awesome combat, that was really a gigantic detour from our true goal, driven by feedback. The physics is there because we want things to be truly interactive and less artificial, everything should behave in an organic way rather than according to a simple set of rules and predefined actions.


The next big update will include progress on this role system and include new intelligent NPCs and more dialogue, and also a new area to explore, which is very terrain heavy. For some time now we've been wanting to spruce up the visuals of our terrain, and we've already begun work on improving our tools for designing terrain and its surfaces. The ground is visually dominant in Exanima, so this is important. The updated terrain will feature better materials and many remastered assets, but it also solves many difficult problems that our level designers currently have to deal with. You will likely see incremental upgrades to the terrain before the major update, such as improved 3D grass which has been patched in already.

While we're hesitant to promise anything too specific, we are considering one or two smaller updates before the big one. One topic would be fully implementing Potential and other thaumaturgy mechanics, adding some new powers, improving existing ones and also the controls. Another thing that is high on our priority list is mechanics for saving progress in the late game. This will not be simple checkpoints as the game is no longer linear, but rather an optional system you will have to discover and engage with. We have been laying down the pieces for this for a long time, and with its introduction they will finally have a purpose and provide new objectives and interactions within the game.


We hope you found some of this interesting, and please let us know if you like this format (yes we will try to include some images in future). We'll see you here again on the first Monday of the next month.


Thanks!

-The Bare Mettle Team

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on January 01, 2024, 04:36:42 PM

Coffee Diary - January 2024
Mon, 1 January 2024

(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/ss_d9641461c6d0d3a37da02f0d7ae5911f1eed99d7.jpg)

Last month we mentioned we were migrating our entire engine, game and tools to 64 bit, as we really don't need to support 32 bit anymore and this gives access to practically unlimited ram and many big optimisation opportunities. This was a massive undertaking as our engine uses a lot of very low level (close to the hardware) code and we also took this opportunity to improve and optimise many core systems as we reviewed so much of it.

You may be wondering, the game already runs great, why optimise it further? First off, these are not rendering optimisations, as that's GPU territory, but in terms of everything else, and especially physics, these optimisations are extremely important. Unlike graphics which just runs at different framerates and different settings, physics always works in the same way, and for this to work and be any good in the first place, it must always do exactly the same thing at exactly the same rate. This means better performance isn't a matter of higher framerates and better settings, it's simply a hard limit on what we can do with the game.

Physics in Exanima isn't just for show, every element of gameplay, every interaction, every motion and outcome is a direct result of physics, no exceptions. Character motions are driven by virtual muscles and are made dynamically, even the slightest collision can completely change outcomes, everything has physics, everything is fully persistent. We never use simple shapes like boxes or cylinders for collisions, but always accurate representations, even when objects have complex shapes that are notoriously difficult to simulate.

All of this detailed simulation is expensive, which puts limits on things like how many characters we can have, how many objects, and just generally how detailed and accurate the simulation can be. Greater character density is an important requirement for what we have planned for the game's conclusion, but we also want more physics interactions to add gameplay elements and improve immersion which was the main goal of our fully physics driven approach. This includes things like cloth physics, plant physics, soft bodies, animated tentacles and water to name just a few.

This huge migration is now complete and we've also done lots of low level optimisation and a slew of improvements, especially to our tools. We've been using and testing things for a while now and it's all very solid and very fast. The results have exceeded our expectations, with physics performance being doubled, and collision performance specifically almost tripled with room for further improvement. Collisions are particularly important, because while things like character and other motions are expensive, they have a fixed cost, but collisions keep scaling as more objects are involved and the game doesn't place any restrictions on what you can do.

Most recently we've been working on cloth physics, which is really the technology which drives cloth, hair, vegetation and soft bodies, so this is a big important thing and it accounts for a very big chunk of our performance budget. We also use cloth physics to help generate models for clothing in our tools. We came up with a new method that produces much better results and is much less restrictive in terms of modelling. After some thorough optimisation, it's also up to 10 times faster than what we had before. This is a really impressive result which is great for all the things we plan to do with these features.

These kind of major engine and tool revisions are par for the course after a major update, and often involve many months of work. With this and our terrain system overhaul we're done and already back to focusing on content and gameplay features. The team is busy with major content additions for the next update as well as some nice improvements, as some existing content is gaining new importance with the introduction of new features. We plan to start insider testing of the updated engine and terrain (which affects all content) soon, and we should be following this up with a public update that includes some new features and content updates.

Have a great year!

Bare Mettle

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on February 08, 2024, 12:18:24 AM

Coffee Diary - February 2024
Wed, 7 February 2024

(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/ss_d9641461c6d0d3a37da02f0d7ae5911f1eed99d7.jpg)

For this month's diary Madoc made a video again.

We mentioned previously how we hoped to use more performance for more and better physics, and this is the result of those efforts. This gets a bit technical, but we think real time physics isn't a very widely understood topic that needs a little explaining.

These are some very significant improvements and additions to the game's physics that support a lot of things in terms of gameplay, world building and our development process. They make the very foundations that drive everything in the game better.

https://youtu.be/R9-ihvHJdJE


Best,

Bare Mettle

Title: Re: Exanima
Post by: Asid on March 04, 2024, 03:51:59 PM

Coffee Diary - March 2024
Mon, 4 March 2024

(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/362490/ss_a72030cc5e3d118f0026e2a7e898ba710a274386.jpg)


This has been a month of mostly wrapping things up and getting them ready for a release. There have been a lot of important core improvements that affect the entire game and content, so we want to get the game in testing and updated before moving on to other things. This includes the switch to 64 bit and optimisations to many parts of the engine, the overhauled terrain system and all related assets, improvements our physics engine and important new features, a complete graphical overhaul of the golem area, a huge rework and expansion of the Catacombs map and a few other smaller, but still important improvements. It's a lot.

Most recently we've been working on improvements and additions to our physics engine. These are things we've been wanting to do for some time and are extremely important for the future of the game. The core physics improvements are immediately obvious in gameplay, they make weapon interactions feel and function better in combat, they solve many problems and we're already noticing how they allow us to do more with level design and interaction. Last month we released a video where we showed what was basically a prototype version of new cloth and soft body features. This is something we hope to use extensively for things like clothing, plants, those creepy fleshy growths, sheets of paper and generally the many things that should be soft, flexible, floppy and squishy. This would allow a new level of immersion and interactivity. Dynamic physical interactions are at the core of Exanima's gameplay and immersive world, and this is something we want to extend to every part of it.

The key breakthrough we demonstrated in our video was a performant way to do polygonal collision on deformable bodies. While it's great that we're able to do realistic interactions between cloth and things like weapons, this provides a versatile solution for all sorts of soft bodies beyond cloth, where simpler methods could be considered sufficient. Since the video we've further improved our model, stress testing it and making it very functional and stable under many conditions and applications. We can drape cloth over objects, hold objects in nets and sacks and do all sort of tricky things that require a very stable and accurate model.

Performance is of course a major concern, we identified good, fast methods, but we still had to optimise what we showed then. We knew our prototype implementation could be made roughly 10 times faster, and we joked about making it 20 times faster, but that's what we did. Then we optimised it even more, and made it 40 times faster. This being physics, This being physics, it means a bigger performance budget for more cool things. Another important optimisation was making deformable bodies that aren't currently doing much and actively interacting with anything, or visible, or casting a visible shadow etc., go into an idle state where they cost virtually nothing. This is ultimately what allows us to have a huge number of these complex objects in an environment.

In keeping with Exanima's full interactivity, we also added the ability to move and drag cloth around with the cursor. Besides that consistent immersive feel, this has a number of gameplay implications that we're eager to explore. Another of Exanima's more unique features is perfect persistence of everything, this means that if you leave a piece of cloth draped over something in a particular way and exited your game, it has to be in the same exact position when you return to it.

We've also extended our development tools to support these new features and generally improve our workflow for all physics. We've been constantly making improvements to our tools and also making them more intuitive and user friendly, for eventual modding use and also if and when we expand our team.

There is so much we can do with these new features and we're very excited by the possibilities, but as usual much will be revealed when we add new content and gameplay where you can experience it fully first hand. Everything we listed up top and these core improvements are in the polishing stage now and we hope to begin testing in the next few days and get it all released for everyone soon after.

Best,
Bare Mettle