When the guy fights the skeleton is feels like a drunk aventurer sim.Yeah, especially how the hero finished off the knight. It looked so hilariously unintentional, as if the character had indeed taken few pints. :lol:
Yeah, especially how the hero finished off the knight. It looked so hilariously unintentional, as if the character had indeed taken few pints. :lol:
'Tis a bit silly, but I expect them to tune it down since the game is still in pre-alpha state. Alternatively it could be a matter of learning, for example: in the beginning your
moves might look more like drunken rage than anything else, but as you progress and become familiar with the combat gameplay, your strikes become more precise and
less random. Though this is propably not the case, since I'd expect the developers to already be intimately familiar with the combat they have created themselves. :P
I can't see him just scrapping an entire engine he built by himself if it doesn't get funded through kickstarter.
Scrapping it? no, but if they don't get funding of some kind then it's probably going to take them 10 years to release this, lol. They need the funding so they can work full-time on the game as a team, without it they will just be stuck doing it as a part-time hobby.
Looks pretty cool. I can see myself playing that if they fix some combat animations and put more depth into it as well. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll donate until they add some more stuff to it and release another video.
The point is that there are no combat animations, which makes the whole "drunk fight" feeling very complicated to fix.I get that it's the physics, but it just looks exaggerated. Mostly with the torso movement.
People often underestimate what a team of select very skilled people (which seems to be the forte of these guys) can do as a hobby, especially if they like what they are doing.
Imagine you were good at painting, how many good works would you be sitting on top of if you invested all your time playing cRPG into painting.
Sui Generis is our first game, an ambitious RPG. We are a year into development and things are going very well. We have not only developed all of the core technologies and prototyped the game, but have developed a truly vast and impressive set of tools to ease development and the content production process. We have tried our hand at everything that we thought could pose a challenge and achieved what we believe are excellent results.
A new gameplay video just came out. It's in their new update on the kickstarter page.This one should be the video...
Jack leaned against the side of the building, trying to catch his breath. Behind him, beyond the palisade, shadows still prowled. Unable to scale the fortifications, they paced back and forth at the edge of the clearing in the vain hope he would emerge again. Eventually the high, nasal whine of their frustration slowly faded as the beasts retreated, and after a few more minutes Jack finally relaxed. He brushed the twigs from his hair, picked a few brambles from the hem of his cloak, and headed directly for the smithy.
“Good morning!”
“It may be...”, said the shopkeeper.
“Are you open, friend? I have need of a new blade.”
“We are as open as your purse, good sir.”
“Ahh. I’ve little wish to empty its contents on the counter...”
“Then we’re closed. Good morning!”
“Wait! I could be persuaded to pry it open... for the right weapon”
“Then I shall do my best to find such a weapon! What exactly are you looking for?”
“Not this.” *he displays a pitted, mostly dull and slightly crooked longsword*
“Gods below, what have you been using this for?!”
“Its main purpose of late seems to be acting as excess weight. It also does an excellent job of antagonising enemies, and impeding my subsequent flight from them”
“I could hardly sell you a worse weapon, friend. I have several fine oaken broom handles that would be a clear improvement!”
“I would prefer something sharper than a broom handle...”
“A basket of bread would be sharper than this apprentice’s accident.”
“Indeed. But again, let us confine ourselves to swords and the like.”
“Yes, yes. I have a fine journeyman blade, never used in combat. Its former owner was consumed by a bear a fortnight ago.”
“He was taken unawares by a bear?”
“I hardly think so. They make an awful noise, do they not?”
“But you said the blade was never used...”
“Quite so. The poor man left it at home for fear of chipping the finish before his master smith’s examination”
“Not the best decision, in hindsight.”
“I should think he would agree... now let us talk price.”
As the combat is at the moment, we only have swinging weapons. Every attack is chosen out of a set at random, and while each have their perks, it's up to you to react and adjust your aim, or even cancel it (by simply letting go of the mouse button) in favour of parrying. It makes for very skilful gameplay whilst being hugely dynamic and simple to operate. Parrying is automatic, but you're at the mercy of physics, and learning to rotate your character so your parrying arm is better placed to deflect the incoming blow is key.
I spent a long time playing Mount and Blade, and not to blow my own trumpet but it was one of the games I was very good at, and I'm obviously talking about PvP against some very good players. While it is seriously fun, combat is not very dynamic and it's not hugely fun to watch unless you can appreciate the skill involved in what's going on. It is purely mechanical and looks kind of silly. With only 4 directions of parrying, all of which you can attempt every single attack (if you're quick enough), it is entirely possible to, say, make a macro that cycles parrying every direction, rendering the entire system exploitable. This is not a criticism, I love the game, it's just the nature of a mechanical system.
This is very, very early combat you're looking at here. Think typical isometric game, where all you can do is left-click. If you were watching someone play the third installment of a game who's name I shall not mention, and all the person was doing was left-click attacking, I think it would be far less enticing. We are going to have special strikes you can incorporate into your build and even stabbing weapons as either an alternate attack, or more specialised weapons like spears. These will be pin-point accurate, based on our epic collisions and bring in a whole new play-style to the early gameplay you're seeing in our videos. We would also like to include double-tap behaviours for dodging and a wide variety of close-quarters utility thaumaturgic powers.
Shields will play an important role in defensive melee combat, and instead of providing a static defensive bonus, when you aren't attacking you will adopt a sort of bracing stance. It will be up to you to angle the shield into blows, and allow you to perform bashes and other offensive maneouvres. Skill points are very limited, and choosing to incorporate a shield into your build will be a significant build choice, rather than just a damage/defence tradeoff.
"The idea is that you and your friends drop your characters in a (persistent) world instance and just do whatever you want. Whether you cooperate or duel or whatever else is entirely up to you. Even if you are cooperating a stray swing of your friend's weapon will still hurt, thaumaturgy affects everything etc. We want AI whether for combat, dialogue or anything else to function in relation to groups as well as individuals (the two things can be conceptually abstracted by AI). Even in single player you may be able to join, lead or form bands of mercenaries, for example."
There is a huge dynamic sandbox element to the game (the idea is a sandbox with lots of depth and complexity) and the general emphasis on dynamic story, dialogue and AI behaviours means that even the more important plot elements should work well whether you are playing alone or with friends. We want lots of major variables to be dynamic and every play through to be significantly different.
Forbes: When I first wrote about Sui Generis, a lot of my readers said it looks more like a tech demo than an RPG. While I was enthusiastic about the nature of the game and the gameplay itself, many people worried that this was technology without a game.
So what is the story, and how will it figure into what we’ve seen already?
Evans: Well, we’re very keen on the concept of writing your own story. Our main focus is creating a world and sandbox elements that have lots of depth to them. Mostly it’s going to be about you discovering the world, learning abilities and growing into whatever it is you will become. The player character is special but what is special about them is that when they die they return to life. No saving and loading and no respawning as if it were normal, the fact that you come back is a big deal within the context of the world.
You don’t do quests and get rewarded for completing them, there’s stuff going and you can get involved. You might actually lose more than you gain by doing so.
Update #12 is intended as an example of a game experience from the player character’s perspective. The events there are dynamic, based on player actions. An apparently simple premise can escalate into almost anything and by doing things you always discover more things to do and get more deeply involved. No content is isolated, there’s an open world and a single vast interconnected underworld rather than a series of small dungeons. Similarly with events, we want everything to be connected and affected by whatever you do or happens.
The main plot is essentially just an extension of this. Theoretically it would be possible to avert the entire affair by accidentally rolling a boulder off a cliff and this landing on the main antagonist. The player would then play the game and perhaps never realise there was supposed to be some big problem to solve. Of course in practice this is quite unlikely!
It’s ambitious but we think this is what an RPG has to be. Who knows how much we can actually do but we have to try! We do have serious ideas about its implementation.
A lot of games promise character choice, dynamic outcomes, and so forth but this almost always turns out to be difficult to implement and few games do it well.
What sort of ideas do you have in regards to implementing this in the game? Do you think there’s a risk that an open-world game can be too open?
There’s no such thing as too open a world. This is not a game with a beggining, a middle and an end. It’s a world where you can do whatever you want and everything you do has permanent consequences. We won’t guide you, if you do something stupid like attack a castle or a group of thaumaturges on your own you’re just asking for it.
Basically what we’d do is take any “quest” or story element and break it down into its components, each component then has activating conditions that are as dynamic as possible. An NPC decision that is specific to a situation would still be subject to various weighted factors that support that decision, it would have to contend with other decisions, including general ones not specific to the situation, for priority. Each decision has associated risks and rewards that vary in dregrees and the NPC’s personal characteristics or mood also weigh in.
We think this is something we can build on gradually, adding more variables, behaviours and ways for NPCs to achieve their goals, even intermediate goals that can improve their odds of reaching other goals. The biggest risk is that this will be limited in scope but we’re not fond of epics, we’d rather have a world that immerses you by being reactive than one that tells a grandiose story. To keep in interesting we want the world itself to be full of mystery and intrigue.
This is not a game where you rush through killing enemies and clicking on highlighted items, it’s a game where you can spend a significant time in every location, looking for keys hidden under objects, hidden switches, journals that may contain important clues, that sort of thing. Even a peasant’s home could hold some dark secrets.
I’ve seen your recent update on blood, fire, and shields. What is your philosophy behind the games combat, both offensive and defensive? What makes Sui Generis different in fighting terms?
We love character advancement but we also love action and a good challenging fight. What we want to achieve is character customisation that allows you to experiment with many different play styles. We want players to invent their own way of playing the game, whether it’s manual skills, tactical combat, stealth, strategy or a combination of things.
There is a lot to experiment with in terms of skills, thaumaturgy and just generally a world driven by massive interactivity and hugely dynamic systems rather than rigid, mechanical ones.
Your Kickstarter pitch makes a big deal out of the physics in the game. Some readers weren’t convinced. What makes the physics unique? Why is this important?
The physics are obviously crucial to the gameplay, even in close quarters combat you get a sense for the weight of your weapon, the forces acting on characters and it makes it deeply engaging. We want a realistic game and even a slight increase in your swing speed or the reach of your weapon can confer a huge advantage in combat. Much better than silly stats. Individual weapons feel different and you have to learn to wield them as a player.
Then there’s the environment, thaumaturgy and everything else. Even without thaumaturgy a table or a door can make the difference between life and death, even a chair. When you start playing around with thaumaturgy and all the ways you can manipulate things you’re opening up all sorts of gameplay possibilities.
And of course there’s realism, immersion. I think anyone who’s seen our video and doesn’t get caught up on the early state of animations or other obvious flaws, or isn’t expecting ninjas who defy the laws of physics, can appreciate this. It’s also just ridiculously fun, it’s easy to just repeat the same fight endlessly because it’s so engrossing, or even just watch someone else do it. Every moment is unique and just damn cool.
The combat looks like it could be quite fun, but a lot of the videos so far have shown a kind of repetitive swinging back-and-forth motion that doesn’t seem to capture the array of possible moves you would hope for. Will swords be limited to this sort of slashing, or will players be able to stab and thrust and do other types of moves as well?
We do plan to include additional combat manoeuvres.
For example, we plan to allow thrusting with a sword by clicking once and then holding the button down while aiming with the cursor. We plan to have other weapon specific attacks and also introducing WASD double tap behaviours that can be used for dodges or lunges. The current swinging however is more tactical and skilful than it might look. You execute your own manoeuvres by a combination of attacks, steps and turns.
The combat has a certain rythm to it and the physics an implicit flow which you can predict because it’s natural, it’s about measuring the motions of your opponent and timing and executing attacks accordingly.
The goals you point to in your Kickstarter are ambitious. Multiplayer looks to be confined to LAN at this point but you write that your ultimate aim is to have some massively multiplayer elements. What do you mean by this? Many RPG fans have grown weary or a bit cautious about the MMO genre, and this sort of thing can be viewed as not only a possible detraction from single-player elements, but an awfully big and potentially risky investment.
We’re definitely not making an MMO and anyway I think it would be impossible with these physics.
When we say “massively multiplayer elements” we mean things like social interaction and perhaps trading within a larger player community and arena fights with spectators. Like a step up from battle.net but nothing more than that. The game is what it is, it’s not strictly a single player experience because it’s not really player centric.
It’s a world first design, the player is a pesky intruder who better watch their step! Things aren’t there to help the player or get killed by them, they’re there to protect their own interests.
As a “world first design” what sort of world should we expect? What types of environments, what scale of towns and cities? Will there be ships, mounts, or any other non-foot travel? Will the world be heavily populated?
It certainly won’t be a planet with continents. It will be relatively small in scale but hopefully densely packed with interesting locations. It won’t feature major climate changes, you can expect green pastures, more forested areas, wastelands and marshes but not much beyond that. We plan on having one major city and a number of towns, villages, castles, fortresses, farms etc. Horses are a pretty fundamental component of the society we want to create, we’re just hoping equestrain physics won’t be too much trouble!
The underworld is also a huge aspect of this world, it’s basically a gigantic non linear “dungeon” that changes and features new elements the deeper you go. It has many entrances and many ways of getting around it. In the underworld you can expect to find themes that are quite in contrast with those of the overworld, it has a very long history predating anything on the surface.
Do you have any plans to license out the engine you’ve created to other developers or publishers? Also, the ease with which you can apparently build terrain and add content to the world seems like it would make for incredibly simple and robust modding—will you provide support for mods?
Definitely. I’m already licensing the engine for non game applications though I have an understanding with the licensee. Obviously it’s going to take quite some work for the engine to be made ready for use by anyone. Modding tools seem like a logical intermediate step towards that licensing goal, but in terms of the game we’re focusing on the game without any concern for how modding might fit into it.
What will be the business model for the game once it’s finished? Are you looking at free-to-play or any other alternative revenue options?
Honestly we don’t have a business model, we’re just making the game we really want to play. We really badly want to play this game. Really.
The only thing we like is the old school way, you buy the game, you’ve got a game to play. We might charge for a significant expansion but never microtransations, we really hate that stuff. We hope to be able continue doing work on the game and providing some new content and features free of charge to anyone who bought it. If we provide online services and need to cover costs then we’ll probably charge a very reasonable subscription fee.
Woop woop, They made that extra tier. I instantly raised my pledge to 30 pounds. :)I asked them whether the £30 tier includes beta access.
"Sui Generis is an open world RPG for the PC featuring ground breaking technology and innovative gameplay"
I heard that like 10 times already
EDIT: Just saw the video.
Holy fuck does this a mouse motion based combat?
Wut
Attack animations still look more like mindless flailling than focused strikes, though.Good news for you, I guess.
Good news for you, I guess.
Vibe, you're probably the first person who took the time to search for existing thread to post in it. That's kinda awesome :D
Xant let's be honest I like your posting habits a lot, but not this one.It's ok, it's just Logen.
More recent gameplay footage:(click to show/hide)
More recent gameplay footage:so u post video where 2 white ppl manipulate 2 black dolls for the entertainment of other white people? are u rasist!? ban! :P(click to show/hide)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K1DtyGAuB0Video explains stabs/overhead too... at least a bit.
Any tips for beating the maul guy?
Phew, finally beat expert.
WHAT IS THE EXANIMA BETA?
We call it a beta but really this is more indicative of what tier of backer has access to it than anything else. We've reached a level of quality and functionality that we're happy with, we've used our alpha testing period to refine core gameplay and weed out all the bugs we could find. Exanima is a prelude to a game that is still in development and our focus has been on getting the most fundamental things right and solve any issues before we start piling on more features.
The purpose of Exanima is to give all of you something to play and provide feeback on as we complete development of Sui Generis. It is also designed as a standalone game that we can release to raise further funds for the final stretch of development. It is designed as a slice of Sui Generis. It is set in the same world some 20 years earlier, it tries to convey the existence of this world beyond it and the events taking place at this time are of some importance. You could see Exanima as what a long trip into the underworld in Sui Generis might be like, we have been faithful to it in every regard.
Despite all of this it is important to remember that while Exanima could be seen as a slice of SG as an actual game it doesn't have much in common with it. It's made from the same ingredients but follows a completely different recipe. More importantly we've prepared the finest dough and baked it to perfection but we're still adding the final icing that will make it taste delicious.
been playing the steam exanima release. noone liking it?I am liking it very much. The controls need time getting accustomed to but there really isn't a better alternative(at least not yet) if you still want to keep the precision the current system offers.
It takes some time to get used to the combat, but I had the feeling that while the combat system is pretty open ended, player lacks 'control' of his character, resulting in your character often doing silly stuff.You learn to attack and move more elegantly as you play the game. I am not saying that the animations are perfect either atm, they still need polish for sure.
The storymode is just so frustrating because there is no saveoption and no healing (at least at the point I am). So if you take too much damage from the first oponent you can restart rightaway.I think they just added a checkpoint system after every level in a patch a day ago. You probably have to turn it on from somewhere first, though.
Really promising game. Second time now I played Examina after they recently had a rather biggish update - you can now venture forth through the portal in lvl 3.You can go past the portal now? Time to play exanima again!
You can go past the portal now? Time to play exanima again!