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.
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.
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.
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
Exanima 0.8.4
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
Dedicated movement and aiming controls
Feathered object and UI cursor interaction
Full menu and UI navigation and interaction
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
Exanima 0.8.3
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.
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: Full size image
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.
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:
The added depth also adds lots of visual clarity, making it easier to see, especially in relative darkness.
The GI also allows glowing objects and effects to cast their glow on nearby surfaces and their own soft shadows, without any expensive light sources being involved. These can have any shape, which has many applications and will be hugely important for the upcoming force thaumaturgy.
Here's an example of the classic blue jar using the new GI. The moving crate casts soft shadows and can even block the glow close up.
HUGE ASSET REMASTER
New rendering engine and material system also meant remastering just about every material and texture in the game. Items mostly took care of themselves with the new procedural systems, but the game has thousands of unique props and other assets. Core character and creature assets were remastered, with undead receiving big visual upgrades. Almost all materials throughout the game were made new, many older assets were completely rebuilt from scratch, including early game environments.
Thanks to our new renderer and tools this was a very smooth process and throughout we've built a huge library of materials and procedural workflows for future content too.
ARENA OVERHAUL
Before Exanima 1.0 we wanted to make arena into a proper game, more structured, compelling and immersive, with goals, rather than just an endless sequence of pointless fights. It also needed some important quality of life and balance improvements. There have been a lot of changes, both specific and general that we feel puts arena in a much better place for release, but we have also laid a foundation to do much more with it in future and we have a lot of interesting ideas. There are also some relatively small, but important changes which will come sooner.
Please note that the new arena mode comes with a complete wipe of previous arena saves.
Tournaments are a new end game activity for arena. Once your fighters reach master rank they can participate in weekly tournaments that provide high end weapons and special armour rewards. Tournaments are a series of 6 events with increasing ranks and special match types, sometimes with weapons restrictions applied.
In tournaments you compete against the best fighters of rival companies, these are more intelligently outfitted with better equipment and provide more of a challenge. You can enter as many events of a tournament as you like, but you must win at least 3 and not tie with another company.
Every four tournaments count as a season, if you manage to win all four you will be awarded a high end, ornate suit of armour. There are several such suits in the reward pool.
The match system has been overhauled and many new match types introduced, including 1v2 and 1v3 modes. Regular matches are now split into standard and specials. Standard matches can be configured to your preference and run as much as you like. Each day a different selection of special matches is available.
New mechanics have been introduced and much has been improved. Daily upkeep for your staff is properly implemented, but this is offset by greatly increased prizes and the ability to do up to 3 matches each day instead of just one. You can now balance the passage of time against your earning and training depending on your current goals.
A new management screen provides many new features. A report notifies you of events and provides quick shortcuts to take actions. Daily financials are given and records for your company are tracked.
A new arsenal has 5 tabs per category providing 5 times as much room for your items. Items now stay exactly where you place them instead of being populated randomly. Items that you equip to your fighters or move into the environment now remain in your arsenal but are highlighted accordingly, so you can always see everything you own. This also means that if you decorate your base with your items they can still be used in matches and will not be lost in case of content updates.
Character management has been simplified and improved. The confusing double inventory is gone and a single pane shows all items assigned to the character. These also stay arranged as you put them, and equipped items are highlighted so you can easily see exactly what they are. Skills are immediately accessible without clicking through an additional screen.
A new physician NPC can be hired. Physicians help your fighters recover faster from injury. Importantly they can also save fighters that would have died in a match, so long as their injuries are not too severe.
A new trainer NPC improves the rate at which your fighters learn skills and can even teach skills from their own repertoire to idle fighters. Which skills can be learned directly from the trainer depends on what the trainer knows, so pick one carefully.
New arenas, new music tracks and new armour are also in this update, changes to much of the existing content as well as of course the countless new weapons and improvements to items. We still have quite a lot of new content to sort through and finalise lined up, as well some as some features that you can expect to see in smaller updates over the next few weeks.
NEW USER INTERFACE
Recently we had to redesign a lot of the game's interfaces, and for some time now we've been wanting to replace that ugly computer-softwary UI for something more elegant and versatile. This was the time to do it.
The new UI had to be simple, compact and still work for complex controls and layouts. We also needed it to work well with negative spaces. We'd been throwing concepts around with input from the community for years, but we hadn't found something we liked yet. Finally we came up with a design that managed to tick all the boxes.
The new UI system still supports functional modular interfaces, but using designed elements rather than just some shaded boxes. It also easily integrates more custom elements and works well for just about any compact or sparse layout. It also finally all scales properly up to 4k resolutions.
CURSOR CUSTOMISATION
We're not quite ready with the new settings screen yet, but we know many of you have been anxiously awaiting options to customise your cursors. We have already implemented all the functionality for it, so as a temporary measure we've allowed you do this via the ini file.
Here's an example that changes the non combat cursor to ivory, the combat cursor to orange and makes cursors 50% larger:
The size is a percentage value, the colours are RGBA hex codes, where the final 2 digits represent alpha (opacity). If you're not familiar with hex colours you can use an online colour picker like this one here: https://rgbacolorpicker.com/hex-color-picker (note that you must add an alpha value like "ff" at the end).
You can find the Exanima.ini file in %APPDATA%\Exanima (paste this into the windows search box).
COMBAT AI OVERHAUL
Exanima has a steep learning curve with physics and very nuanced controls, but once past that initial hurdle things are very different. There's a lot of very complex prediction, tactics and fine manipulation of physics involved. These are skills humans naturally excel at, and there is no artificial difficulty in Exanima, so an experienced player will find beating simple AI very trivial.
Our goal isn't to generally increase difficulty, but rather to make AI behaviour less predictable and exploitable, so that beating it isn't just a matter of repeating the same well timed move. We also wanted to create more of a difference between unskilled and skilled AI, so that important characters or tournaments could feel more challenging than regular opponents.
Our original plan was to give AI a selection of different tactics to draw from, this would make AI more diverse and less predictable. This is a nice idea, but once we implemented the framework for it and began testing we realised that the AI needed more fundamental changes.
This led us to reworking the AI from the ground up, with more tactical behaviour and prediction based on what's actually happening in the physics than predefined rules. There is a much better core system here making AI more intelligent and engaging. We will continue to adjust this, focusing more on high level decision making now, and we do have a framework for the tactics system that we still plan to use.
Changelog for version 0.8.3:
Many new realistic procedural weapons with virtually infinite variants
New in-depth property and randomisation systems for all items
New story mode itemisation mechanics and consumables
Completely new rendering engine
Necessary to solve GPU driver support issues
Drastically improved performance
Fast and efficient high quality materials
Fast and versatile dynamic global illumination
Improved shadows, reflections and more
Tight integration of new procedural assets
Removed hard light source limit and dynamic light bottlenecks
Improved weather effects
Many new advanced capabilities
Complete arena overhaul
New company based management features
Tournament system with special rewards and mechanics
New match system with configurable matches
Eight new match types
New expanded and improved arsenal
Improved character management system
New Physician NPC hireling
New Trainer NPC hireling
Day system with trade-offs for progress and time
Player customisable company emblem
Company record tracking
Increased match prizes and other balance changes
New arenas, more coming very soon
New music tracks, updates to some old music
Various new items of clothing and armour
Remastered core character and creature assets
Greatly improved visuals for undead and corpses
New facial hair with 6 styles
Remastered most game assets for new renderer
Improved many combat motions
Characters dynamically correct edge alignment during attacks
Improved accuracy of overhead attacks
New smarter combat AI
New skin based user interface system
Complete graphical overhaul of all game interfaces
Full UI scaling up to 4k resolutions
Cursor colours and cursor size can now be changed in the ini file
New more varied sound environments
New sound effects for wet ground
Improved movement over uneven ground
Improved item and NPC outfit generation
Brushes can now be used to clean dirt off items
Many content changes, particularly in early game
New early game music track
Reworked main theme with live instruments
New in game lore
Improved body dragging behaviour
Improved camera controls
Improved Security skill technique
Improved Embolden power
Tokens now work even while stored in containers
Massive number of bug and content fixes
Many other improvements and optimisations
WHAT'S NEXT?
There's quite a few things we've been working that didn't quite make it into this release, such as dyes and some general improvements to weapon and combat mechanics. There's also more arenas and some items we still need to add. These things will be added over the next few weeks.
Minor additions aside, from now until full release this is pretty much a wrap on the arena mode. Now we will be focusing entirely on completing the story. The next update will include one of the 3 remaining maps and force thaumaturgy.
We've just put a huge amount of work into core game systems, our engine and our content creation tools and we wanted this update to be really complete, especially as it comes with an arena save wipe. The frequent updates on the beta branch with constant feedback from the community was beneficial, so we'll likely continue to use the beta branch, but also release some smaller incremental updates in general.
Anyone can opt into the beta branch at any time. We'd also like to remind everyone that we post weekly progress updates on our own forums and Steam. You can follow us on Twitter and join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Z5aV2bF
Thanks and have fun,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.8 Released
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.
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.
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.
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
Exanima 0.7.3 Released
We're still working hard on the upcoming major update which includes mind thaumaturgy and two new areas, but we wanted to do an intermediate update and make many improvements to the core gameplay experience. We do also have some small but noteworthy content additions.
FLAILS!
We've heard again and again how much you want flails, so we've added... Surprise mechanics! Just keep opening those Happy Player Boxes and maybe, eventually, you'll get a flail!
What..? Don't you people have credit cards?
Jokes aside, flails didn't exactly come cheap to us, with a surprising amount of issues to overcome with physics, animation, inventory functions, world interaction, blood decals, sound mechanics, damage, parrying, combat AI... Oof! But they're a lot of fun so we think it paid off, and along the way, touching on all these systems, we've paved the road for other upcoming features and mechanics.
In arena, set that merchant to look for adept weapons and you should have one in no time. They can also be found in the main game mode.
DIVINATION
You can now find Diviner's Decks. The cards expose various elements of the lore through the beautiful art of Burgzaza, but can they also expose what the future may hold? Keep an eye out for cryptic messages in future release notes...
Changes in Exanima version 0.7.3:
<*>Flail weapon
<*>Diviner's Decks
<*>New encounter type in newest area
<*>The proctor has a fancy new sword (yes, changing grips is on the way)
<*>Improved hair physics
<*>Characters can no longer initiate attacks while in a weakened or staggered state
<*>Improved weapon sticking and penetration mechanics
<*>Improved character striking motions on successful hits
<*>Improved character balance on uneven ground
<*>Removed a cause of frequent tripping during locomotion
<*>Improved dynamic and rapid recovery from tripping during locomotion
<*>Greatly improved stagger and impact response during locomotion
<*>Smoother transitions into and from locomotive states
<*>Smoother recovery from staggers
<*>Fixed some AI being overly passive / peaceful
<*>Fixed AI almost never fleeing
<*>Characters are less reluctant to position themselves in tight spaces in combat
<*>Improved mechanics for staggering from shield blocking
<*>Shield blocking speeds are now correctly dependent on weight and stamina
<*>Improved various shield combat motions
<*>Various small animation and combat tweaks
<*>Improved keyboard running controls
<*>Improved arsenal and shop window loading times
<*>Fixed characters sometimes becoming stuck in a crouched position
<*>Fixed keys not working after being carried to another area
<*>Fixed equipped unique weapons sometimes transforming into other items
<*>Fixed occasional discoloured and black icons
<*>Many content fixes and tweaks
Exanima 0.7.2.1 Released
GRADUAL ASYNCHRONOUS TEXTURE LOADING
In an effort to fix some issues with loading heavier zones we've been making some fairly big changes to how our engine handles loading content. Textures are now loaded gradually in the background after a new zone has loaded. Peak RAM and video RAM usage are greatly reduced, and loading times are improved.
While doing this we took a thorough look at loading performance, and found various ways in which loading times can be further reduced, by a lot. We will likely implement and roll out these changes over the next few updates, and hope to eventually see some very fast load times. This should help make the late game feel more like one big area rather than a set of distant locations.
CHECKPOINT AND SAVING ZONE CHANGES
The way saving works when changing zones has been improved. The game would previously save and load on the transition zone, forcing you to immediately enter the next zone when reloading, and effectively producing a double loading screen.
Now when loading you will appear just before the entrance, and can choose whether to enter the next zone or not. In the case of checkpoints, you'll be able to continue playing on the current zone, then create a new updated checkpoint when entering the next zone again.
COMBAT MOTION UPDATES
The muscle changes in 0.7.2 have affected many motions in unpredictable ways. We're gradually looking what's changed and hearing feedback, reviewing the motions and updating them. Two handed and one handed weapons have been updated to correct unwanted vectors and things have been smoothed out and refined.
This, as with all animation and combat related things, is an ongoing process, so keep giving us feedback.
List of changes in version 0.7.2.1:
Asynchronous texture loads reduce resource usage and loading times
Improved zone change saving mechanics
Adjusted many combat motions to new muscle systems
Improved and optimised numerous assets
All things skeletal got some visual upgrades
Scales finally have physics!
Player placement of articulated bodies now works correctly
Improved subsurface scattering shaders
Updated some creature materials and textures
Fixed many headers preventing texture detail setting from working correctly
Fixed some double doors being difficult to open
Fixed some shadowing issues with night vision
Fixed some weapons sometimes not rendering correctly
Fixed tokens sometimes spawning later than when they're useful
Fixed becoming stuck when climbing the collapsed entrance on level one
Numerous content and small bug fixes
Exanima 0.7.2 Released
UNDER AND BELOW
The crossroads has received some changes, and while you're there look out for dark tunnels...
A large new area features an all new environment, new creature types, new items and takes advantage of various new level building and engine features. We won't spoil anything, but we hope you enjoy the atmosphere and different pace of gameplay we've introduced here. This also reveals important aspects of the game world.
This level represents the final core set of assets required to complete the game, built using new tools and overcoming various development challenges. This is the first of multiple of its kind, which will begin to play an important role. In coming updates we'll be adding more features, mechanics and creatures to the body of content we're introducing here.
DIALOGUE PART TWO
In the last update we introduced a very basic version of our dialogue system. Since then we've been expanding its functionality to support future content. We want to create a dialogue system that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the game and feels dynamic, rather than being a separate mode. The idea is that you can talk while doing anything else, discuss what is happening as it happens, point to things and say something about them, or ask someone to interact with them, converse with multiple people at once, join or leave conversations that are already under way, use contextually appropriate dialogue, even in combat, and generally treat dialogue as a functional and natural part of interaction, just like in real life.
Some of this doesn't have a role in Exanima yet, but the core functionality is now all there. We will soon be introducing more NPCs, and new mechanics that will take full advantage of the system. In this update we have added new dialogue with Derrin, using new scripting, role functionality and AI system interactions. There's a lot of moving parts to making the dialogue feel spontaneous and dynamic, so we'll be keeping an eye on this and refining the mechanics for more dialogue to come. Note that you may not experience all dialogue on every playthrough, as the conditions can be complex.
Our dialogue authoring tools have also received big upgrades, allowing us to more easily create and modify large complex dialogue structures and automate common scripting tasks, which can all be quite difficult and daunting!
MUNDANE ITEMS
Those that have followed us more closely may know that our priority is to create a believable and immersive game world. Everything we do, from physics to itemisation is with that goal in mind.
In this update we introduce a huge number of "mundane" items. These are items that do not often have a practical use for the player, but help create the setting and tell a story. We design our environments to have practical purpose and reason, accurately recreating real world locations, devices and processes. Now we've built a system for randomly introducing a vast number of items in appropriate contexts, whatever those might be in a detailed game world.
We've now reached over a thousand items in the game. The new items make the many containers in the game much more interesting to rummage in, rather than being simply empty or holding a single item you've seen many times before. There are many new improvised weapons among these (including some that may not seem to be weapons until you try to use them as such). In future we will also be introducing new practical applications for more items.
IN GAME MAPS
We've always been opposed to an overlay navigation system that would cause you to focus your attention on a UI rather than the game world itself, but what's an RPG without maps? In this update we introduce maps as objects that you can find in the environment, and consult as you would in the real world.
Using our constantly improving texture tools, we've developed a system to procedurally create appealing maps with a hand drawn style. This allows us to easily produce and update maps for locations in the game, and make each one of them look unique in every detail.
ANIMATION IMPROVEMENTS
We are trying to avoid investing even more time into it, but Exanima's character physics system is a huge beast in need of constant upgrades and maintenance. In this update we introduce new creatures whose proportions and movements proved very problematic. We've had to make extensive changes to some core aspects of character motion, resulting in some great general improvements to how characters move. We didn't quite stop there either.
Characters are much better at controlling their virtual muscles, resulting in smoother, faster and more precise movement. This corrects a lot of wobbly and floppy looking motion. We've also made legs move more precisely and perform less jittery corrective movements. Characters pause less between steps and turns, resulting in more fluid and responsive movement in combat. Head movement was also improved, becoming much more stable and tracking more accurately. The dynamic balancer and various other things have also been improved.
You can see a quick video of the improved animation in action here. A greatsword is used, which due to its size was particularly prone to wobbly movements in earlier versions:
https://youtu.be/mgam61SG3-c
GRAPHICAL IMPROVEMENTS
Exanima has a unique aesthetic that is built on our own graphics engine and produced using our own content creation tools. We are constantly improving our engine and tools, and updating the game's graphics to reflect the current state of them, as well as increasing standards of quality. In this update we have various new rendering features and improvements, and we've built new graphics and updated assets using some new tools and upgraded versions of existing tools.
List of changes in 0.7.2:
Large new level featuring all new environment
Two completely new encounter types
Many new items, including some with special properties
Huge amount of mundane items and objects
Various new dialogues, from quick comments to lore discussions
In game lootable maps
Item randomisation system for large quantities of items and contexts
Significant additions and improvements to crossroads area
Two new arena music tracks (and one in story)
Improved character muscle control
More fluid combat movement
More precise and decisive leg movement
Better head motion and tracking
Dynamic balancer improvements
NPC initiated dialogue with reply mechanic
Emotion and context driven dialogue interactions
Ability to change topics during conversation
Dialogue can be progressed faster with rapid response
Ability to resume interrupted dialogue
Combat AI adjustments based on community feedback
Adjusted thrusts to have similar timings to other attacks
Improved slash damage mechanics
New environment features and structure
Better interactivity with many objects
Improved quality of many assets
Improved shading quality and many materials
Improved physics performance
Improved AI path-finding and moving object avoidance
Improved post-processing and effects
User interface improvements
Improved behaviour and stability of articulated bodies
A certain gentleman has refined his combat skills
Tweaked energy mechanics of a certain unique armour
Fixed incorrect role configurations on certain characters
Fixed relations with AI characters not evolving as intended
Fixed NPCs having incorrect dispositions towards new encounters
Improved the effects of certain items that help you see
Fixed health values not saving correctly
Fixed ongoing healing effects not saving correctly
Fixed missing procedural item textures when loading many items
Fixed some systems experiencing freezes after inventory interactions
Fixed potential black icons from window and task changes
Fixed a crash occurring when opening an already open container in the inventory
Fixed corrupted 3D grass on Intel graphics
WHAT'S NEXT?
This update is only a part of what we've been working on. There are multiple levels already in the works, thaumaturgy is nearly ready to be added, more creatures are coming and various other features are at various stages of completion. We've done a lot of "housekeeping" over the past months, still upgrading engine systems and tools, but we hope to focus on more gameplay relevant features and content from now on.
The next major update will feature thaumaturgy and more story content. This will likely be followed by a smaller arena focused update that also introduces procedural weapons. The remaining updates will focus adding the last story content, more in depth NPC interaction and various less critical gameplay features.
Exanima 0.7.0
NEW AND IMPROVED CONTENT
Two new levels have been added to the game, featuring all new content, and also music. With these maps we've pushed for a new level of quality, detail and variety, taking advantage of new engine features and development tools. The first 3 levels of the game have also undergone extensive changes and improvements, an updated tileset and a lot of all new exclusive items.
Over 130 new items have been added across the game, including new item types like bevors and hats. We've also remastered or replaced many assets to better fit the game's current level of quality and aesthetics.
COMPANIONS
In this update you can meet your first potential long term ally. This provides a whole new dynamic and a fresh way to experience the game.
This was an important first step for the NPC interactions to come. With Exanima's inherent complexity, creating a competent companion was not simple. He is an asset to any player, and we will continue to make companions smarter and more self-sufficient until they feel almost like equals. We will expand on possible interactions, and importantly dialogue, which we can also use to better expose the story and lore.
Your companion will gain experience and learn new skills, much as you do. They will also learn to fight better, become more confident and undergo some other changes in their character.
DIALOGUE SYSTEM
Dialogue makes a first appearance in this update. We are still only using dialogue in a basic capacity, but it will soon become a much more prominent and important feature in the game.
Our goal with dialogue is something fully real-time and interactive. It is not a separate mode of interaction, but a part of it. You can talk while performing any action. Dialogue can have practical applications, you can point at something or someone, even while walking, and say something relevant. Tactical applications during combat can also be part of the same dialogue system. People can randomly witness the conversations of others, and perhaps join in, or simply learn something. There are countless applications, it is an implicit part of the world and how you interact with it.
NEW DYNAMIC BALANCER
You may have noticed that Exanima's world has been suspiciously flat. Our characters have not been good at moving or keeping their balance otherwise, and when characters lost balance they'd flop like a sack of potatoes.
This is no longer the case. The "balancer" is what has allowed characters make dynamic movements in combat and stay upright. This was overhauled to deal with more difficult ground, such as stairs or rocky slopes, and it is now active all the time, not just in combat. This new balancer does more than just upright movement, it functions even when tumbling or cartwheeling through the air, allowing characters to control more motions and regain their footing dynamically. Characters can now trip, slip, jump off ledges and generally deal with loss of balance without just falling over and resetting. Character can also recover quicker depending on the severity of the fall.
With this come various improvements to movement both in and out combat. In combat movement is now faster and also more responsive, allowing characters to quickly move in new directions without having to shuffle their feet as much.
ALL THINGS AI
Since we began our journey to make a game, our most ambitious goals have been with AI. What we're trying to do, as much as possible, is that if you imagine an approach to a situation, or a way you can modify or prevent an outctome, you probably can. For example, say you were promised a reward, but rather than complete the task, you decide to find out where the reward is stored and steal it. Something like this would not normally be possible, and so called "AI" is notoriously bad if you veer off the scripted path.
There is much more we want in terms of dynamic interactions with AI, but we've been focused on core gameplay features, and have neglected huge aspects of the game, for too long. In order to complete Exanima's story and content, we had to introduce major new features, like intelligent friendly NPCs, dialogue and mind thaumaturgy. If we tried to build these features without the proper foundations we'd ultimately get nowhere. We've now taken the time (perhaps too long!) to completely rebuild every aspect of our AI.
CORE AI FUNCTIONS
We want all our AI encounters to appear like living, thinking beings, not mindless drones that blindly perform a specific task. They are driven by emotions and other states of mind, they have varying personalities, they remember interactions with others and form relationships, they have social and non selfish behaviours.
You might startle someone unexpectedly and cause them to become scared or agitated, but they may calm and reassess the situation. They might defend themselves, but not wish to harm their attacker and behave accordingly. They can understand a stranger fighting in their defence, and may be grateful. They might act to defend someone they care about. They can even, potentially, form social groups among themselves. These are some simple examples of things that are not predefined game mechanics, but that occur organically as part of the simulation. Players and NPCs are treated in the same exact way, based on observable behaviour alone. There is no cheating, no making decisions based on things they shouldn't know.
This is basically our artificial brain, emotions, memory, decision making, impulsive behaviour. But what of more structured and complex tasks? If we were to now simply override it with strictly scripted behaviours, it would become irrelevant.
THE ROLE SYSTEM
As soon as you tell NPCs to behave in a certain way and also give the player freedom to act as they please, things can start to go very wrong. It is a very difficult problem, and the less restrictions you place on the player, and the mechanics of the game world, the more difficult it becomes. Player and mechanical freedom are at the core of our design philosophy, we have spent years devising a solution to these problems, a solution we call the "role system".
"Roles" are basically collections of traits and behaviours. They can be specific and character defining, such as "King of Ardent" or very situational such as "person crossing bridge", they can also be relational, such as "friend" or "customer". They can be real or assumed, they can influence personalities, spread information, reputations and conflicts, and model various real world behavioural effects. Single characters have many roles assigned at once, they come and go, change and evolve.
There is a lot of complexity behind how roles function and interact, but the core concept is that we can keep building our library of roles, to expand on how characters can behave, adapt to situations, perceive and relate to eachother, and use the same tools and systems to also define more specific behaviours, without locking characters into situationally inappropriate ones.
This will be a long journey, but is essentially now a matter of content. Already now the role system is modelling all our behaviour, and we have the means and tools to keep building more.
AND MORE AI
Still falling under the AI umbrella, we felt it was time to address other things too. Combat AI as been completely rebuilt, it is more varied and much more tactical, allowing the most skilled AI to keep experienced players on their toes and not just fall into simple but effective patterns. It can be proficient with different fighting styles and weapons, and it is much more careful about accidentally hitting allies. Pathfinding has also been updated to negotiate more complex environments, avoid moving objects and more.
These are all complex systems, and all fresh from the production line. It will no doubt take us some time to iron out the kinks and especially to actually take advantage of new features. But we now have a true solid foundation, and an array of tools at our disposal to create better and more interesting AI.
Changelog for 0.7.0:
Large new late game area, the Crossroads
New optional area, the Catacombs
Over 130 new items
Reworked and improved first 3 levels of the game
First companion NPC introduced
Dialogue system
Completely rebuilt AI systems*
All new combat AI
More intelligent and tactical behaviour
Improved timing and footwork
Better proficiency with different weapons
More fluid and human-like AI inputs
More pronounced difference between AI skill levels
AI can smartly avoid friendly fire
New dynamic balancer*
Greatly improved movement on uneven ground
Increased speed and fluidity of combat movement
More accurate and responsive cursor control
Improved general animation fluidity
Improved thrust mechanics and animation
Improved feint mechanics
Improved armour damage mitigation mechanics
Added a stagger effects for blocking with a shield on low stamina
It is no longer possible to defend with depleted stamina
Improved walking and running control and animations
Improved hit reactions and death animations
Many specific animation improvements for all character types
Extensive additions to environment features and variety
More detailed and varied ground surfaces
Improved rendering quality, effects and post-processing
Improved texture asset production quality
Improved shading and global illumination
Better wear effects on armour featuring dents and more
Visual improvements to item icons
Full UI support for 1440p (4k is on the way)
Cursors that scale with resolution (customisations coming)
Improved combat experience gain mechanics
Improved lore related experience gains
Perfomance improvements
Improved loading times
Fixed weapons sometimes not sliding free colliding with environment
Fixed characters simply giving up when suspended over a high drop
Fixed issues caused by alt-tabbing during loading screens
Fixed vsync not working correctly on some systems
Fixed not being able to switch weapons while under attack
Fixed Sprint to Dash input option not working correctly
When an arena fighter ranks up, the previously highest loadout is copied
Increased weapon variety of arena master level fighters
Introduced RNG balancing for arena opponent generation
Improved random NPC generation and fashion sense
Short spears can now be used one handed
Various changes to the practice arena opponents
Many more fixes and small improvements
MORE ON THE WAY
We're going to be rapidly adding to what these new features bring to the game, but we didn't want to keep you waiting any longer. We've got a lot more lined for upcoming updates too.
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.6.5.4
This update features a large number of improvements, largely based on recent feedback and to balance recent changes. We've also finalised some features that had been incomplete for some time.
Cumulative changelog from 0.6.5.3 to 0.6.5.4:
Increased parrying speed
Increased impact mitigation for many armour types
Item quality now affects trade values
Exceptional items now come in all colours and variants
Reintroduced superior soft leather goods
Correct lacquered materials for all quality levels
Match prizes substantially increased
Added dynamic brightness adjustment for darker arenas and weather
Reduced output lag and improved visual accuracy of simulation results
This was already good, but now it's even better!
Improved cursor tracking accuracy during rapid player movement
Fixed weapon masses being calculated incorrectly and inconsistently
Improved two handed sword overhead attacks
Added many new items to early story content
Redesigned many early story encounters
New undead voices
Fixed torch easily getting caught in the environment
Fixed cloth collisions not working
Added a warning when entering manager in a match
Added colour coding to fighter names in match view
Many fixes, tweaks and performance improvements
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.6.5.3
We released 0.6.5.2 as soon as we could, and we promised more updates soon. This update includes the second outdoor arena and various improvements that didn't quite make it into 0.6.5.2. More is on the way.
We've made some changes to how characters tense their arm muscles during attacks. This was done in response to some long standing concerns about attacks being weak and difficult to control under some conditions. The change has corrected these issues and made swings generally faster and more predictable. It has been in beta testing with very positive feedback so far, but may still require some balancing.
Changelog from 0.6.5.2 to 0.6.5.3:
New outdoor arena: The Maw
Increased the strength characters put into attacks
First functional cloth physics
Wind effects
Sandals added, four different pairs
Made shields a less popular choice for NPCs
Fixed a bug giving some containers a very low capacity
Fixed various terrain rendering issues on Intel HD Graphics
Fixed lacquered metal rendering (only new items for now)
Rolled back to non adaptive VSync for non Nvidia hardware
