In the past months we've been trying to break free of the endless cycle of improving core features and instead focus on adding what's needed to finish the game. This includes quite a few things, but the really crucial ones are terrain, dialogue and thaumaturgy. Those are what we need to continue and complete the story.
Adding terrain was a late decision. We had an incomplete terrain system, and we thought to get it to a state where we could use it for some outdoor arenas. Since then everything's been hugely improved and optimised to support larger and more complex maps, many more dynamic lights and objects, more detailed and realistic graphics and physics, and many other features and improvements.
Our terrain wasn't just incomplete, it was fundamentally outdated, it could never support all the things we've come to rely on. We could have maybe worked around these limitations, but it would have been a waste of time. We had to completely redesign and redevelop it.
Knowing we had to go back to the drawing board, making an improved and complete terrain system that could also support all these advances, we thought we should take it a step further. Rather than build our engine around two types of environments, we could try to adapt everything to work in the same way, make a unified system that could seamlessly integrate terrain and modular environments.
It would take a lot of work, not only to develop the terrain system, but also to abandon the comfortable constrains of highly segmented and flat environments. The payoff was clearly huge though, it opened up many exciting possibilities for future level design and visual variety.
After much head scratching, prototyping, developing and refining we finally succeeded. We have a fully functional integrated terrain system with all the bells and whistles. We have our first outdoor arenas, we're preparing to release new story content with it and we will also be adding it to existing content.
WHAT'S NEW IN 0.6.5.2
Version 0.6.5.2 features the new terrain system in the form of arena matches that take place outdoors, with variable time of day and weather conditions. Many new items have been added, some important new features and a host of critical or required changes.
There's more content and additions that are very nearly ready, but this much has made it through testing and seems stable enough for you to get your hands on it. We'll be releasing some more updates shortly.
While we've tried to avoid spending time on improving things, a few improvements snuck their way in as we worked. There's some notable upgrades to combat physics and animation, and in adapting things to bright sunlit settings we've made some nice enhancements to lighting.
Changelog for 0.6.5.2:
Terrain based outdoor arenas
Time of day and weather system
Many new items, including:
Brigandines
New shields, including kite shields
Many new footwear items
Jackets
Complete in game manual
Improved combat, animation and physics
Local reflections
Lighting improvements
New arena music
Improved interactivity for many common objects
Improvements to pugilism impact mechanics
Alternative characters require unlocking (one unlockable now)
Introduced inventory and container space mechanics
New portable containers
Smart randomisation of match locations and music
Added shopkeeper to arena
Added encumbrance gauge to management screen
Added restart prompt to practice arena after death
Improved in game menus
Many sound improvements
Various updated graphical assets
Functional and visual tweaks to equipment
Numerous other improvements and fixes
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.6.4.3 Released
We're working towards some major features to support the rest of the story content and bring it to its conclusion, these are not ready yet though so in the meantime we've expanded on the arena mode and core gameplay with some really big improvements.
Initially we focused on longer term goals, thinking we would add some skills and arena features for a nice intermediate update. When it came to adding these features however we found that they placed demands on our animation and other systems that they couldn't meet. This led to the most thorough and extensive overhaul of our animation system yet. Improving animation and gameplay has been a constant and often fruitless struggle from the first day of development. Realistically we'll never consider it truly finished, but this latest iteration has certainly brought them to a new level.
As usual, the update took longer than expected. We've got a lot of stuff that's almost done and we would have liked to include it, but we don't want to keep you waiting any longer. The current version should be stable and brings a lot of big improvements. Over the next few days we'll be releasing a series of smaller updates as the rest of the features and content are completed.
There's a few incomplete things still, notably the lack of ceilings in ogre matches can on rare occasion lead to an unfortunate death. We will correct this ASAP.
Here's the changelog for version 0.6.4.3:
Ogre matches in arena mode (more tiers coming)
New Close Combat skill technique: Dual Wield
New Shield skill technique: Synchrony
New Shield skill technique: Ward
New Shield skill technique: Persist
New Shield skill technique: Endure
New Shield skill technique: Mobility
Added shield block stamina mechanic
Added shield item statistics
Added merchant hireling NPC in arena mode
Hireling NPCs now come with various ranks and equipment
Many new items (more on the way)
Improved footwork and balance
Improved combat stances
Reworked all combat and most other animations
Improved parrying and blocking
Improved thrust accuracy and power
Improved action transitions and dynamic posing
Sped up recovery from falling
Various improvements and fixes to combat mechanics
Improved AI combat tactics
Improved NPC equipment choices
More variety in master level opponents
Gave AI more human-like use of controls
LtR swings are now easier to execute
Various graphical improvements
Analogue stick movement via XInput
Numerous bug fixes and improvements
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 6.3.3
So, here's the big update many of you have been waiting for. It has been in the beta branch for some time now. It improves almost every aspect of the game and brings a lot of new content.
This version is still missing a couple of areas from the new map, these will be added within the next couple of days. You may want to hold off playing the new content until then, but you'll want to play this improved version of the game either way.
Here's a list of major changes in this version:
Huge new map to explore, roughly as large as the first 3 levels combined
New environment, encounters and mechanics
Many new items
Advanced lightning / electricity
New itemisation features
Improved environment reflections
Improved shadows
Improved post-processing and atmospherics
New lighting engine features and effects
Improved animation
Improved footwork and movement
More realistic character balance behaviour
Improved character articulation physics
Improved equipment graphics
More accurate weapon balance and mass
Weapon specific swing behaviour
Increased zoom levels
Improved camera behaviour
Added alternative playable characters
New music
Graphical improvements to some existing levels
Pausing the game now pauses all sound effects
Improved visuals on Intel HD Graphics
Countless bug fixes and small enhancements
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.6.2.0
We're working on a lot of different things at the moment, the biggest focus being on getting the rest of the story content done. We're expanding significantly on what can be done in terms of level design, it's going to take us a little while to get it all working, but it will make things a lot more interesting and varied. Once we've got the basics working we can resume doing more frequent smaller updates, and we will release some new content quite soon.
In this update we've got a couple of new fairly important features, and some really nice gameplay improvements.
Changes in 0.6.2
Switch between two sets of weapons with a key press
unconsciousness mechanic in story mode
Greatly improved combat movement control and smoothness
More precise and predictable control over dashes
Removed sways and stumbles when ending dashes
No more falling over from huge lunging swings
More realistic and satisfying character reactions to hits
Improved physics and behaviours when losing balance and falling
Reduced graphical output lag from simulation
Improved supersampling motion smoothing
Improvements to piercing and crushing damage mechanics
Improved thrusting with 2 handed weapons
Numerous animation improvements
AI combat and pathfinding improvements
Removed speedup after the simulation fails to remain synched
Many bug fixes and tweaks
UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Before you start thinking that we're trying to make the game easier, know that this feature was planned long before release. Those who have followed the game long enough can confirm this. One feature of our two-tiered health system is to allow both death and knockouts. Our earliest release of the game was just the practice arena, with an already skilled playerbase and initially very little content, we kept the failure on knockout, and the intended knockout mechanics are now long overdue.
From this point on when you get knocked out you will wake up again. Much like in the arena mode. As it is you will suffer some permanent damage from knockout blows, but various things will eventually happen while you are unconscious. Bad and interesting things, that will spice up the gameplay nicely.
As for difficulty, it will inevitably fluctuate as features and content are added, but even as it is this is less significant than you might think. In practice the aim is currently to take as little damage as possible, in the long run you'll be very glad that not every KO is game over. Some things will inevitably need adjustment and we'll continue to do that with your feedback.
Note that unconsciousness is not a metagame "try again" feature, but rather something that just makes sense within the context of the game. You can still easily find yourself in situations where death is unavoidable.
WEAPON SWAPPING
This apparently simple feature gave us a lot of headaches, but besides some refinements it's mostly working as intended.
Managing that torch that we love and hate in equal measures should be somewhat less of a burden. You can equip the same weapon to both your sets, allowing you to switch between a torch and a shield while using the same weapon, for example. This feature will become even more useful as ranged combat is introduced, and supports some other planned changes to the inventory system.
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima Beta 0.6.1.7
New armour skill technique, Security. Master rank is now achievable
Shield blocking is no longer completely broken! Still more work to do though
Experience from arena matches is now based on what you do in combat, even when losing
Roster view now shows which characters need new training
Shop stock and turnover increased
Improved camera tracking smoothness
Improved item colour randomisation
Numerous fixes and tweaks
SECURITY
"Confidence in your armour allows you to continue attacks while receiving weaker blows."
This and other new mechanics are being introduced to solve the problem of light fast weapons being a good choice against heavily armoured opponents, where clearly the opposite should apply. The reason for this is the interruption on hit, hitting first can prevent someone with a heavier weapon from ever attacking succesfully. Heavily armoured opponents could essentially be "stunlocked" by fast weapons landing weak hits.
The recently introduced momentum mechanic means that once a swing has gained momentum it cannot be instantly interrupted, heavier weapons naturally have more momentum than light weapons.
This skill technique, and a similar one being introduced for shields, allow weaker hits that are mostly mitigated by armour to be largely ignored, and the attack to continue, even if it has not yet gained momentum. The strike will still be weaker as a result, depending on the impact, but not completely ineffective.
Note that the effects of the skill is proportional to how much of the force and damage of the blow was mitigated by your armour, it will have no effect when wearing no armour or being hit on exposed parts of your body.
This is overall more realistic, makes different weapons effective at what they are designed to do, and promotes skillful play over cheesy tactics.
ARENA MATCH EXPERIENCE
The placeholder experience system for the arena has been replaced with a proper one. Experience is now awarded to each combatant based on what they did during the fight. This includes successful hits, parries, blocks and damage dealt.
In team battles experience is shared amongst combatants based on what they did during the fight. The system is designed to also reward defensive roles in teams. It is not possible to earn more experience by protracting a fight, the total experience that can be gained is fixed.
Experience is now also awarded when the match is lost, or when not all opponents in an Elimination are defeated. If 50% of the opponents' health remains when the match or round ends, 50% of the total xp is gained. In Fray matches being more active in the fray will result in more experience gained.
Exanima Beta 0.6.1.6 - Thrusts, Hirelings and more
Here's a cumulative log of recently added features, most of the very specific improvements and fixes have been omitted. Some more detailed changelogs can be found in the forum section.
Exanima Beta 0.6.1.6
Improved footwork and movement
NPC Hirelings in arena mode
Arena team battles (Doubles, Skirmish)
Numerous new items
More hair models updated
Counter shield skill technique
Beta 0.6.1.4
Thrusting
Strikes now preserve some momentum when the character perfoming them is hit
Various animation improvements
Improved parrying with polearms
Beta 0.6.1.3
Improved hair rendering
Added instruction screens in new arena mode
Reintroduced legacy arena as a "practice" mode
Facial hair is optional and follows hair colour (more styles are coming)
New items
Beta 0.6.1.2
Locational blood on characters
Sprint dash control option added
THRUSTS
To perform a thrust hold Alternate Attack (default ALT) and then LMB as usual. Once you are thrusting you can target different points on your opponent with precision, your aim is adjusted continuously throughout the thrust.
Allowing you to intuitively choose the height at which you aim your thrusts was quite a difficult problem. The game has to understand that aiming near someone head should in fact aim near their head, not at the floor behind them. In the end we came up with a system that tries to mimic how a human would perceive their opponent on screen. We're using a sort of simplified blurry stickman with depth, on to which we project the mouse cursor. This image should explain roughly how it works:
The bright red line represent different cursor positions. When the cursor is nearest a point on the body it will aim at that height, as it moves away it resumes the normal elevation used for controlling the direction of your character. This makes it easy and intuitive to both aim at very specific locations on your opponent's body or simply attack in a direction as usual.
Well placed thrusts do primarily piercing damage, represented by the thrust value on weapons. They do also deliver impact damage, which is very dependent on the force of the thrust, bladed weapons can do some slashing damage too.
HIRELING FIGHTERS
In the arena mode you can now hire NPCs that will fight for you or with you in team battles.
From the roster click the "Hire" button to view currently available hirelings. Currently all hirelings start at inept rank, but with varying skill training. You will pay an initial fee of 4 silver Talins, the upkeep cost is to be paid every few matches, but has not yet been implemented.
You can enter hirelings into fights and spectate them. There are also team battles in which you can enter multiple of your fighter at once.
You have full control over your hirelings' equipment and training. The AI skill level (how well they fight) is determined by the number of trained skill techniques. Be sure to equip them well to give them an advantage in battle.
Team battles allow you to earn money faster and train multiple figthers at once.
Best,
Bare Mettle
New Arena Beta Branch (v 0.6.1.0)
So, the new arena mode is not quite complete yet, but we're almost there and it's quite functional, so we thought we'd provide it optionally in its current state.
This is an optional beta version of the game. To play it you must right click on Exanima in your library inside the Steam client, select properties, then betas and opt in.
Most of the planned features for the first iteration are implemented or almost, notably the following things are still incomplete:
You cannot yet hire NPCs to fight with you or for you
Only some of the match types are implemented
Things like values, ranks and points still need adjustment
Some assets are incomplete, missing or placeholders
Many tweaks and ease-of-use enhancements to come
In case you missed the original post, here's the list of features we promised:
Persistent arena mode with progression
Create a main character who manages your affairs, but can also fight
Bid into matches and lose your bid or win more money
Numerous match types with varying participants and teams
Character and equipment rank system for match participants
Hire NPCs to participate in matches with you or for you
Recruit additional player characters to play
Shop for items using the money you earned
SKill progression for player and NPC characters
Permanent death. Rest characters who are seriously injured or risk their death
Procedural characters. There are always new characters to fight or hire
A variety of arenas for matches to take place in
Pugilism matches
There are numerous other improvements to the game in general. We've improved lighting and other effects, made optimisations, improved AI, fixed many issues and added many new items and nice little features.
GETTING STARTED
The new arena mode is fairly complex, there will be some in game instructions to explain how everything works, in the meantime please consult the following text to understand the basics.
You will start in your base of operations. For now there are three main things of interest here: a shop, a roster and a match board. The roster and match board appear as notices pinned on wooden boards, click on these to open them.
ROSTER
This is where you can view and manage all your characters. Select a character and click manage or simply double click them to get a detailed view.
When managing a character you will see their match loadouts, their inventories, an arsenal where you can store and manage all your gear and their skills.
Your character will progress a rank for every two skill techniques trained. A higher rank will give you access to higher rank matches in which you can use higher rank equipment. There is an equipment loadout per rank, even when you achieve a higher rank you can still participate in matches with reduced equipment ranks and the corresponding loadout will apply. Every rank also has a point limit towards which every piece of equipment contributes.
RECRUITS
Recruits are additional player characters that you can control yourself during matches in place of your own. It is useful to cycle between characters so that the others have time to heal. When a character suffers full red damage during a figh they will die and be lost forever, if this is your main character you will lose everything.
MATCHES
The match board is where you can view and choose what matches to participate in. Select a match and then enter characters into it by dragging them into the space on the bottom right, then click "Enter" to begin the match.
Characters must meet the rank requirement of the match to enter. This rank is also indicative of what rank equipment is allowed in the match. If the rank requirement is suitably low, you can enter higher tier matches, these however feature more skilled and experienced fighters, but also award larger prizes and provide faster training for your skills.
Be careful entering high tier, low rank matches as these can be the most deadly, also challenger matches which are devoid of rank restrictions. Elimination matches work similarly to the old arena, but with five consecutive fights and no red bar healing inbetween. These present a very tough challenge but also great rewards in prize money and experience.
THE SHOP
This is pretty self explanatory really. Drag items you want to buy from the shop's stock on the centre right pane, items you want to sell on the left. The paperdoll on here is so you can try items on and view them before you buy them.
Invest your money wisely and as early as possible, even basic clothing can offer much needed protection and all rank gear is useful throughout the game.
Update: items you buy now go directly to your arsenal (in the manage screen) to make equipping recruits and hirelings easier.
That should hopefully be enough to get you started. We'll be updating all this soon with many improvements and new features.
Happy new year!
Exanima 0.6 Released (part 1)
BEYOND THE PORTAL
Beneath the surface of our apparently fairly typical medieval setting there is something else. Now we begin to unveil it. It has always been our goal to create a special brand of fantasy, one that is familiar yet different, where the wondrous and fantastical hold up to pragmatic scrutiny. Function rules over form, plot and player convenience never get in the way of believable fiction.
We tell the story through many things and encourage the player to investigate. Every detail, no matter how apparently small or insignificant, must make sense and support it. This creating something fantastical, original and realistic at once has proven quite challenging, it took a lot of iterating and rejecting to be able to create this unique setting and make every small part of it fit.
We know some of you have been waiting for something more wondrous and visually impressive, crossing the portal in Exanima should satisfy that desire. Be warned, you'll meet some nasty things down there and surviving will be harder than ever. This is a mostly temporary situation though, a nice (and spectacular) challenge for now, but its role will change significantly as some new mechanics and many new maps are added.
ANIMATION AND CONTROL
Mixing physics with even simple animations is a difficult problem, nevermind those of a functional lifelike human. Throw in a player who demands precise and responsive control and you're really asking for a lot. This problem has been eating up most of our development time since we started experimenting with it almost 4 years ago. It has been a huge and often fruitless struggle. We've learned a lot though and our animation system has really evolved, now when we try to improve things our success rate is pretty good.
Every once in a while we take our patchwork of improvements and things we've learned and rebuild them into something better. With this update we've really turned things around.
It would be easier to make a list of what we haven't improved, and that would be a short list. We've rebuilt our IK system, improved footwork, added dynamic stance adjustments, rebuilt virtually all our "animations", made turning twice as fast, all movement snappier and more decisive, walking and running are much more reponsive, we introduced more fine grained control over upper body movement, improved articulation physics, fixed many combat mechanic and input bugs and made all sorts of other improvements and tweaks.
Not to blow our own trumpet, but the results are great. We think we've finally developed this into something not just fun and somewhat quirky, but just exceptionally good. Sure, there are still things to add and there is always room for improvement, but this is the core of it. We have actually gone out of our way to keep the fundamental gameplay essentially unchanged, so don't expect it to be completely different. All movement is still all about momentum and not just simple inputs, actually more so than before. This is central to the gameplay and will always require a lot of finesse (and practice) with the controls.
NEW A.I. BEHAVIOUR SYSTEM
One of the things we've been focusing on recently is getting our A.I. system to a more complete state. When we talk about A.I. we mean it in the literal sense, Artificial Intelligence, not scripted behaviours with complete lack of circumstantial awareness. Our goals for A.I. are very broad in scope but at the core of all of it there's a sort of artificial brain that behaves in quite an organic way. Getting very dynamic and yet and natural behaviours is quite tricky and we try get these things right in the foundations.
A.I. characters establish individual and group relationships, they have moods, emotions and react to a great many things happening around them. They remember events, characters and features of the environments that they discover. Players and other NPCs are indistinguishable and treated in the same exact way. You will notice much more detailed and realistic behaviour in general.
We've also started adding much more detailed low level behaviour. You will see NPCs flee from combat, set up ambushes, wait for opportunities, fight eachother and more. These are not prescripted behaviours with simple triggers, but things naturally arising from circumstance and a very detailed simulation.
This is a complex system with many moving parts that we still plan to expand on greatly. It will no doubt take some time to tweak the countless fluctuating parameters to a point where they're behaving as well as they should. While this is part of a much broader system that we're working on, already in this form it creates some very dynamic and amusing situations.
Note that your actions are now more important in determining the outcome of an encounter. As an example if you run straight towards someone they may feel threatened and respond, if you stop and fight you will confirm their suspicions, but if you just run past they're unlikely to give chase, and next time you meet they may not consider you a threat. There's no fixed rule though, some may see you running as a weakness and an opportunity. Making enemies can be very dangerous, whereas friendly NPCs may even help you in a fight.
QUALITY IMPROVEMENTS
Our standards of quality have been consistently improving throughout development, which inevitably leads to a certain disparity between things developed later and ealier. Recently we've been revising many of our older assets, bringing them to up to par with the rest. We're also introducing circumstantially increased zoom levels and in game zoom has been increased for higher aspect ratio displays. Many core assets have been greatly improved and we've hugely increased the zoom in characters views. These improvements don't only concern graphics, we've also revamped many sound effects and how they interact with physics.
MULTIPLE CHARACTERS
With the new permanent save point for the portal added and some build diversity becoming possible, it was important to allow you to create multiple characters at once. You can now start many new games and go back to any one of them when you like.
The Continue option now brings you a new screen where you can review all your characters and choose which one to play. You can view each character, look through their inventory, their skills and read their personal journal.
This is also where you can manage new global experience earned since you last played the character. Newly available global experience will be displayed and automatically invested in any skill techniques you were training, any remaining experience can be invested in new techniques of your choosing.
We've done everything we can to allow you to keep your current save games, but there have been extensive changes to content and formats so there will be some issues.
Armor is finally no longer a matter of more is better, but presents a tradeoff and an investment as well as having a new layer of meaningful diversity. Heavier and more rigid armours are now more cumbersome which will affect your character's movement in many subtle but still important ways. Your character doesn't just move slower but differently, in ways that are realistic and convey added weight and stiffness. You can be effective even when heavily encumbered, but in some situations you will undoubtedly be at a disadvantage, with the correct training however this can be avoided.
ARMOUR SKILLS
We've introduced the first armour skills, those that are most meaningful for the current state of the game. There are 3 ranks of Manoeuvering in Armour which allow you to overcome the encumbrance effects of increasingly heavy armours. Deflection allows you to take better advantage of your armour, it effectively increases how much of your body your armour is able to protect and reduces vulnerability in gaps and weaker areas of armour.
ITEM QUALITY
Items now come in various qualities and conditions. We've introduced over 50 specific quality modifiers with various effects which improve gear diversity and randomisation. This gives many items that were previously just better or worse new roles, particularly with the introduction of the encumbrance system. The quality of items is not only reflected in their properties but also their appearance.
Item quality does not currently apply to weapons, this will be part of a larger upgrade to weapons with a procedural system for much greater weapon variety and meaningful effects. With this we will also introduce many new weapons and types.
Many completely new items have also been added throughout the game.
FIST FIGHTING
You should of course be able to fight with no weapon equipped and we've now introduced basic unarmed fighting. You can punch with your left and right, do uppercuts and either straight punches or hooks depending on how you move the cursor. This turned into some very fun boxing combat, which does require a new level of finesse and precision with the controls. With the introduction of the new arena mode we will include unarmed fights which we're sure will make for hours of solid entertainment.
GUI OVERHAUL
A long overdue graphical overhaul of the user interface is finally here. We've added support for nicer, proportional fonts and upgraded all shading and textures. It's a fairly superficial change, but one that was quite labour intensive, we do think it adds a lot to the game's overall presentation and atmosphere.
PLAYER JOURNAL
Each character now has a journal, currently accessed with 'J'. You can write notes on your progress, what you've pieced together of the story or anything you like. We're considering generating entries from your character's perspective as you discover various things, but some players have mixed feelings about this. Let us know what you think.
OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
There have been countless improvements and fixes to almost every part of the game since the last major release. Here's a list of some specific fixes for well known bugs or things that weren't broadly covered in the above wall of text:
Cursor locks to full screen windows
Added a checkpoint earlier in the game
Improved locational damage mechanics
Improved loot randomisation
Fixed characters being unable to step in certain places
Improved camera obstacle avoidance behaviour
Improved pathfinding
New shading and material effects
Fixed "exorcist" bug
Fixed strongbox bugs
WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?
This update was supposed to be about getting some more content in, and it was supposed to happen a lot sooner. The level of care we're putting into every aspect of the game has grown a lot, at some point we thought that with how much everything has improved, the more fantasy aspects of the game also needed some more love. A decision was made to expand on our underworld assets and create something more unique, that differentiated itself better from the rest. This also made sense from a longer term productivity and workflow point of view at the time.
Unfortunately we ran into some problems. One of our team members who was core to developing the new assets found themselves in a position of being unable to work much. We initially responded by working on bringing other aspects of the game forward, but the situation got worse and we just found ourselves with a lot more work on our plates.
We got through this little crisis in the end, things are back to normal now, the update has shaped up very well and we've made great progress on many fronts. We've got a lot more content lined up for Exanima, but the assets for this were mostly completed before even its first public release. Delays like this one should not happen again.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We will continue to complete and add features and content at an always faster pace, and at this point I think we can safely say that the days of improving things are almost entirely behind us. The list of features and things we need to do to support them is rapidly shrinking, from something rather daunting to something that looks much more manageable.
The arena mode, which was born as just a combat test, has proved extremely popular amongst players and in the next update we will expand on its features. Fights will be randomised, you will bid into fights and earn money to invest in better gear or even mercenaries to fight by your side. There will be skill progression similar to the story mode and some other features besides. These are great additions and quite simple to make. The arena mode is also a great way to introduce and test multiplayer features which we hope to add soon.
It has been a long and ardous journey so far, especially if you consider that we built everything from the ground up and taken on board every bit of advice and feedback. We don't know how much credit you take as backers and supporters of this project, but you should really take plenty. You made this happen and it's fantastic.
Best,
Bare Mettle
Exanima 0.5.3 Released
EXANIMA QUALITY OF LIFE
Exanima takes a radically new approach to many things. Not only are we attempting these things for the first time, but they certainly are not easy to do. Inevitably the results are often not as good as they could be. We're always learning from our mistakes, listening to feedback and striving to improve everything. It's an ongoing process and we know that in time we can make the game really shine.
In this patch we've tried to address players' biggest concerns. We've made important changes to our animation system and combat, introducing features to dynamically change muscle tension and improving procedural elements. We've rebuilt most of our combat animations and improved the modelling of weapon mass. We've made characters negotiate and climb obstacles much better and get snagged on things less. Many other improvements and fixes have been made and this all contributes to an altogether better and smoother core experience.
ADVANCEMENT SYSTEM
You can approach the game in many ways and almost all the content is optional. Whatever you choose to do must be viable, you can fight or befriend who you encounter, explore, look for hidden treasure or piece together mysteries. We designed an advancement system that isn't based on just killing and major goals but rather rewards you for every little thing you do. Every new thing you discover, use, experience and accomplish awards small amounts of experience. Combat also yields experience based on the skill and equipment of your opponent.
Everything that grants experience is not repeatable so with each character what is gained is based on how much of the content they experience and how fully. A portion of the experience you gain is awarded as permanent global experience which gives you a nice starting point for new characters.
Experience earned is gradually absorbed by your character as actual learning towards whatever they are training. This feels more natural and realistic and prevents exploits.
INTRODUCING THE SKILL SYSTEM
Although experience will serve other purposes in future, it currently supports the training of skills.
We are working towards a total of 7 skills. Each skill has 8 techniques to choose from and 5 possible proficiency levels. You begin as Inept and reach levels of Aspirant, Novice, Adept, Expert and Master as you complete the training of each technique. The total number of techniques per character will also be limited to 15 or little more out of the total of 56 techniques.
This update features only the most fundamental close combat techniques that represent basic combat training. Upcoming skills feature more dramatic changes to gameplay and mechanics. Like everything else, skills affect players and NPCs alike so they also work to differentiate your opponents and promote more diverse tactics.
You must choose to train a skill technique to make progress, once training is complete a + icon will appear in the bottom right indicating that you should choose a new technique to train. If you are not training you will gradually forget experience that you've accumulated. Currently in arena mode you are automatically granted all techniques but this will change with an overhaul of the arena and its own advancement system.
NEW PUZZLES AND CONTENT
We've been promising greater environment interaction and this update introduces pits, fire traps, levers, pressure plates, portcullises, buttons and puzzles. We've gone beyond the typical lever puzzles and added some Exanima uniqueness, and of course there's the important element of physics. There are many new features that open up a lot of possibilities that we've only just begun to explore.
When we first made the current content for Exanima we couldn't do it as per our design due to a lack of features and assets. Now we have what we need and we're revisiting our content accordingly. The first map is now as we originally intended, with new and improved lore relevant locations and spanning almost twice the area as previously. Our map designs are not linear so be sure to explore thoroughly and try different routes on different playthroughs. There are various new items and objects, including a container that you can carry to improve your inventory management.
WHAT'S NEXT?
This update introduces some important new features, improvements, many fixes and tweaks, but our efforts have been focused on even more important things for the future of the game. Our highest priority has been the content beyond the portal which has been largely redesigned to provide a more unique and special experience. Some post portal content will be in the spotlight of our next bigger update but there are many things we're working towards. The next update should be with you before too long but we may also release some smaller but significant updates in between.
