Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
Between the holidays and Madoc dealing with some personal stuff we haven't exactly been at the peak of productivity, but we have made some good progress. In our last diary we talked about making some pretty big improvements to the new pathfinding to solve some problem cases and support more features. We had to make a lot of changes to accommodate this, but we've gotten through it all now and also made some other improvements we wanted along the way.
Hopefully we can now get on with testing and finalising things without immediately going back to making major changes. With the pathfinding, new AI framework and thaumaturgy system updates wrapped up we will have accomplished all the major goals for this update. We have also made some other important engine improvements, bug fixes and so on. Our plan is still to release some test versions in the near future while we finalise new content, some additional smaller features and more force powers.
Something we've been active on in the past months, but haven't talked about yet is some pretty big updates to itemisation. We've been gradually introducing key features like sockets, procedural item generation, orbs, weapon flipping / toggles and more, but the intent is to put all of this together with new mechanics, many new special properties, active abilities and even a degree of customisation for a much more complete and deep itemisation and loot system. In the context of Exanima this is largely to support better replayability, and to this effect we are considering only "unlocking" new randomised items based on key items found in previous playthroughs, maintaining a sort of "vanilla" item experience for your first one. Also relevant is more randomisation of items in the environment, randomised locations of chests, locked chests, new secret locations, less linear loot progression and various tweaks to item mechanics. This isn't exactly imminent in its entirety, but these are things we have been working on. Some will be added in isolation, but there is also a bigger picture.
We can never go into much detail with things without spoiling them, but with force and everything that comes with it, new level design features, new gameplay features and an expanded role system this should be an epic year for Exanima.
Have a really great year, all the best from Bare Mettle.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
Between the holidays and Madoc dealing with some personal stuff we haven't exactly been at the peak of productivity, but we have made some good progress. In our last diary we talked about making some pretty big improvements to the new pathfinding to solve some problem cases and support more features. We had to make a lot of changes to accommodate this, but we've gotten through it all now and also made some other improvements we wanted along the way.
Hopefully we can now get on with testing and finalising things without immediately going back to making major changes. With the pathfinding, new AI framework and thaumaturgy system updates wrapped up we will have accomplished all the major goals for this update. We have also made some other important engine improvements, bug fixes and so on. Our plan is still to release some test versions in the near future while we finalise new content, some additional smaller features and more force powers.
Something we've been active on in the past months, but haven't talked about yet is some pretty big updates to itemisation. We've been gradually introducing key features like sockets, procedural item generation, orbs, weapon flipping / toggles and more, but the intent is to put all of this together with new mechanics, many new special properties, active abilities and even a degree of customisation for a much more complete and deep itemisation and loot system. In the context of Exanima this is largely to support better replayability, and to this effect we are considering only "unlocking" new randomised items based on key items found in previous playthroughs, maintaining a sort of "vanilla" item experience for your first one. Also relevant is more randomisation of items in the environment, randomised locations of chests, locked chests, new secret locations, less linear loot progression and various tweaks to item mechanics. This isn't exactly imminent in its entirety, but these are things we have been working on. Some will be added in isolation, but there is also a bigger picture.
We can never go into much detail with things without spoiling them, but with force and everything that comes with it, new level design features, new gameplay features and an expanded role system this should be an epic year for Exanima.
Have a really great year, all the best from Bare Mettle.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
