Bare Mettle Entertainment

Bare Mettle Entertainment presents Sui Generis

An original open world RPG for the PC featuring dynamic story and physics based gameplay.

Believable Fiction. Carefully crafted and researched so it feels authentic down to the smallest detail, the world of Sui Generis will draw you in and captivate you with its depth and complexity.

Non Linear Story. Write your own story. Create your own character and then interact with the world and events as you see fit. Who knows what might happen? It's not written, it's up to you.

Reactive Characters. All characters and creatures are driven by their own goals and unique perception of the world. All have complex behaviours and react to every circumstance.

Physics Driven Combat. Whether swinging your weapon, shooting an arrow or manipulating the world with your mind, you can expect spectacular and always unique results.

Interactive Environment. Nothing is bolted down or fake, the environment is fully interactive and can play an important tactical role, as well as just provide lots of fun.

Deep Character Customisation. Don't just choose a class but create your own unique build and develop your own play style. The paths to success are almost limitless.

On a treacherous world with a tortured history the meagre remnants of humanity live in awe of a misconceived past, haunted by forgotten gods and fearful of the very ground they tread. A vast sprawling underworld ever present below their feet, baleful demons lying in wait. Thaumaturges, people with powerful psychic abilities, have abandoned their once benevolent nature turning to cruel and dark activities in their quest for ultimate power. Awoken by impending threats, an abandoned and damaged being gives rise to its ancient weapons who now walk amongst the people again.

WORLD

In Sui Generis we hope to create a computer role playing experience like none other. A world where you have complete freedom and everything you do has repercussions.

We have not defined a path for you to follow, we don't know what you will do or whether you will succeed in doing it, anything might happen. All events and plotlines unfold dynamically and according to a hugely detailed input of circumstace, even the most apparently insignificant change in conditions can result in dramatically different outcomes. There is no correct way to do things and no failure or success, just an ever changing world that you must discover yourself.

You cannot save and load in Sui Generis, the world never returns to a previous state, nothing respawns, eveything that happens is permanent. You do not try again or follow a known strategy, you deal with consequences and feel the weight of events that are meaningful in their implications and unique malliable state. What you do and what happens matters.

The world of Sui Generis is a highly original work, the product of a lifetime of deliberation and many rare moments of inspiration. Every detail matters and must feel authentic, there can never be enough depth and complexity. Nothing is as it seems, the people have forgotten their tortured past and fanciful myths conceal its complex true nature. It is a world rich in mysteries where even the apparently insignificant carries meaning, a purpose and history to unravel.

A feudal society is dissolving under the pressure of thaumaturges who have abandoned scruples and turned to dark pursuits. The seals of the underworld are being broken and its dormant threats have begun to stir. You will enter an this unfamiliar world fraught with dangers and opportunities and have complete freedom in your actions. You might strive to restore peace, endeavour to uncover it's dark secrets or simply pursue your own selfish goals. It is your story to write.

COMBAT

Combat is entirely physics driven with accurate collisions and largely procedural animations. Every swing is unique, every blow actually connects accurately and the force of the impact is used to determine damage. Armour protects only parts of the body it actually covers; a breastplate will provide zero defence from a blow to the head. Weapon behaviour is drastically different because their weight, balance, speed, damage, etc are all the product of physics and affected by your character's physique, skill, and even what you are wearing. Finding the right equipment for you and your playstyle will involve experimentation rather than comparing numbers.

The current swinging style combat is more tactical and skilful than it might look. You execute your own manoeuvres using a combination of attacks, steps and turns, which all have a significant impact on how effective you are. While not attacking you will attempt to parry incoming blows, or block them if you have a shield. There are no artificial chances for this, although character skill will have some affect on how quickly you can parry or how much force you can absorb, should you manage to intercept the blow.

We already have one-handed, two-handed and dual-wield implemented. We plan to include significantly different styles such as polearms, ranged weapons and more precise stabbing weapons like spears. These will all behave drastically differently; spears for example will have an alternate attack which will stab at your cursor with pin-point accuracy. We plan to include additional combat manoeuvres for each weapon type and double-tap behaviours for lunges and evasive dodges, as well as a range of close-quarters utility thaumaturgic powers.

ATTRIBUTES

When you create a character you define a physique which is the basic shape and tone of your body. You do not choose from preset body types but rather between extremes of lithe, muscular and heavy using a square graph control. Defining your physique is very intuitive as the morphing is done in real-time, you can just drag the cursor around to find a balance you're happy with.

You can also choose a height and possibly other physical attributes. Various features such as hair, facial hair and skin tone will also be selectable. You can of course choose your gender and any name you like.

The skin tone palette is also a square graph control, giving you the choice of a few basic shades and thousands of hues within them. The hair has physics.

The physical attributes of a character are not just cosmetic, they are a natural replacement for arbitrary statistics typically found in RPGs. Innate qualities such as your strength, dexterity and toughness are affected by your choice of physique. You will also be able to change your physique over time.

There won't be any mental attributes. How intelligent, wise, charismatic or for that matter gullible you are will really be down to you as a player. We want to provide the scope for you to be any of those things or quite the opposites. In terms of character advancement you will still be able to focus more on combat or thaumaturgy through your choice of skills and powers.

SKILLS

Skills are one of the major aspects of character advancement.

Skills are advanced through practice, to train a particular skill it must see relatively frequent use. Actively training a skill through artificial repetition will not work, progression will remain gradual. This mechanic exists so that players spend more time playing the game and experiencing the world rather than performing repetitive tasks in order to achieve more rapid advancement.

A milestone is granted for reaching each of level of expertise beyond Inept. You will choose from several, further specialising your use of any given skill. Milestones may grant new abilities or improve particular aspects of a skill. As an example, Light Weapons will feature milestones such as Dual Wield and Defensive Fighting. Milestones may be retrained, but this requires retraining the skill from its previous level of expertise.

You will be limited by a global skill total, it will not be possible to train all skills to the highest attainable level. This mechanic exists so that you have to choose a combination of skills to specialise in as part of your "build".

You select which skills to train, untrain or keep at their current level.

Skills currently planned are:

Light Weapons
Heavy Weapons
Ranged Weapons
Shields
Armour
Insight
Concentration
Meditation

Skills have the following major expertise levels:

Inept
Aspirant
Novice
Expert
Adept
Master

THAUMATURGY

Another major aspect of character advancement is thaumaturgy.

Though you can make some use of all forms of thaumaturgy you must choose one as innate to your character. This is your natural talent and where you will excel.

Each form of thaumaturgy grants specific effects rather than having a particular purpose. For example, a necromancer would use powerful Mind thaumaturgy to evoke the transcended mind of the dead, causing them to take control of their remains. The revived dead control their decayed bodies by means of their own dormant capacity for thaumaturgy.

Thaumaturgic power does not undergo gradual progression over time, rather some portion of the transcendent mind of others is absorbed in their moment of death. The more advanced the transcendence of the mind being sundered, the more of it may be absorbed. Some thaumaturgic knowledge, different from raw power, may also be gleaned during such moments.

Thaumaturgic knowledge may also be gained by natural insight where one's innate powers are concerned, and other sources of knowledge or learning besides.

You will initially have a basic command of your power, using it in its simplest form. With time you will learn more elaborate ways of shaping its outcome, refining its use and combining your individual insights into completely new effects. As a basic example, you may learn to turn Force Blast into an omnidirectional effect, pushing things away in any direction; you may also learn to make the force highly coherent, thus turning it into a shield. The two things combined may lead you to make a bubble that shields you from all directions.

Forms of thaumaturgy currently planned are:

Displacement
Energy
Light
Body
Mind
Force

ITEMISATION

Items will have properties that make sense. You won't be just wearing as many items as possible because they confer stat bonuses. You will wear specific items because they do something useful or because you like the way they look. What you wear can significantly affect how people perceive you and also provide useful disguises.

Most items you find will be fairly mundane. However a good, well balanced weapon can be a significant upgrade over a crude weapon; an armour made of well tempered plates that interlock cleverly and is well padded can provide a huge advantage in terms of protection, manoeuvrability and even things like insulation. Such items can also carry a high monetary value.

Our inventory system is "slotless", which means instead of having fixed equipment slots for head, legs, hands etc. we have almost 200 virtual slots that can be used in any combination. This allows characters to wear a great many combinations of armour and apparel, based on what makes sense rather than artificial restriction. Articles of clothing and other apparel cover and also interact with each other, for example long trousers tuck into boots realistically. Containers are also slotless which means you can freely arrange items within them, this allows us to do things like hide objects under others or arrange them in meaningful ways.

MULTIPLAYER

Sui Generis is designed from the ground up as a sandbox experience that can be shared by multiple players. Its highly dynamic, completely real time nature and the lack of artificial mechanics mean you and your friends can experience the game together in whatever way you want.

The highly physics intensive gameplay makes online play potentially problematic, it is something we will not attempt to implement until after initial release. Multiplayer on a local network is however something we absolutely want to see accomplished.

FAQ

When will the game be released?

May 2014. That's our deadline for the initial release but we will continue to expand and improve on it after that.

Will I be able to play on Mac/Linux?

We want to support both Mac and Linux with native clients. With Mac this should be trivial, we have less direct experience with Linux so would rather not make any promises just yet.

What languages will the game come in?

If the funds are available we plan to get the game translated into as many languages as possible.

Where will I be able to download the game from?

Directly from us, via a fast content delivery network. There are other possible options we are considering such as Steam, Gog and Direct2Drive, but nothing is concrete yet.

Will your game feature nasty copy protection?

No. Our game will be completely DRM-free.

Will I need an epic computer?

No. The system requirements are similar to other titles in the genre.

When will I get access to alpha and beta versions of the game?

At the moment we aren't able to give an exact date for this. It will be as soon as we feel it is in a playable state.

Is the quality of animations likely to improve?

Yes.

How does the lack of saving and loading affect gameplay?

Your progress in the game will be saved constantly making the effects of all events and decisions permanent. This is an open world game and progress is not linear. Death will result in you returning to life elsewhere in the world, unless in special game modes. Instances of the world are fully persistent but you can carry your characters across multiple instances.

Will an editor / modding tool be included with the game?

We will do whatever we can to make this possible but we're not yet comfortable with promising a complete modding solution. Some of the more advanced features currently require significant technical knowledge and providing a broad user friendly experience could prove challenging. Please consider that our resources are limited.

Can I learn more about...?

Many of you understandably want to know more. We ask that you seek more information and ask questions on our forums.