Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
Last week we mentioned we were working on a new type of effect, both as a better approach to do one of the Force powers, but also to support a host of other powers, special attacks, natural effects and all sorts. This is essentially a better alternative to your typical particle effect, we can do much more advanced and specific motion and rendering, it looks more 3D and stable and it's much more efficient which actually becomes very important for large scale effects. This took a lot of work, which included things like physics interactions and lighting, but it looks great and we're looking forward to making all sorts of impressive things with it.
With Force we really tried to create unique effects that have more realism and substance to them than your typical game effects. Exanima often lies more on the side of simulation than game, we care more about nuanced behaviours and interactions than typical game stuff like whether something is balanced or produces a specific gameplay outcome (though we do make some concessions). This tends to make our work infinitely more complicated than the old "play this static effect or animation and do x damage", but it's core to our game and we think it's worth it as it just makes everything feel a bit more real and immersive and less "gamey", and it produces a different kind of emergent gameplay that we value more. More work for us also means more waiting for you, but we hope you can appreciate our effort to push for something different and special.
On the content side, we're now up to 40 new and remastered items that are all procedural, this is a lot, and combined with extensive changes to the early levels, should breathe some new life into the older content as you play through it again and unlock Force powers. It also fixes most of the inconsistencies with items that aren't procedural, can't be upgraded or don't have you looking for good examples. These are now important parts of itemisation and loot that weren't being leveraged in much of the game yet.
We're still refining various things and we've been a bit too busy to really figure out what else we might still be able to fit into this update, but we're now quite certain we'll be following it up with a smaller update as we have a bunch of relatively low effort but still meaningful things we'd like to add ASAP.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
Last week we mentioned we were working on a new type of effect, both as a better approach to do one of the Force powers, but also to support a host of other powers, special attacks, natural effects and all sorts. This is essentially a better alternative to your typical particle effect, we can do much more advanced and specific motion and rendering, it looks more 3D and stable and it's much more efficient which actually becomes very important for large scale effects. This took a lot of work, which included things like physics interactions and lighting, but it looks great and we're looking forward to making all sorts of impressive things with it.
With Force we really tried to create unique effects that have more realism and substance to them than your typical game effects. Exanima often lies more on the side of simulation than game, we care more about nuanced behaviours and interactions than typical game stuff like whether something is balanced or produces a specific gameplay outcome (though we do make some concessions). This tends to make our work infinitely more complicated than the old "play this static effect or animation and do x damage", but it's core to our game and we think it's worth it as it just makes everything feel a bit more real and immersive and less "gamey", and it produces a different kind of emergent gameplay that we value more. More work for us also means more waiting for you, but we hope you can appreciate our effort to push for something different and special.
On the content side, we're now up to 40 new and remastered items that are all procedural, this is a lot, and combined with extensive changes to the early levels, should breathe some new life into the older content as you play through it again and unlock Force powers. It also fixes most of the inconsistencies with items that aren't procedural, can't be upgraded or don't have you looking for good examples. These are now important parts of itemisation and loot that weren't being leveraged in much of the game yet.
We're still refining various things and we've been a bit too busy to really figure out what else we might still be able to fit into this update, but we're now quite certain we'll be following it up with a smaller update as we have a bunch of relatively low effort but still meaningful things we'd like to add ASAP.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
