Needlesss to say we didn't exactly stick with our original plans for the next update.
As I do after any big update, I at first took some time to explore some ideas rather than diving straight back into completing the next features as fast as possible. This led me to completely overhaul a huge part of our asset creation process, developing new tools and improving on existing ones. This is enabling us to make much higher quality art with much less effort. Hopefully this will be quite apparent when the new content is released, but it's also made our lives a whole lot easier in terms of all asset development.
Besides that I've mostly been working on everything needed for dialogue, NPC companions and thaumaturgy. Originally I thought I would stick with the bare essentials for getting these features in Exanima, but as I worked on it I got deeper and deeper into the very complex and ambitious plans we have for dynamic character behaviours. While this level of depth isn't needed, at least not yet, I found I wanted to work towards this rather than an intermediate solution that isn't as useful in the long run.
A lot has had to change to support all the new characters and AI stuff (and indeed we're looking at a possible save game wipe), and a host of new complex tools had to be made for creating dialogues, character roles, relationships etc.
What this means in practice is that we'll have the freedom to do a lot more with how characters behave and what they're able to do, and have a working version of all this already in game with the obvious advantages that carries.
We're definitely quite far along with all this by now, but there are still some things to finish. We hope to start some beta testing very soon. Thumaturgy is something we might add in another update shortly after this one at this point.
I think you'll be quite impressed with the quality of the new content, and the new NPC interaction stuff should add a huge amount of value to the game in general. There will of course be various other smaller additions and improvements.
23 May,
http://steamcommunity.com/app/362490/discussions/0/1291816569122777549/#c1291816880505780890