Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
It's been another busy week working on many different things as we try to get everything ready for the release. We always want to avoid spoiling things you'll discover playing the game, so we can't go into much detail, but most of this ties into new content and Force powers. We have all the powers we wanted ready for the next insider test, one of which ended up getting a bit of an overhaul as we figured many players will use it almost constantly, making it their new default Exanima experience, so it had to look and feel right. We've got some new mechanics and effects from this that should prove useful for more powers and itemisation features too.
We've been adding more character animations for Force, which are mostly short and simple, but need to be carefully matched and timed to the powers themselves and need different versions depending on what weapons etc. the character is holding in their hands. Getting through this work we found some things about our animation authoring tools could be improved, so we did that too.
As we transition some of the more unusual items to the procedural system and add new story items we're trying to further expand what we can do with materials, both procedural and in general. We're working on adding ivory, resins, embedded gemstones and dynamic illuminating elements to items. Adding these things to our repertoire is always nice, it means many things that are shelved because they just don't really work or are too difficult or inefficient become easy to do.
The early game is still receiving some big changes. The goal here is to make it feel more diverse and interesting, as it is linear and doesn't have the freedom and variety of the late game. There will be a story save wipe with this update, and we also want the game to feel somewhat fresh and exciting to play through again. We do have various plans to improve replayability in general, but most of this will have to wait as we're already packing a lot into this update.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
It's been another busy week working on many different things as we try to get everything ready for the release. We always want to avoid spoiling things you'll discover playing the game, so we can't go into much detail, but most of this ties into new content and Force powers. We have all the powers we wanted ready for the next insider test, one of which ended up getting a bit of an overhaul as we figured many players will use it almost constantly, making it their new default Exanima experience, so it had to look and feel right. We've got some new mechanics and effects from this that should prove useful for more powers and itemisation features too.
We've been adding more character animations for Force, which are mostly short and simple, but need to be carefully matched and timed to the powers themselves and need different versions depending on what weapons etc. the character is holding in their hands. Getting through this work we found some things about our animation authoring tools could be improved, so we did that too.
As we transition some of the more unusual items to the procedural system and add new story items we're trying to further expand what we can do with materials, both procedural and in general. We're working on adding ivory, resins, embedded gemstones and dynamic illuminating elements to items. Adding these things to our repertoire is always nice, it means many things that are shelved because they just don't really work or are too difficult or inefficient become easy to do.
The early game is still receiving some big changes. The goal here is to make it feel more diverse and interesting, as it is linear and doesn't have the freedom and variety of the late game. There will be a story save wipe with this update, and we also want the game to feel somewhat fresh and exciting to play through again. We do have various plans to improve replayability in general, but most of this will have to wait as we're already packing a lot into this update.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
