Development Update #2

BigT2themax

Insider
Man, I was starting to wonder if I should make a topic asking for a simple "how are things going?" update.

This new update has pretty much answered all my wishes. With the dynamic AI, the physics-based combat, and how it seems the dialog will go, this is seriously starting to sound like the game of my dreams. I really can't wait to hear more about how things are going to work and I can't wait to see some gameplay footage of the new things (that isn't, you know, the inventory, we already saw it in dev video #2).

All in all, you're doing awesome work, guys. :)
 

Parco

Moderator
patience grakiao, we just got one update so now we can endure a month or 2 before next one :p
anyway, awesome work BM, cant wait to see more of your work :D
 

Komuflage

Insider
For those wondering about skills and how you progress or are limited I found this on the About section of the website

"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.
[...]
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."

So I suppose you choose which skills to advance within the limited number and then advancement has to do with actually doing tasks (ie: dealing damage with a light weapon). It seems to be more of an over time thing and not a use it 100x times to advance like in Oblivion.

As for Online play causing issues with physics combat, similarly in the about section there is the following information:

"Sui Generis is designed from the ground up as a sandbox experience that can be shared by multiple players.
[...]
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. "

From that I take it that yes, Online will have issues with physics and will most probably be added post launch. Local or Lan play will probably not have issues though (something to do with sending second to second accurate physics combat data maybe?) and they plan to have multiplayer Lan play at launch. Who knows, maybe tools like Hamachi will allow players to make use of Online play though the Lan game feature.
Well it was from the 'about' page I took most of my questions :p
So personally that didn't really help much :)

Anyway, if online play doesn't work with the physics then Lan over Hamachi most likey ain't gona work either.
 
So I rather hear "We'll try to make it work" than "Yes it'll work perfectly and it will be revolutionary"
Aye. These devs are very down to earth and its the best news i've heard in a very long time.

When developing the dialogue system, i personally hope all npcs convey conversation through text. e.g., There are loads more options through text rather than audio. From fans (and ex-fans) of TES series, we've all seen the horrifying drop in plot density and npc interactivity from morrowinds text-based system to oblivion.

I personally appreciate when games leave a little bit of room for some imagination.
 
This looks really great! Every time you release an update, I remember why I love this game so much. And I haven't even played it! :)

The dynamic nature of quests and NPC interactions sounds really promising. It's something that I've been thinking about quite a lot recently (as part of my interest in agent-based social simulations). Keep up the awesome work!

The inventory system reminds me somewhat of Day Z, albeit graphically superior. Actually in many respects the game in general is reminiscent of Day Z, despite being in a totally different genre.

Not to sound superficial, but those graphics are looking amazing as well. Also, the amount and quality of procedural content is stunning.

Bare Mettle forever! :D
 

Komuflage

Insider
Aye. These devs are very down to earth and its the best news i've heard in a very long time.

When developing the dialogue system, i personally hope all npcs convey conversation through text. e.g., There are loads more options through text rather than audio. From fans (and ex-fans) of TES series, we've all seen the horrifying drop in plot density and npc interactivity from morrowinds text-based system to oblivion.

I personally appreciate when games leave a little bit of room for some imagination.
Going of-topic as a change (since no1 ever does that on this forum :D)

Looking back at morrowinds text based dialog system, the reason so many think it's so great is due to "nostalgica" (That's not a word :p) because if you look at it, honestly, it simply only was 15 different topic you could ask a npc, and all common/non important npcs answered the same thing.

You could go through a town, asking every lesser npc about the same subject, and they would all answer in the same way.

So to be fair, morrowinds system wasn't so good as every1 remember.

That's not to say I'm a skyrim fan though, so I'm not trying to start a Morrowind vs skyrim fight here. I was actually quite disappointed in the dumbing down they did to skyrim, so I never bothered finishing it.


To go back on topic, this is actually something I'm concerned about in SG, it fells like if the npcs will have dynamic dialogs, it will most likely just be a lot of pre scripted topics and answers that they'll be able to chose from. For instance, if I would walk around in a town, asking every NPC about the cave in the forest, is it likley that I will get pretty much the same answer from every1, or if there's an awkward silence in a pub, what's the change that the ice breakers are getting repetitive after I've been to 10 pubs?
 

Dorag

Member
This is amazing! fantastic update, I can't wait for the video, thank you for your efforts, I have a lot of confidence added on top of what I already had for this game now, the texture quality is just amazing, this could be the BEST environment to Roleplay in due to the dynamic surroundings and the way items interact with each other and the AI's understanding of it.
 

lvk

Insider
I'm looking to say something really, really positive, but I'm having trouble thinking of something good enough. That's saying something - I hardly ever have trouble writing a post on a forum, but the excitement and wonder are just far too great.
 

BigT2themax

Insider
Actually, I was wondering, about generating the island...

Is the game engine going to generate a 2D landscape like the drawing for each world instance, or is the overworld just going to be the same island based on a preset 2D drawing? I'm just kind of confused as to whether or not the game is going to have a procedurally generated world or not, and I kinda want to know if it is or not.

Also, I'm guessing the terrain generator doesn't actually use a drawing like the one you've shown us. Is the terrain generated from a 2D pixel map you guys can generate or just draw with lots of colours that specify different types of terrain and different heights in terrain?

Are you going to use this method to make the underworld, or will that just be put together from a bunch of room-tiles in a procedural pattern, or simply hand-built like a building or something?

Well, maybe what I'm trying to say is, can you tell us a little bit more about how you're going to make the island and the underworld as a whole? How is each world instance going to be created?
 
Following on from what BigT2themax has said, is it possible for the game world to be 100% procedurally generated? Obviously the quality wouldn't be nearly as good as a designed world and I'm not suggesting that it should be procedurally generated. But I am intrigued to know if things like characters, items, towns and buildings are able to be procedurally generated.
 

Komuflage

Insider
Actually, I was wondering, about generating the island...

Is the game engine going to generate a 2D landscape like the drawing for each world instance, or is the overworld just going to be the same island based on a preset 2D drawing? I'm just kind of confused as to whether or not the game is going to have a procedurally generated world or not, and I kinda want to know if it is or not.

Also, I'm guessing the terrain generator doesn't actually use a drawing like the one you've shown us. Is the terrain generated from a 2D pixel map you guys can generate or just draw with lots of colours that specify different types of terrain and different heights in terrain?

Are you going to use this method to make the underworld, or will that just be put together from a bunch of room-tiles in a procedural pattern, or simply hand-built like a building or something?

Well, maybe what I'm trying to say is, can you tell us a little bit more about how you're going to make the island and the underworld as a whole? How is each world instance going to be created?
From my understanding (and of an official answer is more valuable, but I like to chat) the world will be "predefined" like in a loot of RPGs, and not "randomly generated" like in a loot of arpgs, (or not fully random since they follow curtain parameters) Diablo 3 being a recent example of this, go to the same location twice, and it'll still be the same location, but different. (Since it's partly random generated)
Personally I prefer if the world is predefined/hand sculpted rather than random in a game like this, since it often looks better.

2 "proofs" that I have is that in the pitch video, you can see when (I guess Madoc) creates some terrain, if it would've been random generated, then there would be no need for that right? Also in, I think the 250 tier you will be able to create a 60*60 meters square of terrain, and If it would be randomly generated, then that user made terrain would not make much sence.

I hope this somewhat answered part of your question, even if it's still speculations :rolleyes:
 

Fawz

Insider
The way I understood it is that they draw a 2D global map with fine details and from there the system procedurally generates a representative 3D landscape. This is for the rough ground work of water edges, mountains, forests, ect...

From there they devs go in manually and add fine details and assets to the land.

So from my understanding it's a procedurally generated world based on predefined guidelines with manual details and assets added on top.
 

BigT2themax

Insider
2 "proofs" that I have is that in the pitch video, you can see when (I guess Madoc) creates some terrain, if it would've been random generated, then there would be no need for that right? Also in, I think the 250 tier you will be able to create a 60*60 meters square of terrain, and If it would be randomly generated, then that user made terrain would not make much sence.
Well... to be honest, that's not really proof. A terrain editor is generally just a useful tool to have anyways, and it's likely just a more direct use of what could be an automatic terrain generator, which could be used to flatten terrain to place buildings, for instance. Maybe, the game would normally just automatically deform the terrain, and Madoc simply added the functionality to the game editor to build the terrain themselves if they needed to do so for whatever reason.

The user made terrain might just be made into a "tile" that could be integrated into a part of the map in a way that fits correctly, no? Obviously, if the island's procedurally generated there'd only be a small of these preset tiles fitted in wherever possible, otherwise the whole island might end up being made of fan-made tiles. If you think about it, this would make sense to make the map procedurally generated with a few £250 backer-made terrain tiles spaced around the island. :p

... At least, that's the case I was going to make about that, but I checked, and there's only like, 11 people who are doing that. So, that argument's gone out the window. Unless the island is going to be way smaller than we thought.

Really, the reason I'm so confused as to whether or not the map is hand-made or not is mostly due to how everyone on the dev team talks about the map and how they're going to make it. Take what Kieran said for example:

Our terrain is procedurally generated but until now this was very basic and just too random. To make an actual island or even just features like beaches we would have to sculpt them by hand. Now we're developing the actual land mass for the game and we need something quite specific. We've been extending our procedural tools significantly so that they can accept shapes and other major features such as rivers from images. Basically we can draw a flat 2D map and just convert it to a 3D terrain.

Below is an early version of our map based on the 2D image inputs for the terrain generator:

An example of procedurally generated coast following a map contour:
He mentions the words "procedurally generated" a few times, says "procedural tools" once, as well as "terrain generator", which seems to point to us getting a new island generated every world instance, but at the same time, he's saying they're wanting a quite specific thing and how they're going to draw a 2D map to make the island terrain, which points to the map being hand-made instead...

And also, he says that "[they] can draw a flat 2D map and just convert it to a 3D terrain", which doesn't explicitly say that they will, just that they've got a terrain generator that is able to take a 2D image and make a 3D world with it.

To be honest, with the way they're going about doing it, I kind of hope they are just procedurally generating the landmass. I get it if they want to hand-sculpt the island so that it's really awesome to explore, but even if they have a 2D to 3D terrain-maker, they'd still probably have to comb through the island after changing it from 2D to 3D to make sure the island has turned out exactly the way they wanted it, and that everything's hunky-dory. There might be a slightly higher chance of part of the map ending up not really the way they want it to unless they check really carefully, too, seeing as how it's a bit easier to spot a mistake you made after making it than it is spotting a mistake in something you're checking through.

Ahh, what am I talking about... I don't know anything about their 2D to 3D terrain maker anyway, they've probably made it really well and there's going to be no problems.

I suppose I kinda just prefer having a new island to explore each time I start a new world instance, so I can play a unique adventure each time. I hate to say it, but while a well-made world is a really awesome experience the first-time round, unless I'm able to explore a new island each playthrough, I'd probably lose interest after playing through the story once. Even if the story is incredibally dynamic and I can change it damn near any way I want, I wouldn't get much replayability from a game just from something like that.

So yeah, even though a great experience can be had playing through a well-designed world, that's just it. You only have that one great experience of exploration, and once you explore the entire world (or however much you feel like exploring, anyway), there's nothing left to see, unless the dynamic storyline can open up new places to explore, but even then, once that's done, that's it. If the world were new each time round, I'd probably be more inclined to explore every nuance of the story and seek out lots of lore and such, seeing as how there's always more places to explore if I want them.

I'm kind of having difficulty getting my point across, I think. I just like procedurally-generated worlds more, I suppose. If they're done fairly well, I could explore them to my hearts content, and I won't really run out of places to see.

Maybe someone from Bare Mettle could say a little more about the map? Please? I really can't stand not knowing, there's so much confusion on the topic in the things you guys write, and I really don't know one way or the other. So please, somebody tell us what's going to happen with that.
 
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