Bare Mettle Entertainment released an update about the prologue of Sui Generis called Exanima on Steam this week. Seems the game made the Top 10 on Greenlight.

Greenlight Progress and Exanima 0.4.1 Released

Exanima made it into the top 50 items on Greenlight in under 24 hours and now after less than 2 days we're close to the top 10! A huge thank you goes out to all our supporters!

We've also just released update 0.4.1 for the Exanima beta (not to be confused with version 0.4.0.1).

Changes in version 0.4.1:

• You can now move bodies by dragging with left mouse

• Removed slight latch delay for opening doors as some found it confusing

• Can no longer interact with objects while prone or recovering

• Fixed issue with character placement when travelling from 3rd to 2nd area

• Fixed potential errors after control assignment of additional mouse buttons

• Fixed an issue that could cause characters to refuse to walk through secret
doors even after they were opened

• Fixed being able to use the portal to duplicate items

• Fixed characters sometimes not recovering after falling on or between objects

• Various fixes and improvements

After the announcement from last week that a new beta called Exanima was available for backers it seems Bare Mettle Entertainment has put the prelude on Steam Greenlight.

Exanima is now on Steam Greenlight. Visit our Greenlight page which includes some nice new screenshots of the Exanima beta and please vote yes! We need a lot of votes to get Exanima approved so spread the word.

After months of silence Bare Mettle Entertainment has released a new kickstarter update this week about the games development, and a new Exanima Beta.

This update is about the beta launch of Exanima but first we think we should address the elephant in the room. Why the lack of updates? What's happening with the game's development?

Let's be honest here, when we came to Kickstarter we didn't know what we were getting into, not so much in terms of development but everything else. We were excited about making the game and naive about many realities. We saw ourselves as indie devs promising to do a lot of cool new things that people would share our enthusiasm for. Our plan was to focus on the game's most unique qualities, release it and then continue work on it indefinitely after release, improving and expanding it. What we soon realised is that most people were not so willing to forgive a few flaws for the sake of the game's virtues. We would be subject to harsh criticism on all fronts and where we showed ability and quality these would only serve to make them expected everywhere. Sui Generis does not present itself as a humble game and expectations were sky high.

Our focus almost immediately shifted from just developing the game to improving everything and responding to criticism so that people would not prematurely dismiss the game. It is a very unconventional game, one that can't be described with what are usually the biggest selling points. It's unfamiliar and people don't know if they want it, they will more easily compare it to what they know and fixate it on flaws rather than understand its unique potential. This was further reinforced by our first alpha releases, our alpha backers were in large part people who believed in and understood the game but a lot of people who knew less about what they were getting into and what the game aimed to achieve were, at least initially, not as impressed.

Thank you xenocide for the link, and a reminder about the new update.

Bare Mettle Entertainment posted an update on the comment section for Sui Generis. Just for reference it has been a few months since they released a kickstarter update.

We've recently done a very big update to the prelude and with the help of our alpha tier backers we've been hunting down and fixing every bug and making various improvements. The game is working great now and already has a lot to offer, we're just about ready to go beta and lift the NDA, this will be accompanied by an update of course. A full relase to all backers is close, at the moment we're working on a release trailer and adding more content.

We apologise again for the lack of recent updates, it's just been a very hands-on stage in development and we're doing everything we can to get something solid in your hands. There has been a very real and in depth interaction with alpha and beta backers on our forums. We are very present there and we take everyone seriously, if you want to get involved don't hesitate, interact with us! Our forums aren't just for insiders.

David Reid of IncGamers had the chance to interview Bare Mettle’s Madoc Evans.

IG: Lastly, anything you would like to say to your fans and those looking for a new RPG?

ME: Too much. There are a lot of things that make this game special and set it aside from other games. It really needs to be experienced with an open mind and no preconceptions about what a game should be or how it should play.

Some people are initially taken aback by it, they expect to absent-mindedly press buttons and run around while things just fall into place and you somehow win and accomplish what you were supposed to. The physics aren’t just for show, you need to really embrace them and use them; information isn’t fed to you, you need to find it and piece it together; you’re not given objectives, you have to set your own. The game is ruthless, it does not want you to win.

The world is indifferent to you, AIs will do their absolute best to beat you. The aim is not to win and be rewarded, it’s to be challenged, to become immersed and have fun, even if you failed to do something. It is most certainly not a casual game, but it’s not complicated either. It has a lot of depth and freedom that are not immediately apparent. If you take the time to figure out what it’s about and how it works you might be captivated like never before.

Bare Mettle Entertainment has finally released the Prelude Alpha of Sui Generis on their website, and posted a new kickstarter update with more information.

Prelude Alpha Release

The first prelude alpha is now available from our website. For those of you who haven't caught on yet, the prelude is named Exanima. If you have alpha access then go grab it and then come to our forum and tell us what you think. You're our first testers so this first release is still under NDA until we've dealt with eventual major issues, please keep this in mind!

So, we've somehow overcome the huge ordeal of developing all the functionality and technology needed for a fairly complete playable experience. It may even appear very complete and polished but don't forget this is only the first alpha, there are many features and improvements to come for both Exanima and Sui Generis. This is happening very quickly now that we've gotten the really big and difficult stuff done. Some of the features we have not completed yet will obviously have a massive effect on the game, such as character advancement and thaumaturgy but we have been focusing on things that we believe present the biggest technical challenges and making sure we get them right. Even so we believe this alpha is very enjoyable and that we've already largely succeeded in providing the kind of atmosphere and experience we're aiming for.

This alpha is fairly short and doesn't have a proper conclusion, that's because it's the earliest part of the prelude. Once we've gone through some initial testing and completed the most urgent features and improvements we'll be opening up more of the prelude and then going into beta. The first full release should be close behind. Don't underestimate the volume of content though, you will have to be quite thorough to discover everything and all doors except the big double metal ones can be unlocked.

Bare Mettle has added Update #30 for Sui Generis to their Kickstarter site. They discuss the difficulty and scope of their ambitions and the progress with the prelude Alpha:

Much of what we're trying to accomplish is far beyond the scope of the prelude and that's partly the idea of the prelude. It's an intermediate goal that is built from the same blocks but doesn't yet need to take advantage of everything they provide. In the end we've invested more in the prelude than we originally planned in an effort to do things right. Core to our game philosophy is that nothing is a static asset or effect, a predefined animation or scripted behaviour. We need to start with such things as placeholders while prototyping but in the end everything must be complex, mutable and reactive. If anything is possible then it should always be possible and be a natural result of the underlying simulation. We're not just talking about physics here but rather how everything has a meaning or purpose, how AI understands what things are and how they may relate to other things. Our event system and AI are aimed at providing an emergent story but we believe the most important and challenging aspect of this is the little things that drive how that story unfolds; the actions and objects that are instrumental to what actually happens and how what happens and happened previously can be perceived by AI. This has always been central to our design.

This update for Sui Generis is about the release of the combat demo with details on the mechanics, which is available to backers.

Before we move on to the purpose of this update we'd like to clear up some misunderstandings that seem to have resulted from our last update. Some people seem to have understood that we were abandoning our physics intensive combat in favour of something more conventional and even that the combat isn't much fun. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The physics based nature of the game has not changed, only improved. We'd become very used to the combat in its previous state but with the feedback we received from the alpha we started to think about things from a new perspective and this led to some big improvements. Nothing was sacrificed.

We received an overwhelmingly positive response from the combat alpha. Almost everyone is really enthusiastic about the combat and many have spent countless hours enjoying it even though it's just a series of one on one fights. This is something not many combat systems can provide. It is however hugely skill based, tactical and difficult, don't expect to be an instant hero who easily dispatches their opponents! Many people were initially frustrated but then came to love it once they understood its subtleties. It requires a little patience and practice, this is not a game where spamming keys leads to victory, every mistake you make will be brutally punished. The AI is clever and will use every tool at their disposal to beat you, you need to be clever too!

Missed this update of Sui Generis in which they talk about The Underworld, the dead, damage and equipment mechanics and combat.

Until recently we focused mostly on outdoor environments which in many ways are the most technically challenging. Because we're such a small team with one programmer we generally have to focus on one thing at a time and the underworld had taken a back seat. Developing the prelude we found ourselves confronted with some issues that had been neglected and reviewing things that we weren't satisfied with.

You might remember we promised a vast and sprawling underworld, it's all interconnected rather than being many distinct environments. It's also very deep and it changes as you go deeper. The concept remains the same but our early design now seems too basic and not to the standards that the game is shaping up to.

Our first goal was to introduce more variation in the common structural graphics. We improved the modular system through which the environment is constructed and developed a tool that allows us to create these environments extremely quickly and interactively while providing an intuitive workflow, this means that we can focus on and experiment with design rather than getting bogged down in the work itself. We've improved and adapted our existing assets to this new system and we're developing new ones with fresh insights.

Bare Mettle released a new status update a few weeks back on the games forum. It talks about the games combat alpha, and a few other performance related issues.

As you've probably noticed we've discontinued development of the combat alpha. This is because we're focusing on other aspects of the game needed for the prelude. The feedback and testing from the combat alpha has been very useful. We've gotten to a point where the game is solid with very few minor bugs remaining that have mostly already been fixed and in terms of combat we're aware what the major issues are and also working to resolve them. There will inevitably be many improvements to be made to combat and animation in general but we think it's more important to broaden the scope for future releases.

Since the last combat alpha release we've been working on getting a number of important things to a complete enough state. First amongst these is finalising and putting together all the AI components necessary to have multiple characters moving and fighting in complex environments. While there's been a huge amount of work put into this already a lot of it was still more experimental than complete and we've been working on new and significant improvements in terms of spatial awareness, dynamic obstacles and combat tactics. An important feature here is also the ability to be able to thoroughly customise all behaviour on a per character basis. Some of this applies to just combat and it's likely we'll release a new combat alpha featuring improvements soon.

Another major area of development has been revising the workflow for underworld (and some other) environments. We've extended our tools to allow for a much more streamlined and rapid workflow while also allowing for more varied environments. We've been rebuilding assests to fit this new system and to higher quality standards, future assets will also be much easier to develop. The workflow is now incredibly fast and intuitive, we can already see how this is allowing us to experiment and focus much more on design rather than getting bogged down in the work itself.

Finally we've been bringing into action some plans to improve character physics performance so as to support more active characters at once. Some early tests show that we may be able to support significantly more characters than we originally thought and this has some pretty significant implications for the game.

There are some other very significant things we've been working on but at this point they would seem like a bit of a spoiler. Hopefully you'll be able to see them yourself before long and we're also planning to release a new development video soon.

We're still unsure what our first non combat alpha release should be. The basic options for an early alpha release would be the early content for the prelude in a somewhat incomplete state or something more along the lines of a free-form test environment. The latter has the advantage of not spoling the prelude experience while also potentially providing a more open testing platform.

Bare Mettle Entertainment is back with another post-funding update for Sui Generis with more information on the Combat Alpha Release.

Combat Alpha Release

Yesterday evening we released a first version of the combat alpha. Over 1200 people now have access to it. This very early release is under NDA but it will be lifted soon, we just want to get some early feedback and solve any major issues before it goes public. Anyone with access to the insider forum can view discussions where people have also posted screenshots and videos.

So far the feedback has been very positive. Some people are finding the controls tricky but they seem to be quickly getting used to them, it is a very unique control system. The combat system in general seems to be greatly appreciated. We've had really excellent feedback on graphics, sound, music and various features.

Performance and compatibility are better than we expected, very few people have had compatibility issues and we're getting amazing performance on even very low end systems. This being a first ever alpha release of both game and engine there are of course a few issues but we're quickly solving them as well as making major gameplay adjustments based on the feedback we're receiving. We've already released an updated version with numerous fixes and changes.

This is a huge milestone for us, we've actually shipped a working game even if it is very limited for now and the whole thing has gone very smoothly. The amount of work required to get so many things to this complete state has been staggering and overall we've really made some fantastic progress. Our workflow and tools have greatly improved as a result of this too. Now we can work on adding important features while also receiving continuous feedback (and testing!) and generally having a more meaningful interaction with our backers.

A quick update is provided for Sui Generis, which details what they have been working on after the postponement.

After announcing the postponement of the game we felt we had breathing room to develop some important features and improvements that we couldn't be sure we'd have the time to add and are better done sooner than later. Because we weren't sure we'd be able to add some of these features we've never really promised them or been specific about them. We've been wanting to make a development video or two about these new features but we're not finding the time to do this with getting a first build out of the office. We will make some new videos to go into more depth about these things but here's a quick breakdown of some of the more important improvements and features:

• Procedural materials for apparel that allow items to be made from different fabrics and other materials, possess unique variations, be dyed in different colours and have dynamic dirt and wear. This allows for endless unique looking items, greater customisation options and many implications for gameplay and AI.
• Procedural character texturing that allows us to add more unique detail and effects to our characters.
• Finalised and improved models for both genders and all physiques taking advantage of new features.
• Complete overhaul of sounds.
• Reworked post-processing for a more vibrant overall apperance.
• Torches! These work as dynamic lights with new dynamic fire effects, you can grab them off walls and even use them as weapons.

• Various animation and combat fixes, including one that caused a perpetual swinging/swaying motion that gave characters a "puppets on string" feel.

A first playable version is scheduled for the end of the month.

Bare Mettle Entertainment annouces that Sui Generis release date is being pushed back in the games latest post-funding update.

Postponement

With less than six months left until our planned release date we can see that we're behind schedule. We thought it best to communicate this now rather than later. We also want to reprioritise current development goals in a way that is more satisfying for you and easier to manage.

Rather than rush to release something incomplete or just keep you waiting we thought to release a prelude which only requires a subset of the game's functionality while we take our time completing features properly and fleshing out the game world. While quite different in scope from the final game this will still be a very enjoyable game in its own right. Besides building a small independent plot (which ties in with the world's lore) no work would go into this that isn't required for the main game and most of the team will be working on other aspects of the game anyway. What it will allow us to do is bring a number of core features to completion first and continue developing others and the world without trying to do everything at once.

We have a somewhat atypical development process in that rather than pile on playable content we develop large complex systems that can deliver content more efficiently and drive it more meaningfully. It's never as simple as add a new character, animation, dialogue or object; everything is part of big unified totality that must support all aspects and instances of those things. We've seen how this can be frustrating for our backers because until these systems are complete there's not much to see. This is fundamental to our design though, we want everything to be playable and interactive in many ways, not just one; we want a reactive and dynamic world that feels real, where there's depth and substance to everything, not just surface. We also believe this is a good strategy for a small team like us working on a project of this scale, our limited resources don't really allow for a more brute force approach.

In the latest post-funding update for Sui Generis the developers address the concerns over the released pre-alpha video.

Running improvements and combat controls

Many people found the poor running motion in our latest video quite distracting so we made an immediate effort to improve it. There also seems to be quite a lot of confusion about how the combat works so we made a new, more detailed explanation of the controls as they are in their current state.

There is a lot of room for improvement in the animation system in general and inevitably it draws people's attention. While we do want to continue improving animation we're currently focusing on other aspects of the game.

You may notice that at times the characters seem off balance and recover somewhat unrealistically. While this is relatively easy to improve in a way that would look better in a video it would also take away control from the player by causing involuntary steps and shuffles. We're prioritising gameplay, better to have something that's fun to play and not just nice to watch! That said we can probably improve this but again we don't consider it a priority right now.

Bare Mettle has posted a new post-funding update for Sui Generis offering us a look at at some Pre-Alpha gameplay footage.

New Public Video

Somewhat later than promised, here finally is a new public video!

During development it's easy to dismiss many glitches and other issues due to things being unfinished and as you know we are developing all technology in house. As we endeavoured to make this video we became determined to solve every issue we encountered rather than avoiding them or using temporary workarounds. We are after all making a game, not just videos. The game is now very stable, the perfomance is solid and we removed every glitch we could find.

While the game still deserves many tweaks and improvements, and we want to continue improving it almost indefinitely, we feel we've reached a good level of quality and functionality. We've avoided showing some aspects of the game that we don't feel are complete enough yet but we tried to convey the spirit of the game in the video's narrative. Hope you enjoy it!

Despite our efforts the Youtube playback of the video is not very good, you can download a high quality smoother version of the video here:
Direct link: http://sb1.baremettle.com/SuiGenerisPAG.mp4
Torrent (faster): http://cdn1.baremettle.com/SuiGenerisPAG.mp4.torrent

Sui Generis has a new post-funding update talking about combat AI and stats.

Item and character stats

Stats must play an important role in the game but player skill, action gameplay and physics are already playing a huge role. We want to retain the skill element and the fluidity of the combat, stats must interact seamlessly with this process and give advancement and loot a good purpose. The effect of stats compared to many other RPGs is quite small, you will never be 10 times as strong or do 100 times more damage, but that extra speed or force does make all the difference.

It's taken us some time to design and test a stat system that would work well. Weapons in particular are tricky because their shape and size alone have a huge impact on gameplay and character animations. Just the distribution of the mass of a weapon (this is accurate and based on the 3D mesh and can also be tweaked) can completely change how a character effectively wields it. We need to use the weapon's inherent physical qualities and allow them to interact with character skills and physique realistically, we also need to provide the player with an intuitive yet accurate overview of a weapon's qualities. We think the fact that every weapon feels and plays differently is great. We're thrilled with what we've come up with and you'll be able to see all this in game.

Combat AI

Combat AI is something we're taking very seriously. We're very keen on NPCs appearing lifelike and playing similarly to a human opponent. Combined with the physical interaction and motion, a realistic and clever behaviour really tricks our brains into thinking of the characters as alive, it makes combat feel very real and personal. We're also keen on AI opponents being challenging while playing by the same exact rules as yourself which contributes to this feeling.

To ensure that NPCs really do play by the same rules as players we're actually running them through the same exact controls, we're basically putting a virtual player in charge of them with their own cursor and buttons to press. Because of the full physics simulation however these need to be very smart, landing a good blow requires steering the character so that their weapon connects with force in the right place at the right time while overcoming the opponent's defences. When you play the game you'll see this is a very organic and tricky process, it requires skill from a player and it also does from AI. It's even trickier when you start to consider the hugely different weapons and other items that a character or their opponents may be equipping. That's just the beginning though, we want our characters to react with human like individual qualities; we need them to employ solid tactics and have good awareness of the environment, swinging a halberd into a wall, or worse into a friend's face, is a big problem. NPCs need to act cleverly in any situation or against any number of opponents. Oh, and we need you to be cursing at the little buggers with genuine outrage.

Sui Generis has a new post-funding update with news of a new environment artist.

A while ago we decided to hire an additional environment artist to help us build the Sui Generis game world. We advertised the position and received over 100 applications, we selected the best applicants and asked them to do an art test, we then interviewed those with the best submissions and finally selected one artist to join our team. His name is Leonid Kuzyakin.Incidentally Leonid was one of our Kickstarter backers with a significant contribution. This already told us he was passionate about the project and we very much liked everything we heard during the interview. Leonid shares our views on game design and his education gives him a solid understanding of architecture and its history, which fits perfectly with our attention to detail and authenticity.

Leonid adapted very quickly to our art style and methods, we are really pleased with the results and to have him join our team. Welcome to the team Leonid!

Best,
Bare Mettle

P.S. We're almost ready to record the new video, coming soon.

Bare Mettle Entertainment has a new post-funding update with news about the promised video for Sui Generis.

We promised you a public video but then we got cold feet. We're not very comfortable with showing the game while it's still so far from completion. While we see the progress we've made it's inevitable that people will only see what we haven't done yet, the flaws. Don't worry though, we are actively working towards a video again now.

In general we're focusing much more on big stuff and less on features that can be completed quickly. This is more true now than ever before. While prototyping stuff, doing mockups and just the odd bit here and there is fun, it's actually more harmful than beneficial at this stage. We need to work methodically and make sure we do everything in the most efficient and actually useful way possible.

So, expect a video before long, really this time. We're taking some time off the big stuff to polish up a few things and add a couple of cool features even though it's not the best thing for us to be doing right now. Thank you for your patience, you funded this project and you have every right to be kept in the loop, we've been overwhelmed by development work but we do honestly want to make an effort to communicate more with you.

I almost forgot about this funded kickstarter my humble apologies about that. The game was called Sui Generis and the project has a development update post.

THE BIG PICTURE

During our Kickstarter campaign we were criticised for showing a lot of technology but not enough of a game or story. This was frustrating for us because actually the dynamic story is one of the aspects of the game we're most excited about. Technology is just a tool to support that vision and make the world more immersive.

We talked about a "dynamic story" but that could mean anything. Because we don't know how much we can accomplish it's been difficult for us to go into much detail, and we couldn't promise things we weren't sure we can deliver. Now we're actively working towards this goal and we need to tell you what we're working on. Still this is a complex topic that is difficult to explain concisely so please bear with us as we try to convey our ideas.

The kind of roleplaying experience we dreamed of and hope to create is one that hasn't been possible without a human game master who can intelligently respond to all your actions. We want your actions to have meaningful effects, not as pre-scripted "choice and consequences" over which we have no real insight or control, but as a world that is affected realistically by everything you do. We want you to be able to make mistakes, to fail and to feel that your successes are your own. We even want you to accomplish things that we as designers have never foreseen. We want a world capable of supporting your most creative strategies, where hypothetical scenarios turn out to be real. We're talking about roleplaying, immersion, being master of your own character in a world that can make you believe it is real.

Can we really do all this? As we've said before, we have to try. It is difficult, we ourselves have to occasionally remind ourselves why it might be possible. We are committed to it and actively working towards it. To us this is the only way worth doing it. It’s the same attitude we have with everything. We're doing combat using physics because that's kind of how it works. It might be far from perfect but it's a lot better and infinitely less boring than comparing a couple of numbers.

Thanks go to Lemonhead for bringing this post to my attention.

Kostaz informed us we missed the development update of Sui Generis from last week. Next to the development update they also mention moving to a new location.

Nothing is more important than populating the world with diverse characters. The physique and inventory system we talked about in previous updates will accomplish this and implement many of the game's most important features.

We had to revise our initial design as it proved impractical, the assets we had also proved unsuitable. We now have a functional system, much higher quality models and have made various improvements to how they work in game.

The revised system uses a square physique graph where the two axes represent muscularity and fat. We had to use significantly more morph targets than we planned but we now have the full range of physiques for both male female characters with excellent results. Here are some examples of different physiques outputted by the completed system.

Click on the link to actually see those examples.

In this Kickstarter update we learn that if you have pledged at least 20 pounds before, you have access to the insider forum of Sui Generis.

We've just launched the insider forum. This forum is primarily intended for anyone with alpha, beta or development video access but anyone who has pledged £20 or more can participate. If you qualify and register to our forums using the email address associated with your Kickstarter account you will automatically be granted access to the insider forum. If you register to our forums using a different email address then please contact kickstarter@baremettle.com from your payment address with "insider forum" as the subject line and specify your forum email address.

The insider forum is a place where we will discuss the game and its development with you in a more direct and informal way. We will still use Kickstarter and other channels as a platform for larger updates and the majority of our forums are open to everyone.

Also the Paypal pledge system has been updated:

We've added a more complete paypal pledge system. Some of the rewards such as the collector's edition will only be available for a short period of time, these are there for those people that were not able to pledge before the Kickstarter campaign ended. Also for a limited amount of time, if you wish to upgrade your existing pledge you can do so. A revised set of rewards will remain available so that we can raise more money in order to recruit additional team members and improve the quality of the game!

Sui Generis has been funded (160k of 150k) and the team has posted a short update:

Sui Generis is still 14K pounds short from reaching it's goal with only 15 hours to go. So this is going to be stressing times for Madoc, who announced some T-shirts you can get as an add-on and had time to do an interview with Forbes.

Forbes: When I first wrote about Sui Generis, a lot of my readers said it looks more like a tech demo than an RPG. While I was enthusiastic about the nature of the game and the gameplay itself, many people worried that this was technology without a game.

So what is the story, and how will it figure into what we’ve seen already?

Evans: Well, we’re very keen on the concept of writing your own story. Our main focus is creating a world and sandbox elements that have lots of depth to them. Mostly it’s going to be about you discovering the world, learning abilities and growing into whatever it is you will become. The player character is special but what is special about them is that when they die they return to life. No saving and loading and no respawning as if it were normal, the fact that you come back is a big deal within the context of the world.

You don’t do quests and get rewarded for completing them, there’s stuff going and you can get involved. You might actually lose more than you gain by doing so.

Update #12 is intended as an example of a game experience from the player character’s perspective. The events there are dynamic, based on player actions. An apparently simple premise can escalate into almost anything and by doing things you always discover more things to do and get more deeply involved. No content is isolated, there’s an open world and a single vast interconnected underworld rather than a series of small dungeons. Similarly with events, we want everything to be connected and affected by whatever you do or happens.

The main plot is essentially just an extension of this. Theoretically it would be possible to avert the entire affair by accidentally rolling a boulder off a cliff and this landing on the main antagonist. The player would then play the game and perhaps never realise there was supposed to be some big problem to solve. Of course in practice this is quite unlikely!

It’s ambitious but we think this is what an RPG has to be. Who knows how much we can actually do but we have to try! We do have serious ideas about its implementation.

The Sui Generis kickstarter is currently still 30K pounds short of their 150K goal, but still have 39 hours ahead of them, so who knows.

In this update they show how blood, fire and shields are shown in the game.

We've had quite a few requests and questions about blood, fire and shields. What better way to show we intend to do these things than getting started on it? So, we got to work, made some early versions of these features and put them in a video for you!

BLOOD
We've added blood sprays for the more painful blows, the effect is still simple but we already see the potential of the animation resulting from all the physics. When our character rendering system is complete we plan to add lots of proper sticky yucky gore, wounds, dents and the lot. And not just on characters. For now we've made weapons get nicely spattered until they're covered in the stuff.

FIRE
Just a fiery pit for now but it's procedural, volumetric fire. It's 3D, there are no repeating animations, we can shape it however we want, make it envelop and react to objects etc. Those physics again. The colours need tweaking but we're pretty happy with this early result.

SHIELDS
We basically just strapped a shield to the character's arm and added some basic blocking behaviours. Even though we've done very little the physics are already doing a lot. Shields are supposed to be a big build choice and just as we hoped they're proving to be extremely effective.

With just 3 more days to go Sui Generis still needs another 60K (pounds that is). Not impossible, but difficult. To help things they have added an update on writing.

We promised a writing update and here it is. We have three loosely connected short thematic pieces, two of which also illustrate what could be actual gameplay experiences. By reworking encounters into a story format, you begin to get a feel for the tone we're aiming toward. Enjoy!

They say we built cities in the sky.

The histories say we made great things, once. White pillars that never tarnished. Great monuments, and greater cities around them. We lived in tranquility. Somehow, everything changed. None can tell what the ancestors did to anger the Gods... to make them poison the water, and curse the skies. 

That was lifetimes ago, so far gone that no one remembers how or even where it may have been. Others say that’s only fairy stories. That things have always been such as they are. That our ancestors scraped in the dirt just as we do today, and dreamed of greater things around the nighttime fires... just as we do today.

Myself, I couldn’t guess. I dream of walking the hills without need of a sword, of falling to sleep without setting traps against the night. Beyond that, I suppose I don’t much care.

They say we built cities in the sky... I’ll settle for travelling without looking over my shoulder, or wondering what hides within the evening mist.

Two more stories can be found on their Kickstarter page.

For the update of today the devs of Sui Generis (79K/150K, 6days) offer more insight into items, equipment and the inventory system.

We've got some pretty cool features planned for our inventory system. We're going to be using a "slotless" inventory system. In practice this means there's over a hundred slots and you don't see them. This allows you to equip many combinations of things, rather than being limited to articles of clothing or armour that cover a fixed part of your character's body.

To make clothes we use a dedicated cloth simulator and other tools we've developed. This allows us to make realistic clothes very quickly and easily. It also allows clothes to change depending on what else you're wearing. For example, long trousers will tuck into boots realistically.

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.

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.

There will however also be a great many items with much more special qualities. These won't be randomly generated items that make no apparent sense, they will have plausible though sometimes quirky qualities, you will get a sense that someone designed them with a purpose. These items will be well hidden and well guarded, they won't just spawn at random. If you defeat an opponent you will be able to take whatever they have equipped and they will have been using this equipment to combat you.

In the last week or so several updates became available for the Kickstarter game Sui Generis. There is the introduction of a new writer, more on combat:

As the combat is at the moment, we only have swinging weapons. Every attack is chosen out of a set at random, and while each have their perks, it's up to you to react and adjust your aim, or even cancel it (by simply letting go of the mouse button) in favour of parrying. It makes for very skilful gameplay whilst being hugely dynamic and simple to operate. Parrying is automatic, but you're at the mercy of physics, and learning to rotate your character so your parrying arm is better placed to deflect the incoming blow is key.

I spent a long time playing Mount and Blade, and not to blow my own trumpet but it was one of the games I was very good at, and I'm obviously talking about PvP against some very good players. While it is seriously fun, combat is not very dynamic and it's not hugely fun to watch unless you can appreciate the skill involved in what's going on. It is purely mechanical and looks kind of silly. With only 4 directions of parrying, all of which you can attempt every single attack (if you're quick enough), it is entirely possible to, say, make a macro that cycles parrying every direction, rendering the entire system exploitable. This is not a criticism, I love the game, it's just the nature of a mechanical system.

This is very, very early combat you're looking at here. Think typical isometric game, where all you can do is left-click. If you were watching someone play the third installment of a game who's name I shall not mention, and all the person was doing was left-click attacking, I think it would be far less enticing. We are going to have special strikes you can incorporate into your build and even stabbing weapons as either an alternate attack, or more specialised weapons like spears. These will be pin-point accurate, based on our epic collisions and bring in a whole new play-style to the early gameplay you're seeing in our videos. We would also like to include double-tap behaviours for dodging and a wide variety of close-quarters utility thaumaturgic powers.

Shields will play an important role in defensive melee combat, and instead of providing a static defensive bonus, when you aren't attacking you will adopt a sort of bracing stance. It will be up to you to angle the shield into blows, and allow you to perform bashes and other offensive maneouvres. Skill points are very limited, and choosing to incorporate a shield into your build will be a significant build choice, rather than just a damage/defence tradeoff.

And new information on the T-shirts and add-ons:

Digital Add-Ons:

Digital Soundtrack +£5

Extra Digital Copy of the Game +£10

Extra Three Digital Copies of the Game +£20

Extra Digital Copy of the Game Including Beta Access +£15

Extra Digital Copy of the Game Including Alpha Access +£30

Exclusive Downloadable Videos +£30

Physical Add-Ons:

Audio CD Soundtrack +£15

Extra Collector's Edition Copy of the Game +£60

Sui Generis T-Shirt +£20

Bare Mettle Hoodie +£40

Sui Generis Update #8 talks more about combat:

As the combat is at the moment, we only have swinging weapons. Every attack is chosen out of a set at random, and while each have their perks, it's up to you to react and adjust your aim, or even cancel it (by simply letting go of the mouse button) in favour of parrying. It makes for very skilful gameplay whilst being hugely dynamic and simple to operate. Parrying is automatic, but you're at the mercy of physics, and learning to rotate your character so your parrying arm is better placed to deflect the incoming blow is key.

I spent a long time playing Mount and Blade, and not to blow my own trumpet but it was one of the games I was very good at, and I'm obviously talking about PvP against some very good players. While it is seriously fun, combat is not very dynamic and it's not hugely fun to watch unless you can appreciate the skill involved in what's going on. It is purely mechanical and looks kind of silly. With only 4 directions of parrying, all of which you can attempt every single attack (if you're quick enough), it is entirely possible to, say, make a macro that cycles parrying every direction, rendering the entire system exploitable. This is not a criticism, I love the game, it's just the nature of a mechanical system.

This is very, very early combat you're looking at here. Think typical isometric game, where all you can do is left-click. If you were watching someone play the third installment of a game who's name I shall not mention, and all the person was doing was left-click attacking, I think it would be far less enticing. We are going to have special strikes you can incorporate into your build and even stabbing weapons as either an alternate attack, or more specialised weapons like spears. These will be pin-point accurate, based on our epic collisions and bring in a whole new play-style to the early gameplay you're seeing in our videos. We would also like to include double-tap behaviours for dodging and a wide variety of close-quarters utility thaumaturgic powers.

Shields will play an important role in defensive melee combat, and instead of providing a static defensive bonus, when you aren't attacking you will adopt a sort of bracing stance. It will be up to you to angle the shield into blows, and allow you to perform bashes and other offensive maneouvres. Skill points are very limited, and choosing to incorporate a shield into your build will be a significant build choice, rather than just a damage/defence tradeoff.    

The sixth update for Sui Generis (52K/150K, 13 days to go) talks about producing a new environment type; a wasteland, character animations and a new combat video.

The inputs for our animations are hand crafted. The animations currently in the game were made by Madoc while he designed the system and tools behind them. Madoc is not an animator, nor a swordsman and he had plenty to do besides making animations! Hiring a professional animator is at the top of our list of priorities and we are already taking some under consideration. The dynamic behaviours and procedural elements of animations are also something we hope to improve significantly so that the characters appear more reactive and sure footed.

In the first part of the video Kieran demonstrates how the controls work. Most of the weapons in our videos are supposed to be heavy, in the first part of this video we decreased the mass of the weapons, sped up the animations and removed some of the worst wobble from them. The animations are still amateurish but hopefully you can see that the worst problems come from the quality of the animations.

Forbes checked out what Sui Generis is all about and wrote this article on it.

“Sui Generis is not about running around killing hordes of enemies in order to collect experience points and numerous items,” the Kickstarter page reads. “It is about exploring a world and being involved in major events there. What exactly you do and how you do it is entirely up to you. The world is carefully designed to be believable and have a life of its own. It is not there to wait for you to go on quests, trigger events or make decisions. Events will take their course and may take a turn for the worse if you don’t get involved.”

There will be no saving and loading, no easy out for the unwary or careless, and death—well, prepare to die. And when you do die, events that transpired before your death will remain in place. Death matters.

“Much of the time combat situations will be occasional yet meaningful,” the game description continues. “Few opponents can be dismissed as trivial. Though there are powerful items, even an old rusty sword can be effective in the right hands. There are no levels, but there is a more natural progression system based on skills and thaumaturgic powers. There are no classes, but rather countless possible builds with diverse and interesting qualities.”

No classes, no leveling, and a deep, dynamic open-world. Oh, and really unique and quite possibly amazing combat.

An update on Kickstarter for Sui Generis showed up expressing some of their thoughts on the game.

Here's a quick update in response to some of the opinions that seem to have formed regarding our game. We are simply expressing some of our thoughts here.

Yes, you start the game as an anonymous villager. The whole point here is that you create your own character and write your own story. If you want to play a named hero with a rich background, predefined personality and a clear mission ahead, then you're looking at the wrong game. Personally, we feel completely alienated from such characters.

Yes, your character does turn out to be special. If you weren't special you wouldn't stand a chance. And here comes a spoiler. Rather than providing you with this astounding power to record moments in time and return to them whenever you please (read save/load) so that you may win every battle, eventually, even by pure chance; we thought it better for it to be an element of the story. We don't just brush over this as an every day "respawn" or other mechanic. Also, to quote our project page, "not as vague mythology but actual chains of events leading to the current situation".

Yes, our world is under duress, you won't be picking daisies. As for a looming threat, you may have no idea what it is until it's too late. Nothing is as it seems. There is no evil in our world. There may be lack of scruples, ruthlessness or just genuine oversight, but motives are often complex and valid to those who hold them.

What you should be paying attention to when reading our brief summary of the premise are the "ifs" and "buts". We dislike linear story, we hate linear story, no, we truly despise linear story. If you asked us what is as pleasant as being poked in the eye, we'd have to answer "linear story".

We have not given you a story. We have intentionally lured you into thinking of this as a fairly typical fantasy RPG. Guess what? We don't like those either. We are of a skeptical nature and when faced with the usual fantasy claptrap, much like an inquisitive child, our answer is simply "but why?". There is lots of because in our world. We have taken what appears to be generic fantasy and given it a whole new twist. A lot of effort has gone into this and to reveal it would be to throw it all away. We hold it more dear than the funds we are trying to raise. If by not revealing it we fail in securing your support, then so be it.

We have been asked about character interactions and such. Well, sometimes we want to chat and sometimes we just want to kill stuff. Must be those hormones. Thing is, when the latter mood takes us, and some whining NPC decides to illustrate their sensitive nature to us, the solution is clear: smack 'em in the gob, throw 'em in the river, then perhaps evaluate whether their home looks to be a suitable place to store our booty. If this errant behaviour should upset someone, well, let them come. That, to us, is role playing. What we tend to be presented with in "games with choices" is something like this:

  1) Help the distressed peasant now
  2) Help the distressed peasant later
  3) Help the distressed peasant reluctantly

That is not role playing. We don't know what it is, but we don't like it.

You may encounter characters with sunny dispositions that are not always genuine and heartfelt. You may find yourself trying to divine your interlocutor's true intent, hopefully you are well versed in the arts of subtlety and sarcasm. You may also encounter characters with good or even noble intentions, and yet these intentions may not be in your best interests. Our game will certainly feature moral dilemmas and ambiguities.

Undoubtedly much of what we say sounds familiar and doesn't strike you as original, but perhaps it has at least conveyed something of our ethos. Take home what you will.

Big thanks to everyone who is supporting us.

On the Kickstarter page for Sui Generis an update on character customisation and advancement.

Your Character. Yes, yours

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

 

Skills

These are the skills planned for Sui Generis:

• Light Weapons
• Heavy Weapons
• Ranged Weapons
• Shields
• Armour
• Insight
• Concentration
• Meditation

You will be limited by a global skill total which is distributed amongst your individual skills, it will not be possible to train all skills to the highest attainable level. You choose which skills to train, untrain or keep at their current level. To train a particular skill it must see relatively frequent use. Actively training a skill by more frequent, repeated use will not increase your proficiency, 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.

Skills have the following major expertise levels:

• Inept
• Aspirant
• Novice
• Expert
• Adept
• Master

A milestone is granted for reaching each of level of expertise beyond Inept. You can choose amongst several milestones 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. Any milestone may be retrained, but this requires also retraining the skill from its previous level of expertise.

Skills are never required to grant a proficiency in using equipment but only in improving the character's effectiveness with it. All equipment can be used without artificial requirements. Equipment also does not belong to specific categories. For example, a weapon has a variable weight putting it somewhere on the scale of light to heavy.

 

Thaumaturgy

A huge 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.

The forms of thaumaturgy currently planned are:

• Displacement
• Energy
• Light
• Body
• Mind
• Force

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.

 

What about stats/attributes?

Sui Generis does not feature attributes as seen in many RPGs that can be advanced over time. Innate qualities such as your strength, dexterity or toughness are affected by your initial choice of physique. Currently we do not have specific mechanics planned for altering or improving these though they may be introduced. There are also no health points but simply resistance to various forms of damage which may be partly natural and partly conferred by equipment and various effects.

 

We hope this gives you an idea of the possibilities for creating unique characters with interesting abilities. Our goal is to provide many possible builds and unique play styles which you can tailor to your personal preference.

If you have more specific questions please visit our forums so that together we can build a body of information that everyone can benefit from.

And as we are with Kickstarter updates here is the latest for Sui Generis (currently at 10% of its goal), showing some pre-alpha combat.

The first update for Sui Generis, which is still quite a bit away from their 150.000 pound goal, is about the story and the world.

You start the game as apparently just a common villager but someone obviously disagrees, this puts your village in danger and you are exiled. You will be thrown into a hostile world you know nothing about and be forced to fend for yourself. As an unworldly villager you will discover this land and learn of it's history and current affairs, of the primitive people living in awe of a misconceived past. It soon becomes clear that you are no ordinary villager and indeed have some highly exceptional qualities. Dark, ominous events are rapidly transpiring throughout the world, a terrible conclusion beckons on the horizon. You may be the only one with power enough to prevent catastrophe but it all hinges on whether or not you choose to intervene, freedom is king here and there will always be numerous ways to achieve any desired outcome, or fail in the attempt.

You will find yourself in a large open world that you can explore freely. A rich detailed terrain features many interesting locations. A vast sprawling underworld, a source of terror for the people but filled with ancient treasures, tells strange stories of the world's past.

The world features a feudal society dissolving under the pressure of thaumaturges, once benevolent miracle workers who have now turned to dark and cruel activities. Thaumaturges wield great powers, they can manipulate many aspects of the world with their minds. A recent shift in their agenda has led them to cruel experiments and dangerous incursions into the underworld, causing it's dormant threats to stir.

There will be other races besides humans but they will be very much nonhuman, more like creatures or mutants. The demon image and the ogre (we call him porky!) in our videos will hopefully give you some idea of the type of thing we have in mind. These creatures will have their own social structures but ones dramatically different and alien to those of humans. There are no elves, orcs or other common fantasy races (we use ogre as a descriptive term), all creatures are original.

The story unfolds in a hugely dynamic fashion and events will transpire even without your intervention. Your lack of involvement may lead to truly disastrous consequences for the world, the game will not end but the world may become a very inhospitable place. Even if you try your best you may not succeed, the game does not revolve around completing tasks and progressing stages of the plot. Success or failure are of equal value, the aim is to have fun.

There will be a great many unique non player characters in the world, whether they become friends or enemies or are simply indifferent is completely circumstantial. The game is not specifically designed to have a persistent party of companions, though some characters may choose to follow you and may be predisposed toward this role. If they perish they will not return to life, or at least not as they were. Ultimately no character (or creature) is special, all are subject to the same rules and the physical laws of the universe.

The Sui Generis game experience plays hugely on the element of mystery. The idea is that you are thrown into an unfamiliar fantastic world for you to discover. It's history is not understood by it's inhabitants and trying to piece it together will be an important element of the game.

Salvo writes in to point out Sui Generis, an RPG on Kickstarter described as "a ground breaking RPG for the PC that may just change the way you think about games". In more specific terms, the game is classless and doesn't use levels and also doesn't allow you to save-and-reload. They are looking for 150k Pounds (no, not dollars) over the next 29 days, which looks like a big ask:

Originally inspired by our belief that we could do almost anything, we let our imaginations run free. What would be your idea of the ultimate role-playing experience if you weren't aware of any limits? That's what we've been asking ourselves for many years and Sui Generis is the culmination of our ideas.

Sui Generis is set in a dark, hostile mediaeval world pervaded by intrigue and treachery. A completely original work evolved over many years, the Sui Generis universe is the product of many rare moments of inspiration. It encompasses a vast and rich history spanning aeons and galaxies, not as vague mythology but actual chains of events leading to the current situation. In Sui Generis you will get a sense that everything is connected and exists for a reason. You won't just be fed the history in a cutscene or book and you may never know the full story. We believe that piecing together elusive clues will be of huge entertainment value.

Sui Generis is not about running around killing hordes of enemies in order to collect experience points and numerous items. It is about exploring a world and being involved in major events there. What exactly you do and how you do it is entirely up to you. The world is carefully designed to be believable and have a life of its own. It is not there to wait for you to go on quests, trigger events or make decisions. Events will take their course and may take a turn for the worse if you don't get involved.

Much of the time combat situations will be occasional yet meaningful. Few opponents can be dismissed as trivial. Though there are powerful items, even an old rusty sword can be effective in the right hands. There are no levels in Sui Generis, but there is a more natural progression system based on skills and thaumaturgic powers. There are no classes, but rather countless possible builds with diverse and interesting qualities.

As you advance in Sui Generis you won't see creatures or characters in the world becoming more powerful with you. Rather, you will be able to face opponents and explore locations that previously entailed certain death. Death will not be hard to come by and carries consequences, and there is no saving and loading. The game will put you in situations where trying to get out alive may be your only concern. We believe this is important to keep the game exciting. What's a game if you can't lose?