Due to popular demand we're going to add an early version of armed combat (with some low-level weapons), as well as a more performant brawl scene on high priority. Hopefully this won't last more than a few weeks, but don't pin us down on it!
This game looks like it is going to be awesome once it is completed. I only had two major issues I wanted to address (other than minor bugs). The first is that the controls are very frustrating for me to play on my laptop. It runs fine, but it is nearly impossible to turn the camera using the trackpad while walking or running. I am using an HP omen, just to give further detail. Do you plan on allowing controller (Xbox one, specifically) use for this game rather than just the keyboard? The second thing, and this could definitley just be an oversight on my end or something I am doing wrong, but there are no other NPC's in the courtyard with me and I can't seem to go into any other areas where there might be, so I didn't really get to test out any of the hand to hand combat. Other than that I am very excited for the continuing progress on this game, it looks like it is going to be phenomenal.
We hadn't anticipated on people trying to play using the trackpad, so everything is tested with a mouse and keyboard. We did include controller support (I will update the ingame cheat sheet), however that is only tested with an Xbox 360 controller so far. You should be able to plug in the controller at any time and control the character with that.
The courtyard is to display your creations so as soon as you create multiple characters, they will all show up in the courtyard. You can also spawn random characters by pressing 'insert' while in the location.
Thanks for the feedback, and good to see you're on board where we want to take this going forward!
Hi, thanks for the encouraging comment! We do agree that we need to make improvements to performance, especially the courtyard scene has not been thoroughly optimized. This is one of the reasons we're showing this as an alpha preview; we believe it is the first version we can give out to people to show our vision and our work so far, but we're at the same time aware that there's still a lot to be done, including performance optimizations.
Out of curiosity, how do the other parts of the game run for you and what are your system specs?
I have gtx 770, i5 4670k and 16gb ram at 64bit OS. Main menu and Armory works at 45/60+ fps (almost smoothly) as squad show case and caste run at 30 or below.
Still the potential is great. For me this lands somewhere between exanima and overgrowth (where exanima is my all time favourite and overgrowth is good but still meh) Not bad at all for an alpha preview!
I see, ideally, we'd want the game to run @ 1080p on high settings at least at a stable 30 FPS with such a setup. Since Unity (the game engine we use) currently also does a lot of work on optimization, I'm hopeful we can get closer to that goal in the coming months.
But we're very excited to hear you've enjoyed this preview and hope you'll stay tuned for the next updates! If you'd like, you could also drop in on our forums for more feedback & discussion on ideas for features, improvements, etc. Cheers!
Hi! Physics in the game are based on the PhysX framework, so essentially simplified/streamlined numeric rigidbody physics. In addition to that we also fine-tune e. g. collision reactions by applying additional forces based on the state of a character, for example to simulate muscle strength and/or constractions.
Running a lot of physics computations is definitely resource intensive, but to some extent necessary for the interactions that make up physical combat. So, no, it's not really feasible to attempt physics based combat without a framework like PhysX, especially not for a super small team like us.
What we will be doing, however, is trying to utilize the CPU more fully (as in, make better use of multi-core CPUs) and see where we can offload some potentially computationally expensive stuff into more streamlined/simplified versions handled through custom code.
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if the people that buy the game on itch.io do they get in on steam if it gets put on steam
Yes, we will be handing out Steam keys to people who bought it here, as soon as we go live on Steam!
Will it ever be free?
The game won't be free anytime soon, but we will release a free demo version in the future!
thats nice!
How far away is armed combat? Can't wait to smash some heads with swords and axes!
Due to popular demand we're going to add an early version of armed combat (with some low-level weapons), as well as a more performant brawl scene on high priority. Hopefully this won't last more than a few weeks, but don't pin us down on it!
Sounds really cool! Thank you for answering!
This game looks like it is going to be awesome once it is completed. I only had two major issues I wanted to address (other than minor bugs). The first is that the controls are very frustrating for me to play on my laptop. It runs fine, but it is nearly impossible to turn the camera using the trackpad while walking or running. I am using an HP omen, just to give further detail. Do you plan on allowing controller (Xbox one, specifically) use for this game rather than just the keyboard? The second thing, and this could definitley just be an oversight on my end or something I am doing wrong, but there are no other NPC's in the courtyard with me and I can't seem to go into any other areas where there might be, so I didn't really get to test out any of the hand to hand combat. Other than that I am very excited for the continuing progress on this game, it looks like it is going to be phenomenal.
Hi & thanks for giving the preview a go!
We hadn't anticipated on people trying to play using the trackpad, so everything is tested with a mouse and keyboard. We did include controller support (I will update the ingame cheat sheet), however that is only tested with an Xbox 360 controller so far. You should be able to plug in the controller at any time and control the character with that.
The courtyard is to display your creations so as soon as you create multiple characters, they will all show up in the courtyard. You can also spawn random characters by pressing 'insert' while in the location.
Thanks for the feedback, and good to see you're on board where we want to take this going forward!
- Khaya
This is good and I can totally see the potential with this! I only hope that performance would be fixed asap. Ofc that might not be first concern yet
Hi, thanks for the encouraging comment! We do agree that we need to make improvements to performance, especially the courtyard scene has not been thoroughly optimized. This is one of the reasons we're showing this as an alpha preview; we believe it is the first version we can give out to people to show our vision and our work so far, but we're at the same time aware that there's still a lot to be done, including performance optimizations.
Out of curiosity, how do the other parts of the game run for you and what are your system specs?
I have gtx 770, i5 4670k and 16gb ram at 64bit OS. Main menu and Armory works at 45/60+ fps (almost smoothly) as squad show case and caste run at 30 or below.
Still the potential is great. For me this lands somewhere between exanima and overgrowth (where exanima is my all time favourite and overgrowth is good but still meh) Not bad at all for an alpha preview!
Best regards to you!
I see, ideally, we'd want the game to run @ 1080p on high settings at least at a stable 30 FPS with such a setup. Since Unity (the game engine we use) currently also does a lot of work on optimization, I'm hopeful we can get closer to that goal in the coming months.
But we're very excited to hear you've enjoyed this preview and hope you'll stay tuned for the next updates! If you'd like, you could also drop in on our forums for more feedback & discussion on ideas for features, improvements, etc. Cheers!
Yoooo this looks sick, how did you do the physics for this!? Am a physics student currently in college
Hi! Physics in the game are based on the PhysX framework, so essentially simplified/streamlined numeric rigidbody physics. In addition to that we also fine-tune e. g. collision reactions by applying additional forces based on the state of a character, for example to simulate muscle strength and/or constractions.
Does the game take a performance hit by using the PhysX framework? Can you still have realistic body physics without it?
Running a lot of physics computations is definitely resource intensive, but to some extent necessary for the interactions that make up physical combat. So, no, it's not really feasible to attempt physics based combat without a framework like PhysX, especially not for a super small team like us.
What we will be doing, however, is trying to utilize the CPU more fully (as in, make better use of multi-core CPUs) and see where we can offload some potentially computationally expensive stuff into more streamlined/simplified versions handled through custom code.