Hey Exanimates,
Before we get into what we've been working on, let's address what many of you want to know: public testing will begin in a matter of days. We hoped to start some time ago, but we've been making changes to how some important things work, because we saw a better way to tackle some of the more complex role features. We're currently fixing a few things from the last round of insider testing we did a few days ago, and then we'll go to the Steam testing branch.
The past month we moved past testing core role functionality and we've been trying our hand at some actually complex role based behaviours. So far all AI decisions have been driven by an emotion system, with roles only really being able to nudge things in a direction and provide some specific interactions and reactions. That didn't really allow for more rational behaviour, and often creates a harsh disconnect between how a character acts and what interactions they can engage in. We've been working on a much tighter integration between roles and emotions, allowing roles to both influence emotions more directly and to make explicit and considered decisions based on emotions and low level behaviour. You could basically see this as making the difference between a wild animal and a thinking, rational human.
We had developed the core features for this already, but when it came to actually using them we realised there was a better, but fundamentally different approach. This has quite an impact on core AI and places a much bigger emphasis on roles for low level behaviour, so things will need to be tweaked and adjusted over time, but has many advantages. This leads into what we previously discussed as "foundational behaviour roles". They provide the most important emergent behaviours and relationships based on unscripted events and actions. We're again using Derrin as a test case, where he could previously only be provoked into combat without this being reflected in subsequent behaviour or dialogue, he can now respond in various ways, choosing to plead for mercy, run away and try his luck on his own or negotiating a truce with the player. He will respond differently to intimidation or outright hostility, or hold grudges and so on. A big part of this is also making dialogue more dynamic and situationally appropriate. Where game dialogue is typically something that happens separately from the rest of the game, in Exanima dialogue can be conducted while doing anything else and while everything continues to happen normally. It's entirely possible to attack someone at any point during a friendly conversation for example, or for it to be interrupted, or simply be or become inappropriate in an emerging situation or emotional state. This creates a lot of very difficult problems with many cases that are not easy to predict or account for. As well as building contextual awareness into the dialogue system and dynamic reactions, there is the problem of dialogue being interrupted and resumed naturally, possibly taking a new direction based on what happened.
We've added various new dialogue and re-written most of the existing dialogue. Besides just improving some of the hastily written old stuff, we've tried to make dialogue feel like a natural back and forth between characters, in keeping with its real time aspect. This however means that dialogue branches often and quickly explodes into a large volume even for short conversations. This is made much more complex still by the previously mentioned contextual changes, dynamic elements and resuming interrupted conversations. Our systems and tools were designed for this, but it's our first time navigating these complex cases and we're still figuring out the best ways to author and handle all this as we go.
We've also been making unique events and interactions more generalised and versatile, so that they can work with many roles. This means characters might respond differently to these based on their roles or that characters can easily be substituted for others. One example of how this would be used is for Derrin (and other characters) to appear on playthroughs other than Unknown's, providing an opportunity for different lore exposition and a more meaningful alternate playthrough. On that note, we're also finally working on introducing the proctor uniform and armour set. This is an elaborate and very unique set with eleven pieces that can be combined in different ways.
After a first round of improvements to pathfinding went through testing, we worked on it a fair bit more. We solved some remaining issues and made characters better at navigating complex paths, far less prone to getting stuck and they now try to find a safe and comfortable position to stop in. There's still some pathfinding related improvements and tweaks we'd like to make such as characters moving better in groups, moving out of each other's way and dodging moving objects, but for now the focus was mainly on making companions better at avoiding dangers and sticking with the player. While role testing and general polishing continues, we're still finalising new content, but also working on a few things besides. We're not sure exactly what other features we will include in the main update just yet, but as we've overcome these big development hurdles we're shifting focus to completing and adding new features and smaller content additions. Some of these will come in small updates following the big one. Best, Bare Mettle