Novus Inceptio News

Hey, everybody,

I'd like to update you on the current progress of the development. The main thing is that everything is progressing as it should, but unfortunately not as fast as I imagined.

The progress is available in the video below.

The speed/slowness of development at this time is influenced by several factors:
1) The game as such has not been generating profit for several years and if it does it is a minor amount to cover the various necessary fees. Therefore, for a long time now, the priority has been on the work (contracts) that will pay for rent, food, and general stuff. The development of the game thus takes place in spare time.
2) The game is really complex - and the transition to new things is really more complicated than one imagined...

What has happened since November 2022
Late November saw the announcement that work on the game had begun again, including a video demonstration of the new character controller.
A new visual of the game's characters (male and female) was also shown.
At the beginning of December, the Christmas event was activated for the old version of the game (which is very important for some players and not very difficult to activate from my side) - this event is still active but can be turned off in the main menu (if it bothers anyone).
The rest of December was spent tweaking the character visuals and deeper integration of the 3D model with the new character controller.
In January the first implementation of the game on the new character controller started - which turned out to be a really complicated thing. Since the game contains a lot of complex logic and systems that are on one hand cool, on the other hand outdated (their implementation) and all connected together so it's not exactly easy to tweak.
That's why in February they started with the opposite logic, by adapting the controller to the core of the game and creating a bridge for the core logic and from there everything will be extended and improved or fixed over time.
All of this is now finally functional at this time and the new character, including the new motion controller, is connected to the game and the basic stuff is functional.
So what originally looked like a thing to be mastered during December finally took more time and is still being debugged.
Overall though, this is a huge step forward in further development.

But it will take some time to connect all the logics. Even considering that currently it is not possible to do fulltime development, but only in free time. Novus was and is my dream game and even though there was a long hiatus (caused by multiple factors including personal issues etc) I never forgot about this game and always wanted to finish it - which will happen and I'm working on it (slowly but surely).

What's next?
First, I'll have to start communicating more (I do communicate in the discussion), but somehow I can't communicate in the form of global news - which is my weakness. But I didn't post anything in December and January, because there would be rumors that it's all because of steam sales promotions. Same thing in March (during the spring sales). And February was full of questions as to whether the character controller would eventually be able to connect to the game. Now there are no global sales in sight so hopefully it will work and the community will be more informed;)

Now, technically and realistically.
At this time, we need to fine-tune the last crucial things - character equipment connections and other gameplay elements.
It's about connecting the old stuff to the new controller.
Once this is done, we'll start tweaking the world behavior and various finishing touches for the linking.
It will also be decided whether to release some experimental version (not even for testing, but you can see that what is in the video is really real and functional ;) ...
Alternatively, there will be a temporary hybrid - where the current world and progress with the new character will be available (this is still under consideration).

But I will definitely not be able to do this in time for the end of March (i.e. the planned end of Q1/2023) :(
(Current job/task is keeping me busier, but again, it brings experience).

There is and will be a lot to do in the future:
A new save system - the current one brings with it a lot of problems
Technical stuff in the form of in-game settings - including new key settings, etc.
Mp/CoOp will be - not just right away - it's the last step (and it was planned to be - it's just counting from the beginning now).

But the goal is not to bring a new flashy different game, but the game as I envisioned it years ago.

Below is the promised video showing the current progress:
Connecting the new character game controller to the core game
Completely new camera system
New female character
The world is the original world from 2016, which I want to return to the game as the core world.
There are still gaps in the animations for resource gathering - which is currently being worked on.
etc.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Thank you all so much for your patience, support and trust.


McP

Hey, everybody,

we've had a few requests for the Christmas event.
Which is really meaningful and important for players who hunt achievemnts etc.

So we installed the old Unity 5 engine, activated the game code and created a new build in which we activated the Christmas event :)

We also made the old/new quests (content-wise they are identical to the last Christmas event), but they had to be made new - to activate them for everyone.

So you can complete or finish all Christmas achievements.
The classic Halloween event will then come in the fall of 2023 for the new version of the game.

If you don't want to complete the Christmas event, you can turn it off in the main menu.
The event will be active until the end of the year.

So good luck with your achievement hunting;)

McP

Hey, everybody,

It will take some time before the new update is ready and available to the public (Our current plan is January/February 2023).

So until then, we will try to keep you at least gradually informed about the latest progress or news.

So what has happened in the week since the last announcement/news.

Most importantly, there has been a change in game characters/characters.
The new models have a completely new skeleton rig that is identical for both female and male characters. Which ensures us a seamless implementation of any "humanoid" animation and easy change from female to male character and vice versa.

All this will also make it possible to do basic customization in the form of changing hair/beard, skin color, etc.

The images and video below are still very much a work in progress.
We are still working on tweaking the character controller and various details along those lines.
The full implementation of the game mechanics is yet to be seen.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

You can also catch a glimpse of some WIP animals in the video (currently static, but they are and will be mostly completely new - we're working on their basic implementation).

The latest announcement has raised a few questions that are good to answer early on.

The game itself will remain fundamentally the same (game mechanics, sense of production, building houses, etc).
The first thing we want to implement is new characters, controls, world, and MP/co-op.
We don't plan to make any major changes to the game logic - that will come with time, but still to keep what is already defined.

There will be no special MP achievements - the future MP/co-op will be only for possible cooperative play between friends.

If anything will be changes, it will be in light of new and future plans/things in the game.


Thank you all so much for your patience, support, and trust.

McP

Hey, everybody,

As most of you may remember, we announced at the end of 2019 that we were putting the game on indefinite hold.
Which it did, and there were a lot of things leading up to it, both personal and professional.
The indefinite period of time eventually turned into three years, but Novus itself was never forgotten nor did it officially end its development. It just needed time and ideas to mature and valuable new experiences to be gained.

We were going to wait until after the new year to make this announcement, but I guess it doesn't matter when we go out with it - because getting the trust back will take a long time to build and every day counts towards the good.

The game is being worked on again.
Slowly but surely a big update is in the works.
We'll keep you posted on exactly what it all entails as we go along, because honestly there will be a lot of changes and returns to the roots of the game.

The most important thing is a complete change and modernization of the character controller and animations.
What was technically impossible for us in 2015-18 is now possible thanks to the experience gained over the last 3 years - you are always learning and the 2015-18 version of the game was really such a first attempt.

A working version of the new driver can be seen in the video below. Everything is still being tweaked and balanced, but the foundation has been laid.
The next thing is a return to the original world and the whole idea of the game. When the entire original world of 64km2 is just pure wilderness with a few hints of mystery. And everything else is going into anomalies so that it doesn't interfere with the world.
This world was meant to be a sandbox for house building, survival, etc.
Which it was (those who played the game in 2015-16 will remember all too well their megalomaniac buildings, anywhere in the world without limitations ;) ) - but as little experience and perhaps confusion led to the creation of a new limited world, which while great in many respects and has its charms caused a final break in development.

That's why we want to return to the original idea of the game as it was dreamed up long ago and as it should be.
This goes hand in hand with what was never in the game but we all still wanted, and that is multiplayer.
Admittedly the game won't be an MMORPG - not really, the technical capabilities, experience etc. aren't there for that. But steam P2P co-op (host-client) is currently in the early testing stages, technically everything is ready just need to connect it all to the original game.
So we don't want to promise 100% multiplayer yet, but it's all on the way;)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We will try to keep you actively informed about the progress - currently we want to have the first version ready for Q1/2023

Thank you so much for all the support you've shown the game over the years.
And also a big apology for the last 3 years when we were silent - it had its reasons and we are all just people who can and do make mistakes.

We will try to build your trust again (which will be a long journey) and bring the promised gaming experience to everyone who owns the game.

McP

Hello everyone,

we thank you in advance for your patience and support. Right at the beginning, we announce that the development of the game does not end. After all the hardships you've certainly noticed, we've been fully in the game development for some time, though it may not seem like it.
In fact, for the past six months, nothing has been done but work. Unfortunately, there was not much to publish or hasty conclusions and promise something that may not be met in the future.


(Just briefly about the individual parts).

1) Migrating to Unity 2019
Since all our projects were running on old Unity 5, it was necessary to upgrade to the new version and take advantage of it. Which brings a lot of problem and incompatibility for Novus, but on the other hand, this step brings new possibilities.

2) New character controller
As the first, we were to embark on a brand new character controller, including new animations.
We needed to make our own clean system that could be used for any of our projects and was flexible for the future.
Part of this controller is the control of the camera, so as to avoid camera jamming or other visual imperfections during movement.

3) Performance
Another problem is the performance, we were spending a have a long time to debugged different methods of how to best to improve performance in given situations. And they tried different ways to achieve the desired result with the least impact on the performance as possible while maintaining our imagination of visual impression. The goal was to always run the base core at Full HD on 50-60 FPS, to create space for further calculations game scripts.
Which basically succeeded - the base core runs very well on our old PC dev assembly.

4) Finding the way
This was the most difficult time, we will not hide that we really wanted to end and leave the project. In the end, however, cleaning the head and constantly working on internal tools and finding new ways to find a solution to the NI as such will lead to a successful end and finish the game.
It will not be now, nor will it be the kind of game we dreamed long ago years - big eyes and lack of experience caused NI was to grow over our heads and far away from our personal and financial possibilities.



The "reborn" version is and will be a big update for the current game (not a new game or something like that). This is a general big adjustment of the whole game from A to Z so that it can be completed.

1) Why NI Reborn
Because it is really a transformation of the whole game from A to Z mainly in technical terms.
The first step was to try to convert the game from Unity 5 to Unity 2019. It took a long time and eventually succeeded and the game is working under the new engine, but the whole project has been an absolute ballast and unreal mess over the years. The project takes up over 40 GB of disk space. And it contains a lot of things that are not needed for development - just over the years of learning and development it is basically acceptable but inconvenient for work and further development, and even a new version of the engine did not help.
It takes over half an hour to load the project. Testing minor modifications and debugging is a matter of 10 minutes (before the game can run in the engine and we can do it some test - which we need to do all the time, so the tuning of one thing was taking an hour instead of a few minutes.), etc. etc. Which is very inconvenient. It's a lot like working in messy and uncleaned OS Windows :) These are things that can say we have a mess in it, but the whole project we started building years ago and over the years it has accumulated a lot of items that have not been used in the game.
That's why the new character controller was solved so that it was separated from the project and could be tested quickly and easily.
All these limiting problems led to the way that we decided to convert the game gradually as a new clean project with only what is really needed.
So all scripts, assets, etc. are gradually transferred to a new clean project so that the code is clean and the project cleaned of impurities.
It may sound jumpy and complicated, but it's for the benefit of the game, and the last days show that it was the best and fastest possible option to do.

2) Returning to the roots
In order for the game to work really well, it is not good to constantly add new content without a deeper sense of the game itself. A lot of things added to the game over time lost the sense and logic of what the game was supposed to be.

The purpose of NI was mainly about building and manufacturing with a light touch of survival, who doesn't have the power to restrict playing. The world of the game was supposed to be calm and full of forests, where you can easily get lost and find a quiet place to build a cottage.
NI fans who played the game from day one certainly remember the first version of the world;)

And we have good news for these players. The original old world full of impermeable forests and high mountains, which had and has its charm, will return to the game. And most importantly, we will do not limit where you can build your dream home.

The current world will stay in the game will only lose some POI locations, but in return, it gets dense forests and most of all the opportunity to build anywhere.

It will be possible to travel between these worlds.

More information will come later, as we do not currently want to promise anything that is not properly tested and closed as possible and beneficial to the game as a whole.

3) So what is done and what does it look like?
Please note that the information and videos below are very underworking and still in development and do not match the final result. The videos do not contain the final layout of the objects, nor do they contain locations as you know them (this is only being converted) - all are WIP.
Aerial footage is just a show of performance - aerial video shows some background generation processes that you won't see as you play.

The basic scheme of the old world is fully and functionally translated into a new generation method.
Here's an example of what the old world looks like in working form. The distribution of flora in this video is random without logic - it is mainly used for performance tests.

https://youtu.be/opN72OL9fgc

The transfer of the current world is more difficult, but it is well on its way. Since the current world is working on a different logic of generation than the old, it entails a more complicated conversion under the new flora generating methods. However, basic terrain data is converted and performance tests in randomly distributed flora turn out very well. Thus, we managed to ensure the same logic of behavior for all worlds in order to avoid collisions.

https://youtu.be/eQMDsU5j1pg


The main character is already connected to the new controller. But since the character has a different skeleton rig than the new controller, it's not perfect. I.e. we have to adjust the character so that everything works well.

Maybe it doesn't seem to be much - yes, it will be a lot of work and time. But everything is well on track and the most difficult steps are already done.

We will try to inform you more often now so that you are more in the picture about our progress (but sometimes the work absorbs us so much that one month is like a week for us).
We hope that you will not lose confidence for the project and you will last until we have finished all this and can update.

We thanks a lot to everyone.

The energy is back, but the financial situation is not very good, so if you want to support further development, there are some options (we don't force anyone into anything, but we know we have a few hards fans who want to help):

1) Write a review of the game (few people realize how important reviews are and how they affect product sale).
2) Recommend the game to friends, share on social networks, etc.
3) Put the game as a gift to your friends.
4) Let us know in the comments that this makes sense and that the game is no longer totally dead for you.
5) Get our little side project “The Wild Age”.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/732160/The_Wild_Age/