Dev Blog #001 - The first information about NI Reborn
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/
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.
So what was happening and what was being solved.
(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.
So now about NI Reborn as a whole.
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/