FINAL RELEASE DATE IS STILL TBD. PROJECT STATUS AND PROGRESS UPDATE. Firstly, I'd like to say hi and thank everyone who has shown their support and love to Arx Insanity over the years. We're thrilled to be a community of over 1200 members on Discord and that fact holds great significance for us. If you're interested in becoming a part of our community, engaging in discussions about Arx, or keeping track of Arx Insanity's internal updates, we invite you to join the Arx Server below: FINAL RELEASE DATE IS STILL TBD We had set multiple dates in mind, including testing phases to ensure a stable and polished release experience for the public. We were genuinely confident about these release plans. However, the unexpected departure of team members and the subsequent lack of staff have overwhelmed us. Despite our best efforts to work swiftly and meet the announced dates, the reality of the situation has made it difficult to achieve those targets. The sheer amount of work that needs to be done, coupled with the limited team size, has resulted in an overwhelming and unmanageable workload in recent months. We are fully committed to bringing this project to a proper and successful conclusion, realizing the vision we set out to achieve. While the project has become ambitious with various ideas and add-ons, we understand that it's time to prioritize and focus on accomplishing those essential elements to ensure decent results. To ensure a smoother and faster development process, we have made the decision not to introduce any new delays, unexpected ideas, or major changes from this point onward, allowing us to concentrate on completing the core aspects of the game. *At this time, we're unable to provide an estimated release date for the public version or testing phases. The game still requires completion and polishing, and we want to ensure a high-quality experience before making it available to the public, Managing time and schedules has been difficult, especially with team members having other commitments like work. Additionally, relying on voluntary contributions and pending assets has introduced further complexities into the development process, We acknowledge that we rushed the previous release date announcements due to the community's requests for official dates. However, unforeseen complications arose during development, causing delays and subpar results. This, coupled with personal stress, has impacted the progress. The current situation has led to a crisis within the team. Dealing with difficulties, lack of personnel, time constraints and RL work or activities can be incredibly challenging. The overwhelming nature of the development process, combined with the burden of working alone on the mod for most of the time, has added to the complexity. I want to take a moment to give a special shout-out to my dear friend Bjarky, our talented Art Director and Lead 3D Artist. Bjarky's incredible dedication and hard work on creating stunning weapons and 3D models for the game have earned him the well-deserved position he holds, his passion and unwavering enthusiasm have been a tremendous source of inspiration for me. Witnessing his boundless energy and creativity in action has motivated me to keep pushing forward with the mod. His contributions have truly transformed the project, bringing in fresh perspectives and designs for weapons and models. A short summary of recent add-ons and Implementations
Crypt changes
Well the crypts are one of the levels that were totally changed and we still working on it, some of the changes and addons are:
ARX INSANITY LITE VERSION HAS BEEN CANCELLED We have decided not to create a low-resource version due to the substantial growth and the addition of intricate details to the environments and textures, making such a version would mean compromising a significant amount of content from the full version. We will see later if we implement more quality options, allowing users with older hardware to have access to the mod. Currently, the mod consumes a total of 4-6GB VRAM, which can be challenging to translate into a simplified version. However, we believe that Arx Insanity should take at least a small leap forward, as hardware has advanced significantly. If we resurrect the plans for this version in the future... we will see, but it's cancelled at the moment. THANKS FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING AND SEE YOU IN THIS JOURNEY Thank you for your unwavering support and understanding. We're fully committed to delivering a good experience for you in Arx Insanity. This journey has been a learning process, and thanks to the perspective shared by your friend Saggi, we are more inspired than ever to infuse this project with passion and love. It's a big journey and we get experiences from the beginning so we want to still giving love to Arx and we are dedicated to finishing this project with our goals. We periodically post in our discord server, if you didn't join yet you can do it now here. FOR THE FULL ARTICLE AND SCREENSHOTS, DON'T FORGETN THE MODDB PAGE AS ALWAYS
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NEW SCREENSHOTS AND COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED What's the current state of the project nowadays? As you can imagine, this project is very ambicious, practically a whole new game, orginally it was made only as a difficulty mod, but it got more and more content, turning into a complete remaster and overhaul for the whole game, every texture, script, code line, sound and everything you can imagine has been worked or completely replaced and we don't mention the original content, we put a lot of love in every asset, we don't mind how much time an asset or idea could take but we want to achieve what we plan and be satisfied with the result, for instance from a simple old-fashion fishing system to new and modern mechanics found in the game. The progress is at a very slow pace but it's continuous (Due to our limited time). To be honest, in my personal life I work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, so my spare time was drastically reduced from 12hrs to 1-2hrs per week to work the mod, so this will extend development as it is now and we will require more months and time to develop and achieve what we want to do. As I said before, I don't dedicate my life to developing the mod exclusively all the time, it would be great if that were possible, COVID-19 and my current job with 12 hour days and extended shifts is the main reason of all this delay time. I work shifts with 12hrs because it's the only job and I also have personal goals and ambitions in my life and I dedicate myself to working on them, I know that all the efforts will be worth it, and this mod too, although it's a hobby, it's an ambition and a personal goal. What's already finished? We finished about 90% of textures, levels are already finished in art and design, all remastered weapons are finished as well, so we want to focus on final details and polishment, audio and general remastering, also we want to add new lore and depth to the universe and world of Arx (Exosta) but the critical part is that some game designs and scripts need rework or be finished, also Insanity will be developed under Arx Libertatis 1.3, we want to add support for this version and develop with more possibilities, sadly one of our team programmers and friends left the project a long ago and we need to redo the code from scratch and improve what was already in the demo, we got more ambitions and features which we have in mind, so the time and the long wait will worth it we promise. Why has the release of Arx Insanity been delayed since the first announcement? Like you, we are people, we need to work, get money, eat, we have a personal life but above all we have problems and difficulties in real life. The mod was delayed due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a very difficult time since there were no jobs, there was no way to support ourselves, in addition to the fact that the delay was also due to serious health problems which have been gradually overcome little by little during this time, all this made it impossible to continue or focus on the development of the project enormously The mod is 7 years in development, that's a long time, why is it just not released now? Indeed, the mod has been started for more than 7 years, but it was mostly developed by one person in his spare time, moreover, when the project was started, I had no knowledge of anything, texturing, scripting, programming or audio, literally anything, so my love for Arx made me learn and make what we know today, it was a very long learning curve, most of the assets that were created initially, were improved or even replaced over and over again as I learned to make better results (Hardcore fans know the difference between old and new assets and the evolution of the mod), so the project has been a constant learning, there have been big and difficult challenges but also great achievements, as well as failures and mistakes, all this has been a process of years, so it's not that we make content and it's there implemented at the first attempt, every day it is about improving and giving more life and quality to the project, exceed our own expectations Why it is taking too long to be completed? As we said before, the project has been evolving and improving day by day, we could release an unfinished mod, but we want it to be finished properly and achieve what we really want for the project, give all the love and respect that Arx deserves, we need to make shure that the mod is solid and it has the quality we are looking for and make a better experience for all of you, it's very important to us. We need to be happy with the final result, so you will be happy as well. Why another release date?, it's not interesting if you will delay the mod once again... We're taking more time until the next year to develop what we need and have enough time to finish it, taking into account all our personal limitations and the little time we have to progress with the development of the game, this time there will be no more delays. We made the mistake of release the Arx Insanity Demo with a raw build, without enought tests and it was developed under pressure in a very short deadline, resulting in a disaster that was fixed eventually, we learned about that and we don't want to repeat the same thing, this time we want to have a solid organization, schedules and release the mod in the best possible way within our possibilities, again, thank you very much for your love and patience. And what's planned from now?
Finish the mod once for all and deliver the best possible experience for you, thanks for your understanding. From now we'll be sharing progress and updates more often, periodically in our discord server, if you didn't join yet you can do it now here. We plan to release a new trailer in the next months, maybe some weeks depending in the situation but it will come sooner or later, also we plan to release teaser videos exclusive for our discord members with short fragments of gameplay from the full version. From now we will do our best and give all our love to Arx, thanks for your patience and for supporting the mod, it means a lot for us... Join the discord server now View on ModDB Voluntary donations Hello everyone, some months have passed since the last demo patch was released and we are still working daily in the Full mod and the next patch. The patch was expected to be released a month ago but it was delayed due to new implementations and addons that we are finishing and we want to release a major patch instead, some of the upcoming features are: IMPLEMENTATIONS: 3D Remastered models for weapons and misc objects It's a very requested feature from the community, redo most of the weapons in better quality, after we did and experimented with the implemented bone as a contribution, a lot of you requested to remaster every weapon in the game so now it's happening, thanks to our new 3D artists we have some of the remastered weapons already done, a new Lord Inut's bow is in the works, after that we are done with every weapon from the demo. The work consists in work the mesh by hand on blender, fix and add details, collision spheres and the required attachments, paint textures and finally make a post-process to make the new weapons fit in the Insanity graphics environment. As an standalone step we do 6-7 blood variants for every weapon in all of the 5 blood colors found in the game, our idea is to have dynamic and real time bloody effects depending in the NPC we fight. Bringing back to life early concepts and ideas discarded from Arkane We want to implement new content based on old concept arts, ideas and concepts that Arkane Studios removed back in the days because of their deadline or other reasons. As you already know, we have brought back the Miguel's Fight Arena, a concept that was completely discarded by Arkane due to the lack of time, we are using unused dialogues, sounds, weapons, skins, puzzles and many things that were lost in the final version New texture format and optimizations Some users reported slow loading screens and performance impacts in a few computers due to user hardware limitations, so we are changing the game format from bmp to png in most of the textures, this to improve greatly the game, now we have x48 times faster loads per texture. We changed the color profile to index limited to 255 colors in the bmp textures to decrese up x32 the charge and size loaded in the vram, this means faster loading times, light processing and a smoother gameplay (Another lite version with low resolution textures will be available for the Full and final version only). A new overhaul for the goblin prison level The upcoming patch will feature brand new textures completely re-worked to match with the other levels and standards, now we have more realistic and deep walls with the same current Insanity art style. Gameplay modifications We did gameplay modifications as well, including some radical changes that were very requested by the community in general. Now we are able to find taar from the beginning of the game, so if you are a mage you're no longer vulnerable and the game will no longer be unfair when fighting with enemies and difficulties at the start of the game, so the game it's more balanced now. Currently we are looking for a way to balance the archer class from the beggining as well, it's very requested as well so we'll be on it in the next days. New Am Shaegar's faces and some remastered NPC faces We experimented remaking the textures for the Am Shaegar faces, our goal was to make them more realistic and the first prototype had very good results, so we decided to implement this feature as official and replace all the Am Shaegar's faces in addition to remake others such as Tizzy, Alia, etc Difficulty modes re-work We received a lot of criticism and suggestions for the new implemented difficulty modes, specially for the Nightmare mode and number of enemies, a lot of you made reports saying that those difficulty modes were so hardcore and frustrating in some cases. So we re-tweaked all difficulties from Normal, Insanity and Nightmare (Secret mode) completely, to give a better and enjoyable experience, being fair with the players, the important thing is to have fun in the mod. Misc changes and addons There are multiple changes in the patch from graphics improvements, new lighting designs, new behaviors (For example the flying creature will have a new poison cloud attack) and new props like a new broom to add a better atmosphere and world in the game. General bug fixing We already fixed lots of bugs for the next patch, fixed some of the ones you found in your gameplays and bug reports, so we still getting rid of them and other new that we have found recently, so the patch will have a better experience with less bugs (If you found some, please report them to improve the mod) For more images visit our ModDB PageUPDATE: MINI-PATCH:
Patch 0.4.71 has been released solving and balancing some issues found in the latest one:
The latest patch is now available in 2 versions, full and patch only. With 78 new bugs fixed, requests and new features done, update your demo installation to this latest version to get an improved game and a better experience. In the most important changes and addons:
IMPORTANT NOTE! To install the latest version or reshade read the complete updated instructions once again. PREVIOUS SAVED GAMES: Old saved games from old Insanity demo versions/vanilla/libertatis are incompatible with new patches, so start a new game to apply all changes and avoid corrupt scripts or broken games, thank you very much. DOWNLOAD: There are 2 different downloads available for version 0.4.7:
To download any version click here The latest patch is now available in 2 versions, full and patch only, Reshade support, French and German languages are now available!. With 475 bugs fixed, requests and new features done, update your demo installation to this latest version to get an improved game and a better experience.
Thank you very much for all your support, merry Christmas and happy holidays!. In the most important changes and addons:
IMPORTANT NOTE! To install the last version or reshade read the complete updated instructions once again. PREVIOUS SAVED GAMES: Old saved games from old Insanity demo versions/vanilla/libertatis are incompatible with new patches, so start a new game to apply all changes and avoid corrupt scripts or broken games, thank you very much. DOWNLOAD: There are 2 different downloads available for version 0.4.6:
To download any version click here Now you can play Arx Insanity testing the first levels of the game as early access, sneak and use stealth in the goblin prisons, visit the outpost and survive the dangers of the crystal caverns.
This demo is only available in English, Spanish, Russian and Italian. Thank for all your support and for the recent inconveniences. More updates are coming in the next weeks. We hope you'll have fun in this Arx adventure, it was a hardcore week but finally the demo is here, don't forget to share your experience!. You can download the mod here: www.moddb.com/mods/arx-insanity-mod/downloads/arx-insanity-demo-v045#downloadsform Also don't forget to join our discord server dedicated to Arx Insanity and Arx Fatalis https://discord.gg/mxTKk52 We sincerely apologize, the Arx Insanity demo planned for this Friday October 30th has been delayed to November 6th, we are very sorry about this, we need more time to do the packaging properly, the demo is finished, the only thing that remains is the packaging and upload it, we made recent modifications to increase the mod quality but those needed polishment and we had a very short deadline. Due to personal reasons and lack of time, the two last weeks were hardcore and we'll take one more week to improve things as well, thanks for all your support.
A note from Pedro:
First of all, plans for Arx Insanity continue for October 30th, a demo will be released featuring 5 levels from the game, also including the full modifications from this first part of the game. The full version has been postponed until further notice. The coronavirus pandemic situation is very difficult for all of us, from financing, time and difficulties. Even with the maximum efforts, it was really hardcore, I lost my job and now there is a lack of one, money, time, modding work overload and health problems, all of this affected the development schedule. As the project founder, I'm in charge of 90% of the work, I worked up to 16 hours daily during this pandemic but my health became bad, this added to the current difficulties, no one expected the current world situation to spread even further. I tried to reduce the hours of work keeping the intensity but my health worsened even more. The mod continues to develop daily but at a slower pace due to this reason, much of the progress has already been made at this rhythm, fortunately. All those who supported the project in small donations, you have helped lighten the electricity costs of developing the mod and I thank you a lot. Same for the discord server boosts, thanks to them you have better services now. All those contributions will receive thanks via email, a pack with some exclusive items for the demo, as well as receiving something called "Exosta traveler pack" on the final release date, in appreciation. Check your emails in october 30th. A final release date can't be announced yet due to the current situation, although it would be a few more months at the most, perhaps 3 or 4 months depending in how development progresses. The full game will be announced when it's fully finished, polished and ready to drop, we want to give love and a good experience for all of you, most of the assets are already done, just taking this decision due to the situation and to deliver the mod in the best conditions, we are adding and fixing huge modifications that are complicated and require time, a hotfix and polishing finished assets. We're receiving bugs to fix from vanilla in addition to very interesting requests ready to be made, all contributions make the project better, thanks for all your reports, suggestions and ideas!. The team wish you the best, we hope you are well during this difficult situation and once again, thank you very much for all your support and all apologies for this sudden announcement, I've been crunching hard to release the final mod as soon as I can within my possibilities, once again, a sincere and great apology and thanks for all your support. As a small additional announcement: We'll do a live streaming for the Arx Insanity demo in october 23th at 14:00hrs (ET), via our discord server, you can join the Arx Insanity community below. Join the discord server Open Donations . Hello everyone, as you will know a few days ago the 20th anniversary of Arkane Studios was celebrated, Arx Insanity wishes the best to our favorite developer and for this, we celebrate these 20 years with 20 images from the mod, in addition to giving some information about the current state of development.
Read the new ModDB article below: Gallery and full details on ModDB Join the discord server now Open Donations Now we are opening the official Arx Insanity Discord Server. You can join this server to follow the mod more closely, know more about the project, see exclusive screenshots, bug reports and more.
This is also a server dedicated to the original game, so you can discuss and share your love for Arx Fatalis, talk about Insanity, the game lore, theories, the old Arx beta, watch streamings and more about the amazing universe of Arx and Exosta. Everyone is welcome, feel comfortable joining and being part of the new discord community, you can join in the link below: Join the discord server now Finally, I'm happy to announce the Arx Insanity trailer, after 6 years of development the mod is in a GOOD state and it's getting solid and the mod will be released on NOVEMBER 8TH 2020, starting with a beta release!. Plus, to commemorate the release date announcement, a first trailer for Arx Insanity is now released!, you can watch it in the link below: Today we're happy to announce a new section in the website: Bug Hunting Quest, this is a new page for bug tracking and user reports, so from now the community can report bugs in the Insanity website, the page is intended for gameplay/in-game Arx script bugs.
You can join and help improve the game: A massive hotfix for Arx is in process and with your help, we hope to find and solve all or at least most of the bugs found in the whole game, one of the goals of Arx Insanity and this "quest" is to fix all bugs as possible found in vanilla 1.21 and Arx Libertatis 1.2, to provide a stable game with the best functionality and bring quality to our beloved Arx, you can also send requests and suggestions for the mod. The Bug Hunting Quest is now online and you can submit all the reports you want in the link below, the hunt has already begun: Bug Hunting Some people were asking for details about how the development is going on, now I share with you approximate information and what is done and what is not about level remastering. "2nd and 3rd remake attempt" descriptions mean early versions already done, but not matching the new mod standards and quality or simply not good, so they need to be recreated once again:
Finished locations:
In progress and pending locations:
Additional details about levels: Yesterday all the dwarf level was finished 100%, the hardest level to remaster ever to be honest, it has new lighting design and now it's more creepy, also it's improved in environments, visuals and sound effects. Gameplay design was changed here, from a persistent and more annoying black beast, it will be a new nightmare and nemesis for Am Shaegar, dwarven mines are absolutely dark, so you will need to find a torch before explore that last part, also there is a little surprise in the level. This has one of the best atmospheres in my opinion. Crypt level 5 received huge/radical changes and improvements from lighting, fog, textures, lore, level design, ambiances and music in addition with new gameplay to bring life and make this last level more interesting and interactive. I dropped a new sneak peek for the dwarf kingdom in the upper banner and below, so you will have an idea without too much spoiler about the looking, much effort was put on this level. Work this level brought me vision problems but it was worth it. Let me know what do you think about this new type of updates, do you want more?, thanks for your support and if you have read all this, have a nice day :) Very happy to announce a brand new design for an updated Arx Insanity Moddb page, from now you'll find this new feature to stylize the look of the page: new dark colors and contrasts will fit with the dark atmosphere from Arx in addition to being a more intuitive design and facilitate reading and page elements visualization, also an improved new comments section is available to use. We hope you like this new change to make the wait less heavy and give more personality to the project. New development updates will be uploaded in the future, have a nice day and as always, thanks for your support.
Moddb page: www.moddb.com/mods/arx-insanity-mod Hello everyone, perhaps you don't see activity in the site/moddb but the work in progress continues with strong intensity, these days development is long and intense, even 6-12 hrs (weekends 16-18) daily depending on my spare time. So now I want to keep you informed of the progress: I'm happy to say that 21 of 27 levels are finished and remastered with HD textures, lighting and style, but missing pending environment polishment. So now textures are done with great progress so far, it's exaclty 80% of overall textures done, so the mod will be available maybe in this year if everything is all right. Thanks for all your support and for being pending of the project!.
I will not upload spoilers or more screenshots from the other levels, I want you to play the mod fresh and as a new experience, but I drop a little sneak peek about the work in progress, have a nice day. Some weeks ago polish support for the mod was rumored: now it is a reality, we are pleased to announce and confirm polish support for the mod, fans from Poland can play the mod in their native language!. If you missed it, multi-language translations will be supported in Insanity Mod, at this point, we have confirmed: english, spanish, russian, italian, polish and latin american spanish, thanks for all your support and those amazing voluntary collaborations!
The work with textures still there and a new GIMP version is released with cool new features that will be used for the mod. Now jpeg export algorithms are enhanced, and there are some tests with arithmetic/huffman codification and advanced texture builds. The current test has interesting results: new enhancements bring the same texture quality but considerably smaller file size; so you will have the same graphics with faster loading screens and better performance for your GPU. So from now the project will focus to get a quality-performance balance, so maybe the new texture advanced optimization is good news for some of you. Current tests reveal 30% improved performance so hepefully it will gain more in the future.
Hi, the mod progress is going well, this summer vacation I'm spending the time working on textures and environments, this initial levels had old textures and lighting design (2017-18) but now they will be updated with a remake to fit the new mod standards, I started working the tavern and now it's finished so now I'm focusing in the human outpost, lakes and caves and the new remake update for all textures is in the plans (maybe not the goblin prison that have early mid-res textures) so here are a few screenshots of the work in progress. After this, the next level to remake with the new quality will be the goblin catabombs, it seems it's the final version for textures, when this will be finished a gameplay video with the first 15mins of gameplay will be uploaded. In the other hand, gameplay mechanics are finished and polished for most levels. Have a good summer!.
If you are an old follower maybe you remember old screenshots and some short video in the tavern (Insanity), this holidays I'm working with environments and improving the level lighting even more, if it was darky now it's darker with brand new lighting design, temperatures and ranges, a total overhaul for lighting. The goal is improve my personal skill and have more realistic and immersive environments also experimenting with my design to get some fake/simulated volumetric lights that have good visual quality, here I share some of the work in progress, tavern has new design and props as well. This took me about 2-3 days to make, I'm testing a lot and trying to get the minimal detail for the locations.
In commemoration of Arx Fatalis on its 27th anniversary there is a celebration and something special for this occasion: the Arx Insanity Mod website has been published and now it's online!. Originally a website for the mod was not planned, this idea was born a few days ago to celebrate the event for these 17 years of Arx.
This site was made for you and we thank everyone who has followed and supported this project, it's really appreciated, more news coming soon... Important: Finally it should be mentioned that currently this website is having trouble with servers from Russia and Ukraine and maybe some near countries in Europe. If you have problems visiting the website or you reside in these mentioned countries, please contact this page sending a private message, thank you and sorry for the inconvenience. |
AuthorPedro Ordaz, general development. Archives
July 2023
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