Arx Fatalis Windows, XBOX game

ARX INSANITY FINALLY RELEASING ON OCTOBER 27TH 2023.

Hello everyone, now we reveal the definitive and final release date for Arx Insanity in addition to the official release calendar. First of all, thank you very much to each of you for your patience, loyalty and for all the love you have given to the project. More details will be explained below as well as common questions made by the community very often which will be answered.

NEW SCREENSHOTS AND COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED

We planned to launch the mod earlier in December 2022, but the current situation could not allow us to achieve it, in addition to the fact that this will be the definitive date.

As you all know a while ago the first Arx Insanity trailer was released on youtube, revealing the first release date which unfortunately had to be cancelled, instead, in that period the Arx Insanity demo was released as an apology to the delay, but we don't want to repeat that situation once again.

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.

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...

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE 12/06/21:

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, 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 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 make about 6-7 blood variants for every weapon in 5 different blood colors found in the game, our idea is to have dynamic and real time bloody effects depending on the NPC we fight.

Bringing back to life early concepts and ideas discarded by 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.

Early concept art by Arkane Studios, featuring a goblin weapon and a shield.

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 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

UPDATE: MINI-PATCH 0.4.71:

Patch 0.4.71 has been released solving and balancing some issues found in the latest one:

• Fixed a bug with 2 trapdoors at the outpost
• Fixed Kultar not firing the first cinematic at the prison
• Fixed a wrong description for the medicinal herb
• Buff for the drop attack game mechanic, now they inflict more damages
• Nerf for general npcs in insanity and nightmare difficulties
• Taar is now on its old spot and not inside a crate anymore

The latest patch is now available in 2 versions, full and patch only. 84 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:

• Optimized all-fog quality to significantly increase game performance on most systems and very high resolutions
• Fixed a bug with a door not opening when showing a gem dealer license at the prison introduced in the previous patch
• New magic system and balance
• New and improved drunkenness system
• Updated level design and level lighting for some levels
• Localization minor improvements
• Fixed some buggy goblins not hearing noises in the goblin prison
• Nerf for drop attack and added a new system for them
• Nerf for trapdoors and new system for them
• A few brand new gameplay mechanics
• New sound effects
• General bug fixing and improvements

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:

• 0.4.7 Patch only version: this just include updates so it's required to have 0.4.5 (Or latest) previously installed before hand (0.4b is obsolete and not supported).
• 0.4.7 Full version: this is an all-in-1 package (Full Insanity demo + patch), if you don't want complications just install this package and you're done, older demo versions or patches aren't required.