Arx Fatalis Insanity

[Jacinto Dieujuste]

ARXINSANITY is a remaster and immersive sim mod for Arx Fatalis. Improved gameplay, remastered HD graphics, revision, enhanced lighting and atmospheres, expanded universe, new quests, remastered soundtrack, original music, overhauled sounds, environmental effects and thousands of features. Adding new elements inspired by Arkane and Looking-Glass games, you can play with a variety of new approaches and choices.

This mod is still based in the original Arx Engine and it uses Arx Libertatis. One of the goals is to get the most out of the Arx Engine and AL features overcoming the challenges involved in overhauling the original game directly.

Thanks to everyone who joined our event! We received a lot of interesting questions. Initially, we planned to answer 10 questions, but due to your participation, we ended up selecting and answering 36 questions.

Answer: The status is TBD (To be determined/announced). It is difficult to specify a release date at this point due to several factors. The scale of work required is immense, and unfortunately, due to our commitments to other jobs and real-life obligations, the development process has been prolonged and complex, we can't predict how it will run, sometimes it's paused or hard. Additionally, the lack of spare time to work, our real-life responsibilities or sometimes working as a solo dev is the issue. We plan to announce a real release date only once the testing phases are over. Despite the current difficulties, we are hopeful that the project will be completed as soon as we can.

Answer: I plan to release constant patches and updates for the base mod to address any issues players might encounter post-release. Our first goal is to polish and fix the mod as much as possible. Once the mod is in a well-polished state, I may add new content or small quests based on the unused/cut content from Insanity. However, these additions will come later, after I take a small break from Arx Fatalis haha. But another important thing is that we are planning special and limited time events, e. g. Christmas, Halloween and Arx Anniversary with exclusive contents.

Answer: Yes, if everything goes well, the final version will be available in English, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, and Portuguese (Thanks to the job of our amazing translators), though speech and dubbing will only be supported in English.

Answer: The reason was simply: my love and passion for Arx Fatalis. This game changed my life radically. You know, still working on this after so many years and thousands of dev hours must mean something. It started as a mod with some new difficulties with minor additions. The name 'Insanity' comes from this: I created the Nightmare mode with tons of rats and strong NPCs (a secret difficulty in the demo, actually), and I thought, 'Oh, this is extremely insane and hardcore to play,' so I called this difficulty 'Insanity'. Later, I added more content like the Miguel's Fight Arena, new lighting, and scripts. Then I decided to remaster it and create serious quality textures, it became an ambitious project. I thought: "This will be hard to develop, very ambitious, this is insane", what should I call the project? Mmm... insane, insanity. Yes, let's call it Arx Insanity. A bit silly story but this name recalls the difficulty modes but also and the hardcore tasks of a project of these dimensions'.

Answer: We're about 60-70% done, if I can put it that way. My goal is to finish all the pending tasks, including interactive/immersive-sim systems, quests, scripts, and textures. I want to fix things, finishing and implementing elements that will directly improve the mod's quality and experience. We've made good progress already; it's playable, but still a bit of a mess as a project. As said before, we can't say anything about 2026 but we'll try it out and finish the mod as soon as it is ready.

Answer: Yes, we have new narratives, quests and characters in Arx Insanity. There are many new NPCs in the levels. One of the strong points is the game lore, we expanded the Arx universe and even made it more cohesive, making it even more interesting and deep. I can confidently say it's now more fascinating than ever, logical and realistic. We also resolved some plot holes and narrative issues from the original game. I've always respected the original lore and based my work on what Raphael Colantonio (Arx Fatalis director) shared publicly, providing us with new interesting information we never knew. Some questions will be answered in the mod, but new ones will also arise.

Answer: Well, the final version will be a bit different from what we saw in the last demo release. We have new features, improvements everywhere, and updated weapon models. However, I want to hold off on releasing those contents until the full mod is available. This way, you'll get to experience something new, just like with the first demo versions. Spoiling the changes and additions with a new release would diminish part of the experience for the full release. But of course, we can show progress and stream on Discord.

Answer: We respect the vision of the original art director of Arx Fatalis, and our Arx Insanity 3D artist (SimonMT) keeps this in mind while enjoying creative freedom in most of his designs. When developing new concepts, we aim to ensure that the original Arx feeling is preserved, with a historical look and fixes to issues and details found in the vanilla designs. We avoid going too far into crazy fantasy for these designs (As Raf once advised me). We strive for a balance between historical accuracy and fantasy. Some weapons feature original designs, while others take a more realistic approach or are purely fantastical (though these are very few). Additionally, some designs faithfully respect the original look of the weapons while improving and remastering certain details.

Answer: I can tell you, if there were 1 or 2 additional people working the same amount as I do, the mod would already be done and released. Alternatively, if I had enough financial support to focus solely on development, even just enough to survive in poor conditions, I could dedicate 100% of my time to the mod, which would speed things up significantly. In that scenario, the mod would probably be completely finished by now. But as it stands, we all have to survive and work in real life to support ourselves. Unfortunately, my job and responsibilities don't allow me to work on the project as much as I would like.

Answer: First, I assess how plausible the idea is. We can all have great ideas and concepts, but I need to ensure they can fit into the game not just in terms of lore or assets, but also within the engine itself. Is the idea possible to script and program? How should it work? Later, it needs to be tested. Sometimes implementing ideas in the game is very complex. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. What doesn't work is usually discarded and removed. In rare cases, an idea may be implemented in the future if it's plausible but hard to manage at the specific moment it was conceived.

Answer: Things I wanted to implement but couldn't include are handmade levels, new animations, armors, and NPC models. There are also a lot of discarded contents that were in progress but failed. For instance, I recently cut the 'kick' feature, which allowed us to hit enemies with our feet and even make them fall from heights. In practice, it was a failure, and there were technical issues with animations and the engine. Sometimes NPCs would go out of bounds or break their behaviors in very strange ways. I might revisit that feature later, but for now, it's discarded. Other concepts like explosive bombs when thrown and various new behaviors were also discarded.

Answer: Immersive sims are definitely my type of games. They embody a deep philosophy and respect for the player. Arx Insanity draws inspiration from these experiences. For instance, I found a lot of inspiration from games like Thief, Ultima Underworld, Deus Ex, System Shock, Dishonored, Prey, and even Deathloop. These games share similar values, designs, and feelings. It's amazing how all the new immersive sim mechanics in Arx Insanity fit seamlessly into the game due to the genre's nature. I highly recommend playing any game classified in this genre; you'll enjoy a bold and quality experience, allowing you to experiment and play your way.

Answer: That's another good question. Everything in game development requires a lot of time and dedication (when you work on small details), but I believe there are better ways I should use to optimize tasks and improve efficiency. Danae, at times was slow, laggy, and prone to crashing. A modern and practical editor would be perfect in my opinion, and could also inspire others to create their own content. Making and testing scripts usually is a slow process in the project, so, to reduce testing time, I created a testing directory with 16x16px and 32x32px textures, I can re-test in 3-5 seconds so the issue is the work itself. However, scripting sometimes doesn't work as expected or presents complications, requiring analysis and problem-solving to achieve the desired result, "challenges" are my personal time wasters and my enemies, but they're satisfactory when achieved.

Answer: Arx Insanity is intended to be a single-player experience that overhauls every aspect of the game. Multiplayer mode is not currently in the plans and I've never aimed for that. However, who knows? If the opportunity arises in the future, I might consider contributing to it.

Answer: Yes, I plan 6 different endings for Am Shaegar based on the player's actions throughout the game. Also introducing new side-endings for Alia, and even Enoill Calpale's fate can be altered in six different ways. Additionally, without giving away too much, there's a big cliffhanger in the game you don't expect.

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