Emily, the host of Pixel Breakdown, was very kind to invite the developer and the founder Antypodish of UMeFate, to the long chat about the game development process and its future plans for UMeFate.
Since Pixel Breakdown YouTube channel is also freshly started, yet with long game dev experience under Emily’s belt, it is a great pleasure and the privilege to be hosted at this initiative. I want to highlight great gratitude to Emily, for the quality work and the heart that has been put into the interview preparation and the post editing the video.
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The interview itself was in the form of Q&A, which consisted of 19 questions and answers. Plus in between a bit of free talk about UMeFate related subjects. Since UMeFate is very early in the development, a lot of discussion focuses around planning and navigating the project towards its goals and the road map. Along with some technical discussions, there are topics touching sociological aspects, which are important to deliver an immersive gameplay experience to players, for life simulation type of the game. There are also discussions about challenges and limitations, which are important for large projects like UMeFate, to be researched and validated.
Questions And Answers:
Below is the list of Q&A, which has more concise form than the video interview itself.
The important disclaimer is, that discussion is focusing on the long term direction of UMeFate development and many features will take months to years, before being ready to be implemented. Also highly depending on available resources.
You can checkout the road map blog, to see more details about the plans
Q1:
What inspired you to create UMeFate, and what gap in the life sim genre are you trying to fill?
A:
Large inspiration came from the long years experience of playing various game and genres.
It is really a mix of experiences, but mainly the driving factor is coming from other life sims, including The Sims series (starting from the very first one), Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld, Factorio. And the final trigger and yet unfortunate Life By You situation with its open philosophy for modding.
Q2:
You mention that many life sims have become too cozy. What specific challenges do you want players to experience in UMeFate?
A:
Many life simulators have taken a more cozy form, which reaches its own group of audience. But there is a huge group of life simmers, which like myself, want some different experience and more challenges, while playing a game. UMeFate philosophy is to get away from various arbitrary limitations imposed on the gameplay and let players experience more life-like challenges. DwarfFortress, RimWorld and Kenshi games would be good reference points, to describe the development philosophy in that regard.
Q3:
The idea of a fully dynamic community where actions ripple across the world is ambitious. What inspired this mechanic, and how do you plan to execute it?
A:
Many inspirations came from previously mentioned titles, but also to add, games like the Civilisation series, where every choice has an effect on the world. From the technical point of view, it is not something that hasn't been done in other games before. As UMeFate player, or UMe NPC (none playable character), whether interacting with each other, building relations, trying to influence others, or perhaps committing the crime, this will affect other UMes. And those actions will ripple through UMe world over time.
Naturally each game mechanic will be added and expanded over the time. One by one. Each needs to be tested and validated.
Q4: How will the AI in UMeFate make the world feel alive? Can you share an example of how NPCs will interact dynamically?
A: Each UMe will have their own life, experiance, needs, and aspirations to reachout. However, UMes and the player will need to learn about the world, places like work, school, or social venues. Also knowledge about venues, people etc will be passed on between UMes. Certain things become common knowledge. But various communities may potentially create their own behaviours and clash with each other. Even UMes may be able to exchange their understanding of “norms”.
Q5:
UMeFate aims to introduce dynamic AI behaviors like social norms, cultural habits, and addictions. What challenges have you faced in designing such a complex system?
A:
The main challenge is converting desired game behaviours and theory into the game mechanics.
The AI, or UMes NPCs autonomous behaviours is still in the process of the design, and the start of the development on it is planned to be coming soon. Regarding AI, UMeFate takes the classical form of Artificial Intelligence, or autonomy, which has been successfully executed for decades in many games and that have already been mentioned earlier in this discussion. This is a specially important design choice, since the UMeFate world will be populated by 100s of UMes.
Very important part before even starting the design, is the research and endless discussions regarding human behaviour. This is something I have done for many years as an interest in psychology and sociology. Discussing these aspects often with my GF. This also comes now as a great bonus, while designing UMeFate.
Q6:
Will AI react to in-game events dynamically? For example, if a character starts a business, will the community adapt and interact with it organically?
A:
Simply put, if there are no goods produced like bed, or food, UMes will create a demand in the world. But until the product is actually created, that UMe requirement will need to be fulfilled by other means. Maybe perhaps harvest food by themselves. Or go steal it, so UMe doesn’t starve?
In the more technical words, there are long term plans for systems like economy, goods, or even goods wearout. This design is oriented around demand driven mechanics, similar to Tycoon type games. There are naturally a lot of challenges to be researched and tested, to execute it into a good gameplay experience.
Q7:
How will the AI handle unpredictable player actions? Will there be adaptive responses to things like crime, economic shifts, or political influence?
A:
This is something that is currently closely analysed and how this will be implemented in the future.
For example, crime should be punishable and foremost detectable. Perhaps demand for UMe jobs like detectives, or similar.
This subject is under investigation, how things worked over centuries, specially before the digitalisation era.
Economical shifts will affect what is available to produce, or purchase. And lack of available goods, will affect effectiveness and mood of the UMes and community in general.
Political influence may lead to change in the policies. And for example driving vehicles can become a crime. Consequences on the community will be several.
Q8:
Will AI characters develop biases or prejudices based on past experiences, influencing how they interact with other AI and the player?
A:
As every new born human, UMes wont have the memory. They will start learning things from day one. They will also build up their biases etc. by being influenced by their parents and friends for example. Or the environment that they are in in general.
This will create a situation, when a certain group of characters will find common topics, while others may don’t like discussing things. Perhaps someone don’t like UMes with scruffy clothing? Or like characters with hats.
For example, if someone was thought and biased that being outdoors is bad, the character will be less likely to go outside, to spend the time.
This can be enforced, or weakened by others influences. Also if popularity is high enough, such biases, or prejudices may shape others opinions by socialising with each other.
The Sims in a sense has the similar system, hence is not something that is out of scope to do. But executing it right, will definitely take a lot of time.
Q9:
You mention that AI can influence communities and vice versa. How much control will players have in shaping social norms?
A:
This is partially answered in the next few questions. But generally, if a player decides to play as an “influencer”, by getting more popular, going to chat with other UMes, then can influence them, by spreading the word. This may be to like, or not like, or do, or not do things. Higher influential aspect, may help reach political careere for an example. Which opens an option to set different norms. But, changing too many things in too short a time, may make the community unhappy. Or even destabilise the town, by for example prohibiting the schools? Who knows.
An interesting thing is, I have already partially planned out, how to execute that. But it is far too early in the development.
Q10:
With 100s to 1000s of AI characters potentially influencing the world, how do you plan to manage emergent gameplay while maintaining structure?
A:
The target goal is, to allow each UMe NPC to leave their own life. Focus on their living place, their needs, their hobbies, work and socialising. Maybe even a form of careere climbing.
Population will drive the demand on school and work places. Potentially driving higher employment and some form of technological advancement.
On the flip side, I expect the unexpected. I want to see a bit of chaos.
The challenge is, to see if the community can be stable, or how much variation can be in it, while not letting it collapse and die out completely.
It may happen for example, there will be poorer and richer groups of population. Or maybe everyone will be equally wealthy. That is not something UMeFate predefined, but more like let it evolve.
One artificial aspect may be, still in the design process, unless finding a better solution, is to limit the population growth, when the limit will be reaching maximum. And yet to feel it naturally. Few ideas are already there.
In the end, I believe that executing various social experiments will be a very interesting aspect of the UMeFate.
Q11 Are there any particular player choices that will have the biggest impact on the game world?
A:
I am designing UMeFate in such a way, that every choice will affect the world. Some choices will be least significant. Like, joining someone to play football for example. However, it may ripple through the community, or even the world, by influencing and creating relations with new friends.
Doing potential crime, like stealing furniture, may lead to someone needing to buy another one. It means UMe need to earn again to be able to do the purchase. Which realistically affects the wellbeing of that character, or the family. Doing a worse crime will have an effect further.
Bigger of an impact is by influencing other UMes, to encourage do, or not do things. Like spreading the word, that character is bad. Or that sport is good. Up in careere ladder, like the mayor of the town, there will be even an option to change things, what is allowed, or not. Vehicles may be prohibited. But wearing a hat may be mandatory. Which will ripple the effect on UMes, if it takes longer to get to work places, or even beyond a reach. Hence quality of life will be affected significantly.
Q12:
How do you plan to involve the community in development? Will there be dedicated modding tools, forums, or dev updates?
A:
Primarily I want the narrow participants community to discord, maybe reddit too. Later I may consider expanding reachout, if that will be required.
When the game dev stage reaches a certain stable point of the development, and having basic modding functionality, I want to involve the community by running requested feature polls. How it will work is by allowing players and modders to post their request for the next feature, which is most reasonable to be implemented at a given development stage. For example, UMeFate has roads, so acceptable requests may be crossroads. But not having water yet and requesting boats, will be rejected. Requests also will be highly dependent on dev team capability.
From the list of requested and validated features, a poll will be created and will allow players to vote for the best one. One which will be selected for development.
Some features may require additional dev resources.
Regarding modding tools, certain tools will be available directly in the game. Like map editor, which is currently in works and can be viewed on blogs and vids.
But for making for example additional furnitures, file templates will be provided. This will be a mix of json/lua as configs and 3D models.
In regards to scripting in lua, there will be guidance provided.
Aim is to allow modification of certain lua scripts, while UMeFate is running. So there is potential to test scripts without restarting the game. Which should be enough for most modders to be able to mod faster.
There is no plan at this stage for additional visual programming inside the game however. That would lead to too high cost and game dev complexity.
However, there is a potential option to use Scratch for visual tools, to make more friendly modding tools. But this is beyond the current development scope of UMeFate.
Q13:
Some games struggle with balancing developer vision and community-driven content. How do you plan to navigate this?
A:
I am a community member of various game forums. And as well as life sims communities.
I was observing, or participating in the development of various games from an alpha stage onwards. For example Minecraft, From The Depths, Factorio.
One thing I want to avoid is the case, where contributors and followers push massively for certain features. I have experienced in other communities, that when that happens and devs allow it to happen in an uncontrolled manner, it leads to feature creep and resulting in bugs and extending development extensively. Then game release dates are pushed constantly.
Once the development stage will be sufficient and open to contributors, the mitigation plan is, while allowing players and modders to contribute to the project directly and build a form of wishlist features, as discussed earlier, is to create dedicated polls, for which best and more realistic features can be added. That is especially inspired by one of the communities that I have been part of for many years now. And it worked for the game in the long run.
Having other plans for allowing contributors into the project. But that will be revealed in its own time.
Additionally I will be considering creating the space for modding uploads in the future.
Steam workshop also will be under the consideration.
Q14:
What’s been the most surprising or insightful feedback you’ve received from early testers so far?
A:
Since UMeFate is early in development, I haven’t received that much feedback as of yet.
However, my GF is my primary tester and critique 🙂
Then I have received from another lovely playtester a video, on a UMeFate tech demo form of an October 2024. While the tech demo was very limited and buggy, player did show great creativity using what was available at that time. More info in the link below.
https://antyversum.com/2025/02/27/umefate-first-ever-fan-made-early-tech-demo-gameplay-42/
From others I had generally positive anticipation about UMeFate from viewers. But with a great reservation. As well as some scepticism for the project to even work out, which is understandable, since the unfortunate end of the story for Life By You.
Q15:
What game engine/tool do you develop in and is there any particular reason why you ended up using that one?
A:
I have worked with Unity since about 2013 / 2014, while have started modding game From The Depths. Since I did a number of prototypes. I was even able to use it outside the game industry. And just after a few years, Unity Data Technology Stack (DOTS) became a thing, which focused on high performance and safe multithreading. Which allowed me to create more fancy prototypes and systems. Few years forward and I joined Enhearten Media to work on Sanctuary: Shattered Sun RTS (https://www.sanctuaryshatteredsun.com) as a Lead Programmer, with focus on DOTS. Which further lead to UMeFate.
Q16:
Have you tried developing in any others?
A:
Not really, besides trying them at some point. Mostly because other game engines weren't the right tools for the type of work I was interested with. Focus on Unity DOTS was my major drive.
Q17:
You emphasize performance as a key pillar. What specific optimizations are you implementing to maintain stable 60FPS with so many AI-driven elements?
A:
These requirements of 60 FPS, UMeFate complexity and my expertise in using Unity DOTS, was the reason to leverage DOTS tech, as I can foresee its perfect use for such complex systems. The tech gives an opportunity to utilise it for high performance and with many heavy calculations, plus ability to spread load onto multithreading, while keeping safe threaded systems.
Additionally, I got some tricks planned, in case certain solutions are too heavy, to spread workload across multiple game frames.
Q18:
What are the biggest technical hurdles you’ve faced so far essentially solo developing such an ambitious game, and how have you addressed them?
A:
Essentially whole UMeFate 😀
I knew I can’t skip certain mechanics, which are part of the core philosphy and I had to focus on them, before moving forward. Basically step by step. I write small prototypes to validate the systems and if things work. But then when it comes to the actual implementation, that is where the challenges come into play.
I need to think about modding compatibility with lua. I need to be oriented on performance. Need to think about thousands of moving and interacting NPC and the player. Need to think about the goal of the dynamic world and the environment. And how to display things on the UI.
All these and more, extend duration on implementing individual features. A ton and tons of debugging. Especially after converting from primary prototype, to the actual implementation. At least at that time, I have a reference point, to track issues. But if I skip them now, or I do halve baked systems, I know they bite me later on. Saying all that, I still weight, when I need to stop expanding the system, so it is “Good Enough” for a given development timeline and fits into the road map.
So for example, I want roads and land plots, but I don’t need cross roads and complexity with land plots as of yet, in an early development stage.