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[Christian]

I'm just having way too much fun with this  

So the bottom white is hunting the blue lizard, the top lizard was hunting slugcat. Once the slugcat got out of range, the top lizard shifted focus to the closer, easier prey

That's basically what's going on?

Edit: http://gifplay.me/player?play=http://i.imgur.com/LLcQkpf.gif
You can play the GIF in slow motion, rewind, etc. Really lets you appreciate all the subtle detail

[Christian]

Was watching one of the other GIFs in slow motion and noticed something





How do you know where Slugcat will exit from? How do you know where a vent(?) will lead to? Also if you watch the GIF, entering and exiting happens almost instantaneously; there's no travel time between going inside and coming out.

[jamesprimate]

you recall in the lingo there were dotted lines and blinking arrows that illuminated when you were close to a shortcut, showing where it went? joar just hasnt gotten around to implementing that stuff yet or the "travel" animations.

that said, its still something we want to highlight and polish more in this version, but will prob take some thought and design work. weve even talked about this as recently as 2 days ago, but basically just "not there yet" etc etc

[DarkWanderer]

That gif is great.
Had a few more ideas today. First, is yellow a color used for any lizard subspecies yet? I take it the white lizards are a more rare/less common encounter. I had an idea for a species whose movement speed is below average, but isn't quite as slow as the tankier lizards. What would differentiate it would be it's adaptation; white lizards effectively 'shoot' a projectile that pulls the player towards them. This species would spit a sticky mucous at the player (projectile subject to gravity & arc trajectory of course). This projectile wouldn't actually damage the player, but would effectively cause a temporary status effect, that being slowed movement speed & decreased jump height/distance. The effect would be short lasting, but long enough for the lizard to gain a bit more ground on the player. It would also be cumulative, i.e. the more lizards landing successful hits would only further impede player ability(with perhaps lengthened status affects). This lizard may be a less common occurrence, but paired with other lizards(especially others of the same species) would make the player have to be extra cautious & calculating. [I imagine the status effect looking like a bunch of those bubbles (being whatever color of the mucous, ideally yellow, as if that's an open lizard color the two would sync) dripping off of the player. Player might even be able to assess duration by the size of the cluster & bubbles falling of him/herself.] Other lizards hit with this projectile could have an annoyance factor increased towards the offending lizard as well. Not sure if this idea would work with what you have in mind, but considering a lot of the combat seems to be movement, speed, & physics based, it seemed like a fitting addition to the bestiary.

The second idea I had was what if lizards could detach their tails if it were speared or bitten by another lizard? This may increase speed but decrease balance(& consequently pole climbing ability). A lizard without it's tail may even be more prone to fleeing/being extra cautious. & then I thought, well, Our lizards here have that adaptation so that they don't fall prey to other predators, whereas in Rain World the Lizards are the predators, so maybe they wouldn't have that adaptation. Unless, it were a smaller species. Think almost slugcat sized. They may require a need for tail removal. But this species might not have the same capacity to kill a player in a single bite, so they'd have to attack him/her repeatedly or gang up on him/her in packs.
& this lead me back to the corpse dragging thought. I think corpses should have some level of interactivity in terms of physics when say the player walks over them; i.e. the limbs should be pushed respectively. But in terms of setting up traps by dragging heavy corpses? Maybe not, you wouldn't have to if you could acquire a dismembered lizard tail, & throw it towards a lizard who hasn't detected you yet (as it'd prefer your mammalian flesh over a gross reptilian meal). Tails could be a useful way to bait potential enemies away from you, or set up ambushes. I definitely think this idea may make more sense if it were exclusive to a particular species, as all the lizards being able to lose tails may just be chaos.

& the last idea; will the player ever encounter bodies of water in Rain World? I would think they might, granted the nature of the environment, flooded areas & partially flooded areas should be present to an extent. & this made me think about RW's metroidvaniaesque nature. Progression isn't based off of power up gating. But what if there was an area the player thought they should be able to get up to but couldn't at that time? Well, after a rain, that area may be temporarily flooded, permitting the player the opportunity to explore further.

Well anyways, I gotta get in bed. Remember, these aren't demands, just ponderings about interesting ways the landscape of RW could be shaped. Looking forward to your thoughts in the morning

[JLJac]

Actually there was a spitting lizard in the lingo build! So that's going back in! It wasn't sticky though, just pushed you around. But sticky would be way cooler! This is the red one though, the yellow one is the one hunting in packs.

Losing their tails... I think it would make them too much of a lizard, perhaps? They're a lizard-like... thing, not an actual reptilian.

James and I are hoping for bodies of water, for those exact reasons - it'd give some ways to control progress. I'm super particular about aesthetics though, so a graphically complex thing like water kind of depends on whether I'll be able to make it look good enough. I'd rather not have it than have it looking sub par compared to the rest of the game.

So the bottom white is hunting the blue lizard, the top lizard was hunting slugcat. Once the slugcat got out of range, the top lizard shifted focus to the closer, easier prey

Actually I don't know what's going on in their heads at such detail... But yeah, they're constantly re-evaluating their targets, so they could easily do a shift like that.

Update 340
Yesterday I did all the fun stuff with spears, today I proceeded to get the boring stuff done! Such as having them disappear with creatures into short cuts, and then reappear (not duplicated!) and so on and so forth.

This in turn forced me to get to some other interesting stuff. I set up a "health state" class for creatures keeping track of their health, and what spears they have stuck in them (yes, I know this is macabre, but it has to be coded haha!). In order to keep track of what spear is where, I implemented an ID system, which also applies to creatures. It's really simple, every single object in the game (which is an actual interactive object, I don't label water drips and sparks) has a unique integer ID. This is accomplished really easily by having an integer in the main game class, and each time an object is created it asks to be assigned an ID, and the integer increases. No two objects will ever have the same ID! The upper limit for an int is more than two thousand million, so you'd have to eat a lot of bats for it to run out.

Unique ID's are cool for a few reasons! First of all, purely technical stuff, such as when spawning a spear, the game can look through a list of displaced spears "is this particular spear actually somewhere else" and if it's displaced, refrain from spawning it. That way object consistency can be created - one object exists in one place, and one place only.

But it's with creatures that the possibilities get really interesting! Just off the top of my head - relationships between individuals could be saved. "I'm very scared of creature #6911!" Or, and this one I know will make James happy, the ID can be used as a random seed for individual variations, cosmetic or behavioral. These would probably have to be pretty clearly communicated for them to be noticed, but they could be cool even if they're subtle, just knowing that the creatures are in fact individuals would perhaps making your interactions with them feel more personal.

Last for the day, I made a James friendly build so he can try out his level editor work! It seems to be running nicely, but some of the levels are not loading, so we'll have to troubleshoot that. All in all, a good week! Thanks for hanging around and talking, see you guys Monday!

[DarkWanderer]

In terms of the status effects for the spit, I'd imagine it'd make sense for there to be a threshold where after X amount of hits, the player's speed isn't going to decrease any further(as I don't imagine you'd want it to get to the point of being unplayable), but as a trade off the effects would last longer with every successive hit past that threshold. Part of that initial idea I forgot to mention last night was not only would speed, & jump height/distance be reduced, but so would throwing distance. Glad you like the idea by the way

I really hope you can pin down the right look for water in this game, I was trying to imagine what it may look like earlier today & I couldn't quite envision what a fitting aesthetic would be for it either. The only thing I can think of at this time is maybe a translucent body that's grayish in color? Bright blues definitely wouldn't work for sure, it's gotta have a murky feel I think.

[tortoiseandcrow]

Thinking about having unique individuals in a game where the world is somewhat persistent, I wonder if one way to visually indicate that would be for lizards and other creatures to accrue scars or other physical changes over time. If I get into a scrape with a lizard and barely manage to get away by injuring it (that rare occurrence), maybe it gets a scar, or a limp.

Also, speaking of injuries, just because this is something that more makes sense to me on a visual level than anything else: have you considered diseases or parasites? There's this species of fungus called cordyceps that primarily infects arthropods, converting its host's tissue to its own. It also, I believe, contains fungi that alter behaviour, like making an ant grow a giant red abdomen and then force it to hang upside down from a tall plant, enticing birds to eat it and thereby complete the parasite's reproductive cycle. It has that disturbing nature-documentary vibe that Rain World cultivates so well, and it looks kind of beautiful, in that organic fungus-y kind of way (reminds me of some of the plant sketches you did earlier):

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--TD86SGvG--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/17pyz1fttrbkmjpg.jpg





Lizards are the apex predators here, but all that means is that they then become the end-point of all of the nasty stuff everything else is carrying. I imagine an infected lizard, all tendrilly, acting kind of weird, maybe trying to infect others, maybe just suicidally presenting itself to some other creature (like those garbage worms) to be eaten, maybe being chased away and quarantined by other lizards (like the ants in the videos), or maybe just hauling itself somewhere to die and emit spores.

[iambored]

@tortoiseandcrow 'The Last of Us' is actually based on the cordyceps. Adding it to Rain World would make it chilling indeed.

Regarding the personalities and scars thing- I don't have access to the codebase, nor do I have much knowledge of Unity, but it seems to me that these ideas are going a little overboard in a manner that won't be very noticeable to the player, and might slow down the engine, or the development. I'm currently working on the AI code in my own game, and I originally had a lot of ideas for it that I'm abandoning because they're just unnecessary. The current AI is almost completely randomized, and it looks fine.
I fear that these nuances in each creature's uniqueness will be for naught.

[Whiteclaws]

Thinking about having unique individuals in a game where the world is somewhat persistent, I wonder if one way to visually indicate that would be for lizards and other creatures to accrue scars or other physical changes over time. If I get into a scrape with a lizard and barely manage to get away by injuring it (that rare occurrence), maybe it gets a scar, or a limp.

Also, speaking of injuries, just because this is something that more makes sense to me on a visual level than anything else: have you considered diseases or parasites? There's this species of fungus called cordyceps that primarily infects arthropods, converting its host's tissue to its own. It also, I believe, contains fungi that alter behaviour, like making an ant grow a giant red abdomen and then force it to hang upside down from a tall plant, enticing birds to eat it and thereby complete the parasite's reproductive cycle. It has that disturbing nature-documentary vibe that Rain World cultivates so well, and it looks kind of beautiful, in that organic fungus-y kind of way (reminds me of some of the plant sketches you did earlier):

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--TD86SGvG--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/17pyz1fttrbkmjpg.jpg





Lizards are the apex predators here, but all that means is that they then become the end-point of all of the nasty stuff everything else is carrying. I imagine an infected lizard, all tendrilly, acting kind of weird, maybe trying to infect others, maybe just suicidally presenting itself to some other creature (like those garbage worms) to be eaten, maybe being chased away and quarantined by other lizards (like the ants in the videos), or maybe just hauling itself somewhere to die and emit spores.

I don't think it is in the scope of the project, it may sound interesting but it wouldn't be easy to make and I dont think it would fit in

[gimymblert]

It's call the flood

[Christian]

Thinking about having unique individuals in a game where the world is somewhat persistent, I wonder if one way to visually indicate that would be for lizards and other creatures to accrue scars or other physical changes over time. If I get into a scrape with a lizard and barely manage to get away by injuring it (that rare occurrence), maybe it gets a scar, or a limp.

Also, speaking of injuries, just because this is something that more makes sense to me on a visual level than anything else: have you considered diseases or parasites? There's this species of fungus called cordyceps that primarily infects arthropods, converting its host's tissue to its own. It also, I believe, contains fungi that alter behaviour, like making an ant grow a giant red abdomen and then force it to hang upside down from a tall plant, enticing birds to eat it and thereby complete the parasite's reproductive cycle. It has that disturbing nature-documentary vibe that Rain World cultivates so well, and it looks kind of beautiful, in that organic fungus-y kind of way (reminds me of some of the plant sketches you did earlier):

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--TD86SGvG--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/17pyz1fttrbkmjpg.jpg





Lizards are the apex predators here, but all that means is that they then become the end-point of all of the nasty stuff everything else is carrying. I imagine an infected lizard, all tendrilly, acting kind of weird, maybe trying to infect others, maybe just suicidally presenting itself to some other creature (like those garbage worms) to be eaten, maybe being chased away and quarantined by other lizards (like the ants in the videos), or maybe just hauling itself somewhere to die and emit spores.

I like this idea, but I don't think it would fit in Rain World. Would make the game too complicated

One of the things I always liked about the game is its "simple complexity". In that, mechanically the game seems pretty simple. You can climb, and grab, and throw, and hang, and hide. Your moveset is relatively simple. The world is relatively simple: slugcat, flies, lizards. Your objectives are relatively simple: collect flies, avoid lizards, avoid the rain, maybe protect pups

The complexity comes from the interaction between the species and the AI adapting and reacting. The game isn't complex in terms of layers upon layers of mechanics (infection and parasites is something I'd expect in Don't Starve), but in the nuanced emergent possiblities that arise from the AI's personalities and behaviors

[tortoiseandcrow]

I'd more imagined that the parasitic interactions would pretty much solely be restricted between NPCs, rather than the slug cat, as a way of making observing the world feel even more organic. Cordyceps fungii tend to be pretty specialized, and slug cats are an entirely different species. I mentioned it largely because the idea of a lizard suffering from some sort of disease or dying from natural causes (rather than a purely violent death at the hands of another creature) seemed like a nice way to add variety to lizard behaviour without the chance of individual characteristics being lost in the shuffle. Cordyceps look like they sprung straight out of Rain World vegetation, so it seemed like a good match aesthetically. That said, I'm not keen to defend an idea idly thrown out there for a game that isn't mine.

[desdemian]

This game is beyond everything. My head cannot even begin to comprehend how this works... and, like magic, i don't think i want to.
I love this.

  you sir are at another level, and i salute you.

[JLJac]

Hahaha woooow! So many ideas! I do like the fungus idea, but it seems like that is a mechanic that should be a game itself, rather than something you slap on top of a finished concept. Haha and as Jimbert points out, Halo Did It! But if you had a game that was more focused on containing (or spreading) the contamination and built mechanics around that, it'd be really cool.

Update 341
Gggaaaaaaahhhhh shaaaaader heeeell revisited!

The coloration is obviously not the real deal (just gave it some colors that made it easy to see, won't use gradients when in the final look), but I'm happy with the surface movement and how it exists in the 3D-environment. The surface is a triangle mesh, so I'm hoping to be able to do some cool manipulations on it when stuff interact with it.



Here comes the funny part though - unity won't build with it (I use a screen coordinate passed down to the fragment shader, and that won't fly, apparently. There HAS to be some way around it though, they can't reasonably expect people to write fragment shaders without being able to ask about what pixel on the screen is being handled -___-). And even more funny, I wrote the entire thing imagining that it was snugly lined up to the level pixels, but when I resized the unity window - everything was suddenly fifty pixels to the left of where it should be! I had built it dependent on my unity window size... Well, the two problems are pretty much just one actually - getting screen coordinates (of the game area, not the goddamn Unity editor) and I feel pretty confident there has to be some solution for that. Hitting the forums tomorrow I guess, unless someone has any idea?

[Scifa]

I'm sure you got this covered, but slug cat needs air bubbles when under water.

[Christian]

Oh yeah, so we can expect swimming ambushing lizards now?

[gimymblert]

I have already hard time parsing the problem in my mind given your description ... what's the build error message?

[DarkWanderer]

It's insane how much depth is made apparent by the water. It looks great, really hope you can figure out how to get it implemented properly.

[JLJac]

I have already hard time parsing the problem in my mind given your description ... what's the build error message?

'variable/member "pos" has semantic "POSITION" which is not visible in this profile;'

To make my shader work I was cutting and pasting code I found on the internet, so have no idea exactly where this "pos" variable came from - but it didn't do any damage until I actually used it in the shader. Then it stopped working. Now it seems to at random sometimes not work in the editor either, hehe.

What I used it for, and what I actually want, is a screen coordinate of the fragment I'm handling. So if there's any other way to do that, I'd be happy to switch away from this troublemaker.

[Fermenter]

oh my gosh, that freaking water... top notch work, dude.