Thanks!
so perfect! dont change a thingggg. I can hear the sploosh clearly in my head when the cat dives into the water, it looks that good
That's really good, as it's you who's gonna do that splash sound, mate! Hahaha!
I've never really been a fan of (wavy) water in 2d platformers, it feels like the world just ends at a glass pane or something to me. You managed to make it look pretty though, so I'll get over it
My only gripe would be that the water behaves very rubbery when you dive in, like it's jelly you're swimming around in rather than water. The swimming itself looks really cool, and I think the slugcat being darkened while submerged works well.
Yeah, me neither - and for a while we did talk about having the water extend towards the bottom of the screen - as if you were watching the level stick up above the surface, from a distance. It gets weird very quick though, because this whole platformer perspective thing doesn't really work if you try to think of it in 3D. If you saw the surface, and the level stick up out of it, you'd all of a sudden feel like you're viewing the creatures from a distance - which is weird, because it uncomfortably places the viewer in the scene - and 2D and 3D spatiality collide. Also, when looking at a normal level, you're kind of seeing the
inside of walls, maybe? Doesn't really make sense to have a cut-in-half building like that stick out of an ocean and view it as through binoculars...
Then come the practical stuff - if what you see was the surface of the water, you wouldn't be able to see what was going on beneath it. And when the surface is above the horizon? (Yeah, the game has a "horizon" it uses for the pseudo 3D stuff, it's 1/3 down from the top of the screen). In the end, the aquarium approach was only the really thing that made sense. And I've kind of learned to like it, it makes it feel like you're looking at a little model of a room or something
I love the effect. One thing I noticed: The impact when the character jumps into the water is very heavy, which makes it look a bit like a miniature world. Don't know if I can explain it correctly, but right now it feels like in a bathtub, very small.
Yeah, I've really been struggling with the jelly-ness of it. That's the least jelly I've managed to get it to, but now when I've tried to rewrite the thing to work with multi-screen rooms the jelly wobble is worse than ever
If anyone can point me to a nice and simple description of how to actually simulate a water surface I'd be really happy. Haven't managed to find one myself - the
wikipedia article wasn't easy enough to work with.
Oh and maybe if lizards are underwater, only their flashing colors would be visible, like the bioluminescent nature of deep sea creatures. Imagine how tense that would be. You dive underwater, and don't realize a lizard is nearby because it's hard to see and kind of camouflaged against the other dark things underwater. And then a flash of color in the darkness and a dark shape starts rushing towards you...
I haven't had a proper talk with James yet, but I'm kind of leaning towards not having many creatures that are both land and water dwelling - it's easier and feels cleaner to have some separate (vicious!) water fauna that will eat whatever falls down there. But it's all open for discussion right now - currently I'm just trying to get the damn water to work haha!
I love the effect. One thing I noticed: The impact when the character jumps into the water is very heavy, which makes it look a bit like a miniature world. Don't know if I can explain it correctly, but right now it feels like in a bathtub, very small.
I think the main thing here is the distortions close to the surface. And also the jelly like qualities of the water, making it seem as if surface tension is really strong. The jelly I'm not so happy about, but I kind of like that the water looks like it's small and close, a little bit of confusion over the scale of things seems fitting when you don't want to pin stuff down too much. Obviously the slugcat isn't half an inch tall and taking a bath in a droplet, but that little effect serves as a reminder that we don't actually know all too well what we're looking at.
By the way - and maybe this has been answered before and I missed it - what is the penalty for dying in the game? Do you start all over from day one with no flies?
The classic idea, which we're still holding on to, is that you'll be allowed to restart the "cycle" - a cycle is basically a level, except it's not geographically contained, so more like a "mission" or whatever name you want to use for "chunk of play". In a cycle you wake up from hibernation, go out and try to hunt for food, and need to return to hibernation before the rain gets you. Hibernation acts as save points, meaning that if you die you get to retry that cycle.
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