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[Slader16]

heck yeah we do!

crisis avoided.

[Teod]

Early access doesn't mean "Steam Early Access". Backers at that tier already have the alpha. It's not through Steam.

I just think it's kind of a waste: to go through all of the work of maintaining a functional early access build but only give it to like... a thousand people. Probably way less since not everyone is watching the project closely and not everyone is interested in early access at all.

Honestly a game like this probably wouldn't be the best fit for a public Steam Early Access release. Best to experience the world and the whole thing when it's all complete

One could say that about any game: a complete product is always better than an incomplete one. But where it actually applies is mostly in heavily scripted story-driven experiences. In a sandbox game where you build your own story that is less of a case.
From my observations, the general rules for successful early access are: to have the core fun of the gameplay already in (platforming, stealth and hunting are functional - check), to have enough interesting content coming up to keep people interested (more creatures and regions - check) and to have a decent communication from the devs (even ignoring this thread kickstarter updates are plentiful - check). Devs can have their own internal reasons not to go this way, but I really don't see any, unless they plan to do some linear narrative thing, which I think would be kinda tricky and not sure if fitting for the theme of the game.

@Joar/James - Still planning to do pups?

Why do people call them pups? If the creature is Slugcat shouldn't it's offspring be called Slugkittens?

[Christian]

Ah, but private testing means less pressure, not having to worry about the criticism and negative backlash toward Early Access, not having to worry about sales and complaints about being overpriced or incessant Steam threads about when the next update is coming. I'm not a developer, but I'd much rather have a small group of testers who know the game and understand the vision of the game than dealing with the craziness that is the Steam community

[theEasternDragon]

I noticed some complaints about the GIFs lagging peoples commuters. I have to say I have had this issue, and mine is fairly new. Might want to fix this somehow, maybe have a "spoiler tag"?

[oldblood]

I noticed some complaints about the GIFs lagging peoples commuters. I have to say I have had this issue, and mine is fairly new. Might want to fix this somehow, maybe have a "spoiler tag"?

GIF's playback has nothing to do with your computer's processing power. Slow GIF's are either (1.) Your connection (2.) The GIF hosting service. Said another way: you can only download as fast as you can download and you can only download as fast as they can send.

That being said, I don't imagine the GIF's would impact commuters unless they're distracted by the GIF's while driving...

[chriswearly]

Early access doesn't mean "Steam Early Access". Backers at that tier already have the alpha. It's not through Steam.

I just think it's kind of a waste: to go through all of the work of maintaining a functional early access build but only give it to like... a thousand people. Probably way less since not everyone is watching the project closely and not everyone is interested in early access at all.

Honestly a game like this probably wouldn't be the best fit for a public Steam Early Access release. Best to experience the world and the whole thing when it's all complete

One could say that about any game: a complete product is always better than an incomplete one. But where it actually applies is mostly in heavily scripted story-driven experiences. In a sandbox game where you build your own story that is less of a case.
From my observations, the general rules for successful early access are: to have the core fun of the gameplay already in (platforming, stealth and hunting are functional - check), to have enough interesting content coming up to keep people interested (more creatures and regions - check) and to have a decent communication from the devs (even ignoring this thread kickstarter updates are plentiful - check). Devs can have their own internal reasons not to go this way, but I really don't see any, unless they plan to do some linear narrative thing, which I think would be kinda tricky and not sure if fitting for the theme of the game.

@Joar/James - Still planning to do pups?

Why do people call them pups? If the creature is Slugcat shouldn't it's offspring be called Slugkittens?

pups, kittens, semantics!
But actually yeah even at this point, I think a reclassification of the offspring might be needed. Just because, "cats" have "kittens" plain and simple.

But James/Joar what are your thoughts?

[Christian]

"Cubs" sounds more better than kittens IMO
Slugcat cubs. Thoughts?

[Canned Turkey]

Pups is my vote.
That or midgets.

[DarkWanderer]

Slugcat was always sort of a loose descriptor anyway, it's kind of tongue & cheek. If biologists ever landed on rain world I'd doubt that'd be the official taxonomy.

[JLJac]

I think lizard species should be easily distinguishable by a 100% colorblind person. That's both a noble goal to have in terms of accessibility and an indicator of good visual clarity and vatiety. As for now I think it's still possible to mix them in some cases, but you're moving in the right direction.

Also, I personally don't like nearly white heads on white lizards. They always should be in contrast with the body.

Yup, the ideal would be that they'd be possible to tell apart without color. But it's not entirely easy, if individuals are to be identifiable as well as breeds. I'll work on it!

This is amazing! Seriously, looking at all that plumage is making me giddy.

One issue I'm having is that with the colour variation, some of the pinks look nearly red to me. I don't know if the reds will look radically different from the pinks, but in any case you might want hedge your bets and adjust the colour ranges of the pinks so that they don't hit red. Maybe head in the opposite direction on the colour spectrum and range between magenta/purple rather than magenta/red? That way you don't have quite so much of a problem distinguishing between the two, and red is pretty much exclusive to the really scary one.

EDIT:

Yeah, there is a lot of space between the purplest hues of the blues and the bluest hues of the pink, but the pinks are sometimes getting way too close to red. I've placed them there on the color wheel because I like the warm purples more, they contrast better to the typically cold colors of the background. Another issue is that the human eye's experience of hue differences doesn't perfectly line up with the RGB (or rather HSL) model of the computer - some portions of the color wheel we divide into many separate color concepts, while there's a good fourth or so that we generalize to "blue". I read some anthropology article somewhere that these divisions are actually heavily influenced by culture - western culture tends to see blue as separate from green, while many other cultures see these as variations of the same color, while being better at identifying the warmer greens. At the end of the day, I can't really do much more than going by my own eye. When the reds come around the pinks are definitely going to have to scoot over into the colder hues though, unless I come up with some smart workaround. Maybe the lizards could get a secondary color, similar to the vultures right now (vultures actually generate two hue-related colors, you might notice that the feathers are different than the shoulder pads) and create distinction that way.

looks like you are having a lot of fun! I was just wondering if all this extra cool stuff has any impact on performance? are the vultures going to have this sort of attention given to individual looks as well?

The vultures acutally do have a bit of this, the feathers on the wings, the "danglers" and the colors are all individual. But I'd definitely want to do a bit more. That said, lizards are definitely getting extra attention here, as they're the primary foe. I can't spend 5 days on individualization for every species in the game. But I hope for all of them (maybe with the exception of stuff like bats and leeches) to have some degree of it.

#early access, this is not really my desk as much as James', but I tend to agree that it's a different thing with backer early access and public early access. Backers generally have more insight in our development progress, and might be more well-meaning as they understand that it's a work in progress, and knows what is implemented yet and what is planned to come along, etc. Also I agree that Rain World is probably better experienced as a finished-ish product, I think we'd want to at least have the all of the areas areas and the more important creatures finished before release.

#pups, as for the name, nothing is concerning me less at the moment hahahaha   Remember that the names won't actually feature in the game, it's just for the devlog and other conversations about the game. A piece of trivia though, I believe the pups were "pups" before the slugcat was "slugcat." When it comes to the actual gameplay element, yes sure we do still plan to include them! But as some of you have noted, the environments are quite hostile, so we might want to tone down the escort quests a bit. Perhaps the pups could be made more stationary, so that they generally hang out in a shelter and the challenge is more about bringing them food than about taking them from A to B. We'll have to see how it develops though.

[gimymblert]

NEVER thrust color, soon you will be claiming it's white and gold or black and blue

[Woodledude]

(about slugcat pups) When it comes to the actual gameplay element, yes sure we do still plan to include them! But as some of you have noted, the environments are quite hostile, so we might want to tone down the escort quests a bit. Perhaps the pups could be made more stationary, so that they generally hang out in a shelter and the challenge is more about bringing them food than about taking them from A to B. We'll have to see how it develops though.

From what I know about them, it would definitely be a huge hassle to be dragging around all three of them, especially somewhere like, say, the Chimney Canopy, with a lot of dangerous terrain, long falls, and large, hungry predators. However, I could absolutely see myself taking one, or even two, especially if I was worried about being able to feed one in particular. They can have their uses, and you can keep a lone pup fairly safe, use them to carry equipment, catch bats (so long as you're planning to let them keep them), and even as bait in traps. That one pup requires a little extra management, maybe, but it's like having a spear or rock in your hand.

[jamesprimate]

as Joar and I have discussed it, the pups have pretty much always been considered a really challenging but optional fork in the game. theyve been on the back burner for a bit as weve been putting together the more structurally important stuff (and will probably remain there for a while longer), but the idea were currently running with is that the pups open up certain narrative paths and figure more prominently into shaping the end game / NG+ experience. but, at least as we have it now, babysitting them wont be essential for progression through the game. because yeah its going to be SUPER hard 

[Crispy75]

Joar - really interesting to hear your thoughts on colour - you obviously know a fair bit about sight and perception. With that in mind, could you clear something up for me? I asked a while back, but it feels more on-topic now

The lizard heads pulse from full-bright to black. This makes their motion very hard to track. It's like a strobe light highlighting parts of a dance: you see individual poses, but your brain has a really hard time filling in the inbetween motion. It keeps going "oh! there's a new thing! oh! it's gone! oh! there's a new thing! oh! it's gone!"

I once got into a heated debate about flashing bicycle lights (don't ask) which boiled down to the same thing - the ability of the brain to track an intermittent object.
The following paper is regularly cited:

Smooth eye tracking and the perception of motion in the absence of real movement
Michael J. Morgan, D.F. Turnbull
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0042698978900342

I don't have access to it right now, but the following line from the abstract sums it up:

A target moving physically in discrete spatial jumps could elicit smooth tracking eye movements in practised observers, but this tracking was increasingly interrupted by saccades when the temporal interval between the spatial jumps of the target was greater than 150 msec.

They're talking about discrete flashes here, so the effect isn't as pronounced with the pulsating lizard heads, but it's definitely there. Personally, I find trying to track one lizard quite distracting; when there's multiple heads flashing at different rates, I lose track of them all.

I don't know if I'm the only one who responds in this way, or if it's a deliberate effect to confuse the player...

[jamesprimate]

^ worth noting is that the blinking effect is exaggerated in the gifs due to gif framerate being quite low. in game at 60fps+ the transitions are much smoother. less a blink and more of a pulse.

[Caspar2000]

Yup, there'll be reds, and yup, I'm a little worried about how to keep the colors apart! Maybe I'll have to rely more on other features.

Actually the rotation effects are, in my opinion, strangely more clear in an actual game context. The differences between the individuals also seem to pop more when they're not all suspended on a grid:


(this amount of agression between lizards isn't normal by the way, it's because I pulled them all into the central room where they ended up in a big pile with a lot of biting, and the general annoyance hasn't worn of yet as of recording)

Yeah, blue needs some love still! Wasn't really thinking about it as "horns" as much as "lines along the body", sort of like how a chipmunks fur is colored, just that whatever this is connects to the head... Haha these are strange creatures, I shouldn't pretend I know what I'm doing. But yes, the blues need something more going for them. I think maybe tail tufts or something might just do the trick 

Guys, plese mind the colorblind like me. I can only see the red, pink and blue apart by their shapes and sizes, not the colors.

[tortoiseandcrow]

The history and anthropology of sense and perception is a fascinating field! Even the idea that we have five senses is a product of our culture - some cultures perceive different senses more strongly, like, say, placing more emphasis on proprioception (the internal feeling of balance and orientation within space) than sight.

Anyways! One solution might be for the "reds" to go into the deep brownish reds, rather than the purer end of the spectrum. Oxblood and rust coloured. I imagine that perhaps they get darker as they get older. Personally I'd argue against secondary colours, because it seems like adding even more variables would only increase the chances of mis-identification. Plus, I find that part of the visual appeal of the lizards is the stark-ness of their colour scheme.

Have you thought of maybe designing the different breeds in greyscale for the time being? That way you don't have the colour to rely upon as a way of telling them apart, and instead have to work more with their silhouettes. Like, exaggerating the crest feathers the pinks have on their necks, or limiting back spines to the greens. I think it is probably fine to have more subtle variation between individuals. Any bird-watcher who has followed a local hawk for a season will tell you that you get to be able to pick out individuals over time, even when the traits that allow you to identify a given species are pretty standardized.

[RainWorldIsAwesome]

As far as colors go and distinguishing and being able to track them, in the alpha and the gifs you guys have provided I have no trouble following them or being able to distinguish them, but it would be pretty cool if as reds got older they're color got a bit darker or maybe just have that for all the species, and maybe make older ones less agressive but a bit more patient or per-say "intelligent". Also permission to live stream the new alpha and the other alpha?

[JLJac]

@Caspar2000 Hey, so you can tell them apart by their shapes and sizes? That's good news then  But it might be a bit too ambiguous still? If you have full color blindness, feel free to stick around and interact as I work with the lizard cosmetics, your input would be really valuable  Work might be a bit slow for the next few though, because of travelling and PAX.

@tortoiseandcrow, yep, I feel the same, the one-color thing has something going for it. I was thinking that maybe secondary colors could work if reds have secondary colors tending towards yellow, while pinks have secondary colors tending towards blue - that way if the primaries overlap you'd still see a distinction between warm and cold in the overall color scheme. The idea about greyscale is really good, I should put them randomly on the grid in grayscale and see to what degree I'm able to identify them.

@RainWorldIsAwesome, awesome name there! If you could hold off on streaming just a little bit that would be great, I want to have a more in-depth talk with James about our stages of going public when I get over to Boston tomorrow!   

@Crispy75, thanks for the well thought through input! I think the reason why they are hard to track has a strange sort of connectedness to the reason why I like the effect. Let me try to explain, haha!

In nature, very few things change color before your eyes - an apple changes color, but super slowly, quick color changes would be like, a chameleon? An octopus? Super rare. So it sort of makes sense for human eyes to be optimized for tracking same-color blotches that move. I remember from somewhere that our sight (on a very close-to-hardware level) mainly tracks edges between colors and dark/light areas, and movement perception is tied to this. Neurons in the image processing part at the back of the eye (my english fails me here) light up mainly on the edge between one blotch of color and the other, and it seems fair to assume that neurons next to these edge sensing neurons would "expect" to perceive the edge soon after, which would be how very low-level movement perception works. I'm blabbering here, but anyhow. Given that things changing color are rare in nature, it's not too far fetched to assume that this process "expects" the color edge to have the same colors, and that maybe edge/movement perception is somewhat impaired by stuff changing color as they move? This would explain the results of the article you linked.

That was (my fantasies) about reality, now let's move to fantasy land! I'm trying to make a Neon Lizard. I want to somehow hint at some sort of biotechnological qualities, but I don't want to have like, nuts and bolts sticking out of them. Whatever is going on here is more sophisticated technology than that... Maybe? This is really fuzzy stuff, but I know what mood I want to get across. So, stuff changing colors are rare in nature, but common in modern technology. Screens change color all the time. The reason why I like the color pulsing of the lizards is this - that it brings in an alien, or artificial, quality. It makes it obvious that this is not "just an animal," it's some stranger entity which doesn't belong to the world we know.

You say that "practiced observers" have an easier time seeing the flashing lights, and I think I'm certainly one of them at this point  That said, I personally don't have a super big problem tracking the lizards. I do experience some of it though, but I think that bit sort of enhances the experience - the lizards become a bit of an alien, unpredictable threat because of it, similar to some ghost in a horror movie. The (in my case very slight) difficulty to track them makes them more menacing, they move quickly through passages, all the while flashing, and with the next flash they might be closer than you expected.

Obviously "cool effects" never trumps actual playability, but I don't think it's that bad trying to see where they are? If a lot of people think it is, let me know! Basically I feel that the "worst case scenario", which would be the brief moment when the lizard is entirely black, is still not unacceptable, the black silhouette is fairly well contrasted against the background, and the fact that it moves while the environments are static also helps.

When many lizards (especially of the same color) pile up in a fight, it is definitely impossible to keep them apart. But is it really super relevant to know which is which in such a situation? It becomes a "pile of danger", which you just shouldn't get near to either way, and that's pretty much all you need to know. If you're interested in which lizard won the fight or something like that, they will eventually separate and you can look at them as distinct entities again.

This is my reasoning! Nothing is set in stone obviously, and if this is indeed a big problem we'll have to tackle it. Just wanted to let you in on why I'm feeling good with this design decision as it stands. 

[Christian]

What about bio-luminescent "Tron Lines" for a Neon Lizard?
Something like this:


I'd imagine a biotech lizard would be really sleek: no frills, no spines or ridges, smooth, lithe, and efficient kind of how the slugcat is. An "iLizard" so to speak.