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[jamesprimate]

finally getting to design some proper RUINS!



(well, arguably its all ruins, but you know what i mean...)

[oahda]

Which we won't see when you slam darkness all over 'em? ;o;

[TopherPirkl]

Which we won't see when you slam darkness all over 'em? ;o;

Heh, maybe they could do a "New Game +" style mode with a "darkness off" option. I'd totally do it, I think it'd be cool to see how differently the game would function.

[JLJac]

Update 428

We have been talking for a long time about how the black death screen doesn't really hold up to the visual/interactive standard of the rest of the game, so today I finally got to work on some actual in-game death rain.



Obviously still a lot of work to go, but it's a start! What I've got going so far (aside from the start of a rain shader) is basically a texture that shows what parts of the level is sheltered under terrain, and doesn't render the rain there. Basically the texture is the same size as the room's tile matrix, with pixels that represent solid tiles or tiles beneath solid tiles as black and others as white. The shader then grabs from that texture, and my usual eternal enemy the automatic smoothing of scaled-up textures actually helps me out this time by softening the edges a bit.

A concern is the water splashes going through walls, as you can see... I'll have to figure something out with that. Maybe instead of having a radial splash I could have a directional, and aim it upwards from the surface being hit.

There are a million tricky design choices that go into this. I was hesitant to even get started on it for a long time because the plants and wires are static, and it feels weird that they don't move in a situation like this. For that reason I still want the rain to be pretty binary - on or off - instead of a gradual transition, because if the rain is intense enough to mess up the image completely you are less likely to notice the adamantium ferns standing strong against the pounding.

On the other hand, we want to have some rain-related gameplay going on, fleeing from rain and the like, and that speaks for a more gradual approach where the rain can be there, but you aren't instantly dead.

Currently my idea is that the rain first comes in this stage shown above, where you can actually hide under terrain a bit. If you go out into it you should be thrown around pretty badly and drown/get crushed quickly, but scurrying a few tiles through it should be possible (if you can do it in the blind, it's impossible to see what's going on out there).

Then obviously the rain need to step it up a notch from there, or you'd be able to survive by just waiting it out in any old spot such as in the gif, which would undermine our entire game mechanic with shelters etc. What this second step should look like I don't quite know yet, currently I'm thinking about having it just gradually fade to some sort of all-encompassing complete rain mayhem. That could sort of make sense given the ambiguity of the 2D/3D aspect of the game ~ are these rooms completely closed, or are they open in the front? The answer to that question changes according to what's convenient for us haha, and in this case I'd probably say that they're open and as the rain gets really intense it gets in there and smashes everything with general watery violence.

Then comes the question of the rooms that are very obviously completely underground, what to do there? The current idea is flash flooding, just a water level that rises quickly, and maybe underwater currents that smashes everything into the walls and wreck mayhem on whatever wasn't quick enough to swim to safety. But I'll have to get to that when I get to it - outside rain first.

Another concern I have is that rain like this should generate a whole lot of water, that should be washing around and dripping/pouring everywhere. Currently I don't really know how to animate that, but it'll have to happen through shaders somehow. The super realistic scenario would be that the water has an actual fluid simulation going and is just washing along in the corridors, but I really doubt I will be able to make that happen, at least at acceptable performance. So I'll have to wing it somehow. Stay tuned!

[Christian]

As usual, Rain World's progress never ceases to impress. Now that rain looks like it'll kill you in a second

I don't see why you'd need to change the splashes going through the walls. At least to me, and maybe others as well, it just looks like the rain is really powerful and spraying everywhere
---
I like the idea of flash flood crashing through and crushing everything against the walls while you're underground

Regarding plants, could you use the same physics/code you're doing for the dynamic tails to allow plants to move and be affected by rain?

[jamesprimate]

Oh god I love this so much!!! It already looks better than I imagined! You guys don't know how long I've been waiting for this 

Complete agree with Christian, the radial spray through the walls looks great, adds to the perceived intensity and depth. Feature rather than a bug! Also, maybe it's hard to tell from this pic, but the rain seems to blur and obscure the exposed terrain so much that I wonder if the plants will be seen as anything but a vague outline, which would be perfect imho!

A few months ago I did a survey of literally all instances of rain in videogames, and it was pretty bad, even in modern/next gen games. This is already better than any of them, so if that's one day's progress then HELL YEAH. 

I mean, it's called Rain World, we had some expectations to meet!

[Woodledude]

Complete agree with Christian, the radial spray through the walls looks great, adds to the perceived intensity and depth.

Totally agree that the rain looks great, but I think the radial spray isn't quite realistic, like Joar says. My main problem is it "seeping through" terrain and still having the same velocity it did - It's hard to tell from this pic, but imagine a long, thin platform having spray UNDERNEATH it from rain ABOVE it. That makes no sense. Same with a walled room getting spray in it because the rain is aimed at a corner that's definitely outside.

I think the solution to this is just to have the rain have four spray directions - Up, down, left, and right. Turn off each direction based on where the rain hits, but it would never be necessary to turn off upwards rain, so you could do it via a trinary system.

As for flooding, perhaps you could just have James drag-and-drop directional markers that would turn each other on in sequence? So you'd have this torrent of water come down and split off, slowly filling the room, but also going down different corridors where it makes sense for it to.

Also, an interesting idea... It would make sense for the cisterns above the big region locks to refill while the rain falls. Wouldn't that theoretically allow the player to use the locks AFTER the rain started? I mean, there's still the urgency you'd want there, it's just coming less from "Now I have to find a shelter before the rain comes" to "SHIT SHIT SHIT I HAVE TO FIND A SHELTER BECAUSE THE RAIN IS FRIGGIN HERE!" On the other hand, you could probably make those region gates go crazy during the rain if you wanted, with the doors slamming shut, one after the other, and the showers turning into a deathination stream

[fizmat]

Update 428
Then obviously the rain need to step it up a notch from there, or you'd be able to survive by just waiting it out in any old spot such as in the gif, which would undermine our entire game mechanic with shelters etc. What this second step should look like I don't quite know yet, currently I'm thinking about having it just gradually fade to some sort of all-encompassing complete rain mayhem. That could sort of make sense given the ambiguity of the 2D/3D aspect of the game ~ are these rooms completely closed, or are they open in the front? The answer to that question changes according to what's convenient for us haha, and in this case I'd probably say that they're open and as the rain gets really intense it gets in there and smashes everything with general watery violence.

If the rain starts bad and just gets worse, then hiding does not actually help because you'll just wait in the nook until you die with no way out. Unless it's what you're going for? If you can't try to get to the shelter itself, might as well stand in place, no point in hiding at all...

I see two other possibilities here:
1) Make this first stage of rain somewhat possible to navigate, so that after you hide in a nook and catch your breath you have a chance if you leave the nook and try to get to the shelter if you are close enough. Maybe make it literally use your underwater meter in the rain so that you have to run from cover to cover to not drown.
2) Have the rain pause for a moment and give you like 10-20 seconds of calm to save yourself. This way you're rewarded for finding your temporary hiding spot.
2a) Have that pause in the rain not be guaranteed but random. 50% - you're doomed, 50% - it was just the initial wall of water, it passes and you have 10-20 more seconds to escape. I imagine this will make waiting in the nook not boring, as you're nervous, hopeful, and preparing to run, and the dash in the lull be even more frantic because you know you were lucky to even get a second chance. I think you had something similar with the lizard at some point, where it might kill you and might not?

[Teod]

I think that during the rain no place should be dry, other than the shelter. Even seemingly solid ceilings should let some water through. It would basically look like normal rain inside (under the roof) and this insane rain outside. This would also partially solve underground rain problem (we would at least see the water flowing in) and through-the-wall splash problem (it will be less noticeable when water is everywhere, although you still need to replace 360 splash with at least 180). And then I imagine the room being filled with water, but not the normal kind: it should be seething, with splashy surface and a ton of random currents and bubbles, and maybe even some junk/corpses caught in the stream, making it really hard to swim in. Visually it would be cool if it was hard to tell where the exact edge between the rain and this water is.

[SrGrafo]

woa, saw this game very long ago and it seems that its getting really polish and smooth, congrats guys

specially loving the backgrounds, they seem so smooth and realistic



  will for sure get this once its done, its an amazing work

[oldblood]

Wow, Joar that looks insanely good. My logical side immediately starts considering just how quickly that much water would collect and rise, but fuck logic thats some gorgeous gameplay mechanics right there. I want to get caught in the rain now just to watch it fall... mesmerizing.

[tortoiseandcrow]

That looks incredible! I agree that you should probably just ignore the "sides" when you're clearly above-ground. Alternatively, you could just flash-flood everywhere - rain falling above, water rising through the entire level below. If this is hurricane+ force stuff, then it's not unreasonable to imagine that everything just completely floods and drowns if it isn't in a water-tight place. And then maybe it all drains away at the end of the cycle because the ground is porous or something?

But this is definitely what should happen underground:

[darklight]

Been lurking in this thread for a long time now, I love reading about the progress of this game.  Just wanted to mention - how about a mechanic like the water flood in bubble bobble (see

) - where slugcat gets carried by floodwater that makes its way to the bottom of the screen / room (where you drown in the rising water), unless you manage to jump out the way onto somewhere where the floodwater is not so intense.

[gimymblert]

Well technically I thought you shouldn't be caught up by rain at all (shown in previous game over screen than as soon as drop happen you have already failed). So if you were to use fluid physics to flood, it should just be contain in the visible screen only with maybe all AI simulations ticks frozen focusing only on the awesome graphical death of the slugcat literraly crushed and carried away by the flood, ie the best game over screen ever seen in video games 

[Christian]

Joar, does the game already have some form of fluid dynamics? Since you have the flooded cisterns draining out?

[Woodledude]

Joar, does the game already have some form of fluid dynamics? Since you have the flooded cisterns draining out?

It's one thing to push the top edge of a shader volume down, or simulate falling "blobs" of water like seen in the water falls - It's another thing entirely to keep track of different bodies and currents of water combining, and keep all the volumes intact while allowing it all to change shape based on the collision mesh around it. I think that's the part Joar wants to avoid if possible.

[chriswearly]

[made a post, then read the page, deleted post. I feel dumb ]

Anyway, the rain looks bloody awesome!

I seriously can't wait to play this :D

[Mark Mayers]

finally getting to design some proper RUINS!



(well, arguably its all ruins, but you know what i mean...)

I'm diggin those ruins, keep up the good work!
Also, you should come to Boston Indies or Boston Post Mortem next time.
Don't make games alone in a cave

[jamesprimate]

@mark: Lydia went to last weeks! She said it was super boring other than your game, which she couldnt even get near due to the crowd of people XD I do need to make it out though. Next time!

[Osteel]

Love this game, and have been watching it forever. But really random question: who exactly on TIG is working on this game? I'm a little confused because I seem some regulars posting like they work on it, yet other times post like they're seeing udpates for the first time.

And there's no credits on the front page haha.

Anyway, rain looks awesome!