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[tortoiseandcrow]

I'm kind of sad not to be able to trick lizards into falling into the water and drowning anymore.

[Christian]

I'm kind of sad not to be able to trick lizards into falling into the water and drowning anymore.

I know what you mean. It was always funny seeing lizards freak out when they were near water.

But just thinking about the possibilities of swimming lizards is so exciting to me. Some could be better swimmers than others, maybe some more like crocs, resting on the water's surface, or others being excellent swimmers. I bet the green ones are too heavy to swim

[chriswearly]

I'm kind of sad not to be able to trick lizards into falling into the water and drowning anymore.

I know what you mean. It was always funny seeing lizards freak out when they were near water.

But just thinking about the possibilities of swimming lizards is so exciting to me. Some could be better swimmers than others, maybe some more like crocs, resting on the water's surface, or others being excellent swimmers. I bet the green ones are too heavy to swim

What is the camo-lizard just glides along the surface, waiting for you fall in, and you won't even know > Well, as long as the leeches don't get to it

[ernanir]

The splash looks fantastic

[JLJac]

@Keith, thank you so much :D Keep in mind that animation != gameplay though O___O

Don't worry, instead of weird chemical death you will be able to have them eaten by leeches!

Update 446

I've been working on a water lizard, it will be salamander or axolotl-inspired in its appearance. During the day I've been setting the creature up and dealt with the various path finding related issues that I inevitably run into. Drawing a head for the lizard took about an hour, bug hunting why the hell it wouldn't go into shortcuts under water took 2, after which I tried several fixes that didn't work, after which I applied a 5 minute fix that I feel like, in the back of my mind, that it might break the vulture. Hahaha. Inheritance is great for the fact that if you solve a problem in one place, you solve it in all of them. The backside however is that if you solve a problem for one of the inheriting classes, you might break something for another one. We'll see what happens.

It's strange how much more time I spend messing with my damn technical issues rather than adding content, and maybe not a good thing. But what to do? I have to get it to work, one way or another. Anyway, now it can enter the shortcut and I'll try to get some cool swimming animation running ~

[theEasternDragon]

I like the idea of the "crocodile" lizard. How are you planning to handle it with the leeches? If it is a water dweller, would they have some kind of symbiotic relationship?

Also, just a kind of cool idea, but I have been looking at pictures of the Kowloon walled city. What are the odds of having a region like that? Kind of a cramped urban area, kind of like a jungle gym.

[tortoiseandcrow]

Yay water lizard! I'm excited to see that the roster of lizard sub-species continues to expand into new contexts. The axolotl is a really cool point of reference - it should totally have creepy translucent skin or something.

I think it's a testament to your animation that it always read to me as the lizards not being able to swim and drowning, rather than some weird chemical death. But there's something really satisfying about the idea of watching them get dragged down by leaches. I get the same sort of shot of relief and excitement when a vulture takes out a lizard that is chasing me.

Just thinking about the sneaking mechanic, where a creature's vision is tied to your movement or stance - wouldn't that mean that if you were sneaking a lizard would not be able to see other creatures as easily either?

[gimymblert]

How many creatures officially is left to implement?

[jamesprimate]

Also, just a kind of cool idea, but I have been looking at pictures of the Kowloon walled city. What are the odds of having a region like that? Kind of a cramped urban area, kind of like a jungle gym.

spot on! we originally intended to do a Kowloon-inspired region early on, but couldnt get the scale and tile to work right. also, it veered a bit too close to showing the specifics about the previous occupants of rain world, how they lived, etc., so we opted to go in another direction.

How many creatures officially is left to implement?

quite a few, and the list keeps growing. some are going to be really challenging too.  we have our work cut out for us

[Christian]

Talking about creatures, are the pack hunting lizards still planned?

[jamesprimate]

Yellows! I hope so. Seems like something that will go well in the next region actually.

So ive been quiet the past week or so, mostly because this Shoreline region that im working on has become all-consuming. Im finishing it up now, and minus the narrative-specific rooms that we'll be adding in later, its already over 100 screens... which is a little over 3x the size of the Suburban region. So its *huge*.



That said, it might actually be the tightest region conceptually, and im super happy with how it is turning out. The game mechanic possibilities of open water swimming was just too good to not explore in depth, and that we certainly have! Plus, you can't imply the scale of "ocean" without some serious scope, right?

[gimymblert]

Hi Fumito Ueda! Nice to see you dropping here 

[Mark Mayers]

Yellows! I hope so. Seems like something that will go well in the next region actually.

So ive been quiet the past week or so, mostly because this Shoreline region that im working on has become all-consuming. Im finishing it up now, and minus the narrative-specific rooms that we'll be adding in later, its already over 100 screens... which is a little over 3x the size of the Suburban region. So its *huge*.



That said, it might actually be the tightest region conceptually, and im super happy with how it is turning out. The game mechanic possibilities of open water swimming was just too good to not explore in depth, and that we certainly have! Plus, you can't imply the scale of "ocean" without some serious scope, right?

Reminds me of Shadow of the Colossus! In the best of ways.
(I've also been playing that for the first time recently, so it's fresh in memory, ha.)



Looking really cool

[JLJac]

So cool looking 

Just thinking about the sneaking mechanic, where a creature's vision is tied to your movement or stance - wouldn't that mean that if you were sneaking a lizard would not be able to see other creatures as easily either?

Don't worry! This visualization has the camouflage value of the player specifically weighted in, but when several creatures are around it calculates a value like that for each of them separately.

Talking about creatures, are the pack hunting lizards still planned?

Yup, yellows and reds will feature - they're actually in the game at this point, though they don't have much specific behavior written for them, they're basically just pinks with slightly different speed etc right now. But they will get some more attention when we get to the regions where they live.

Update 447

Got some visuals on the water lizard/axolotl! Now I have to give it a unique swimming animation, and it should be good to go.

[Christian]

So with Shoreline, are you guys past 700 rooms yet? Shadow Complex's map was 780 rooms.

Real question is if the Rain World will be bigger than Knytt Underground (1000+ room)
http://i3.minus.com/iKXxdSAe7YUF2.png

[JLJac]

Nah we don't have 700 rooms yet, but now the forecast is looking like we'll break through that, and 1000 might not be entirely impossible either if James keeps this pace O___O

But keep in mind that strictly we are counting screens here, not rooms - which makes comparisons a bit difficult. In Knytt a screen is a room I remember correctly, so there the comparison makes sense, but shadow complex is a side scroller where each room is several screens large right, so then the comparison falls apart. Back in suburban region I think the average room was something like 1.2 screens (almost every room was a one-screener with a few two- or three-screeners) but in this latest region I'd say that the number has gone up to something crazy like 3.5 screens per room on average or similar. So despite being waaaay larger than SU I wouldn't be surprised if it actually had fewer rooms.

[gimymblert]

it's bigger than ff7 too

[jamesprimate]

Hi Fumito Ueda! Nice to see you dropping here 

Reminds me of Shadow of the Colossus! In the best of ways.

  you guys...

So with Shoreline, are you guys past 700 rooms yet? Shadow Complex's map was 780 rooms.

Real question is if the Rain World will be bigger than Knytt Underground (1000+ room)
http://i3.minus.com/iKXxdSAe7YUF2.png

quick look says we're near 500, which seems about right pace from current estimations. A couple of these next regions are of a similar sort of scale and structure to Shoreline, so 900ish seems very possible.

Worth pointing out though that the larger-scale regions are generally much less complex from a terrain standpoint. In a lot of ways, the game layout is such that there are "dense rooms designed for things to happen in" and "transition rooms that give an impression of movement through the world". So often the time spend in a single screen room will actually be greater than the 4-5 screen room that preceded it.

Similarly, the conceptual effort that goes into a single-screen room vs what goes into a 10-screen room is roughly the same (tiling and etc takes longer ofc, but thats not nearly as fussy), so whereas i can probably do 3 solid single-screen rooms in a day i could likely do 2 8-screen rooms in that same period of time. so basically what im trying to say is its not the size that counts!!111 er

but that said, this all bodes well for the production rate. Despite being the largest by far Shoreline was also the quickest to complete, and since the next 2 or 3 regions are of a similar sort of structure and scale, im hoping that carries through! if so it could do wonders for our timeline.

/wonk

[oldblood]

So this must be how the alien overlords fell...

[Christian]

^^^ Reminds me of the supports of a collapsed bridge