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[Saijin_Naib]

Every post I see from you guys is cooler than the last...

Absolutely phenomenal. Back to lurking!

[adge]

Wow! I really like all these creatures. But what about the biomechanical touch the seaworm got? I thought you would like more creatures to have it. Would fit the setting perfect. And it adds a lot of creapyness. Until now, only Jaws has mechanical jaws.

[Christian]

Is there going to some kind of Sandbox mode? I'd love to just have an empty room or some enclosed maps, where you can spawn different species to watch how they interact, play around with tube worms, etc.

Especially watching the different species. I have to say, this game has this incredible voyeuristic quality, where simply watching the different creatures is just fascinating. After my slugcat gets killed, I tend to watch for a few more minutes to watch lizards fight over the carcass or fight each other. It's so cool.

I'd love to have a separate mode to enjoy that without having to worry about the coming rain or other dangers

Like a mode titled "Vivarium" or something like that

[jamesprimate]

Is there going to some kind of Sandbox mode? I'd love to just an empty room or some enclosed maps, where you can spawn different species to watch how they interact, play around with tube worms, etc.

Especially watching the different species. I have to say, this game has this incredible voyeuristic quality, where simply watching the different creatures is just fascinating. After my slugcat gets killed, I tend to watch for a few more minutes to watch lizards fight over the carcass or fight each other. It's so cool.

I'd love to have a separate mode to enjoy that without having to worry about the coming rain or other dangers

Like a mode titled "Vivarium" or something like that

yes definitely! we were actually just talking about that a little bit. in the old Lingo alpha, multiplayer and sandbox were combined, so you could throw creatures and players into levels of your choosing and just go at it. what were planning now is a bit of an elaboration on that, tying in the narrative portion of the game so as you explore the world in single player / co-op, you are unlocking new content (rooms, regions, creatures, etc) for use in the multiplayer/sandbox mode. this will get us a lot of extra mileage from fun stuff like the water elements, tube worm grapple, cicada jumps, etc., that otherwise would just be confined to a region or two.

but more related to your question, i know Joar is super keen on having some sort of ecosystem observation mode, so a "vivarium" that pulls from these same elements sounds perfecto.



Also hey hello hi im back from PAX! Did a ton of interviews and talks with media peeps about Rain World, so i expect to see that stuff popping up the next week. Probably nothing new for you long-time devlog readers, but who knows!

We had front and center billing at the adult swim games booth, which was pretty slick...



and got to finally see the new slugcat pup plushies that Sanshee is going to be putting out...



and most importantly, the game didnt even freeze ONCE.

[TheWing]

For science!

Hmm, I'd kinda like to see a bit more slack/vibration/something in the tongues.. but that's just me, they're already awesome :D

Update 468

This is awesome too! Might be the early state of development, but it seems like he's not moving with his legs, but rather just dragging tentacles around where he moves..?

[JLJac]

Welcome back James! 

Joar, between raindeer and this thing, you're going to give a lot of people nightmares. Keep it up!

Oh man, you don't even know... 

Wow! I really like all these creatures. But what about the biomechanical touch the seaworm got? I thought you would like more creatures to have it. Would fit the setting perfect. And it adds a lot of creapyness. Until now, only Jaws has mechanical jaws.

Good call! This one will have a quite interesting design ~ I'll not spoil it but let you guys see it as it develops!

...Like a mode titled "Vivarium" or something like that

Yes, I'm also fond of this aspect so I'd like to see something like this go in the game. Maybe not a separate mode per se, but something where you can just watch, maybe as the credits roll or the start screen or something. Also I don't see why sandbox mode should force you to spawn players, you should be able to just place a few critters in the arena and see what happens!

...it seems like he's not moving with his legs, but rather just dragging tentacles around where he moves..?

Yep ~ that's actually a perfect description of the task. What is going on is the latter, what I try to make it look like is the former. It's the same for all the creatures in the game, none of them actually "move with their legs" in an actual sense, rather they are just pulled along and then made to look like they're affected by the legs with smoke and mirrors. I've been achieving results I'm happy with for the other creatures, so I think I will for this one too!

[oahda]

So sandbox, eh? What about modding and cheat codes?

Still trying to find a way to be able to play here! :D

[The MegaMagic Dude]

For science!

i feel bad looking at the beast... poor thing

Wonderful updates, I'm really looking forward the release on Steam, it's a piece of art.

Lovely!

[JobLeonard]

i feel bad looking at the beast... poor thing

I think that's a great quality in this game. Killing should be a messy, horrible thing, not something to be glorified.

[Christian]

i feel bad looking at the beast... poor thing

I think that's a great quality in this game. Killing should be a messy, horrible thing, not something to be glorified.

I love how the game has a "circle of life" vibe. There's nothing glorified about the violence. Everything feels animalistic, like watching a nature documentary.

Actually the intelligence of the slugcat has this interesting juxaposition, since everything seems so instinct driven while it/you are smart enough to upset that balance with tool use and manipulating the ecosystem

[JLJac]

Yeah, that's the idea! Violence as a messy last resort when everything else fails - never a goal in its own right.

Update 469

More daddy long legs work. The locomotion still has some wonks, but it's getting better. This creature has a new challenge - it's more procedural than most because this time around the body shape and the amount/length of the tentacles are randomized as well, not only cosmetic details. This introduces the difficulty of not knowing exactly what the body I'm writing locomotion code for will look like, but at the end of the day the general body plan is always similar enough for it to work - chunky body in the middle, halo of tentacles around it.

This creature will use its tentacles to grab, and today I did some work on making it reach into narrow spaces to try to pull you out. What's tricky about this is making it able to think about how to interact with spaces it's not actually allowed in itself. The solution I'm going with is to rely on the tentacle pathfinding I already have - the tentacles are sort of autonomous and just gives the main AI some hints on how to make their activities easier. This autonomy should also bring with it the ability to hunt two or more different prey with different tentacles at the same time.

[Schoq]

The solution I'm going with is to rely on the tentacle pathfinding I already have - the tentacles are sort of autonomous and just gives the main AI some hints on how to make their activities easier. This autonomy should also bring with it the ability to hunt two or more different prey with different tentacles at the same time.

The brain inside the octopus skull sees a tasty sea morsel and decides to eat it, but to get the morsel into its mouth the brain inside the skull sends a message to a mass of nerves inside the octopus arm. That mass of nerves controls the arm movement to snatch the tasty treat.

"In this hierarchical organization, the brain only has to send a command to the arm to do the action—the entire recipe of how to do it is embedded in the arm itself,"
...
"Arms have a lot of autonomy and the central brain of an octopus gives high-level commands but may not be aware of the details—in other words, there is a lot of processing of information in the arms that never makes it to the brain,"

[JobLeonard]

Are you saying the tentacles give the main body information on where to go? Leading to potentially conflicting input and the main body acting confused and conflicted?

[Christian]

That's not a daddy long-legs, that's a cthulhu-spider

Is it in the same region as the raindeer? Seems like something that would hunt that species...
(Really just want to see some "kaiju" fights with these big species with slugcat caught in the middle)

[siskavard]

awesome progress. found a PCGamer interview

[Christian]

awesome progress. found a PCGamer interview

Whoa, some cool details in there

James, could you give some more details on that dynamic difficulty and the whole ecosystem vacuum/aggressive vs altruistic system? Lizards can eat bats now?

[adge]

Haha just saw the new gif and immediately thought of these guys:




It's because of the movement. The drones in matrix also didn't use the tentacles to move. They somehow floated like this fellow.

[jamesprimate]

awesome progress. found a PCGamer interview

Whoa, some cool details in there

James, could you give some more details on that dynamic difficulty and the whole ecosystem vacuum/aggressive vs altruistic system? Lizards can eat bats now?

Sure, but not too much more to tell yet. Joar has had the framework for this system in for quite a while actually, and the effects can be seen currently in the behaviors of the cicadas and the jetfish. But its one of those numbers things that's probably going to require a bit of fussing with and balancing to make it work well, so we will get into that more when we're in the polish phase, where the world is complete, creatures are done and we have this big ecosystem web of creature behaviors to mess with. I think it should be pretty fun! Really looking forward to what Joar can do with it 

As for your other question: so far lizards don't really eat bats (though they might snap at them from time to time.) Did I say something otherwise in the interview? If so, blame it on 4 days of PAX craziness

[EddieBytes]

JLJac, I think you might be going about the daddy long legs locomotion the wrong way.
Instead of making the body follow the legs and having to tweak so many things, and it being more costly performance-wise than it needs to be, you should perhaps think in reverse, and this will help with driving your spider AI too.
1. Start with the target position your spider wants to go to
2. calculate a valid legs layout for that position.
 a) if successful, proceed to 4.
 b) if no valid layout found, return flow to AI code that requested the new position and let it decide what to do
4. procedurally place legs in the calculated layout positions
5. procedurally animate legs to pull the body towards the desired position

This should give a nice animation, with the added benefit of the AI driving physics, the not physics driving the AI. You have more control overall.

[gimymblert]

I really REALLY hope for a 3d rainworld that import all those animation concept to 3D (tiled minecraft style) space at least as a proof of concept, would be fun to see where the challenge would be