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[Cranktrain]

That's a great looking palette. Colours and lighting is still something I find very difficult indeed, and you're just nailing it here.

Also, these big animated monsters look just amazing. Argh, I'm so excited for this.

[ghosted]

I've always thought some of the best animation I've seen in a game was in Little Big Planet simply because it was physics joints rather than actual animation (not sackboy, but the world characters). This is superseding that now because it's also physics animations but on more realistic characters and I've no idea how you're managing to make it look so bloody lovely. Bravo.

[JobLeonard]

The lighting in the last pictures reminds me of Vangers in all the right ways

[JLJac]

Update 485

Doing some interesting experimentation. This material allows the user (James) to draw a "destruction gradient", making it so that in one end of the room the tiles might be orderly and in the other chaotic.



Also I've been making a bunch of big tiles. We'll see, they'll probably pop up here at one point or another! I'm sort of leaving it to James to decide what parts are to be considered "spoiler" and what parts of the region he's comfortable showing off, that's the reason for the vague wording 

[Saijin_Naib]

That is a very ingenious approach to making the tiles more varied and providing some nice visual interest.

Reminds me a bit of detail textures and how you can use such a simple approach to give a lot of variety to what otherwise would be a very homogenous texture library.

Does your destruction gradient also apply texture overlays to simulate wear/tear/destruction, or is it mainly concerned with positioning and edge effects?

I think combining the current method with some overlay effects would really bolster it.

[Kytin]

Update 485

Doing some interesting experimentation. This material allows the user (James) to draw a "destruction gradient", making it so that in one end of the room the tiles might be orderly and in the other chaotic.



Also I've been making a bunch of big tiles. We'll see, they'll probably pop up here at one point or another! I'm sort of leaving it to James to decide what parts are to be considered "spoiler" and what parts of the region he's comfortable showing off, that's the reason for the vague wording 

This screenshot reminds me a bit of Portal 2. Actually, now that I think of it, the semi-cybernetic style of the creatures of Rain World is very reminiscent of the creatures that are used by the Combine in Half-Life 2. Huh.
All of a sudden I feel like the backstory for this place is that it was one of the worlds that was previously conquered by the Combine, depleted of resources, and then abandoned. Maybe you guys should talk to Valve about doing a tie-in. :D

[JLJac]

Does your destruction gradient also apply texture overlays to simulate wear/tear/destruction, or is it mainly concerned with positioning and edge effects?

It's separate - we already have several erosion effect in place. In the example I made it so that there was most erosion in the same place as where the tiles are the most displaced as that seems like what would make sense in most cases. I wanted to de-couple them to give James that little extra bit of control though!

Update 486

Starting on save files. Today I started out in one region, moved to another and got into a shelter, and then was spawned in that region instead. Milestone!

[jamesprimate]

^ this is so huge. its basically the hinge point of the entire progression mechanic, hahaha. with this functional, rain world is OFFICIALLY A VIDEOGAME.

you would think that something so essential we would have done before, in the past 2 years, right? Hey, better late than never!

[Saijin_Naib]

It's separate - we already have several erosion effect in place. In the example I made it so that there was most erosion in the same place as where the tiles are the most displaced as that seems like what would make sense in most cases. I wanted to de-couple them to give James that little extra bit of control though!

I'm not really seeing them in the bottom right corner. The blocks look the same as they do on the upper part of the room. I just see mainly edge blurring and distortion, not any sort of color overlay, or texture overlay (cracks, pits, dirt, etc).

^ this is so huge. its basically the hinge point of the entire progression mechanic, hahaha. with this functional, rain world is OFFICIALLY A VIDEOGAME.

you would think that something so essential we would have done before, in the past 2 years, right? Hey, better late than never!

Better in than not!
Does it save the entire "state" of the world, or does it only save the state of certain things? Like, will the AI save their position all across the world, or only in the current room, or does the save system sort of work on the assumption that time passes between saves/loads in the game's universe?

[jamesprimate]

thats because hes only showing a quick mock-up room specifically to demonstrate those new ceramic tiles and the new "ceramic chaos" tile effect. as im sure you can tell from the previous screenshots of actual game content, weve got toooooons of erosion and distortion tools at our disposal (like, an absurd amount), they are just not being used in this demo room. 


per the save state question, even though its early and joar will probably have much more to say on this, i can tell you that the creature AIs are based out of hundreds (thousands?) of "dens" scattered throughout the world, which are nodes that the creatures use as nests basically to drop off food and find shelter, etc. The creatures themselves perpetually exist in abstract space throughout the current region the player is in, so they will be moving around, hunting each other, etc. off-screen, before eventually having to find a den to take shelter in when the rain cycle comes (or die.) so long story short, im guessing that the save state of the creatures will be based on their den position.

couple this mechanic with Joars individualized random-seed creatures, and there is a ton of cool stuff we can potentially do with this: creature migrations, ecosystem evolution based on survival rates, etc etc., but first things first!

[theEasternDragon]

Starting on save files. Today I started out in one region, moved to another and got into a shelter, and then was spawned in that region instead. Milestone!

IT IS TIME!  Finally, I can sleep in different places in between getting myself killed by random lizards!

[JLJac]

Because the checkpoints are bound to the rain cycles, I won't have to save the position of every single object down to float space vectors - for the creatures that made it back to their hiding holes I can just save the den coordinate, and the rest I can throw away as dead 

Update 487

Swarm room depletion. I have it set up now so that if you are eating from swarm rooms they deplete, and that data is stored to the save file. At the moment it's set up so that each cycle you can only deplete one swarm room, which will hopefully create a nice pace to forcefully propel you to explore new areas.

From my few test runs, it seems like the situation becomes pretty dire pretty quickly This is going to need some balancing! There are many things that can be done though - such as spawning slightly more flies in the swarm rooms that are left when they get fewer, or lower the starvation threshold. Really fun to actually be playing this as a real game!

[TheWing]

I think a depleted room should also have a bit of food in it? Or well, depends on the overall structure and layout, but still, if they're not completely empty they can serve as a small backup?

[Mattoose]

In the alpha, I found it nigh impossible to explore a region for the first time AND hunt 7 bats. There's no way of knowing how far away the next swarm room or shelter is until you've been there - so it's really hard to manage your time. For all you know the very next room is where all the bats are hiding! You can embark on a one-way suicidal exploration mission... but that feels like cheating and isn't as fun as trying to survive.

So maybe you could keep the number of required bats fairly high but every bat over the limit you eat is a bat you don't have to catch the next rain cycle. If you hunt well enough you can have an entire cycle of just exploring (unless you guys already do this?). 

Perhaps you could also have the bats leave a few subtle dust-motes/spores in their wake as they fly as a visual analogy to smell. It would help you track them and look cool to see their migration routes. Active swarm rooms could 'generate' motes so if a swarm room was absent of motes the player would know it was depleted. Maybe those white-tipped hive things could be all brown and dead too?

I'm sure you guys will think of something that works. I've been lurking this thread since maze runner - keep up the good work!

[Rojom]

So maybe you could keep the number of required bats fairly high but every bat over the limit you eat is a bat you don't have to catch the next rain cycle. If you hunt well enough you can have an entire cycle of just exploring (unless you guys already do this?). 

I like this idea a lot.

[JLJac]

Welcome! Yeah, agreed on all points! The "carry over" of bats has been a thing that has been up since "maze runner" days, and it's not at all out of the question. Would just have to come up with some UI solution for it that seems clean enough, and some kind of cap so you don't manage to get 55 bats through some exploit in one run and then don't ever have to hunt again.

Suicidal exploration should be kept at a minimum. One VERY rough measure that could be taken against this could be some kind of extra penalty if you die two times in a row - such as throwing you two save points back (naturally with a corresponding lowering of general game difficulty). That's... rough, though. The idea is that you should have enough time to both search and catch bats within the same cycle - if that's viable there won't really be any reason to do the suicide missions.

In later versions it has been made a bit simpler to catch the bats when you are in the swarm room. The idea behind this is that the bulk of the time should be spent exploring looking for the swarm room, not jumping around in frustration trying to catch some elusive bats once you've actually gotten there. Together with a lower bat quota I think we have been taking some steps in the right direction since alpha days.

Visual indicators (UI or in-world) leading you towards the bats might become necessary, but if it's possible we'd like to do without it. Would be a shame to impose on the atmosphere of the rooms with some ever-present visual element like that.

All of these ideas are totally possible, and it's a lot of fun to finally have arrived at the point where we're implementing and balancing stuff like this!

[Μarkham]

You could counter the possible exploitation by making slugcat fatter and slower the more he overeats in a single cycle.

[Schoq]

making it more

sluggish??

[charliecarlo]

Maybe you guys should talk to Valve about doing a tie-in. Wink :D

I just imagined a scene at the beginning of Half-Life 3 wherein the Slugcat emerges from underground only to be crushed by a Combine freight train.
In all seriousness though, I think the world of this game is far too unique, and would be belittled by any kind of tie-in.

[jamesprimate]

You could counter the possible exploitation by making slugcat fatter and slower the more he overeats in a single cycle.

i was thinking the opposite actually, like you can survive a single cycle without enough food, but you go into a weakened "starvation mode" until you make up the food debt. over-feeding carries over a capped amount of food into the next round (the cap could easily be done, just have the slugcat shake its head and refuse to eat more that a certain amount.) then a player could balance "hunting rounds" to maintain health and "exploration rounds" to progress.

a potential solution for that might be to have some sort of food meter system, etc etc., where the first tier is "starvation", second tier is "safe zone" and third is "carryover." This would probably be helpful anyways when the pups come into play, which the player will have to feed.

                              fed   
starvation [ - - - - | - - - - | - - - ] full


anyway, in this example a rain cycle would require 5 foods to survive and maintain a "healthy slugcat." less than that you can survive one cycle in a shelter, but with a negative "starvation" status effect. and if you consume more than that (up to 3 here) the additional food will carry over into the next cycle. Now obviously im talking about a stylized solution and not text with words and Xs, but something like this would be the baseline you want to see:


                               fed
starvation [ X X X X | X X - - | - - -] full



idk, i think previously we had been trying to avoid both status effects and UI, but its time to contemplate it! its interesting, at this point we have the things that we wanted to do with the game pretty well nailed down: the ecosystem, the look, the mood and the huge world exploration, but now its a matter of adjusting the gamification variables and presenting it in a way to encourage the player to continue through. i guess this what happens when you start with an art project and then work "a game" into it!


Along those lines, Joar and I were just discussing how we might maintain the players interest in keeping little sluggie surviving in such a death-filled environment. Especially since its (to a degree) a timed play-cycle, how do we make it so that the player doesnt want to just kill themselves to restart if their exploration or hunt isnt immediately going well?

This food meter system might offer a solution to that as well, if we think of the regions in a more traditional "level" fashion. With the region gates we have built in "level start" points and the shelters can act as checkpoints. A death when "fed" restarts the player at the the shelter, but a death when "starving" returns the player to the region gate that they entered, scrubbing any progression and giving strong incentive to keep sluggie alive and fed throughout.


Then hopefully something like this would allow enough "open world" to keep the gameplay from becoming too forced and linear, but also offers incentive for players that want to progress through the narrative and exploration. Also of course simply adding some sort of "CYCLE 7 SURVIVED" high-score count / achievements at the end of cycles could help further gamify this as well.


thoughts?