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[gimymblert]

Why not have the eyes the food meter? Sad puppy eyes, just above half close, and tired body posture, didn't eat enough, when fed enough current graphics, when above, do flip jump.

[Christian]

I always thought the carry-over idea would be a good fit for the gameplay flow. It would encourage the player to explore, because the more they eat, then the less they need to eat next time so they'd be able explore more

Personally I think status effects would work against the gameplay because the one constant is that you always know the limits of your moveset. If that can fluctuate, it might be frustrating

[gimymblert]

>I like the idea to change the moveset cosmetically

[TheWing]

just have the slugcat shake its head and refuse to eat more that a certain amount.

I imagined the slugcat, when stopping to eat, instead of eating just goes like "meh I'm full" (a shrug or something?) and then throws the food away..

[Caspar2000]

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?

Maybe it's Time to give it a really simple and clear classic UI. Often it makes things so much clearer. Especially when your spawning point changes depending on your hunger level it gets very difficult for players to understand the dependencies.

[Teod]

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.

I'm not sure if making someone's game harder for failing is a good idea. I think "starved" state should only change the look of a character, not movement.

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.

That seems like a good idea. Although going from eating in three swift bites right to to refusal would look unnatural, I think consumption speed should slow down more or less gradually before the full state.

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!

Don't make it too game-y, though. One of the main appeals of this game is that it feels very natural.

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?

Is that a problem you have or a problem you're afraid to have? If a single swarm room can get me all the way from zero to full and any next room can be a swarm one with den being just a couple more rooms further, I don't see a reason to give up.

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.

If the regions are as big as you told us they are, restarting someone all the way back at the gates can get your game deleted with no mercy.

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?

Game-y elements can be pretty cool (hell, I would love to have data on how much total cycles I survived and what's my longest cycle-streak), but I still think they should be kept at minimum when you're actually playing.

[marcgfx]

maybe you could feed a save point by regurgitating a bat, only if you have enough food in your the belly though. slugcat could get slimmer/fatter to make it apparent if he has it in him?

[JLJac]

Yeah this stuff requires some thought. In the old game, you only had one shelter and thus eating and surviving was the natural goal. Now when there are many shelters it's easy that the standard play cycle becomes way more about trying to get to the next shelter than about surviving and returning to the same shelter. The priorities has kind of been switched, instead of moving as a means to survive you survive as a means of movement.

There are plenty of possible solutions though. The "carry over" of bats could do part of it - in that case it might become worth it to hang out in the same spot to farm some bats for 2 or 3 cycles. Another way could be to penalize death a bit harder (either just death, or something like dying twice in a row). That we'd have to be careful with though, as we don't want to penalize players for failing too much. Ideally such a penalty wouldn't be a penalty that puts you back as much as something that keeps you from progressing too quickly into areas you can't handle until you have learnt to handle the area you're in.

One option we've been thinking about is that instead of having the game be one very long session, it could be a couple of smaller sessions, where surviving (or "winning") a session is rewarded by some more options for your next play. Sort of like how the "rogue-lightes" such as Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne and that whole family of games are doing. Like, slightly shorter sessions but accumulation over sessions.

What do you guys think? Do you prefer games with one long session, or games where you play a bunch of shorter sessions and have something build up over the course of them?

However it goes, we would like to have the player feel a certain satisfaction after the average successful hunt, when you return to your shelter with enough bats to survive. In a situation like that the player would feel the most as one with the slugcat nature, who is all about eating, sleeping and staying alive. When slugcat is happy, the player should be happy too!

[Christian]

Rain World seems best structurally for shorted periods of play. The game is already divided into segments much like the floor by floor progression of a roguelike, and each venture is limited by the coming rainstorm.

But at the same time, unlike a roguelike, each region is big enough that the player can spend a while in a single region exploring and observing the ecosystem. There isn't a rush to get to the next area

For Rain World, I personally like to play longer, and would probably stick to the region I'm in for a while. The exploration element lends itself more towards longer sessions, since a new region is unknown and you're cautiously exploring, carefully sneaking around predators, etc.

[Woodledude]

My immediate thought is that I would want the play session to be one long, journey, and if you get all the way through the game and beat it, then maybe there could be a "new game plus", wherein you can begin to improve your slugcat. That seems like it's the best analog to natural selection to me. On the other hand, perhaps you could do a roguelike mode where the pups are essentially extra lives?

But then you come to a particular point: The world is HUGE, and you've spent tons of time making it interesting and varied while hand-crafting the content. Clearly, you couldn't go back on that by attempting to add random generation, but more to the point it just seems too vast for your standard roguelike fare, where you can complete the game in one sitting once you're very, very good. If you had all the time in the world, I would tell you to shoot for the moon and do both. As someone who wants to play this at some point, I would say focus on your strong points, and go for a longer session for this game, then perhaps see about making... A roguelike version, or a new game that is a roguelike in some fashion.

[Caspar2000]

Is it thinkable to unlink saving from shelters? This way there could be one session only with no complicated carry over logics.

While the game seems to me much about exploration contentwise most of the gameplay will be about sneeking, escaping and utilizing the environment creatively. Shorter sessions lend more to such a game.

I'm a big fan of really hard games. I would like to play a mode where there is just no saving at all. Imagine how rewarding it would be to get to the last area without any saves. But I'm probably underestimating the sheer size.

If you go with a carry over mechanism I would like the following. After death you see the slugcat waking up in its shelter from a bad dream and puking out a few bat as penalty. If it you run out of bats it means game over and start over.

[tortoiseandcrow]

Nodding my head along to everything James has said. What I want most out of the game would be to get into desperate situations and just barely get out, and the system that James has described seems like it would do exactly that. Getting knocked back to the region gate doesn't seem too punishing if regions are approximately the size they are in the alpha, but if they are larger I might feel a bit like my time is not being respected.

As far as game sessions go, do you mean time spent sitting down to play, or the game experience itself being broken up into different sized chunks? I generally play for short periods of time because I am rather busy and don't always have a lot of time for video games, so its likely I would only sit down for long enough to get from one shelter to another. But I would prefer for the game itself to feel continuous (if that makes sense). That's because what Joar says here is exactly what compels me to play this game in the first place:

However it goes, we would like to have the player feel a certain satisfaction after the average successful hunt, when you return to your shelter with enough bats to survive. In a situation like that the player would feel the most as one with the slugcat nature, who is all about eating, sleeping and staying alive. When slugcat is happy, the player should be happy too!

Having the game feel too broken up by anything that isn't the natural rhythm of the slugcat would run against that grain.

[TheWing]

As a game I think shorter periods might work really well, but if that's the case I'd want to have there still be some longer gamemode, mainly to explore and stuff like that.. Maybe it'd be an unlockable mode after you've gone through the game with those shorter segments?

[Christian]

The thing is, gameplay is already divided into shorter segments due to the rainfall. I mean, that's the core gameplay loop: start at shelter, venture out, explore/hunt for X amount of time until rain comes, get back to a shelter

That seems pretty natural. How would you allow for shorter play sessions than a single cycle? Anything shorter would interrupt that gameplay cycle

[Jin_K]

Just wanted to throw this here
Slugcat is too shy, too shy !

[JLJac]

Thanks so much for your input guys! Will be taken into careful consideration. These game mechanic decisions are mostly going to be in a later phase where we try to balance the game and create a good flow, so there is still some time to figure it out. Maybe we can find some kind of golden balance where we can get a little bit of the goodies from a couple of models.

Right now it's kind of silent here because I am doing art for the last region in the game, which we wouldn't want to spoil! I will however spoil that the mockups James has sent me are looking AMAZING!

[Franklin's Ghost]

Think it's great that you guys are keeping the last region to yourselves. Gives us all the opportunity to find something that we don't know anything about which is always a good thing in a game.

Also curious on whether you guys have had any further discussions about the pups or what your plans are with them, if any?

[JLJac]

The current idea is that if you save the pups, you will be able to play as them (grown up) in new game plus. One idea we were talking about was that each pup would have some increased skill but also come with an increased difficulty (faster/shorter cycles, stronger/more enemies and the like). All of this is very much up for change though as we get to the actual game balancing stuff. It is hard to know what works before having it in front of you and trying it out, and no early ideas are holy in the face of actually getting a good game flow.

[fall_ark]

The current idea is that if you save the pups, you will be able to play as them (grown up) in new game plus. One idea we were talking about was that each pup would have some increased skill but also come with an increased difficulty (faster/shorter cycles, stronger/more enemies and the like). All of this is very much up for change though as we get to the actual game balancing stuff. It is hard to know what works before having it in front of you and trying it out, and no early ideas are holy in the face of actually getting a good game flow.

Might as well just make it all randomized. If you have three pups then a selection screen like Rogue Legacy could work.

[JLJac]

Code question! I'm working on the save states. Currently the save data of a region looks like this:

Code:

<A>REGIONSTATE: REGIONNAME_SU<B>SWARMROOMS_111111<B>POPULATION_Slugcat<D>ID.0.0.0<D>0.0<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3364.0.0<D>198.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3363.0.0<D>0.0<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3371.0.0<D>199.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3374.0.0<D>203.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3367.0.0<D>0.0<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3362.0.0<D>207.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3372.0.0<D>199.3<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3365.0.0<D>214.3<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3366.0.0<D>214.4<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3368.0.0<D>215.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3373.0.0<D>217.2<D><C>PinkLizard<D>ID.3370.0.0<D>221.4<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3369.0.0<D>221.3<D><C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3375.0.0<D>225.2<D><C><B><A>

The <A> <B> <C> etc are markers for where to split the string as I decode it.

I have opted for this way of doing it contrary to serialization because I feel way more in control - I know exactly what I'm storing, how I'm storing it, and if anything goes wrong I can actually track down the bug. Also it makes sure that I don't store anything more than necessary - with serialization I would worry that some reference somewhere would pull with it an entire chunk of data which I wouldn't actually want to save.

So, right now a creature save looks like this:
<C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3371.0.0<D>199.2<C>
with the key being
<C>Creature Type<D>Identification Number<D>Spawn coordinates<C>

At the end of this, I need to apply the data of something I call a "Creature State". The creature state contains info on the critter's health, and a bunch of other stuff. Some critters have social memory which they use to keep track of relationships to you and each other - this also goes in the creature state.

The problem is that different critters have derived state classes that may contain some extra critter-specific info.

So now I'm thinking, should I just tough it out and write a state-to-string method and a string-to-state method for each critter type, or should I serialize this specific piece of data? Then I'd get a mixture of clear text and binary serialization in the saved creature, like this:

<C>GreenLizard<D>ID.3371.0.0<D>199.2<D>MQCAACbAgAA0wEoBINARYoSERIALIZATIONoSTRINGoAAAwCAAAAAgAA7<C>

My question is - is that just too ugly to even consider? And would it actually do me any good?