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[JLJac]

@Slader, yeah they can certainly starve - that's the main problem. I think they will also have a bit of different personalities among the three of them (and slightly different colors to set them apart). One thing I have planned that might be interesting is that one of them is extra bad. Either it's just not very good at surviving, or it has a wounded leg or something. That would really put you in some difficult moral dilemmas.

@Artemi, I think that as the game is now, trying to stay alive yourself is plenty enough reason not to save the pups. The game is haaaaaard. You don't at all need any extra handicap, even without worrying about anyone but myself even I have trouble in single player, and I don't even want to think about what it has to be like for a beginner.

@Christian, damn, stop pleading to pay me money... The temptation... Actually I'm in a pretty bad place economically right now, but hopefully that won't affect rain world too much. It does however affect how sensitive I am to temptation like that...

I want the game to be free because I remember being in my lower teens, and loving little downloadable games, and exclusively playing ones that were free. I liked it when they were free. It's another kind of atmosphere around a game that's free.

Also, if I charge people, there are expectations to meet. Fact is, I have no idea how I would put together a mac build, I have a super low-fi 2D game that runs super slow on any PC that is not very powerful, etc etc. That stuff won't fly if I charge people.

What I could do, is I could take donations. I could do it through kickstarter, perhaps. I work as a freelance graphic designer, and one idea is that people who are enthusiastic about rain world could donate some money, and effectively buy hours from me. So, I work on the game like I normally do, but if people put in some money I can work some extra, because I don't have to work on my actual work. Would anyone be interested in anything like that?

Drop a post if you'd donate something small.

Update 198
Started on (and almost finished)the first milestone in the AI of the pups - the terrain mapping. That's basically an algorithm that goes through the level and marks tiles as walkable, creates connections between them etc. For example, you might see little red arrows at the ledges. Those are "ledge drop connection", that flag that from this tile you can drop down to the floor below.



There are other connections except from ledge drops, there are jump-and-grab, short cuts, etc. They are sorted into incoming and outgoing categories. So, for example, a tile from which you can drop to the floor below has an outgoing ledge drop connection. The tile below has an incoming ledge drop connection.

This is because the A* path finding will work backwards, from the goal to the start. That works better for some scenarios, because then you can abandon a path finding session part-through, and keep all the direction flags in the tiles. This means that a creature that doesn't have a fresh path will follow an old trace in the level, meaning that it will be headed to wherever it was headed last time it passed by those specific tiles. The alternative would be that creatures without fresh paths would head towards where they were standing last time the path finding algorithm passed over these tiles which makes less sense. Not a big problem though, as most of the times they have decently fresh path to follow.

So, the path finding fill will start at the goal, and crawl outward looking for connections. Maybe it crawls across a floor, and comes across an incoming ledge drop connection. This means that you can drop to this tile from above. Then it goes to the ledge that connection refers to, and continues to crawl from there. Then, perhaps, it runs into the creature pathing - and the path is finished. The pathing creature will now follow the path, to the ledge, find the ledge drop connection, jump down, and proceed to the goal.

Basically it will work like the lizards already do, but simpler since I don't have the horror of not being able to turn around in a corridor to worry about.

[eigenbom]

Off the top of my head I can think of two main donation-driven developers (Bay12 and Locomalito). I really respect those guys, so all the best. Another angle could be to find a sponsor/patron to pay you some small salary to work on the game. Finally, you could apply to your government for an arts grant. In Australia I see that more and more arts funding is going to make games.

[JLJac]

What would be in it for the sponsor? I won't add dr. pepper power ups to the game hehe... Art grant is a really good idea actually! I should look into it.

Update 199
The second big mile stone of pup path finding done. Now it actually finds paths! I can click the mouse somewhere on the map, and it'll look for a path from that place to wherever the pup is at the time.

Pups probably have the most limited movement of all creatures in the game. They can run, climb, and perhaps jump a little, but they can't reach a ledge that's two tiles high. This is because I plan to make the player able to pick them up - they'll follow you, but some times you have to help them across some obstacles.

This means that their pathing map is a bunch of scattered islands that are not connected. For example, they might be able to move around on top of a specific platform, but not able to jump to the next platform.

So what behavior should they have when they're trying to reach the player, and the player is out of reach to them? It would be stupid if they did what lizards do in the same situation, which is basically "screw it, I can't get there so I won't even try".

Say that you're up on a high platform, and you call the pup to come to you (more on communication with pups in later posts). There is a path from the pup's location that's unbroken almost all the way to where you're at. But before reaching you there's a big jump or something, that the pup can't do by itself but needs some help with.

In this situation it would be very stupid for the pup to just shrug and stay put. Frustrating for you, too. Instead, you want it to move to a position where you can help it. In this case, you'd want it to move all the way up to that last obstacle, and then wait on the other side of it for you to come and get it.

The solution I have for this is that when the pup path finding crawls outward, it is not restricted to tiles that are walkable for the pup, but it always prioritizes walkable tiles. So, in the above example, the pathfinding will start at the player location (remember, I work from the goal to the start) and quickly flood the platform the player is standing on. Once the entire platform is examined, and the pup has still not been reached, it'll resort to flooding into un-walkable air tiles. After a few tiles of moving through the air, it'll connect to the walkable tiles on the other side of the gap. Once it has walkable tiles, it will always choose to explore those rather than un-walkable. So, it'll flood the walkable tiles, and reach the pup.

The pup will then have a path, though not a path that it can actually follow all the way. But, it will be the path were it gets as closely as possible to where it wants to go, with the least amount of help.  It'll run along this path until it reaches the point where it can't proceed, and then wait. Unless the situation changes while it's running, which is pretty likely to happen with the player running around and all.

One frustrating situation that might occur is that the pup finds a path that leads to where you are, but that path takes it on a safari around the entire lizard-infested level. Like, you and the pup are standing next to each other, and you jump up the tiniest little ledge. Suddenly the pup decides that it can get to you through this huge detour, and you actually just wanted it to stay put. I don't have an immediate solution for this, but I can think of a few things. One would be that it simply doesn't bother to path to you unless you are a certain distance away.

The next step in the pup pathfinding development will be to make it actually follow the paths. That one also includes a lot of engineering of its movements, so that'll be interesting.

[Christian]

Ha, sorry....It's just that the care and dedication is evident in every post, and this is clearly a labor of love. I just like to reward devs with more than a simple download. So yeah, I'd donate or and I'd definitely back this if it was on Kickstarter

But I'll stop asking now

[Slader16]

I really like the idea of the pups, It fits in really well with the atmosphere.

[Franklins Ghost]

I'd definitely be backing this if it was on kickstarter

[johnki]

I'd definitely back the game on Kickstarter. I've been watching it for quite some time now and it's an impressive game that deserves it.

As a side-note, personally, I greatly appreciate tiers around 1.5-2.5x the price of the game that include early access. I don't do well with pre-orders and I resent the idea that early access should cost 3-4x the cost of the game when the people paying it will be a large part of your testing group.

[JLJac]

Thanks guys!
So, when you back a game on kickstarter, is it about the things you get from doing that, or is it about bringing the game into existence? If, for example, I were to kickstart it to support myself during development, and then release it for free when I got done, would that be a good deal? Or would you think "But I payed! Why is everyone else who didn't pay also rewarded?!"

The way I understand it to work in most cases is like what Johnki mentions, you kickstart it and thereby pre-book it, some times with early access. If I were to kickstart something that would later be released for free, it would be the exact same situation for those who pay, with the difference that you don't get any special privilege for paying - you could as well just wait and hope for other people to pay. Would that be a huge turn off? What about donators getting the game a little bit earlier than the rest of the people? Would that work? I'm kickstarter illiterate, so I'd be happy if anyone with a little more knowledge of the psychology behind it could tell me what's up 

Update 200
200! Woooo!
About halway through making the pup follow the paths the pathfinder finds. The code for just going to the next tile and the next tile is done, but what's lacking is some specific movements, such as jumping up and grabbing a horizontal beam etc. Those actions have to be programmed event-by-event, and they have to be able to interrupt at any point without something too bad happening. The environment is unreliable, and sometimes another creature will push the pup mid-action, in which case it needs to be able to pulling itself together and start acting accordingly to its new situation.

For example, the "jump up and grab" animation is done in two steps - but it's not as simple as an animation. If everything was just some kind of linear animation, weird things like being pushed and pulled in different directions wouldn't be accounted for. Then it could end up stuck somewhere, because the AI can't think about anything else but "I should have grabbed on to that beam by now! Where is the beam??" That would be a bad hopeless situation. Rather, the pup has to position itself on the tile, and decide that "now I will do the jump and grab thing". Then it has to jump - and not forget what it was doing. It knows what tile it's going to jump to, keeping that in mind too. During the jump it'll check if it's in the right tile, if so, it'll go into the "grabbing" mode, and the animation is over.

But, it doesn't know when that's going to happen, or even if it's going to happen. It's not counting frames. When it jumps, that's a leap of faith. It could be 4 frames until safely grabbing the thing, or it could end up not happening. It's an adventure, baby.

If something weird happens, it'll end up in another tile, and ask the pathfinding what to do. As soon as it gets a clue, it'll start moving according to the new situation.

Dynamic AI like this is an asset to rain world, because it allows for a lot of fun interaction. The lizards already use similar stuff. For example, all the creatures in the game (except the flies) collide with one another, which enables stuff like lizards pushing at each other as they're both hurrying to get into the same small opening. And things like one lizard throwing out its long sticky tongue against the player, but missing and latching on to another lizard instead, pulling it in some weird direction. For stuff like that the AI has to be able to re-consider its situation dynamically. Hopefully the pup will tie in nicely with those Interactions.

[SolarLune]

I'd like to say that I liked the idea of handling pups as well - it seems like an interesting mechanic to try to deal with.

[Skydsgaard]

Well, I'm going to back this project when the time comes, and I dont care if people get the game for free after that. But...I will be more happy thinking of you having enough sales income to work on the next one

Anyway this is just my opinion... this looks totally gorgeous!

[alastair]

I remember OC Remix doing a kickstarter for free music, they did have a reward tier with a physic CD print I think though. 

[Christian]

Well there have been free to play games on Kickstarter (such as Dragons of Elanthia - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simutronics/dragons-of-elanthia) but that's one of those multiplayer games so rewards are beta access, in game currency, stuff like that

But from the few games I've backed and the many I've followed, the main goal it seems is to give a promising developer the support to turn his concept into a reality. There's a great community feeling that you and everyone else are helping to make this happen. I never back for the rewards, I just like supporting the developer.

And then there's the idea of stretch goals. Well you don't need stretch goals, extra funds can always just go towards extra polish, but if there were things you wanted to add but weren't sure if you had the time or funds to do so, that's where stretch goals are great

[eigenbom]

I imagine a patron/sponsor relationship could work like in the art world. You find someone enthusiastic about games and culture, and (like an arts grant) you ask them for money to make your game. I think Jason Rohrer used to have a patron, but it's definitely not wide-spread.

Although Kickstarter seems a much better option, and I think you would definitely be successful if you asked for a small (~$10k) amount of money, and released the game for free. The reward tiers would offer early access, credits, etc.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

yeah symbolic reward rather than tangible but costly one, don't forget to subtract the kickstart tip for the real money goal in the planning (and plan for money desist after reaching the goal)

[JLJac]

From you guys it sounds hopeful! Maybe donators could get the game two weeks in advance or something, as a gesture of gratitude. Or the impossible-to-use level editor could be included for them. Early access is another idea - then they could double as beta testers. Thing is though, I don't really want to beta test etc, I want to release and move on. But James has recently been trying to convince me that the game could be bigger, better, and maybe we should pursue that. The pups certainly are an epic feature creep.

I imagine a patron/sponsor relationship could work like in the art world. You find someone enthusiastic about games and culture, and (like an arts grant) you ask them for money to make your game. I think Jason Rohrer used to have a patron, but it's definitely not wide-spread.

This would be a perfect situation, but I don't really know if there are people interested in games like that. My prejudice is that the kind of eccentric old rich people I imagine doing something like this aren't all too interested in the indie game scene.

~$10k is about the amount of money I spend in... two life times, so if I could raise an amount like that I think that would be plenty enough to finish rain world and take me a healthy chunk into the next project. But, I might be optimistic.

Update 201
More pups following paths. Made a little "training level" with a lot of difficult situations (poles sticking out of slopes etc) and have just been having the pup run around chasing the mouse pointer - whenever it encounters a situation it can't handle I try to come up with a solution.

For most situations the AI actually looks at neighboring tiles and then emulate input, and then the input controls the pup through the remains of the original player code that are still hanging around. I can hijack this input and play the pup with the keyboard as well, for debugging. In some situations though, this doesn't really work. Either because the situation is too fiddly, with a lot of small, well coordinated movements, or because it's a situation that isn't possible to deal with given the pup's limited repertoire of movements. For example, while the player is able to balance on top of a horizontal pole, the pup is only able to hang below it. In some situation the pup isn't supposed to be able to go where the player goes (see previous posts), but in some situations it's just too annoying. For example if a horizontal pole connects with a platform just one single tile below the edge, it doesn't feel reasonable that the creature isn't able to climb that tiny distance to get up there.

For situations like this I've created something that's called "magic movement" in the code, which is basically a cop-out when I don't know how to make something happen by simulating input. When entering "magic movement" mode it designates a position it wants to end up in, and what mode it should enter when it gets there (modes are thing such as "standing", "crawling", "climbing" etc). Then it just kind of floats to the desired location, at an even speed, with the force of gravity severely reduced.

This might sound like it looks bad, but remember it's just a question of moving one single tile. For a distance like this it could just snap into its new position and you'd still be able to keep track of it, but I prefer to have this <1 second cosmetic little movement going on. It's very useful for situations when I'm not exactly sure of what to do to get the pup into the right position.

Once the movement is somewhat done, I'll work on the "puppet" of sprites that's rendered on top of the pup. Right now it's basically just the player graphics code, but with a smaller body, making it look like an adult bear creature with some horrible disfiguration. When I have some new spriting code I'll upload a gif of the pup moving around.

PS: working with the pup is fun, because I copied the code from the player and have seen some oooooold stuff that I had almost forgotten commented out in there. Like, today I found this piece that made the player able to fly, back from when he was a bird RW has come a long way!

[Chromanoid]

Crowd fund it, please!
If you set a goal and it fails, you can finish the game anyway! I just want to support this.
I think "pay what you want in advance" is also a good way to make your life a bit more comfortable. Maybe the humble bundle guys have an idea for financing your game. I think they understand your "free is cool" attitude.

[Sved]

I want pup plushies.

[Franklins Ghost]

I'd be happy to back the game in kickstarter and don't really care if at the end it was released free.

Also the rewards aren't really a big deal for me, I just prefer to support the developer and watch they're idea come to life. Been following this devlog for a long time and just enjoying reading your processes and learning how you approach problems.

[jamesprimate]

I want pup plushies.

this is being looked into! 

[artemi]

Something to note, for the pups, what colors are they? The obvious idea to me is to have them be the other three colors for the multiplayer bears. A) so you don't have to have a brand new color set for them, and B) when you get to multiplayer you get the idea that 'hey! I SAVED you guys, and now your all grown up!'