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[JLJac]

Update 40
Did some thinking on the layout of the game. At first I thought I wanted the campaign to be completely linear, but I changed my mind. If you are free to move a little between levels that adds two values. Firstly most people like to be able to move freely. Second, it means that the same levels will be passed several times, increasing the gameplay time/development time ratio. The idea is that during a "level" the player is supposed to get to a hunting ground with flies, hunt, and then get back within a limited time. More on this later.

I did some easy but important stuff with the Croc's thinking, again. For example there was a bug that if it saw you enter a shortcut it wouldn't always understand where you'd end up.

Did I mention that the croc does a little simulation of the player's movement in its head if it's unable to see a player? I made the physics of that simulation better, for example I added gravity. The simulated player also has a minimal amount of "AI", which will simulate the movement of a player character a slight bit better than just an object that continues in the direction of the tangent. This means that if the croc sees you passing by and dissapear into a corridor it'll have a slightly better hunch of where you might have gone once you left its field of vision.

Now, when a croc catches up with a player, it picks it up in its (yet nonexistent) mouth and quickly carries it back to its hole.

[JLJac]

A video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnthCU1P1Ow&feature=youtu.be

This shows how some crocs fight over the body of a bear.

[Oddball]

I must admit I've not really been paying attention to this project, but I was passing through and thought I'd give the vid a bit of a watch. I'm glad I did. The player and enemy movement has a freaky vibe to it, and the game in general has a disturbing edge to it. If you added in more creepy graphics/music/atmosphere then I can see this game weirding a lot of people out. I hope you do take it in that direction.

[Franklins Ghost]

That croc attack looks great, darker feeling then I'd imagined but works perfectly. Looking forward to trying to dodge those guys  

[Scut Fabulous]

That motion is so creepy.  I love it!

[AlexHW]

I loled when it got caught.. i love how those things fight over it.

[JLJac]

Haha it's funny that you say it's dark and creepy, because I actually didn't have that in mind. I just thought that it'd be reasonable for creatures of the same size to fight over their prey, and things ended up moving like this because of a combination of technical stuff and art choices. When I looked at the video again though, I totally saw what you mean o.0 They're ripping the little guy apart! 

I'm usually hesistant to talk about art stuff (if it can be said with words, why the art?) but I guess I should explain what's going on here. I'm not making a horror game, but I'm trying to portray a world that is very harsh, and where survival has to be fought for. There is a twist though, that instead of realistic harshness I want it to be harsh, but in a slightly twisted, cartoony way.

Weird little creatures that you don't really know what's going on in their heads fit the game medium, because things will inevitably move a little jerky, behave a little uncanny. Better to play with this than fight against it.

Rain World is not a horror game, there won't be excessive amounts of blood or violence for the sake of it. I will however do my best to convey a very different world, where strange creatures live and hunt, and if aspects of this are creepy, I'll go with that.

So, to actually provide an answer, I won't try to make the game creepy, but there'll be more of this. If you find this creepy, I hope you'll find the final thing even creepier!

[AlexHW]

you know... watching the video again.. it has a strange similarity to pac-man. just thought I'd mention this unexpected connection I had. it's like a beefed up creepier version..

[JLJac]

HAHAHA! That's amazing, I never thought of it, but when you say it it's so clear! Yeah, the game will basically play like pac-man! Maybe with the difference that in pac-man the ghosts are always aware of where you are, here there'll be more focus on sneaking. I think pac-man is a great game though, it's a simple and very self-contained design, so I don't mind at all!

Update 41

Started to clean some stuff up as a first step towards the alpha version. Implemented death by falling, both for Bears and Crocs.



In a level like this the crocs will quite often end up fighting out above the open air, and end up falling. I made it so that if a single croc catches the player when climbing on the beams it doesn't shake him like it usually does, but when two of them are out there fighting there's really no keeping them from tumbling to their death.

In this level one interesting thing happened. You see the little left-facing dead end at the very bottom of the structure? That's a shortcut that leads to the upper-left island, through that ugly pipe-thingy sticking out to the left.

The blue lizard is a wall climber. When the red lizard caught me he was seen by the blue one, and the blue one started chasing him. He tried to take the route through the short cut, but the blue lizard actually didn't follow him, but rather climbed up to the exit he was going to appear out of, intercepting him and snatching the poor bear.

This shows the pros and cons of the shortcuts, through them you can quickly escape a site, but you're suddenly very predictable. Everything moves with the same speed in the shortcuts, and you always reach the same destination.

[JLJac]

I had a fat deadline for school today, and have sadly not been able to work on the game. Now in the afternoon I've started to play a little with the level editor, to put some levels together for the alpha. Maybe it won't be released within the week as promised, but within a week it should be out.

[JLJac]

To at least give you something today, here's a bit of concept art. Some parts I'm happy with, others not.



I'm happy with the... face, not the head but the face. The way the head ends needs work. The body in general needs to be less anatomically realistic. I want the face to be more emotionless, I think, like a mask that looks like something that could be a biological part of the creature but could as well be added on. It needs to work better together with how the Bear looks...

Well, as you can see there's a lot that will change, this is just a rough sketch. The technical implementation will also have a huge impact, that likely won't increase or decrease quality, but just change everything fundamentally. My original sketches for the Bear looked like *deep breath* THIS:


And ended up like this:


So the technical implementation phase can do good things as well...

We'll have to see where it goes! This is an interesting part of making games, technical solutions and limitations bring something unpredictable to your art process, and if you go with that stuff might end up somewhere unexpected.

[oyog]

I really like how much it looks like a salamander or axolotl.

[JLJac]

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines... Well, as I always say, we'll see where it ends up

Update 42
Today I did a (preliminary?) visual representation for the short cut entrances. They're still impossible to spot, but it took me like an hour to draw so I'm not doing it all over again until I know what they're finally going to look like. At least it's theoretically possible to spot them now!

I've started to make a few levels as well. The alpha needs levels of great variety, because I'll need to know what kind of levels you guys think works best.

Apart from all this stuff there has been a change to the gameplay mechanics. Instead of consuming the flies on touch like mario coins (or pac-man pellets) the bear cathes them in its hands. You then have to get away and sit still for a short moment in order to eat them. It's very quick, and hopefully won't try your patience too much, but I felt it needed to go in the game. As it was, because of flies gathering together, you could suddenly get something like five kills in a second by just jumping through a swarm, and then continue for a minute without getting anything. This evens things out a little, as you can't catch more than two at a time.

Also I think it fits better with the game's style, the lizard doesn't eat you on touch but rather carries you back to its hole, and I wanted the player to do something similar. I didn't want you to eat while chased. Instead you have to hunt, then escape and find a safe spot where you can quickly munch down what you caught before getting out there again. Another benefit is that sometimes the game would have small moments of dead time, when you where just ducking in cover and waiting for a croc to pass by. Now those moments have a purpose, and you can get better at trying to time them and get them to work with your hunting-escaping scheme.

It's all either not animated or horribly animated at this point of course, but the mechanics are in. The game eventually will have a bit of an animation overhaul, for example the vertical pole climbing looks unacceptable at this point. Maybe I'll get to this at the same time I give the croc its legs.

[JLJac]

Update 43
Added a test rendering for levels, so you can get an ugly-looking thing to try out before you go through the huge process of actually rendering a level. It's a good thing, because there's often a few changes you find yourself wanting to do once you know exactly which jumps are possible to pull of and so on.

I've made a few levels as well. Still don't know what kind of layout works the best though.

Crocs don't necessarily spawn right on start up any more. You'll be able to specify from the level editor when they'll spawn. They spawn after a certain number of caught flies with an added time delay, to make it a little bit less obvious. If you want you can set them to 0 flies but a greater time delay.

[Squid Party]

really interesting concept, its nice to see fresh ideas such as this