next »

[jprosk]

[...]although it is already finished and they could release it tomorrow,but they wont. [...]

Actually, they can't. They said they had to delay the release because some release deadlines had already passed and they have to wait for the next ones.

[jamesprimate]

Yeah it's definitely not intentional, believe me 

Basically we're in the process of porting the code to PS4 and that's a tedious time consuming thing, plus scheduling a simultaneous release on steam and PSN with our publisher adult swim... there's only certain windows of time when everything works out for all the pieces that are in motion. We had one if we would have had all the code wrapped a few months ago, but we weren't happy with where things were at, so had to wait for the next one.

Even now, we *pretty much* have the code wrapped, but we're still polishing art and fixing bugs, so... yeah it's definitely going to be a much better, tighter game as a result of the extra time. It's not like it's just sitting around.

Thanks for patience!

[crankykong]

Yeah it's definitely not intentional, believe me 

Basically we're in the process of porting the code to PS4 and that's a tedious time consuming thing, plus scheduling a simultaneous release on steam and PSN with our publisher adult swim... there's only certain windows of time when everything works out for all the pieces that are in motion. We had one if we would have had all the code wrapped a few months ago, but we weren't happy with where things were at, so had to wait for the next one.

Even now, we *pretty much* have the code wrapped, but we're still polishing art and fixing bugs, so... yeah it's definitely going to be a much better, tighter game as a result of the extra time. It's not like it's just sitting around.

Thanks for patience!

Thanks for the quick answer, why do you have to release pc and ps4 at the same time?
Cant you release pc first on steam and then you have all the time and you get const money flow from the pc version, to finish the ps4 version ?

The one thing i really cant get over is(and i think i am really not alone there)is the yellow wormshaped observer. Please ask your fans if they really like this thing, because for me the worm is so anoying that i consider not geting the game if this things shows up on every 2nd screen all the time and ruins my experience and immersion in the game. And all the people who like the game and who i have talked to really hate the worm.Please make a poll reguarding this. It would be good if it would apear only on every 30th or 40th screen of a map.

Or at least give the player the ability to kill this thing in the first level to get rid of it for the rest of the game. Maybe there is a screen where you can let something heavy fall onto him. Or you can electrify the floor , or blow him up,because he shows up beside a explosiv tank.Or you can chanel toxic gas in the tunnelsystem where he is hiding,.... The possibilitys are endless to get rid of this anoying stalkerlike creature. Its not even a fun stalk like nemessis from resident evil 3, which showed up randomly and chased you down the whole level.This function fullfils the vulture like giant bird in your game and the bird is great, but the worm is dull. He has not even procedural animations because he does not really move or interact with the player at all. At the moment all he does is make the game a worst experience.I liked the old builds of the game where he doesnt showed up at all way better. He is like a foreign matter in the game.

[broomhead123]

The one thing i really cant get over is(and i think i am really not alone there)is the yellow wormshaped observer. Please ask your fans if they really like this thing, because for me the worm is so anoying that i consider not geting the game if this things shows up on every 2nd screen all the time and ruins my experience and immersion in the game. And all the people who like the game and who i have talked to really hate the worm.Please make a poll reguarding this. It would be good if it would apear only on every 30th or 40th screen of a map.

I really like the worm. Fits the game really well.

[crankykong]

The one thing i really cant get over is(and i think i am really not alone there)is the yellow wormshaped observer. Please ask your fans if they really like this thing, because for me the worm is so anoying that i consider not geting the game if this things shows up on every 2nd screen all the time and ruins my experience and immersion in the game. And all the people who like the game and who i have talked to really hate the worm.Please make a poll reguarding this. It would be good if it would apear only on every 30th or 40th screen of a map.

I really like the worm. Fits the game really well.

mhmm.......of course you do.

[Teod]

The one thing i really cant get over is(and i think i am really not alone there)is the yellow wormshaped observer. Please ask your fans if they really like this thing, because for me the worm is so anoying that i consider not geting the game if this things shows up on every 2nd screen all the time and ruins my experience and immersion in the game. And all the people who like the game and who i have talked to really hate the worm.Please make a poll reguarding this. It would be good if it would apear only on every 30th or 40th screen of a map.

I'm pretty sure they have answered this earlier in the thread. They increased rate of that guy appearing for testing purposes, and it just happened to be at the same time when they were making the convention preview build. So he's super common there, but will be much rarer in the actual game.

[crankykong]

The one thing i really cant get over is(and i think i am really not alone there)is the yellow wormshaped observer. Please ask your fans if they really like this thing, because for me the worm is so anoying that i consider not geting the game if this things shows up on every 2nd screen all the time and ruins my experience and immersion in the game. And all the people who like the game and who i have talked to really hate the worm.Please make a poll reguarding this. It would be good if it would apear only on every 30th or 40th screen of a map.

I'm pretty sure they have answered this earlier in the thread. They increased rate of that guy appearing for testing purposes, and it just happened to be at the same time when they were making the convention preview build. So he's super common there, but will be much rarer in the actual game.

Sorry, the topic is 293 pages long , so i was not able to read all the posts. But hearing you makes me def relieved.I hope with much rarer you mean every 20th screen or even better every 40th screen of a map and not every 8th screen of a map or so because that would be really anoying and totaly overdone. I do not understand why they put him in , in the first place. He has no procedural animation going on like the rest of the creatures. And seeing him do everytime exactly the same cartoony,anoying animation is also not very interesting. It comes maybe down to different taste, but i think lorewise in this industrial ruin setting they would have been way better off with a video camera , getting extracted out of the ground on a metal stick while following the player movement, or something like that.

If the worm would be at least as creepy looking as daddy long legs or the rest of the creatures, but he looks as cute as Slugcat, so you dont even have the creep factor while he is stalking you. You only have the anoyence factor.

[Dinomaniak]

I really like the worm. Fits the game really well.

Yup, same here. I doubt they'll abuse it's presence.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/product/rainworld_earlyaccess_soundtrack/FpSDLkj8s

Is this legit ?
If we purchase the game here, will we have it for the final version as well ?
Will that be the final price ?

What bugs me is that nowadays when James or Joar answer, is that they only pick up the latest thread questions, not all of them since they were not around =/ . Dropping by the forums for 10 minutes per day to say hello to the people interested in their work would be ... an improvement at this point. Sorry if this sounds harsh, it's not ment to be, I'm just honest here.

That being said, I'm still waiting impatiently for the release news. Also, as an indie dev, I'd like to ask : what makes the release window specific ? Is there a better - particular time of the year when we should be releasing our game as opposed to others ? I can understand holidays, however, since Rain World is already getting plenty of hype and is most likely to receive high grades and be one of the top score games, it will see plenty of purchases later/on holidays as well.

[Christian]

I love the game, the atmosphere is so dense. I am mostly impressed that they use direct sunlight in a more sparingly way,then most other games would do. You have those islands of light shining down onto the environment, in a general overcasted lightsetting on most of the maps. That creates a very moody atmosphere.

And the water just looks so inviting.Its almost like you can feel the wetness of it,swapping physically correct up and down. And they play so well with this general fear,that everybody of us has, swimming in very deep water and not knowing what creature could be hideing under you.

I have only a few concerns:

1: the jump and run part of the game.

4. The Releasedate.

At this point i have the feeling that they have the game finished basically month ago,but they do not want to release it at the moment,because they think its not known enough in the public and so they go from mess/show/exposition to mess/show/exposition just to get publicity for the next half of an year and then they will release it summer 2017,or even winter 2017,although it is already finished and they could release it tomorrow,but they wont.

1) You have a pretty varied moveset that can be seamlessly chained together to flip and tumble through the world. Learning and mastering the traversal is part of the challenge, kind of like Prince of Persia. The more skilled you are, you can reach areas you couldn't before

I've put at least 15-20 hours into the early alphas. The traversal isn't a weakness, trust me. It's part of what makes the game so fun; you're so agile and moving through world is a joy by itself







4) That's like...not an accurate appraisal of things at all. Your perception of them doing things to get publicity when they could release tomorrow isn't realistic at all, because they aren't trying too. No new trailers, no major press previews, no major coverage from their showcases at recent expos. They've been playtesting, balancing, and bugfixing for a while, crunching heavily, keeping their heads down and working hard quietly. Plus they have a publisher to meet deadlines for and who organizes stuff like releases, so they can't just release the game whenever even if they wanted to.

[kennoley]

I really like the worm. Fits the game really well.

Yup, same here. I doubt they'll abuse it's presence.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/product/rainworld_earlyaccess_soundtrack/FpSDLkj8s

Is this legit ?
If we purchase the game here, will we have it for the final version as well ?
Will that be the final price ?

What bugs me is that nowadays when James or Joar answer, is that they only pick up the latest thread questions, not all of them since they were not around =/ . Dropping by the forums for 10 minutes per day to say hello to the people interested in their work would be ... an improvement at this point. Sorry if this sounds harsh, it's not ment to be, I'm just honest here.

That being said, I'm still waiting impatiently for the release news. Also, as an indie dev, I'd like to ask : what makes the release window specific ? Is there a better - particular time of the year when we should be releasing our game as opposed to others ? I can understand holidays, however, since Rain World is already getting plenty of hype and is most likely to receive high grades and be one of the top score games, it will see plenty of purchases later/on holidays as well.

Yeah I agree, I see that the devs do answer questions some people have but I feel like they only look at the latest post nowadays.
(My question about the rain world link was right above crankykong's)

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/product/rainworld_earlyaccess_soundtrack/FpSDLkj8s

Anyway, can ANYONE tell me if this link is legit or not because im impatient and don't feel like waiting until 2017 to play this game, but I also don't want to spend $25 for just the alpha and not get the full game when it comes out.

[jamesprimate]

Things have been *extremely* busy for us the past few months. In addition to continuing to wrap up the dev work, right now Joar is moving to Seoul, South Korea (after spending a week showing RW at Busan Indie Connect, where it was nominated for excellence in Art, Sound and the Grand Prixe prize!) while I've been showing the game at PAX West in Seattle (where it was shown at 3 locations: Adult Swim, Sony and Sanshee) and then the XOXO Fest Arcade in Portland for the past 2 weeks.

I think something that's lost on these boards and even in documentaries like indie game the movie etc is just how many roles you have to take up as an indie developer. There may have been a time when someone could code a game in their basement and release it on steam the next day and that would do well, but it is definitely not the case now. Pretty much every indie budget game that I've seen succeed the past few years has been accompanied by tireless promotional work. I was talking about this with Joar yesterday, how there's basically this unspoken under-culture of devs as "marketing nomads" going from convention to convention perpetually, in different states and countries,  exposing a game to new audiences, making journalists aware of it, building support from various communities, etc etc. It's like running a political campaign or something! But if you've spent years of your life and all of your savings account developing a game, you can't take the risk of just throwing it out there and hoping for the best.

Outside of the traveling circus of the industry I don't think anyone is really aware of it. Like, the average person might go to a convention and see a dev there with their game and assume "oh cool, they are at this convention", but the truth is that they are at EVERY convention, and they probably have been for months or years, writing code in the hotel room, sending emails on shitty Starbucks wifi. This goes for the most polished indie darling to the roughest unity asset flip. Kind of fascinating, really. Even devs that are considered to be "reclusive" by the online gaming  community I see regularly at these events, working hard. Phil Fish was at XOXO, Tarn Adams was at BIC, etc etc

And as an indie you are doing this with a very small team of course, so long story short sometimes we're not reading too deeply into the TIGS comments, or will forego responding to questions that are answered elsewhere in the thread 




As for the alpha that's on humble, the link is legit but it is **OLD** and not in any way representative of the current game, so I personally would only recommend it to people who might be interested in following the development process in some depth. It might be interesting for people like Christian and Chris Early who have played the Lingo alpha years ago, then this early C# build and then get to see how the mechanics evolve into the final game, but likely not to the average player.

And lastly: shoutout to the TIGS fam for holding down the threads while we've been away, answering questions, etc. Y'all are the best 

[Christian]

As for the alpha that's on humble, the link is legit but it is **OLD** and not in any way representative of the current game, so I personally would only recommend it to people who might be interested in following the development process in some depth. It might be interesting for people like Christian and Chris Early who have played the Lingo alpha years ago, then this early C# build and then get to see how the mechanics evolve into the final game, but likely not to the average player.

And lastly: shoutout to the TIGS fam for holding down the threads while we've been away, answering questions, etc. Y'all are the best  

I think you might be selling the old alphas short.



That alpha is outdated for sure, and not representative of the current polished game, but you do get a good feel for the core concepts of the game IMO. The animations, the movement, the interaction between species, the feeling of being outnumbered and outgunned by the other creatures around you. It's missing a massive amount of what's in the current game like sound and music, entire regions and species, acrobatic moves, more advanced AI, any kind of gameplay structure, and a lot more, but it's still a smaller less-developed Rain World. I think that's a testament to how strong the essential aspects of the game are

[crankykong]

There may have been a time when someone could code a game in their basement and release it on steam the next day and that would do well, but it is definitely not the case now. Pretty much every indie budget game that I've seen succeed the past few years has been accompanied by tireless promotional work. It's like running a political campaign or something! But if you've spent years of your life and all of your savings account developing a game, you can't take the risk of just throwing it out there and hoping for the best.

You are cool guys and i like your game, so normaly i would feel bad criticizing your opinion,but after reading this, i have to say something about it:



What are you talking about? Your game got coverage from every big media outlet,which is out there. From IGN over Gamespot to Kotaku,twitch live streams with famous twitch streamer on gameshow openings.All that on multiple locations over multiple years now. If one indie game got more than enough media coverage,over the last view years,than it is your game.The only indie games which got that amount of media coverage in the last few years are Cuphead,Below and No Mans Sky. And for at least one of them,that amount of attention was very bad,because No Man Sky could not live up to this unnatural high expectations,created through all this media hype machine, at all and is now burned forever.

Here are only a few examplevideos from youtube,of you showing up by all of the big media,in the last few years. By many of them you where even multiple times after another:







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK64SKOEIWU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3XB8N5W_FM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG00aW50UkI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkkmfzGCVEw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlmw7oVn_4o

And that where only some examples out of the first side on youtube,typing in "rainworld game" as searchwords.

If you where this guy who "codes a game in his basement and releases it on steam the next day and that would do well" yes than it would be a stupid idea,to release the game without anyone knowing. But you are the opposite of that guy. Stop acting and pretending like you where this kind of guy and would be in this kind of situation.For an indie game you got enormous amount of publicity. When will enough be ever enough for you??When your game is as famous as Battlefield 1 of GTA 5 ?? That will not happen,no matter how many years from now on you are traveling with your basically finished game,from gameshow to gameshow.Therefore your game is just to "indie" and that's what i and many others love about your game.

If you are not stopping traveling from show to show with a finished game,where the game is played only by  a very minor selected audience while the majority of us get teased with little snipbits on your twitter account, then people will lose interest in your game very soon.If you release your game in the next 2-3 month its not a big problem , but if you continue doing what you do now,for the next year or so,with little to no communication beside of posting when you will be at which mess/exposition next,people will lose interest in the game and they will not gain it back at the release of the game.

Your last status update on kickstarter was in april. On your twitter account you done nothing else,in the last few moth,than telling people on which gameshow you will be showing next. Beside of releasing little gameplay snipbits of slugcat fireing a machine gun or walking into some sticky enemy's, which are cool,but do not replace a status update on how development went.

Its time to release your child in the wild. More hype,without releasing the game, at this point,will make the product not better and it also wont lead to more people buying it, rather the opposite effect.

[oldblood]

I HAVE A LOT OF OPINIONS ABOUT GAMES, I DON'T MAKE THEM, I DON'T MARKET THEM... BUT-- I UNDERSTAND THEM BETTER THAN THE DEVELOPER DOES AND YOU'RE DOING THIS WRONG! WORKING HARD TO PERFECT A GAME HAS NEVER ONCE MADE IT BETTER! QA IS A LIE! GIMME YOUR GAME!

TL;DR.

[Christian]

Are the tracks still "junk audio" transformed to music?

yes, mostly! most of the audio is in fact, including sound effects and all of that

Awesome. That's really incredible. RW's soundtrack is probably the game soundtrack I'm most excited for

[jprosk]

I HAVE A LOT OF OPINIONS ABOUT GAMES, I DON'T MAKE THEM, I DON'T MARKET THEM... BUT-- I UNDERSTAND THEM BETTER THAN THE DEVELOPER DOES AND YOU'RE DOING THIS WRONG! WORKING HARD TO PERFECT A GAME HAS NEVER ONCE MADE IT BETTER! QA IS A LIE! GIMME YOUR GAME!

TL;DR.

This. I feel like they've been working long enough on this and made these kinds of decisions enough that nobody, not even those who have followed Rain World since its beginning, really knows what's best more than Joar and James do.

[Christian]

There may have been a time when someone could code a game in their basement and release it on steam the next day and that would do well, but it is definitely not the case now. Pretty much every indie budget game that I've seen succeed the past few years has been accompanied by tireless promotional work. It's like running a political campaign or something! But if you've spent years of your life and all of your savings account developing a game, you can't take the risk of just throwing it out there and hoping for the best.

Stop acting and pretending like you where this kind of guy and would be in this kind of situation.For an indie game you got enormous amount of publicity. When will enough be ever enough for you??When your game is as famous as Battlefield 1 of GTA 5 ?? That will not happen,no matter how many years from now on you are traveling with your basically finished game,from gameshow to gameshow.Therefore your game is just to "indie" and that's what i and many others love about your game.

Its time to release your child in the wild. More hype,without releasing the game, at this point,will make the product not better and it also wont lead to more people buying it, rather the opposite effect.

I really don't see what warrants that kind of attitude.

1) Considering that the fall rush of AAA games and Autumn/Winter sales are coming up, this would be a bad time to release the game anyway

2) They've been bugfixing, balancing, playtesting, and polishing, not just going around for no reason. Those aspects are critical, especially for a game like this. If the player doesn't understand the how and why the species act the way they do, or learn what plants do, or the basic concept of exploring the map, or the pacing doesn't drive them to explore and keep moving to new regions...those things can make or break the game more than any lack or abundance of hype

3) And I think your overestimating the significance of the coverage on those sites. Sites covering indie games during expos and conferences, especially one being published by a major name like Devolver or Adult Swim, is par for the course, and has less to do with hype for Rain World itself than with Adult Swim setting up booths and getting them interviews. You also group those all to make them seem like so much coverage, but they're all spread across years of development. You could do the same for other games on this forum like Death's Gambit and Manifold Garden

And this

If one indie game got more than enough media coverage,over the last view years,than it is your game.The only indie games which got that amount of media coverage in the last few years are Cuphead,Below and No Mans Sky

is just completely unrealistic and inaccurate. If you truly believe Rain World (or even Below and Cuphead) have gotten as much coverage as No Man's Sky or even as much media coverage as indie games like The Witness or SOMA or even Stasis, you really don't follow indie games news very much

[ActualDog]

...

Dude I know you mean well and just care a lot about the game, but you're coming off kinda rude.

What you gotta understand is that for almost all games, especially ones this size, until they're actually released there's an unimaginable amount of really hard problems to solve and things to implement to make them legit ready for you to play. It's easy to see select clips and previews and imagine how finished the game is, but if the game was actually entirely ready it would be available to you. No one is finishing their multi-year long projects and then sitting on them for another year while they tease their expectant fans with marketing hype, I promise you. It's honestly impossible for me to describe just how hard it is to finish a game. You take pretty much any game (AAA, indie, or whatever else) that seems close to release, call a hard stop on development and throw it into the wild, I almost guarantee you it has issues big enough to ruin the experience.

You have to trust that as much as you care about this project, its developers care even more.

[Teod]

You are cool guys and i like your game, so normaly i would feel bad criticizing your opinion,but after reading this, i have to say something about it:


What are you talking about?
<...>

One of the videos you posted has 30k views, one is 15k, everything else basically rounds down to zero. By Youtube standarts that's a drop in the ocean. Comparing it to No Man's Sky and other highly anticipated games is ridiculous - you will get basically same results with any "<indiegame> game" search. Which is also super-pointless, because you are searching specifically for the game you already know exists, and the whole point of presentations is to inform the people who don't.

[broomhead123]

crankykong sure lives up to his name...