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[Juless]

Started with the building animations! They take hella work but really worth it considering the amount of life they add to the game + Gameplay value knowing which buildings are being worked in.

Or you could watch it in HD!  

[JobLeonard]

Looks great in HD!

The bike is cool, is it supposed to be a pump? If so, it's a bit weird that the whole thing keeps working when the guy stops (of course, fire being insta-lit is also weird, so it's not exactly like we're going for realism).

How many people in the office are fans of the Primitive Technologies channel?





Also, I don't know if I linked this before, but check out Low Tech magazine's article on "stangen kunst", which was the way we used to transport mechanical energy over long distances:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html

I'm sure the website is full of inspirational stuff in general:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/obsolete-technology.html
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-solutions.html

Also, the author of that website (Kris de Dekker) is a Belgian historian if I'm not mistaken; he might even be available to help consult

Hope you'll enjoy!

[io3 creations]

Started with the building animations! They take hella work but really worth it considering the amount of life they add to the game + Gameplay value knowing which buildings are being worked in.

Or you could watch it in HD!  

If that was a reply to my post, then the wave doesn't seem to be as high as in the gif.  Nor as sudden.

The HD version looks great though!


Near the end, a little "Jesus effect" of the character hovering mid-air can be seen.   Also, in the the gif, the same character walks through the other.  That brings up an interesting issue of how to deal with people moving on the walkways.  In some places the walkways seem to be wide enough for two people to pass by each other (or one stand while using a machine) but in other places it isn't.  Maybe, some kind of "invisible traffic light" system would work.

[JobLeonard]

Couldn't you use one of those flow-field based pathfinding systems? Because you're using walkways and relatively few actors it could probably be highly optimized, since the grid is much smaller and requires fewer dynamic updates.





EDIT: wait, that wasn't the flow field I was going for, that's a real-life example, hahaha :D . I meant this:

[Juwdah]

Slowly it's all coming to life

Looks great in HD!

The bike is cool, is it supposed to be a pump? If so, it's a bit weird that the whole thing keeps working when the guy stops (of course, fire being insta-lit is also weird, so it's not exactly like we're going for realism).

How many people in the office are fans of the Primitive Technologies channel?

Also, I don't know if I linked this before, but check out Low Tech magazine's article on "stangen kunst", which was the way we used to transport mechanical energy over long distances:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html

I'm sure the website is full of inspirational stuff in general:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/obsolete-technology.html
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/low-tech-solutions.html

Also, the author of that website (Kris de Dekker) is a Belgian historian if I'm not mistaken; he might even be available to help consult

Hope you'll enjoy!

Yes! It's like an accumulation of everything. Environment, character art, FX all together. Coding intertwined, overall feel of the game. Lovely to see.

The bike is the pump yes, The animation that keeps playing after he stops biking is an error but we didn't mind it enough to remove it. The fact that it's noticed this fast means I'll give it a look. The fire is going to stay insta-lit though as it's a loop

The Primitive Technologies channel is awesome, always super inspiring. As well as giving a weird look at things. I never thought about looking at it for design though, weirdly. I have no idea why, that stuff is gold.

Thanks for the links to the low-tech sites, they are really nice! I had never heard of wood-powered cars before and my god they are beauties! The pipes really finish it.

You mean adding few animations, vertex shaders and particles effects?  That'd be quite simple!   In seriousness though, those "minor details" do indeed add a lot.


Oh, I've been wondering about the wave motion but hasn't been an issue so far (perhaps due to the small gifs and of course since I haven't played the game - i.e. haven't had to look at the objects moving with the waves for long).  
But in the latest one, with that large unexpected wave I experienced a bit of motion sickness.  I wondered it was due to the unexpected aspect and/or the size of the wave.  Perhaps, if I had seen the wave ahead of time (i.e. items farther from you being moved), I might have been able to better expect it.  But, IIRC you can rotate the camera around so having the wave come from the "right direction" wouldn't be possible.  Either way, I'm wondering if that aspect had been given any consideration or have you received any feedback especially after many hours of gameplay.

We've not experienced anyone with motion sickness after playing our game... yet. No one actually played it hours on end though. I hope it's going to be a non-issue as I'd like it if people would play it for long periods of time  

Near the end, a little "Jesus effect" of the character hovering mid-air can be seen.  Also, in the the gif, the same character walks through the other.  That brings up an interesting issue of how to deal with people moving on the walkways.  In some places the walkways seem to be wide enough for two people to pass by each other (or one stand while using a machine) but in other places it isn't.  Maybe, some kind of "invisible traffic light" system would work.

Yeah, the drifters will keep going through each other, it's not like we "like" it but can't do everything we want in game development. This is an easy solution  

The Jesus and other weird cranks should be resolved soon. There's some teleporting and weird places where they stand now but it's due to other things getting priority. (it doesn't really hurt gameplay so)


edit: @JobLeonard Those flow fields seem a bit distant from what we need though. As we have a continuously updating environment.

[JobLeonard]

Really? I would expect the walkways to be relatively static.

[Amonbell]

As everyone already said: this looks so promising, loving the artstyle.

I have motion sickness myself, but I don't respond to the HD video you posted in any way. Only the .gif you posted makes me a bit dizzy if looking at it for too long. For me the sickness is usually triggered by a certain field of view, mostly in first-person games. If the player is able to adjust the camera, I guess you will be fine!

Anyway, if anyone gets seasick, you can give yourself a pat on the back for realism

[io3 creations]

Yeah, the drifters will keep going through each other, it's not like we "like" it but can't do everything we want in game development. This is an easy solution  

The Jesus and other weird cranks should be resolved soon. There's some teleporting and weird places where they stand now but it's due to other things getting priority. (it doesn't really hurt gameplay so)

At some level, those issues are somewhat similar to the "cars don't float" issue - i.e. shouldn't happen in "real life".  Of course, the game is still in development and I imagined that as you mentioned, you are aware of the issues but haven't fixed them yet due to not being a priority.  Similarly, other players might have been thinking that it's not a major issue but I wonder if that will change after the game is fully released where people's expectation might change.  Only time will tell.  

In general, are there many games where people walk through each other like that?


I wonder if flow field would even work since the NPCs are moving independently from each other and there are times when they need to move in opposite direction (e.g. one-way walkway).  I imagine a street based system where certain walkways have two lanes and people can pass each other.  Other parts have only "one-person" traffic (similar to a ladder).  If it's in use, the other person would have to wait.
@JobLeonard Or is there something I'm missing and could be useful for such "traffic control"  (similar to the unintended video you posted ).

I have motion sickness myself, but I don't respond to the HD video you posted in any way. Only the .gif you posted makes me a bit dizzy if looking at it for too long. For me the sickness is usually triggered by a certain field of view, mostly in first-person games. If the player is able to adjust the camera, I guess you will be fine!

Anyway, if anyone gets seasick, you can give yourself a pat on the back for realism

Interestingly, sea sickness hasn't been an issue for me (as of yet).  But motion sickness can be created from other things.  For example, on certain rides if the on-screen visuals and the moving chair is not in sync.  I wonder if it's sort of related to that, i.e. I can *see* things moving but don't actually *feel* the movement.  (Maybe in the future when portable brain scanners are available, such issues can be easily answered. )

[HiddenNatureDsn]

Love the style and colors.  So vibrant and creative.  The concept art looks fantastic.

[Juwdah]

Really? I would expect the walkways to be relatively static.

The walkways yes, but most of the pathfinding is aimed at finding it on the water that's constantly updating. ..I think. I'm not actually doing anything remotely close to that so I'm not going to state anything  . Actually @TheObserver can probably talk about it for days. I SUMMON YOU

As everyone already said: this looks so promising, loving the artstyle.

I have motion sickness myself, but I don't respond to the HD video you posted in any way. Only the .gif you posted makes me a bit dizzy if looking at it for too long. For me the sickness is usually triggered by a certain field of view, mostly in first-person games. If the player is able to adjust the camera, I guess you will be fine!

Anyway, if anyone gets seasick, you can give yourself a pat on the back for realism

Thanks for the kindness  
Luckily we haven't had any complaints about motion sickness so far. I'm glad you find it a non-issue, having people prone to it on our testing list would be nice though. Have you by any chance signed up for our newsletter/Discord ? That way you can get into the testing/alpha and we can see the effects long playtime would have on you. If you'd want to, that is. We should have more info on the alpha sooner than later.



@io3 creations:
I think games can get away with many non-realism aspects. Heck we use teleportation on occasion, our building animations use scaling like in cartoons and well heck none of the towns you can make would actually every work in real life.

The tricky balance is not breaking the suspense of disbelief. But we'll decide on how to polish everything to do exactly that when the game is in a later state.

@HiddenNatureDsn
Thank you!
We've been looking at our game the last few weeks when bigger towns get built and already start getting a "kid coloring book" feeling though, we'll be sure to keep everyone's mind filled with nice balanced colors when the game comes out.

[The_Observer]

In general, are there many games where people walk through each other like that?

Several actually, it's an easy fix for a very complicated issue.
Many games allow for characters to go through each other in varying degrees. Banished, Prison Architect, Rimworld or Planet Coaster for example allow characters to pass through, but try to not have characters end at the same place to 'manage' the illusion for the player.

While the paths are relatively static they however are not wide enough to allow two lanes. Some visuals might look like it, but not all walkways are wide enough for 2 characters.
However I'm rewriting the whole pathfinding (I hope to do some posts around that) now and I'll give it a try again. If that works and wazeau can widen the walkways it might be something we implement.

[Juwdah]

I took our creation process and threw it on twitter.

https://twitter.com/Juwdah/status/936265325699575808

I might throw the gifs on here too for an easier read if people want that?

[JobLeonard]

I'd appreciate that. Also, it's nice to have a more reliable archive than Twitter for these things

[io3 creations]

@io3 creations:
I think games can get away with many non-realism aspects. Heck we use teleportation on occasion, our building animations use scaling like in cartoons and well heck none of the towns you can make would actually every work in real life.

The tricky balance is not breaking the suspense of disbelief. But we'll decide on how to polish everything to do exactly that when the game is in a later state.

Of course, I wasn't expecting a super-realistic game.  Actually, there are a few that come close but those tend to be more like simulators such as: driving, flying but I've read about a war game.
Interestingly, the animated buildings fit well into the cartoon like visual style.   Teleportation might be an extension of "instant-fire" i.e. time dilation that is used often in games. (more below)

Several actually, it's an easy fix for a very complicated issue.
Many games allow for characters to go through each other in varying degrees. Banished, Prison Architect, Rimworld or Planet Coaster for example allow characters to pass through, but try to not have characters end at the same place to 'manage' the illusion for the player.

Ah, I see.  The examples you listed tend to be of the management type games.  I'm more partial to action/adventure/puzzle type game so probably that's why to me it seems like an issue where it's important to know "who's where and doing what", whereas in management games the focus is different.  I just looked at a few screenshots of the games mentioned and the size of people there is quite small and there's lots and lots of them.  So, perhaps if the camera is zoomed in and having fewer people might make it more apparent.

So, in the end, it looks like it'll come down to the "usual" finding out what your target players think.

[The_Observer]

Boop boop, weekly progress update with our screenshot Saturday. This time it's the food truck of which we shared the concept a long time back.

[JobLeonard]

Very cool!

[io3 creations]

Boop boop, weekly progress update with our screenshot Saturday. This time it's the food truck of which we shared the concept a long time back.

So, if in our world it would be selling street food, in the world of Flotsam it is *obviously* selling sea food.

[Juwdah]

Boop boop, weekly progress update with our screenshot Saturday. This time it's the food truck of which we shared the concept a long time back.

So, if in our world it would be selling street food, in the world of Flotsam it is *obviously* selling sea food.

Hah, well that or walkway food.

@Jobleanard:  

[io3 creations]

Boop boop, weekly progress update with our screenshot Saturday. This time it's the food truck of which we shared the concept a long time back.

So, if in our world it would be selling street food, in the world of Flotsam it is *obviously* selling sea food.

Hah, well that or walkway food.

   

It may be the "end" of our world, but it doesn't mean that we can't ease the transition by bringing over some of the things we are familiar with.




Regarding characters moving through each other, I just remembered:
2:23 (on right side)




Looks like it's the "Unity way".

[Juwdah]

Boop boop, weekly progress update with our screenshot Saturday. This time it's the food truck of which we shared the concept a long time back.

So, if in our world it would be selling street food, in the world of Flotsam it is *obviously* selling sea food.

Hah, well that or walkway food.

   

It may be the "end" of our world, but it doesn't mean that we can't ease the transition by bringing over some of the things we are familiar with.




Regarding characters moving through each other, I just remembered:
2:23 (on right side)


Looks like it's the "Unity way".

Holy Guacamoley I never even noticed that before! And I've seen it on big screen.
I guess we're doing something right then. Right? Right?!