next »

[JLJac]

@AxezDNyde
Hey thanks! Yeah, I'm really happy about the near-surface distortion as well It's actually just the horizontal distortion that's present everywhere in the water that gets increased with an exponent near the surface. For the caustics (thanks for teaching me that word) - actually they are not the same color as the static highlights, it's just the gif format that bakes them together. So the wall distortion thing you saw is probably not as bad in the actual game. As for the shader cycle speed, I want it to somewhat work with a pretty still surface as well as with an upset surface that you're currently swimming through, so I settled for a medium-ish speed. I could have it change speed depending on how tall the waves are, but I do tend to get caught up in little cosmetics like this forever, so I try to move on from that stuff at a reasonable time and get back to actual gameplay programming. Especially as if I know myself, walking down that road would mean having the speed be locally affected by the water below that specific place, and that seems like trouble :S

@akryl9296
Awesome map! Bigger it's gonna be - this is one area of like, ten o___0 Remember also that this was the first area James did, so it's a bit experimental. Being the first area, and maybe the most loosely defined theme-wise, I'd bet that this particular one is going to go through some pretty damn big changes before release! Sorry to say when you've spent so much time on that map... Feedback is most welcome! Just remember that everything is super WIP. You can either post it here or PM me, depending on if you think it would be an interesting read to others as well

[AxezDNyde]

I could have it change speed depending on how tall the waves are, but I do tend to get caught up in little cosmetics like this forever, so I try to move on from that stuff at a reasonable time and get back to actual gameplay programming.

Sounds like a sensible thing to do!

However:



And I was wondering how you move the water surface, is it by a 1D cells-connected-by-pipes model? If so, did you somehow restrict the water levels to keep the system stable?

[jamesprimate]

I've been working on a map as well, and actually I just finished mine today: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53786988/RWmap/map%201.0.png
8.1 MB, 6070x5374px. I like how big and complicated this region is - got myself lost more than few times, but always somehow ended up in region I knew and could get back to lair sooner or later. The way I see it now, it's good enough as it is despite few spots that need fixing. The bigger the better

ahh this is rad! im really interested to see how people visualize/organize the world geometry. in my head the world isnt necessarily constrained to a 2d flat surface, rather a side-perspective representation of a 3d world, so rooms sometimes connect in varying degrees of weird z-axis. but obviously thats going to be interpreted linearly, so its really cool to see how people make sense of it in that format, and honestly it helps me a lot.

as Joar was saying, the suburban region as seen in the alpha is little more than a starting point for constructing the world at large. i think its super important that the first region be pretty slick and impressive, so we plan on completely re-working it (and to a lesser degree the other regions as well) once we have the complete map assembled and have all of the tiles / effects / creatures at our disposal. it does serve a fairly specific structural function between 3 other regions so the general layout will probably remain somewhat the similar, but yeah the individual rooms are WIP to be sure. Just something to jump around in for a bit! 

[quan]

posting to follow

[tortoiseandcrow]

akryl9296 - That map is great! Its nice to get a sense of the scale of the region.

James & Joar - Seeing it like that (though without having played the alpha), I am curious about the "death drops" that are on some screens. Given that there are a fair few rather vertical levels, I can easily imagine throwing myself down pretty much any of those, assuming that they would go somewhere. I wonder if they aught to all go somewhere, albeit perhaps with a steep level of difficulty to prevent fools like me from just making a leap of faith anywhere we please. Standard Mario-style platformer logic says "avoid all pits", but the movement possibilities of Rain World give me the impression that, given enough skill, everything should be traversible. Is there a way to find out whether a given drop is either lethal or a passage to a new area without trial & error? I'm imagining something sort of like the "peek" option you get in Spelunky, where by holding "down" you can check and see how far down the next drop is and plan accordingly, but it may be necessarily different in Rain World.

Alpha-playing folks - does this match up with your experience? Is there some way of figuring out a drop is going to be lethal without dying? Is my imaginary playtesting self just suicidally obsessed with throwing myself off cliffs that are very obviously cliffs?

[akryl9296]

Okay then, here I go. Just... before you read all that, I do NOT intend to offend anyone here! Just the way I am, a little... direct... here and there.

I'm glad y'all like that map I made. I realize it's mostly experimental stuff x) And as JLJac said, loosely defined theme-wise. That was actually first thing that came into my mind when exploring after getting rid of too-short-rain-cycle. There's a bit of everything, and I quite like that! I kind of grew used to most of the regions there, so pardon me but I'm going to be whining against revamp of it It's not that the map took terribly long (I'll enjoy making more of each region, and probably include some markers for weapons/lizard spawns), it's just that I like it as it is. The things to be fixed on it though are marked with skulls (in two places actually, SU_A18_1 [see point 12] and stoneheads2_1 [dead-end that neither me nor lizards can get out from]). I realize others are intentional but marked them as warning for players anyway).

I'm going to comment everything that caught my attention in that alpha. It's up to you guys what you will consider useful feedback and what not, as I don't really know in what stage of development the game is and how it plays. I might as well spend lots of time criticizing things that have been fixed long time ago... Things numbered for ease of referring to later on. Ask me anything you'd like too.

0. Anyway, first things first. I'm not a programmer (at least not much of it), so this is going to be more of a games-addict perspective on things, and what few of my friends said when they sat and played it for a while. Whole alpha, from technical viewpoint, is awesome to me - fluid animation, AI, water... I especially like watching leeches hunt for bats, and how lizards behave when they don't see me.

1. Urge to kill and knack for exploration were the only things that kept me playing though - base goal of 7 bats can be achieved without going out of the lair at all! I showed the game to two people and none of them went further than first 5 areas. None of them realized what the weapons are, and where to get them. One of them met purple lizard only once (it roamed into the first areas on its own), and despite trying to defend himself died miserably within seconds (spear and stone went above the lizard, as the guy was standing when throwing at it's armored head). After that he got pissed, called the alpha crap, and proceeded to critique everything about it (I'm going to spare you guys that)
2. Different throw heights/lack of aim (gets better with time once you realize you have to crouch to hit the lizard; and becomes almost no problem at all)
3. Spears getting stuck to walls and acting as poles to climb on (caused me few very angry deaths, but gets incredibly cool when lizard gets impaled to the wall and can't move anymore - captured that on wall, in the room with PX text in the middle of it)
4. Problems going up/down into tunnels (slugcat just refuses to go in and spazzes near entrance, in some cases causing me to fall down from very high areas like SU_B02_1). I imagine if some kind of "tolerance" could be given to slugcat it would help a lot (ex. holding right would make slugcat go right AND getting over small 1 square bends of tunnel without additional inputs; same thing with going up).
5. It is impossible for me to catch a pole that goes out directly from the tunnel (again SU_B0_1, but there's plenty of places like that around)
6. The way catching poles functions is irritating to me. It took me a while to realize I can't just hold "up" indefinitely and have slugcat climb and catch things automatically, I have to tap that key once slugcat is nearby... basically after that it seems just like inconvenience. Having just to hold the key up wouldn't alter gameplay at all, but would spare some irritation, and it wouldn't seem like controls itself are obstacle to overcome.
7. I can't do walljumping. AT ALL. One jump off wall is all I'm capable off, chaining them is impossible to me. I'm way too used to the way it works in other games. I imagine if you could make it so that when slugcat lands on wall (let's say the wall is on right) and remains latched to it as long as I hold "up", then holding "left" does not cause slugcat to fall. Then tapping "jump" makes him do the walljump to the left, and it catches the opposite wall and remains latched while I hold "up". Just my two cents x)
8. The only way to get away from lizards (purple ones, greens are just too dumb) reliably is jumping. When you're in tunnels - and there are areas that only have those - means death. Having seen few games which involve avoiding immortal enemies (you can't kill lizard unarmed, can you?), I think the game needs something I'd call "tight spaces" - ones where slugcat can fit but lizard cannot. It would give a stranded slugat a hiding chance in those areas where there's nowhere to jump away to. (and you could have another lizard later on that can squeeze in, but being still too big, it is slower than slugcat in there (balancing thing))
9. I noticed slugcat won't crouch on its own before entering a narrow, crouch-demanding tunnel. It will smack it's head against the obstacle, then bend it's back backwards, and proceed belly-forwards at truly slug speed... hilarious... until it happens when lizard is chasing you. Much less hilarious then.
10. Too little living things around. Recolored lizards with different properties, leeches, recently snails (? didn't read about it yet), and of course slugcats. Seems a little plain, and it has been brought up by all my friends that played alpha too.
11. Probably only alpha related thing, but there's only one lair. it's impossible to get to the end of even one "path" without getting caught in the rain and without cheating (by either mouse or changing setup.txt). I think it'll be more random later on, not just 360 seconds, but... well, I don't know! :D
12. Lizards don't stay away form lethal ledges (again SU_A18_1). Often caught near the edge, throwing stone at it results in lizard death. And stone lost.
13. Lizards don't stay away from water. Green lizard that resides near SU_C01x_1 always, always follows me down to the water, and realizes that OMG THERE'S WATER HOLY SHI' once it sits on top of the stones at SU_C01x_3 with poles it can't climb. It flails there a lot and eventually falls into the water. I love watching it do that, but damn... it seems just too simple to lure it there and watch it slowly struggle and drown. Satisfying though. Mmmmm...
14. Rain kills. Doesn't matter if you're hiding in spot where even a drop wouldn't fall on you, it kills anyway. Seems unfair. I'd like to be able to hide from rain anywhere where it wouldn't be flooded and is covered from rain. I wouldn't mind to have to find a proper lair anyway if there's a storm coming (with lightning effects and all).
15. Lizards don't always kill. I was often caught and dragged around few areas, and eventually lizard would "drop" me because derp, allowing me to just run away. If that was intentional, there should be some way to make lizard drop the player (perhaps hitting lizard's eyes with paws, like zebras do when caught by crocodiles?). I love it when they try to "stash" me in their lairs for later!

I'm not sure if I have anything else to mention here, it's pretty fun to play for me as it is, despite the lack of more challenging goal... like "kill all lizards without dying". Didn't manage that one yet.
And of course on behalf of all the people I showed the game to I must demand (no. 16) online PC multiplayer (even just simple option host/join within game would do nicely). Pretty please?
I experienced no slowdowns on my old laptop (6 years old? something like that, lenovo g550 [intel coreduo t6600 2.20GHz, 3GB RAM, geforce g210m 512MB] which is VERY nice.

akryl9296 - That map is great! Its nice to get a sense of the scale of the region.

Alpha-playing folks - does this match up with your experience? Is there some way of figuring out a drop is going to be lethal without dying? Is my imaginary playtesting self just suicidally obsessed with throwing myself off cliffs that are very obviously cliffs?

Thanks! I found twothree cliffs that are lethal (one of them I consider a bug; and there's that one tunnel-dead-end that seems a bug as well) and just avoided them afterwards. Didn't know prior they're lethal, and as far as I know there's no way to tell - except if you have poles going down into the hole then you can be sure you can slide down and there will be something there.
Other than that, there's no fall damage that I know off, you just get stunned for few seconds. And most of other cliff-looking things just have invisible walls. Also not everything is traversible - slugcat can't climb up when there's no pole, tunnel, or narrow space (walljumping) to help out.


EDIT:
17. Lizard bodies don't stay in spot they were left at. Few times I found the body to be later clogging up some tunnel, and there's no way to drag it out without debug features (mouse + b key)
18. Dead slugcat body still catches and eats bats.
19. Lizards camp with open mouths near tunnel exits. And no, holding a key to get back in doesn't help, especially when tunnel is so short I have no time to react :I
20. Just one key to control both hands AND grabbing AND throwing is too little. Often instead of throwing things to save his life, he'd pick up some useless chunk of rock and get eaten instead, which is annoying. There's also something wrong with the up/jump buttons and the upright/crouched stance. Often instead of standing up, slugcat would catch nearby pole and before I realized what went on, I'm dead. Ideally, I'd like one button per hand, and additional "crouch" button... at least I think so, I'd have to test such setup to figure out if it's usefull or not.
21. Throwing something while you're climbing a pole causes slugcat to fall down. I believe this shouldn't happen... I mean, he's able to climb pole with rock in each hand, why wouldn't he be able to throw it then?

[oldblood]

I reiterate all of the statements from akryl9296.

[jamesprimate]

whoa thats quite the write-up, thanks for taking the time! as it will probably be for a little while, the answer to most of that is "eh, its an alpha movement demo", but its all good to keep in mind going forward. i'd like the to not to get TOO wrapped in of discussion of the many alpha foibles for that reason (though we'll be all about that sort of thing when we hit beta!) and because we prefer to keep the devlog on things we HAVE done rather than things we WILL do, but let me hit some individual ones:

1. one of the (many) game mechanics that aren't in the alpha is that once you eat bats and survive a cycle, the nest of bats that you caught them from is depleted the next round (possibly permanently?), forcing you further and further into the world to avoid starvation. the little 3 room lair area was kind of designed as "baby's first bat hunt" to let you catch some and learn the controls, but without the enforced scarcity you can just sit there camp bats of course! booooring. BUT then we could be lazy and not have to implement multiple slugcat shelters yet

per some of your later questions on it, the rain cycle in general is pretty much just a mock-up at this stage.

2-7, 20-21. yep, controls are something that we will be spending some serious time on when the world is in a more feature-complete stage. There are a few aspects where we need to make some fairly significant design decisions on, which will inform how we tailor the controls (so no use messing with them until that point), but even from the lingo people have been on us about them XD

8,9. the crawlspaces are one of those design decisions i was walking about. as its planned now, some of the more challenging subterranean regions begin to focus on a more tight crawly maze-like game play style, but until we are there and actually messing around with the creatures and geometries that we'll be using, no use in messing with it.

Only somewhat related, but worth mentioning since were on the subject: crawling will not just be for entering tunnels, but also a "stealthed" silent movement which help you avoid AI detection, letting you sneak past predators and sneak up on prey.

10. no worries on that! there are around 20 notable creatures, plus various NPCs and decorative fauna planned. (though to a degree the bleakness IS an aspect we are going for?)

12,13,15,17,19. Plenty of work to do on the Lizard behavior for sure. Though I seriously doubt Joar will EVER get them to a place that he's 100% happy with them, haha. Although I have to take some of the blame for this, as the lizard AI reacts to the room geometries, and some of these alpha rooms are asking lizards to do things that they dont like to (sloped tiles, drops that are just out of their comfort zone, etc etc), which creates weird behavior.

James & Joar - Seeing it like that (though without having played the alpha), I am curious about the "death drops" that are on some screens.

this is a good question that im kind of dealing with now. right now in the level editor we are limited to rendering rooms of 3 screen heights max. very soon Joar is going to fix that, so i think that "fall off screen" death drops will then only be in certain regions where it's called for (aerial regions, tall towers or deep pits, etc), plus perhaps the occasional scattering of them here and there just to be mean. Then we'd obviously implement death if you fall a certain distance, etc., possibly anything greater than 2 screens. BUT the point being that in most cases the traversable world will be mapped out and visible, death pits and all.

[akryl9296]

@jamesprimate: thanks for the answers With the stealth - I already noticed the lizards remember where they saw me last, and approach that region only. Hiding in tunnels helps avoid them until they calm down, but should they find me out - I'm dead, they're faster in tunnels than I am. That's why I mentioned the "tight spaces" - I meant tighter than standard tunnel, one that lizard can't fit into - would help survive, and since it's in map design, you still get to be mean here and there x)
Will there be more of such "alpha" releases on the way, just to see how the game is progressing?

-------

Map updated: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53786988/RWmap/map%201.1.png
Added markers for rough lizards locations, weapon markers, fixed missing danger markers, added map names.

[jamesprimate]

@jamesprimate: thanks for the answers With the stealth - I already noticed the lizards remember where they saw me last, and approach that region only. Hiding in tunnels helps avoid them until they calm down, but should they find me out - I'm dead, they're faster in tunnels than I am. That's why I mentioned the "tight spaces" - I meant tighter than standard tunnel, one that lizard can't fit into - would help survive, and since it's in map design, you still get to be mean here and there x)

totally a possibility! we will definitely be balancing the tunneling speed of the cat and other creatures for sure, plus possibly adding some sort of tunneling "move set" for the cat (heck, we haven't even discussed regular slugcat moves here yet!), so you can maybe get short bursts of movement in tunnels. another possibility is objects (or creatures) that can be used to block tunnels. but again, this is all a bit ahead of us!

Will there be more of such "alpha" releases on the way, just to see how the game is progressing?

I think we'd like to do at least one more before actual beta? That is somewhat related to time, as whenever we do a public build it takes planning and a week or so of tying together random things to make it palatable for a non dev, and that time could be otherwise used for actually progressing work on The Game proper. PLUS you get a million emails about things that aren't in the build yet, etc etc. Pretty sure the next one will be focused on the multiplayer aspect though, which I think will be pretty fun to see.

[akryl9296]

Pretty sure the next one will be focused on the multiplayer aspect though, which I think will be pretty fun to see.

If you need testers that won't complain and aren't afraid of messy crashing devbuilds, I'm open for propositions

[theEasternDragon]

I second that.

(Oh, and first time on TIG, hi everyone.)

[JLJac]

The feared, the infamous, the in horror anticipated Level Editor Overhaul is here 

Q: What is the level editor overhaul?
A: An attempt to make the level editor spit out rooms larger than 3 screens big.

Q: Why can't it?
A: Because director only has a limited memory, and as is the level editor creates a voxel build of the entire room that's 30 voxels deep. In the case of large rooms, which might be something like 1000 * 4000 pixels large, we get 1000 * 4000 * 30, and then * 4, because each layer keeps track of color for each pixel, shadow status for each pixel, and effect coloration. 1000 * 4000 * 30 * 4 pixels is more than director can handle it seems. So instead I'll try to make the level editor only render a voxel space for a little box around where the camera is for each screen, and get around those huge bitmaps.

Q: Why is it dreaded?
A: Because it's boring. It's a looooot of work, and digging into old code, and the end result won't be exciting at all. In actuality it will be exciting when the game is actually played, because it'll allow us to create really big rooms, but on screenshots you guys won't be able to notice any difference.

Q: Why now?
A: Because the earlier the better - James will have had access to better tools for a larger percent of dev time the earlier this gets done. Also the devlog has been dormant during my winter vacation thingie, and I figured it would be better to have it stay dormant for a while rather than wake it up and get you guys all hopeful, just to shut it down again. I won't devlog about the level editor overhaul, because it basically all boils down to "In frustration I messed around with 3 years old lingo code in futile attempts to solve petty little problems in order to get to the exact same spot where the level editor already was, but this time with support for larger rooms".

Also there will be some other level editor work, such as adding a Prop Editor where James can place some objects (say plants, cogs, chains) in the environment manually instead of trying to make the randomization of the Effect Editor hit the right spot by changing the seed over and over. And make the level loader understand sub-folders, and other exciting stuff.

So, I'm going to just go head first into this mess and try to survive through. Might be a couple of days! So see you in a bit

[Crispy75]

Good luck!

[akryl9296]

Good luck indeed! Remember to make lots of comments in code for later
Just out of curiosity, in the final game, do you plan the camera to pan around and keep slugcat in the center of those super big rooms (pretty please?)? Or just jump around like currently?

[JLJac]

Good news! Talking to James, we decided that I'll do some creatures on half speed on the side of level editor overhaul. I tend to get into big structural projects rather than create content, and the game needs some content, so this time around we'll try doing structural stuff and content in parallel. Definitely more fun!

Update 379
This is going to get spoilery! I won't bother keeping the devlog spoiler free, because then I will be able to post less and less stuff, and the devlog will become worthless at its purpose, a log of development 

James is working on the sky region, and I've started sketching on a flying predator to go with it.




The idea is that these arms/tentacles double as wings and it can walk/climb or fly depending on the situation. Seems difficult... We'll have to see how it develops in the actual implementation!

[AxezDNyde]

WOAH! Suddenly these creatures look all metroidy! Come to think of it, Spider (Morph) Ball and Slugcat's narrow corridor mode ain't too distant, conceptually. Well, I guess

!   
I sure that heritage will be less obvious once they are colored by the Rain World palette. Right now, in my head they are all green and red brain-blobby.

Can't wait to see their first pixels in-engine! 

[JLJac]

Oh! I plead innocent, I haven't played metroid! But if the overlap is too jarring, I could definitely come up with some changes. Or you're talking more about the mood than the actual design? If it's more a mood question I think that'll settle when it's rendered in the RW art style, as you say!

[AxezDNyde]

No need for excuses. It's not something bad.

I was just thinking this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ridley_-_Super_Metroid.png
and this

http://www.game-art-hq.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Metroid-Render-by_green_mamba.png

But of course this is only my imagination. Can't wait to see what you were imagining!

[Crispy75]

Oh! I plead innocent, I haven't played metroid! But if the overlap is too jarring, I could definitely come up with some changes. Or you're talking more about the mood than the actual design? If it's more a mood question I think that'll settle when it's rendered in the RW art style, as you say!

Mood rather than design, and not that strong IMO. If anything, this reminds me somewhat of the Xen aliens in half life and half life 2.

Either way, it looks scary as hell and will become entirely its own thing once it's pixeled and animated in the RW style.