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[oldblood]

Sorry to hear the crunch didn't turn into a release, but I'm sure the extra time this is going to give you both is going to be HUGE in insuring you're able to really polish and test your work. We've waited years, we can wait more. The cutscene tease (and new store image) are really, really cool... Really looking forward to more.

[jamesprimate]

thanks for being understanding, guise! seriously, im amazed that you all even still check in here considering how radio silent we've been the past few months. that will change soon though!

Can I say as an aside that Del has done such an amazing job on the art? I am so glad you guys tagged her for the ingame screens. She has such an eye for colour...

Yes, thank you! Her work has been absolutely stunning. You wont even believe :O

[kizmarh]

2017? Ok I guess now you could at least be more relaxed after the crunch this could make it so the final polish steps would be more effective, as when you're in the crunch mode you often can miss something.

The teaser of the parallax cut-scene looks amazing *_*

[Christian]

thanks for being understanding, guise! seriously, im amazed that you all even still check in here considering how radio silent we've been the past few months. that will change soon though!

Hey, I still check in here for 5734L3R and Hong Kong Massacre, so keeping tabs on Rain World is easy compared to those :p

But seriously, I've been following the game since before the Kickstarter, so I'm not going to stop checking in when you guys are in the final stretch

[BartsBlue]

we can polish the polish

Being Polish I approve your attempts to polish the polish.

[jprosk]

What was Del's tumblr page again?

[gimymblert]

[jprosk]

Joar, are you okay with James always getting the credit for being the "creator"?! 

[jamesprimate]

Yeah thats no good :/ Got to get him out in front of the camera!

[Teod]

What was Del's tumblr page again?

Deldraws.tumblr.com, I believe. I don't think she posted anything since being hired for Rain World, though. Hard at work, best of luck to her.

Were those bats bugged, or flight in formation is one of the new convenience features? They seem to be a bit easier to catch that way.

[Christian]

Yeah thats no good :/ Got to get him out in front of the camera!

Joar was so likable in that other interview you guys did like a week ago. I'd love to see him on-camera talking more about the game

[jamesprimate]

Yep! And honestly, I'm getting much worse. Media burnout is real, friends! International plane tickets are expensive tho, so you'll probably have to suffer me a little while longer yet 

Bats have some flight formation stuff to make them more *reliable* to catch when in swarm rooms (not necessarily easier), but also id say this clip wasn't really representative of their behavior.

[David Berman]

Intrigued by the behind the scenes stuff going on with the release/beta/rush - I wonder if either of you might divulge more details after E3, or is it not really possible as it ties in to external stuff/is otherwise too frustrating? Would be interesting from a development perspective - the pitfalls of the last stages of development are just as important a thing to document - in this case particularly release schedules - would missing one really push something back two quarters, or is it more that by passing one possible date it has opened up some time to polish further? Unless of course initial beta testing has been scary!

Watched the Kotaku and Twitch videos - even though it was an as you suggested a four month old build (cos it was playstation or because of the crazyness of the crunch?!) it was interesting to see how areas from the alpha have been changed, and great to see more of the Linear Farm. The new bits of the canopy look amazing too - both indoor and the spore-like things on the ground/floating in the environment. If I remember correctly you still haven't bumped into any Scavengers whilst demoing the game, which is funny and of course inevitable when showing off a dynamic system!

I know that this demo build is somewhat abstracted from the structure of the full game, but I wondered if the overseer/holographs seem... overkill, or intrusive? They may be handled differently/less initially or constantly visible in the context of the actual game, but their constant instateleporting and flittering around would seem potentially immersion breaking/distracting to me. Of course it is hard to comment not knowing anything about their purpose, function and narrative element, but I feel like they distract from the mood a little when following/moving around to this extent. Perhaps it makes more sense as a temporary or occasional thing rather than a constant feature!

Also... variation on the centipede or a new creature at a couple of points - like a flying spindly bug?!

Anyhow - great stuff as always! Final stretch - keep going! I'm sure you are exhausted but your passion for the project still shines through James!

[Christian]

I have to say, I kind of agree with David regarding the overseers. I had assumed they would be rarer, popping in every once in a while. Or perhaps not even at all in the beginning of the game (since the slugcat wouldn't have proven itself to be that unique yet). Them constantly moving around, in and out, even in the early regions like Suburban seems like it kind of distracts from the whole overall atmosphere. That bright thing moving around is something that would be catching my eye and attention often

I also think it might be more effective if it stayed in a single spot for a while, rather than jumping from spot to spot. Like it would move to the area in the room that gives it the best vantage point and just sits there and...observes.

[Christian]

Kotaku coverage and new gameplay. You get to see the killer grass in action towards the end
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/06/rain-worlds-charming-slugcat-meets-some-dangerous-new-beasts/

[jamesprimate]

Hellooo! Okay, back from E3. Whew that was intense 

Yes, quite a few nice long gameplay vids up! That Sony underground one Christian linked was good, and we had a 30 min long twitch interview that wound up going pretty deep too. Others vids we're pretty short or catch me at various stages of exhaustion, so probably not interesting for all you Rain World experts here.

So! To answer some of the above questions, for this E3 we were in the SONY booth and wound up at the last minute having to port a build to playstation 4 in an *extremely small* amount of time. Like, completely impossible actually. But somehow, shockingly, it all worked out! I can't get into specifics about it as its NDA and contract related stuff right now, but the first time I was able to even play the show build was *literally on the show floor* at the SONY booth the first morning of E3. Basically we were like "I... hope this works", lol. Not. an. ideal. situation. believeeeeeeeee me.

For that reason it was a pretty old (but stable!) build getting ported that just happened to be laying around exactly when we needed it, so there were tons of minor things with it. For instance that build was what we were using to test the observer's behavior, so as you noticed they were a little annoying. There were actually quite a few crashing bugs in this build too, so the challenge was to do these interviews showing large chunks of the gameplay while avoiding certain creature or world interactions that would bring up error screens while being livestreamed on the front page of twitch or whatever. SUPER HARD MODE! lmao. But doing events like this (and i have done many), you find that you just have to roll with whatever comes and make the best.

Anyway! Back to the grind...

[fall_ark]

It looks like the "balancing on a pole" animation could be pretty tiring if the player constantly, well, get on poles a lot. Maybe add in one or two variation in animation if possible? (e.g. sometimes the slugcat will curls up the pole and be at a stable position instead of wildly wobbling left and right)

[tortoiseandcrow]

The wild wobbling is just James wiggling the stick back and forth. If you release the stick, the slugcat balances itself with its arms and then settles to an upright position.

Welcome back James! You did a great job, especially considering the circumstances. One thing I noticed, though, is the way you field the questions about the overseers. I think instead of telling people what they are supposed to think, it might serve to be more ambiguous. Something like "along the way you will find these creatures watching you, for unknown reasons." Let the audience make the rest of the leap and draw their own conclusions.

Was the shelter part of the unavailable content? I just realized that there isn't a video showing a full, successful cycle from beginning to end. I'd love to see that, and I think it might help with the persistent problem I am seeing with folks not immediately grasping the core loop of the game.

That said, and speaking now as someone who has conducted interviews before, your interviewers have been consistently terrible (with the sole exception of the Sup, Holmes? fellow, who wasn't bad). Like, my god. Asking vague questions and interrupting you constantly with irrelevant banter, I was aghast. But that's enthusiast media for you I guess.

[jamesprimate]

Thank you! Yeah hilariously the shelter saving crashes that ps4 build, so I had to figure out how to show the game without its primary progression mechanic for 3 days But hopefully to the outside observer it looked natural enough.

Also tbh there are some aspects to the shelter and saving mechanic that we are *kinda* keeping secret (you'll see!), so I'm not unhappy to be able to wait until it's all finished and looking nice before showing!

[Teod]

Speaking of Overseers, I think those guys could also be used as a subtle-ish tutorial helpers. Having them closely examining items and types of food the player haven't seen or used yet would direct the player's attention to those objects as well. They can even project some holographic hints on them, for instance, project an animation of a pop-corn opening on an unopened plant of pop-corn.