[Waiting Room]

A vanitas is a work of art intended to compel the observer to ponder their life and their impending death.
'Waiting Room' is an attempt to replicate this effect in game form.
You can find it here, on itch and on Gamejolt.

Hello there  Kinda new in the scene, here's mine-
https://iambored.itch.io/

Thank you for the kind words! I'd recommend you to try for the gate up top instead of going left!

Thanks! I did, and this new area is insane! 

[*** SPOILER ALERT ***]

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

I finally feel like I've played enough of the game to share my thoughts about it, and also, I'm stuck, and I'd really appreciate the help! Of course, this post will be chock full of spoilers, so watch out..

First off- I love this game to death! I've been following its development for the past 4 years, so you can guess how excited I was to see it release. The thing is, the reviews are terrible. Seeing more and more reviews that blamed Rain World for the most heinous crimes a platformer can commit slowly but surely weakened my resolve to try it anyway. Then the patch was released, and I bought the game out of impulse, and I'm so glad I did. Now, I don't know how the game played before the patch, but based on my experience, I feel like almost none of the complaints are justified.
The controls are fantastic, though bear in mind that I also enjoy Gish's controls. Also bear in mind that I got some tips before playing, such as double tapping the hold button. I guess there would have been a lot more frustration involved had I not gotten those tips. It's a good idea to insert some of those into the game.
The karma system is entirely OK. I'm not enjoying it, per se, but I definitely do not get all the complaints about it. There was only one time in my entire playthrough where the karma system gave me trouble, when I was stuck in the Drainage System and tried to get back to the Outskirts. That gate should be gated with the lowest rank from the Drainge System side.
I don't understand all the complaints about "random enemy spawns". If anything, I would say the opposite is the problem. I've went through maybe a dozen cycles just to get through a daddy long legs that wouldn't budge from my path.

So that's that with all the reviews. I'm saddened by this situation, because I think a lot of players will avoid the game for no real reason.

Onto my playthrough- there were two times that I felt the game was unfair and even wanted to quit- the first was being stuck in the Drainage System. I got through it, but getting back to the Outskirts felt like reversing all my progress, and I felt like shit. I can understand why other players might quit after this.
The situation I'm in right now is my main source of frustration with the game. I'm in the Underhang. I'm in the hibernation chamber below the gate to the next area, and I know I have enough food to continue. The thing is, I'm not ready to continue, as there is an area to the left that I have yet to fully explore. After jumping past the poles outside the hibernation chamber, I go down to the underhang, and there I find a daddy long legs. Half of my attempts to get past him result in dying to him, and this is costing me hours. After I get past him, I end up in the area above the leftmost (maybe?) orb, the one that doesn't connect with any other orb. I go above it with a grapple worm, and there my real trouble begins. Up until this point, I didn't know I could use the grapple worms. I got to the next area, which requires them, and I didn't have a clue how to continue. I watched some videos of the Underhang and saw people using the grapple worms, so now I'm trying to grapple through that area. It's a long area with big squares hanging from the ceiling, and unsurprisingly, I die every time. I wouldn't mind as much, if it didn't take me such a long time and so much effort just to get to this area. All I need is a hibernation chamber next to this area, and I'm set. Of course, I don't have one, which is why I watched speedruns of the game to see if this area is required to progress, and found that it's not.
So I have to ask- what will I find in that area after the grappling? Is it important? Why is there a linear path leading to it?

Thanks again for this fantastic game! 

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

Those fruits are really cool, but eating looks a bit like the slugcat is punching its face with them. Maybe add some easing / animation to smooth it out?

I agree. A corn on the cob nibble could look nice. Otherwise, pretty exciting!

Don't do it! You'll start with some corn on the cob, you'll go on to make some lizard on a cob, and before you know it, EVERYTHING'S ON A COB!

I remember Joar talking about this way back in the distant past. He talked about "real space" vs "virtual space", as in, when you've encountered a lizard in a room, and you move to the next one, its position is still stored and it's still being updated regularly, but once you've moved a certain number of rooms away from it, its storage is moved to the virtual space; i.e., its position is no longer stored, only "number of lizards in room i,j" or something like that. I remember being very excited for this feature specifically, for some reason...

That's impressive fan-art.

In that 2nd one, I can almost hear Mrs. Slugcat yelling: "Well, look who came home with NOTHING again! I just knew I should have never left Randy Jenkins for you. Father told me you were a good for nothin'..." Mrs. Slugcat is a total bitch if you were curious.

Hah! Yes she is!
But I think it's meant to depict the slugcat going out of the shelter for a new hunt, not returning to it.
The artwork, btw, is AMAZING! I'll be disappointed if Joar and James don't build a time machine to go and hire you 2 years ago!

@tortoiseandcrow 'The Last of Us' is actually based on the cordyceps. Adding it to Rain World would make it chilling indeed.

Regarding the personalities and scars thing- I don't have access to the codebase, nor do I have much knowledge of Unity, but it seems to me that these ideas are going a little overboard in a manner that won't be very noticeable to the player, and might slow down the engine, or the development. I'm currently working on the AI code in my own game, and I originally had a lot of ideas for it that I'm abandoning because they're just unnecessary. The current AI is almost completely randomized, and it looks fine.
I fear that these nuances in each creature's uniqueness will be for naught.

So I noticed an interesting outline effect on the creatures in the GIF. The graphics in general look a little unusual. Is it the GIF's fault, or a new effect? Also, what's with the wonky HUD? It's kinda wonky.
Anyway, looking good as usual! Would love to read more about how you're using those easing curves.

Yup, parallel. The shadows are created with a pretty simple mechanic. As the level is rendered, is saves the depth of each pixel, ie how far into the Z dimension it is.

Now we're in the shader, and we're rendering a pixel P.

What we need to do is find a... let's call it shadow check coordinate S.

S is to the left of and above P. How much to the left and above increases linearly with the depth at P.

So if P has a depth of 6, S might be 6 pixels to the left and 6 pixels above P. (Except it's actually scaled by a factor in the actual game, and can have different angles that are not necessarily 45 degrees)

When we have S we do a check whether or not coordinate S is occupied by any sprite. If yes, then coordinate P should be in shadow.

What this essentially means is that if a wall is far behind the play layer, the shadows will appear far down to the right of the sprites. If the wall is close, the shadows will appear close to the sprites. But it's on a per-pixel level, meaning that she shadows can be distorted by different shapes in the background.

Simple as that! If you want to do some digging through the thread I think I did this stuff back in May, so there are more details to get there  

So you're not limited to just floor and backwall shadows! Nicely done! I'd love to see some more complex background shapes.
Unfortunately, for my own game, I can't afford going per-pixel like this. I tried to implement dynamic shadows today in the most efficient way I could think of, and yet it still fell flat on its face at ~30 fps. Guess I'll have to stick to static shadows. I'll give that earlier material a read, though.

Edit: oh, and thank you, of course, for replying! I really appreciate it! 

Hey, Joar, can you please talk some about the lighting? I'm currently implementing shadows in my own game, and I'd love to get some tips on efficient dynamic lighting. For instance- is the lighting parallel-projected?  i.e. does it have a source point, or is it only directional? From what I can tell, the shadows fall mostly on the back-wall and the floor, which suggests that the whole world is viewed slightly from above.

Implemented lighting!

You should talk about it more! I love reading people's design philosophies, and you seem to have some interesting ideas!

So basically, as long as gameplay makes sense, realism is secondary. Sounds good to me! I think an additional Teleglitch-style FoV mode would be fun, though!

Hahaha wow that's awesome! Especially like the little mini flaps in between... You should release it for the iPhone, it has one entire more dimension of freedom than flappy bird, so it should do ^2 the $$$ according to simple maths!

Heh, thanks! Of course, every button I add will halve the profits, but you can't argue with simple maths!
Anyway, I wanted to ask- why do the lizards have a limited FoV? I get that it's realistic, but consider this- the player has a full FoV. In fact, he's practically omniscient. Wouldn't making the lizards know as much as the player be more realistic?

Hey again!
That first GIF of the bats inspired me to make this-

Download(jar)- http://www.mediafire.com/download/g9dqsjv9rbs433s/Flapper.jar
Controlled with the arrow keys. Hope you like it! I also might make a version with the different wing flap rates if I have some free time.

We need some tasty GIFs to go with all this delicious logic 
In any case, looking good as always!
Also, I just had this idea- is there a hunger parameter in the game? If so, it could affect behaviour in interesting ways; for example- a starved lizard might opt to continue its pursuit of the prey in spite of nearby threats (self-preservation is overridden, or rather, another facet of self-preservation is prioritized).

Hello!
I am iambored, and here are 4 reasons you won't ever get bored when I'm around-

• I've been playing games since I was 4 years old, and I play all kinds of stuff! From miniature game-jam games to classics from before I was even born.
• I like talking about games! I like discussing game design, programming (I'm a programmer), and most of all, the potential of video games as a form of self expression.
• I make interesting games (or so I've been told). Just take a look at my LD page, and stay tuned for my next big game, coming soon!
• I haven't even entered the third decade of my life yet, so you just know I'm hopelessly optimistic about games and their part in my financial future!

I'll see you guys around!

So there's no prototype at the moment. OK, that's fine. You take your time and make the best darn game you can!

I looked through 88-104, couldn't find a thing. I really wanna play this game! I mean, if Joar doesn't want us to play it at this stage, I completely respect that, but if he does, I'm willing to comply.