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[JLJac]

THANK YUO!

Update 94
Making levels, making levels. For the first time like, ever, I've done something according to my policy - recognizing a demand for a feature when making a level and then adding it, rather than adding features with abandon and then trying to cram them into the levels. The feature in question is the ability to mark a tile as forbidden for flies to swarm, form chains or hang around unecessarily on. A level I made had a room that was only accessable to flies, and quickly turned very boring when all the flies decided to just hang out in that one room (why shouldn't they, right?). Also made it possible to mark tiles for spawning flies on level startup.

Have been working with a lot of juicy palettes and light options as well. The idea that the game will be monochrome is given up, it will have pretty vibrant colors actually. I'm eager to show you some of the stuff, but at the same time don't want to spoil the whole game in here. Soon I'll give you something though, I just want to have enough material to feel that whatever I'm giving away is not a substancial part of it.

[JLJac]

Update 95
Made a little more art for the levels.

Gave the lizards a "jaw strenght" stat, that regulates a random chance of how often a player that is caught is killed instantly and how often they are alive to be saved. This is to not make the players too comfortable with always surviving a lizard bite - I'm worrying that players in co-op mode might find ways to exploit it. For the pink one, that I view as the "standard" lizard, it's a chance of 1/12. On top of this there's a small chance of death every frame you're being held in a lizard's mouth, so that the player who's supposed to save you doesn't relax too much, but has a reason to chase frantically. The games get pretty hectic!

[jamesprimate]

Hm! Is this going to be a multiplayer only thing, or can i flail about on the buttons for a chance to escape the jaws in single player as well?


oh and just for the official record: i AM doing things update ;] 34 minutes of music in usable form and we're beginning to stitch together background ambiance audio. JLJac's level design for rainworld is *really* cool in that everything is connected with an underlying logic and many areas can be accessed a few different ways. I would like the ambiance audio to reflect that by thinking of it first as world-wide 'geographical regions' with specific sound qualities rather than simple discreet levels.

Simple example: there are many "high" levels where the protagonist animal is totally "outside" and heavy buffeting wind will be used as an aspect of that sound design. It would be cool if the areas that were geographically close to these "high" levels could still vaguely hear those buffeting winds, etc., etc. So basically, Im looking to create a cohesive sound-world that, in addition to reflecting the specific level design, also gives the player a subtle sonic picture of where they are at in the overall game world.

or maybe it'll just sound like a messy garble and suck! we'll find out

/audio nerd ramble ramble

[Qqwy]

Wow. I've been away for quite a long time. You've done so much. It looks so beautiful, JLJac  . Congrats!

[JLJac]

Thank you! Now some of the bigger graphical assets are coming together, and the visual style of the game is slowly taking another direction. I think you'll like it!

James, I think that thing will be kept to co-op play, because no matter how hard I would make getting away by yourself someone would eventually learn to master it, and then the most dominant game play element (getting away from lizards) would be taken away from the game.

Update 96
A lot has happened. James has been creating a set of super awesome ambient sounds, that really help setting a mood. Next up is implementing those. Together with the music I'm convinced they'll make magic happen and take the game to a level which is higher than the sum of the parts.

I've done a few things programming-wise. Most importantly I've added a new "creature", that is a .... bubble barnacle - or rather a bubble coming out of a short cut entrance (the source of all life in this world, it seems). The bubbles just sit around there, and when flies touch them they are trapped inside. Once a few flies are trapped the bubble retracts, and the creature inside the short cut presumably consumes the flies.

The fun thing is their self defence, which consists of popping violently. This can throw a player around pretty far, and is generally hated by lizards.

Other things added:
Blue lizards (which are the lightest, and most vulnerable to rocks) react the same way to a player holding a rock as to a player holding a stone - by attacking from above. In some situations it's really fun to watch, like if you're being hunted on the ground by a lizard and makes it to pick up a pebble or a spear from the ground. The lizard can then turn away from you, climb up a wall, climb on the ceiling out above you and then drop down on you. It looks pretty smart!
Red lizards can destroy spears.
Fixed a bug in the level renderer which made short cuts invisible if there was a blurred light overlapping them.
Created a dynamic system for how each level can have a "light behaviour" attached to it - right now there are "no light", "static", "clouds" and "thunder" to choose from.
Fixed some random bugs concerning light not being displayed over the entire screen.
Fixed some bugs in the level renderer.
Made it more reasonable what lizards tend to pick up what objects.
Added features in the level editor - such as a slider to decide how much dripping water a level will contain. More of those are needed.

There are a few important things on my to-do list that I need to get to ASAP, but I keep pushing forward. Among those are:
An acutal look for the hives, so that you can see where a fly will be able to burrow down.
Settings for max amount of flies and fly respawn rates for a level.
Ambience sound and music implementation.
Start on building the actual main menu.
Active decorative objects for the world to make it appear more alive.

Hopefully the upcoming things will magically progress 6 times faster than the things I've already done, and the game will ever be finished!

[JLJac]

Screenshot!

This is the swarm level of the "Canopy" area, which is high up and set during the sun set/rise. This is the second last area according to the recommended order.



The blue of the lizard will probably switch to the blue effect color of the level (seen here in the signs) to create visual consistency, if I ever get around to it. It's a hassle because some of the lizards have colored body parts that are bitmaps unchangeable from the code.

On that - I've been doing a little bit of variety among the lizards look-wise, they have a little different looking eyes and so on. The red one has huge teeth.

For those of you who have been around a long time it might be fun to notice the little machine boxes with 2x2 grated holes in them, those have been around for a looong time and were originally made mostly to check out that the voxelly graphics renderer thingy worked properly. I grew fond of them and now they'll probably make it into the final thing.

EDIT: Added a new plant, along with a new way to add plants - one by one. This framework will come in real useful later.

[JLJac]

Update 97
Aaand I added the ability to define a random seed for an effect in the level editor, which means that if some plant or some wires or whatever feature turned out good you can actually keep them, while changing something else that you didn't like. Made a quick test where I kept an entire level the same but changed only one plant, and layered the outputs over each other to check - it seems to work! This is a good time saver when it comes to making levels.

That's it for today!

[JLJac]

Update 98
More art and level design.

Added a little spark that travels through the short cuts, so that some of the more hidden ones are made a little more visible.

[JLJac]

Update 99
Making levels making levels making levels.
I've more or less created the entire world in dull grey placeholder graphics, and now realize that the world needs to be extended a little bit. This is a great victory, as it means I for the first time ever planned something a little too small rather than vastly too big! My plan is to finish what I have so that it's more or less ready for release, and then carefully add the stuff that I want without letting feature creep get a hold of me.

More excitingly I've started to experiment with James' stuff, music and ambient sounds. It's awesome!

James and I are now contemplating on how the music will be implemented - the setup makes it hard to go with a conventional "one song per area" solution, and it's also hard to tie songs to events as there's not really any fixed narrative in the game. The jukebox needs to be somewhat aware of what's going on, and at the same time be able to surprise the player and not just be playing all the songs on shuffle. It's a challenge!

[Cragz]

Just registered to express how much I've enjoyed the devlog to date. Been lurking up until now but your game drove me to take the plunge and join!

Looking forward to update 100

[JLJac]

Thank you!  I'm most honored!
The irony of this is that your first interaction with this thread led to - the postponing of update 100 hahaha! I had planned to do a regular "Did some level design" post, but if there's expectations to meet I'll have to be able to give you at least something, and thus, we wait.
Don't be discouraged though, keep interacting!

Update 99.5
James sent me some rain sounds, and boy, did the scare the crap out of me! There are a few versions to pick from, and they all sound like different circles in rain hell. Suddenly I feel unsure whether my graphics can do justice to this when it comes to metal and stone being melted, pounded and disintegrated to nothingness. I'll have to look over my filters...

[Cragz]

Oops! I didn't intend for you to do anything out of the ordinary for my sake!

Just keep on keepin' on knowing that there are Interweb folk out here who really like the look of what you're doing and appreciate your dedication, even when it gets a bit quiet.

[DustyDrake]

...but if there's expectations to meet...

But we're always staring, watching, judging, expecting of you.
You can never escape it nor should you want to.

[mokesmoe]

Looking forward to update 99.9!

[JLJac]

But we're always staring, watching, judging, expecting of you.
You can never escape it nor should you want to.

Haha this is particularly scary as I have no idea how many people are actually reading this.... o.0

Looking forward to update 99.9!

Hehehe more expectations!

Oops! I didn't intend for you to do anything out of the ordinary for my sake!

Just keep on keepin' on knowing that there are Interweb folk out here who really like the look of what you're doing and appreciate your dedication, even when it gets a bit quiet.

Thanks! I'll try too keep those quiet times as short as possible - I know that I myself prefer reading devlogs that update with small and unimportant stuff to devlogs that have long periods of quiet between fewer, more important updates. It's always fun to see that something's happening, even if it isn't very significant!

Update 99.8
Added screen shaking, for when the rain approaches.

[Caran Elmoth]

Ok, I have to admit it: coming here only now, I just managed to see the video and to read some bits here and there... but it's been enough to pick my interest. I'm following this thread to see where this is going

[JLJac]

Good to have you here!

Update 99.8.5
Introduced some effects for when the rain is approachning. At first the music fades out. Then a rain sound slowly starts to fade in. Then the light dissapears, as if the sun is covered by clouds. Then, in the final step, the screen starts to shake. By now the rain sound is a loud roar. One effective way I found to make the rain sound louder without bursting any speakers was to fade out the other sounds as the rain is faded in, so that everything else is muted when the rain is at its loudest.

Lizards and flies take shelter in their respective holes and hives as the rain is approaching.

Other things I've been doing include enabling effect colors for levels to be either reflective or superflourescent. This means that they have a little aura of blurred light either by themselves or if light is falling on them.

[jamesprimate]

oh man, i cant wait to check out the next build :O This sounds incredible!

[DustyDrake]

Is... rain bad or something?

[jamesprimate]

JLJac explains it more thoroughly earlier, but long story short, YES; rain = bad. On rain world, the environment is BRUTAL. Deadly rains pound the surface constantly, only letting up for a brief period of time during which the animals on the surface all emerge from hiding to hunt. Most of the game takes place during these hunting periods, where you have to catch enough food to survive the next rainy period, while avoiding being eaten by the vicious flora and fauna of course, then return to the shelter of your den. And if you are out too long... the rains will tear you apart