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[egoitzOsa]

I saw the video you posted and felt instantly in love with the game.
The atmosphere, the music, the gameplay... everything it´s great. Nice work man!

[JLJac]

Thank you very much!

Update 122
I found my map, and transfered it to a bigger sheet of paper. When looking at the map I realized that the single player campaign only has 7 levels, which is very limited compared to the like 40+ levels I've actually already made. So I decided to cram a few more of them into the single player world - it's a very small effort required and it will make the single player longer, giving me time to in peace and quiet introduce each color of lizard without rushing anything. So, now I'm well into extending the world map. Don't worry though, I won't make it too huge for me to handle. If I add maybe five hub rooms I'll have room for three or four additional swarm rooms, making the game 50% longer without much additional work.

[jO]

I've been following this thread from day 1 on, and I must say I really hope you'll have the breath to finish the game.
I love the aesthetics and the mood and idea and all the decisions you've taken within this thread; it's plain lovely and I am really looking forward to be able to play this game in it's final version. Keep on going!

[jamesprimate]

I found my map, and transfered it to a bigger sheet of paper. When looking at the map I realized that the single player campaign only has 7 levels, which is very limited compared to the like 40+ levels I've actually already made. So I decided to cram a few more of them into the single player world - it's a very small effort required and it will make the single player longer, giving me time to in peace and quiet introduce each color of lizard without rushing anything. So, now I'm well into extending the world map. Don't worry though, I won't make it too huge for me to handle. If I add maybe five hub rooms I'll have room for three or four additional swarm rooms, making the game 50% longer without much additional work.

MORE LEVELS

you dont know how happy this makes me...

[JLJac]

I've been following this thread from day 1 on, and I must say I really hope you'll have the breath to finish the game.
I love the aesthetics and the mood and idea and all the decisions you've taken within this thread; it's plain lovely and I am really looking forward to be able to play this game in it's final version. Keep on going!

Thank you for the kind words! Knowing that there's some anticipation out there certainly helps me catching my breath when it seems I'm out of it.

Update 123
James got inspired from the new levels, and made new music! Two new tracks of the same high standard as always. These tracks are a bit more background-ish according to me, so I think I'll try to fit them into the hub world areas. They could also work as a suspenceful background for a level with many not-too-dangerous lizards where the action is kind of even in intesity.

On my end I've been tampering a bit with the world map, and I also solved a problem where it would instantly transport you two rooms instead of just one upon entering a door. I went with an ugly solution, blocking the second of the double signals instead of finding the source for it and removing it. It's my game, I'm the only programmer and I do what I want

[JLJac]

Update 124
The completion of the game can basically be boiled down to four points from here:

1 - Create a working menu(With art)
2 - Finish the world map(Including tutorial level)
3 - Make different gametypes for custom mode
4 - Polish and bug fixes (I'm afraid of this one)

Today I did some work on the menu, and created a way for multiple menu pages to exist. Now you can go from the "Main menu" page to the "Custom Game" page but not back again. Yay, progress!

[C.D Buckmaster]

It's good to hear that you're getting closer to completion with this game, I'm looking forward to its release.

[RyanHuggins]

I read the first 3 or 4 pages and then the last 2 or 3 pages in their entirety.

This project is really inspiring! It's such a crazy cool concept and it really shows what goes into the production side of a game when you produce and design at the same time. Just reading this has probably made me a better game designer and I can only hope that eventually I'm as good at figuring out issues and coding as you are. Haha. With my project I want to do something like you are doing (as far as documentation), but with design (I don't plan on producing anything for a little while).

Regardless, I'm excited to play this game whenever it comes out!

[JLJac]

It's good to hear that you're getting closer to completion with this game, I'm looking forward to its release.

High hopes, low expectations, please

I read the first 3 or 4 pages and then the last 2 or 3 pages in their entirety.

This project is really inspiring! It's such a crazy cool concept and it really shows what goes into the production side of a game when you produce and design at the same time. Just reading this has probably made me a better game designer and I can only hope that eventually I'm as good at figuring out issues and coding as you are. Haha. With my project I want to do something like you are doing (as far as documentation), but with design (I don't plan on producing anything for a little while).

Regardless, I'm excited to play this game whenever it comes out!

Thank you! From here my development process seems like the most amateurish thing ever, but I guess I'm good at covering that up then haha! You write that you don't plan to start working on anything right now ~ if I could give you a tip I'd say this: Don't wait in order to create a huge project, stuff like that are probable to die in pre-production if you're a lone developer. When working alone it's better to just get started with a small project, because the only way to learn is to do. If you're a hobbyist like me the keyword would be small project, as everything takes (no joke) about 50 times as long as you think. Rain World was supposed to be a two week project. Right now It's been in development for 1.5 years, and is still most likely nowhere close to finished...

Update 125
A little menu stuff. Started touching upon saving and loading single player games.

[RyanHuggins]

Haha. No worries! I've made a few games, so I know the feeling of a 2 week or 1 month project becoming a several year thing. I also have a fairly large support group behind me for games (college for game design!) xD I'm excited to see where your project ends up though. You seem like you are nearing "completion". ;P

[jamesprimate]

personally, im psyched that the development is getting extended! it means more ideas and more polish! maybe... even MORE levels to make music for! 

[JLJac]

Haha. No worries! I've made a few games, so I know the feeling of a 2 week or 1 month project becoming a several year thing. I also have a fairly large support group behind me for games (college for game design!) xD I'm excited to see where your project ends up though. You seem like you are nearing "completion". ;P

Oh, you're in game college! o.0 Then I should obviously be on the recieving end of any exchange of advice haha! Maybe in my situation I shouldn't look at the gradual growth and feature creep as something bad, when doing this alone as a hobby maybe one could as well embrace the fact that there's no fixed deadline. I mean, there are a lot of people who have to cut in their projects in order to meet a deadline, and I don't. Plus, many indie game classics such as Cave Story seems to be the product of a fairly uncoordinated growth of a project.

Now of course I'm not alone any more, as I have James on board and he as well have hopes and expectations for this project. So I have to keep my s**t together to at least some degree! However, I'll of course take this:

personally, im psyched that the development is getting extended! it means more ideas and more polish! maybe... even MORE levels to make music for! 

as a que to keep pushing my deadline further and further away towards eternity ~ bad move James

Nah, just kidding

But, when we are on this lazy note, I should probably announce that I'm taking a christmas break, as you have probably noticed. And another thing - this spring I'm going on a longer trip, I'll get on the plane somewhere mid-january. James and I have been talking, and we're agreed that it would be impossible to rush a release until then, especially when taking things such as setting up a small website and the like into account. So instead the (already unspecified) release will be pushed two or three months forward into the next year. In the end this is a hobby, and as such I have to put life first, Rain World second. This said I myself don't think of it as something entirely negative for Rain World, as getting away from my screen and recieving some new impressions is good for my enthusiasm and inspiration, which in turn is what fuels the project.

In-between christmas break and travel break I hope to get some work done on the main menu, so that when I get back after my longer break full of inspiration I'm not met by a wall of user interface coding~ If I get a good chunk of menu made before I go that'll actually mean that most technical aspects of the game will be almost finished, and that means I can concentrate on giving it an awesome artistic presentation when I get back.

[RetsamugA]

this game looks really incredible and interesting, wanna play it now  . Graphically looks realy beautiful, and the character and enemy animations rocks. I had been looking some of the gamre videos on your youtube profile 

[Alex Strook]

This looks so fun !! Is the prototype still available ?

[JLJac]

Thank you! The prototype isn't available anymore, because I'm not too proud of it when looking at it in the light of today's progress.

The day after tomorrow I'll be leaving for Africa! From there on I know nothing at all, except that I expect to be back 12 weeks later.

This may be a backside of game making as a hobby - Rain World is not my job, and it has to adapt to my life rather than the other way around. Still, the game is fueled by my inspiration, and only staying in my room coding doesn't give me any of that. So in that way, what's good for me is good for Rain World.

Thank you all for your interest and your help. Don't worry about the game, I've put way too much time into it to not complete it. I'll be back in shorter than you expect, and I will bring with me new inspiration and renewed energy.

See you in a bit!

[DustyDrake]

But but, what if you die in Africa?
If Farcry has taught me anything it's that Africa is where you go to die.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Enjoy Africa and I'm sure it will help inspire your ideas on the game.

[jamesprimate]

But but, what if you die in Africa?
If Farcry has taught me anything it's that Africa is where you go to die.

worst case scenario, i have the alpha build! 

but i kid, JLJac will be back in a few months and in the meantime we'll hopefully be chatting about and improving RW.

Happy travels Joar!

[Nate_G]

Enjoy your trip dude! I love this project, and your travel will definitely have a hugely beneficial impact on the game. I look forward to seeing what a rejuvenated, newly inspired JLJac will come up with!

[JLJac]

Hello! This is just me checking in to let you know I'm alive and kicking. I've also actually been able to work a tiny bit on the game, starting to sort out how I want the menu to look like. Most of what has to be done is programming though, not art, and the african climate doesn't really encourage programming - it's simply too hot to think. I gradually get used to it though, and have high hopes I'll eventually be able to write some code.

Cheers!