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[Christian]

Not sure if it could work, but how does this sound:

When you leave a shelter in search of food, the slugcat starts off a bit scrawny and the body could have a dull greyish tone. As you eat, the slugcat would grow fuller and whiter, until you reach X amount and the slugcat will shake its head and not eat another or spit out the food, indicating that's it's eaten enough.

Or something along those lines

Reminds me of the scarf in Journey

UI that is integrated into the gameplay like those in Journey, Far Cry 2, and Dead Space are my favorite. Keeps the screen free of clutter and looks cool
It's called diegetic UI. Pullling out your map and compass in Far Cry, your health and inventory as holograms in Dead Space, etc. The info is part of the game world, rather than meters and such designed solely for the players

[Teod]

Not sure if it could work, but how does this sound:

When you leave a shelter in search of food, the slugcat starts off a bit scrawny and the body could have a dull greyish tone. As you eat, the slugcat would grow fuller and whiter, until you reach X amount and the slugcat will shake its head and not eat another or spit out the food, indicating that it's eaten enough.

Or something along those lines

I think that would work better not as progression within each cycle, but as a character state changing between them: Number of bats you've eaten should change your weight in the next cycle. Eating less than needed will get you visibly thinner (repeated undereating will get you thinner and thinner until you die), while eating the right amount or more will help you keep your normal weight. That would give the player a bit of a buffer zone to figure out the right amount without any direct indication. Although, that could be a little bit too soft on the player and against the unforgiving brutality theme of the game.

As for the amount you've already consumed, sound can be used to indicate that: make the slugcat squee in different tones after eating each one (maybe even unwillingly alarming nearby enemies) and have growling tummy if he's starving. Also simple indication: speed at which the bats are devoured - nearly instant for the first few, slower for more, gourmet-slow for the ones above the norm.

[gimymblert]

@story and mystery
Look at all the intense discussion to know what really is a "slugcat"! It works

[jamesprimate]

after a few crash and burn attempts at doing shadow urban "in the darkness" level design last night, it occurred to me that *maybe* doing levels without 1.) the illumination system in place 2.) any of the dark-specific creature ecology or 3.) any of the region tiles done... is probably a terrible idea. i was so excited though!!

switching gears a bit, going to focus on something we know exactly what were doing with, the second aerial region: sky islands.


detail:https://i.imgur.com/2fiTR1w.png

Joar whipped up some cool ornate looking ornamented tiles and has some radio antennae looking stuff in the works that will give this region a very unique look (think of a refined, brass-hued oasis set on scaffolding high above the clouds), and with that i should be able to get through a good chunk of this region while he's busy working on... dun dun dun... the dreaded and much put-off level editor overhaul. 

[JLJac]

We're really stoked about this region, because it's one that we've had a lot of ideas for for a long time. I also think it's pretty much the only region so far that we've had some pretty clear visual concepts for going into it, so let's see how that plays out. If it shows to be a super benefit we might want to do more concept art etc in the future before throwing ourselves into a new region. That said James has been improvising really solid visual identities for all the other regions (maybe with the exception of the first one, which was originally a bit here and there as James was learning as he made it, but which has been reeled in to a much more solid aesthetic identity in the last overhaul). So let's see what happens! I think that if James has been able to make as good looking regions as we've seen so far without much coordinated planning, this new region has potential to look really amazing just because of the fact that we had this visual idea, making sure that I was on the same wave length while making the tiles as James will be when composing the geometries.

And now I think there's no way to put off the inevitable any more... All of the candidates for next upcoming regions need rooms larger than 3 screens, so the overhaul has to happen. So, good bye for a couple of days! I'll write some small little progress reports I think, but probably not proper updates as there won't be all that much to talk about.

[jamesprimate]

I also think it's pretty much the only region so far that we've had some pretty clear visual concepts for going into it

ha! maybe the only region YOUVE had clear visual concepts for going into ive had these regions planned for over a year! though its true we usually do new tiles later in the process. but its true sky islands should look pretty niiiiiiiiice. now i just have to live up to the hype O_O

[JLJac]

ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ granted! But earlier you've had to work with whatever random tiles I happened to throw together for that region (me being the one with no visual concept) whereas here we have a more coordinated idea of how things should look! Basically what I'm getting at is that "I also know what this area will look like!" ... which is obviously not true, as you always ends up using the tiles in unexpected ways...

One thing that is nice for sure though is to go into a region with the region specific tiles already in place! Usually you'll have gotten like 40% through before I manage to deliver the first batch  Man, tiles take sooo long... My latest estimation is two full days for a set of region specific tiles 

[Christian]

The regions have all had such a consistent tone, like they're all part of the same world yet also have completely different atmospheres

How long have you had the ideas for places like Chimney Canopy and Drainage and Shadow Urban, for vultures and leeches, etc? Were they always there as concepts during the Lingo-build era? Or did you guys brainstorm them post-Kickstarter after the expanded scope became a possiblity?

--
And any thoughts on those ideas for displaying food count and hunger without meters and numbers?

[JLJac]

Some of the regions are loosely rooted in old concepts from the tiny world attached to the lingo build - in which a region was generally no bigger than 3-4 screens. For example the lingo world had a region called Chimney Canopy which actually looked more like what Sky Islands will look like, as well as some hints at Suburban and Garbage Waste like areas. But pretty much all of what you'll see in the final game will be James' creations, a majority of the areas James has come up with have no equivalent in the lingo build, and those that have have bloomed and developed vastly since. The lingo world was about 20 rooms if I remember correctly, whereas James estimates the Unity world to be around 700 rooms. So yeah, maybe there were some little sparks in there long ago, but for all practical purposes James has built this world ground-up.

For creatures, the ideas of the lingo-era were humble as well. Most of it has developed post-kickstarter, and quite a lot of the creature ideas are not solely mine any more, rather they're a blend of James' ideas for what would go well with the regions mixed up with the backer suggestions. We have quite a lot of backer suggestions, so we generally try to combine them with James' region-specific requests whenever possible. I definitely have the final touch and most of the control of how creatures will look and behave, but the seeds for the ideas generally come from elsewhere now. For example, the Vulture came out of James wanting a big flying predator for the aerial regions, but from this rather loose concept the actual creature grew out of back-and-forth between me and the computer, trying out what worked, what looked good, and so on. The designs are generally like this, not super goal oriented but rather a dance with the technical limitations.

I really like this, and think it's one of the great benefits of being both artist and programmer - I don't have to draw something and imagine exactly how it should be just to later be disappointed by the implementation, and conversely I don't have to try to program a creature that might not work technically in order to meet an artist's expectations. Instead I can explore a lot of technical possibilities while constantly re-evaluating the artistic idea in order to find the place where it looks best.

On the UI stuff, I don't quite know... I don't want to mess with the Slugcat's appearance too much, as its silhouette is kind of iconic and I wouldn't want it to spend the majority of its time distorted by status effects that might make it less aesthetically pleasing - this is after all the character you look at 90% of the time you play, and the proportions are quite fine-tuned to be where I like to have them, so if I can avoid skewing them I will. Also we have this thing with no health bar and no lasting status effect - I want your state to be binary dead/alive, because I think it feels freer and less claustrophobic that way. If you're alive, you have as good a chance as ever, if you're dead, you're dead. No weird grey areas in-between. The exception would be the leeches, they could be argued to be a sort of "status effect" as they slow you down in the water, but this follows a very clear causality which you can observe with your eyes.

But, haha, I don't really have any good ideas myself for the UI thing. Surely some sort of symbol (just 5 dots or similar) should be better than straight up arabic numerals, but hopefully there are other options as well. Just having the slugcat refuse to eat more bats once you've caught enough is a possibility, but that solution really communicates nothing but the absolute bare-bones tiniest amount of information you need to survive - it would be pretty nice to know what amount of bats you need as you set out on your hunt. Another possibility is to have it always be the same amount of bats, but I don't know how well that'd work with the level design.

[Christian]

700 rooms would be incredible. The base in Shadow Complex had 780, but a military base aesthetic can't compete with the variety of Rain World's environments

The dots ideas sounds interesting. I played NaissanceE last year and it had a very minimalist UI: a single circle that would flash as your character become winded as you sprinted. And it would only appear while sprinting.

Perhaps rather than dots, you could use the glyph symbols? And only have them appear when you eat a bat, otherwise keeping the screen clear.

[Woodledude]

You could just have the slugcat burp out a number whenever it woke up, and whenever it ate a bat... Although really, you'd want something persistent, seeing as one might forget the number or not see it. A less oddball idea would be to have either a row of small, hollow circles representing how many bats you need to eat, and dots representing eaten bats, with dots outside of circles representing the "extra" bats.

One more idea... You could have it so that the player could view a diagram of the slugcat's stomach with the Tab key. Like this:



THe idea is that the empty spaces in the stomach represent how much one needs to eat to survive the coming rain. You could possibly dynamically change the amount of circles in the stomach, or just have it be that the stomach must be full to survive the rain, etcetera. For overflow, you could have a gullet appear whenever the player overate, like this:



The idea being that when the stomach is full, the player can the store extra food in the gullet. You could also make it so that you could only hawk up food for the pups from your gullet, and not your stomach. I'm not sure this is as minimalistic as you'd like, but it makes sense to me - The slugcat obviously knows how hungry it is and how much it needs to eat to survive an upcoming rain, but it wouldn't think about that in numbers, or a group of bats - It would think about that via its stomach and how full it was.

Edit: Would have spoilered those, but... Probably made them way too big regardless. Sorry about that.

[Christian]

That's a really cool idea, Woodle

[Teod]

I don't think the stomach outline is needed. The slugcat probably doesn't know his own anatomy, for him the hunger is an abstract feeling.
Burping idea is interesting. If you make circles look like bubbles, burping them out would make some in-world sense.

[fall_ark]

Speaking of hunger/hibernation...why would the slugcat know how many bats it would need anyway? How can it tell, and more importantly, how can the player tell how many days of rain there will be until the next dry cycle? I think there's a gif of the slugcat going into the shelter, and a calendar like UI shows up, marking each rainy day with a bat or something. That would go against the current vision, no?

Burping and refusing to eat are both great ideas. I don't know if the devs would go with the stomach idea or some other abstract way of showing the numbers, but PLEASE make the slugcat rub its stomach as the animation, maybe with a nod/shake afterwards.

[Woodledude]

I don't think the stomach outline is needed.

I'm inclined to disagree. While the slugcat certainly doesn't know what a stomach is or does, at least not in any meaningful respect, it knows what hunger is. Conversely, the player cannot feel the slugcat's hunger - Though they do know, most likely, that the stomach is linked to hunger. It's essentially a metaphor to translate the slugcat's sensation of hunger into something the player can directly and intuitively interpret. In other words, the stomach outline is only showing the slugcat's thoughts in the sense that it is conveying the meaning of the dots as related to hunger. The slugcat isn't literally thinking "I need to fill my stomach sac with food bits", it's just a way for the game to convey the need to eat bats to the player. The dots are the actual metric, the stomach shows what the metric represents.

tl;dr: Stomach isn't stomach, it is hungriness.

EDIT: Not that my suggestion is the best thing in the world. I concede that it could be interpreted incorrectly, and isn't necessarily the best way to tackle the problem.

[jamesprimate]

def have pondered over the "stomach UI" idea before, and it may be worth some further consideration when we get to that point. cant see your pics, but i havent been able to figure out a way to make it unobtrusive.

and dont worry, the bat calendar was in the old lingo alpha from a long time ago. not something were thinking of implementing in the actual game.

[Christian]

I don't think the stomach outline is needed. The slugcat probably doesn't know his own anatomy, for him the hunger is an abstract feeling.
Burping idea is interesting. If you make circles look like bubbles, burping them out would make some in-world sense.

I think animals do have a sense of anatomy, at least in the abstract sense of  "this is important". A lion knows by instinct to attack a zebra's windpipe. Spitting cobras deliberately aim for the eyes. Injuried animals lick their wounds. So I imagine a semi-intelligent creature like a slugcat might have at least a vague understanding of its anatomy

[theEasternDragon]

I'm inclined to disagree. While the slugcat certainly doesn't know what a stomach is or does, at least not in any meaningful respect, it knows what hunger is. Conversely, the player cannot feel the slugcat's hunger - Though they do know, most likely, that the stomach is linked to hunger. It's essentially a metaphor to translate the slugcat's sensation of hunger into something the player can directly and intuitively interpret.

I strongly disagree with this analogy. Those of you that watched the "Shelter 2 review" a page or so ago, you know what I mean. The idea of appealing to the slugcat in you, not the human, is essential. Sure it knows what hunger is, but displaying a stomach is a bad idea, and even if you didn't do that, (because said slugcat does not know what a stomach looks like), then you would have to do something abstract, which would also be un-intuitive. It is, as Woodledude said, something to show the player what you are trying to convey. There should not be a "player". You must be the slugcat. As soon as there is an attempt to try to convey something to the player, then the magic is lost.

This said, I am more in favor of there being a visual cue, or sound prehaps, (maybe a low stomach growl?), that conveys this.

Those of you who didn't see the review:

[Christian]

I'm inclined to disagree. While the slugcat certainly doesn't know what a stomach is or does, at least not in any meaningful respect, it knows what hunger is. Conversely, the player cannot feel the slugcat's hunger - Though they do know, most likely, that the stomach is linked to hunger. It's essentially a metaphor to translate the slugcat's sensation of hunger into something the player can directly and intuitively interpret.

I strongly disagree with this analogy. Those of you that watched the "Shelter 2 review" a page or so ago, you know what I mean. The idea of appealing to the slugcat in you, not the human, is essential. Sure it knows what hunger is, but displaying a stomach is a bad idea, and even if you didn't do that, (because said slugcat does not know what a stomach looks like), then you would have to do something abstract, which would also be un-intuitive. It is, as Woodledude said, something to show the player what you are trying to convey. There should not be a "player". You must be the slugcat. As soon as there is an attempt to try to convey something to the player, then the magic is lost.

This said, I am more in favor of there being a visual cue, or sound prehaps, (maybe a low stomach growl?), that conveys this.

Those of you who didn't see the review:

I had missed that. Great review and I totally agree. Those critiques fit so well as a guideline of what to do and what not to do in Rain World. I'm definitely of the opinion that the best way to convey hunger and X amount of food needed should be through animation and visual cues, rather than meters and menus. I like that idea of stomach growling/rumbling. That could be a good sound cue. The rumbling/growling could lessen as you eat more until it subsides, conveying that the slugcat is full.

[tortoiseandcrow]

I think the stomach growl could be a nice strategy, perhaps with a "rumbling stomach" animation after eating. The more full the slugcat gets, the less pronounced the growl/animation.



Also James, I'm curious as to whether for the most part you're actually using just random "junk" samples like the one you threw together for Joar, or you're generally taking a more deliberate/thematic approach to the choice of audio sources? Either way, it sounds fantastic, I have to say. I really love the depth of texture you can get from sample-based music.