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[Paul]

Maybe you could have some lizards or lantern mice climbing around/hanging from the arches so they subtly illuminate the architecture? Or bioluminescent plant life/vines wrapped around the struts, if there are any plans for that kind of stuff

This sounds like a great idea, if it fits in with the theme of the level. Such a waste to lose that awesome artwork to darkness

[Christian]

Hey, James, thanks for mentioning LiquidSketch in the SuperCoil thread. Somehow I totally missed that game and I love puzzlers like that. Just downloaded it

[fylth]

I definitely think that a range of bioluminescent vines, fungus and insects could be used (in small numbers) to give some areas a bit more character and show off the architecture, would add an air of damp moldyness too

[Crispy75]

The occasional firefly-like creature buzzing through (can they be put on background layers?) would be great. Keeps the darkness around most of the time, but gives intermittent glimpses of the architecture, while showing off the nice per-pixel lighting.

[JLJac]

I'd actually disagree. From a screenshot it looks like the darkness is just boring and you don't see anything, but in-game the entire thrill is moving around and only being able to map out the geometry one piece of a time. It feels like a nice mystery exploration situation, and that would be ruined if you lit the rooms or placed a lot of glowing things that could be used as reference points. I think the dark areas are going to be way better in-game than on screen shots, but let's keep it that way as it's otherwise officially known that Rain World is best in gifs... so let's let the poor actual game have something going for it 

Icky darkness creature is starting to be done. Christian's super gross gifs are on to something, but I won't give too much away ~ The behavior and the skin is done, now to make it work in the connected world. This thing is horrifying! It hates light though, so when you go down there, grab a lantern mouse and run as fast as you can!

[Christian]

This thing is horrifying! It hates light though, so when you go down there, grab a lantern mouse and run as fast as you can!

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.....


 

[oahda]

"damn it is LITERALLY my nightmare"
Hmmm...

Heeey, spiders are great. Pest control, spinners of material stronger than steel and won't do a poop to you! Stop hating and watch this!

[Christian]

Hey guys, have you seen Feist? It's finally releasing this summer and the description sounds somewhat familar

Feist is a beautiful, poetic and action packed game, with an enchanting and spooky atmosphere. It tells the story of a small creature surviving in a mysterious, hostile world. Once players escape the crude crate the strange, lumbering beasts used for a trap, players journey through sprawling forests, mountains, caves, and swamps, brought to life in a cinematic physical-effects style reminiscent of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, or Hedgehog in the Fog.

The dreamlike world of Feist is a striking and mesmerizing place, but dangerous AI-controlled enemies keep pushing the players toward their fate. Enemies and traps, without scripted sequences, interact and produce surprising emergent consequences, creating a physics-driven environment with its own rules. The gorgeous, lush backgrounds are brought to life by a haunting and restrained soundtrack.

http://playfeist.net/

[jamesprimate]

oh geez youre right huh. right down to the description and everything

well thats what we get for taking so damn long 

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

At least ... they don't have the organic alive feeling.

[Christian]

oh geez youre right huh. right down to the description and everything

well thats what we get for taking so damn long 

Yeah, but Rain World has hype, recognition, and a unique atmosphere on its side. Was reading about Feist; it's been in development since 2008 and was originally going to release in 2012. Devs have been kind of quiet for a while, so the game feel off the radar.

And it has that Limbo-inspired look. Which, while cool, doesn't exactly compare to RW's style

[TopherPirkl]

Yeah, I wouldn't stress about Feist. I'd draw more comparisons between it and Limbo than it and RW. I think you've got an exceptionally unique game on your hands regardless.

[JLJac]

Oh, really cool! I wouldn't really sweat it either though. The description sounded a bit similar, but the visual style and setting reminds much more of Limbo, and the gameplay seems quite different as well - more like a fighting/action game where the characters are large on the screen and geometries that are floor-oriented rather than maze like.

Also, there's a lot of room for good stuff I obviously design stuff in RW as I do because I like it that way, so when someone else is doing something similar I generally tend to like that as well haha! I wouldn't suggest that actual game makers that have actual releases in their belts are taking inspiration from me, but I really do like procedural animation and one of my aspirations for this project is that more people will get into that sort of stuff ~ So if it's already getting more common I'm stoked. Hopefully in 5 years the term "game animation" will naturally refer to the creation of body movements that are deeply tied to AI and environmental context, rather than just cartoon animation put on top of a moving block. Every step in that direction is exciting!

[Teod]

This thing is horrifying! It hates light though, so when you go down there, grab a lantern mouse and run as fast as you can!

Wait. If it's afraid of light does it mean that it doesn't hunt lantern mice? What's its usual food source then?

[TheWing]

The world seems to share similiar elements to Nifflas' Knytt: Underground, but gameplay is very different. And the world feels way more alive due to all the moving stuff, ad the way platforming is smooth and fluid :3

Keep up the damn good work!

I've been following the discussion for a good 10 pages and still haven't posted and I'm getting confused when this isn't in my "show new replies to your posts"-list... so FINALLY posting to follow

[chriswearly]

This thing is horrifying! It hates light though, so when you go down there, grab a lantern mouse and run as fast as you can!

Wait. If it's afraid of light does it mean that it doesn't hunt lantern mice? What's its usual food source then?

Don't forget that the KS is bringing 10 new creatures to the game. So Creature X might eat one of the to-be-added ones.
And/or, Creature X might simply be easily startled by sudden light. But the soft glow of the hanging Mice might not alarm it when it's looking for food.

Also, if this is what I think it is, heads up Alpha players: https://twitter.com/BRIGHTPRIMATE/status/601017160455102464

[jamesprimate]

Nah nah this is just an internal build for adult swim (if I can get the damn thing uploaded!) nothing to get excited about

[JLJac]

It's really hard to not give stuff away, I'm so used to communicating with you guys! The last thing I will say is that Chris is on to something - light provides safety only momentarily.

The world seems to share similiar elements to Nifflas' Knytt: Underground, but gameplay is very different. And the world feels way more alive due to all the moving stuff, ad the way platforming is smooth and fluid :3

Thanks and welcome! Yeah I'm also a big fan of Nifflas stuff, used to play a lot of Knytt back in the day. What's really fascinating to me about those games is how effectively exploration is used to propel the player - if I remember correctly most of the games had some collectibles scattered that sort of motivated you going all over, but those were really secondary, mostly you just kept going because you wanted to see more. And it was pretty much only about the environments, the enemies were simple and few. If I remember correctly there was one or two of the games where the enemy/danger aspect was toned down almost to zero, the game was only about the joy of exploration and some light platforming challenges. It's pretty awesome how a lot of hand-made rooms can acquire that degree of value or "aura" just by you having to move between them and explore them. If you had screenshots of all the rooms in a folder you'd just flick through them pretty indifferently, but because you had to find them yourself in this huge sprawling world they each felt like a discovery.

Rain World is not as conceptually tight as those games though, it can't as easily be reduced to a core like that as it has lots of other stuff going on as well (AI, emergent interactions) for better and for worse. But we'd definitely like to harness some of that joy of exploration from the Knytt games if possible! And I think James has been doing an awesome job so far in making each room unique while still tied to its region, which is in turn stylistically tied to the game's general atmosphere as a whole. If we could pull off the stunt of having Knytt-style joy of exploration and then add the AI stuff etc on top, I would be really happy!

In progress news, I finished up creature X to the degree that it works in a connected world, reacts properly to the rain cycle, etc. Which is more than what can be said about some of the other "finished" creatures haha  Garbage worms still don't have a solid functionality for placement in the world, for example. But I'll get to it! In the mean time, I'm doing some sound stuff that James has been asking for - fixing a few errant sound triggers, adding in new sound triggers, etc. The next big challenge is water sounds, that's going to be a big one! Either it proves easier than expected, and just firing off random somewhat-contextual watery sounds will blend together and work really well, or, well, we're in for a ride!

[Christian]

I always imagined the garbage worms as this world's natural garbage disposals; they'd be attracted to corpses and drag them into their burrows or something like that.

[jamesprimate]

Just going through some numbers, so here is the terrain report for Rain World so far: 7 regions (well, 6.5 really), 270 rooms, 359 screens.

As you know there are 12 regions planned, plus additional set pieces and transitions. So its gonna go be deeeeep!