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[jamesprimate]

is it that bundle listed above? if so, it certainly should give you access! use this: http://www.humblebundle.com/resender

[JLJac]

Update 432
Woho! The last couple of days I've been working on a new part of infrastructure for the game which will be very important for the visual aspects. Basically the game consists of a bunch of rooms, as know. The pipeline was that the macromedia director application spit those rooms out in an incredibly slow rendering process, and generally everything that had to do with that room specifically had to happen in the director editor and then go through that rendering. Now I have set up this new separate system which will mostly be supporting the visual stuff. Basically it's a second .txt file that contains data on what palette the room is using, if the room is considered by the game as an outdoors or indoors location, and other data that will come along such as the placement of cosmetic objects. There's a little editor interface for this stuff in the Unity application, where you can load and save the settings etc. Also there's an inheritance system in place, where you can create setting templates for the regions and have the rooms in that region inherit from the templates. So you can do stuff such as setting up a region template that contains the palette for a region, and then all rooms will have that palette unless you specifically tell a room to override it.

There isn't all that much settings at this point, but the idea is to start filling that stuff in now. Thing I have in mind is for example region-specific fauna of little cosmetic insects, palette fades as you move through the world, and so on. Placement of ambient sounds and different game objects will also branch off of this system in the future.

I've passed all of this over to Prime Content Creator James Primate, so he can start working with his regions. Before sending it over I've been trying it out a little myself though, and already I think there is some cool stuff that can be done. For example I've made it so that the interior rooms in Sky Islands have a different, slightly shadier, palette than the exteriors. There's going to be a lot of little graphical touches like that coming up!

Anyhow, with the system up and running I can now move on to more specific cosmetic stuff. Hope to have something gifable soon!

[Christian]

Last week James mentioned an E3 build. Will alpha backers be getting their hands on that build too?

[fall_ark]

Speaking of which, there really needs to be a "official website" for the game, preferably with a preorder function
(independent of the Humble Store Early Access one), or at least a newsletter, otherwise the interests generated by E3 and reviews would just dissipate because there's no easy way to check the game out.

[jamesprimate]

we are *terrible* businessmen

[Christian]

we are *terrible* businessmen

Just slap together a Tumblr page, to use as a quick homepage for the time being. Some of the current GIFs, links to here, Steam, the KS page, Humble pre-orders. Just some kind of central page with current info and screenshots. To be honest, I love following this game, and it's my most anticipated indie, but every main page about the game - the devlog opening post, the portfolio page, the KS page - it's all woefully out-of-date and those are the first things that show up when you google "Rain World"

And a Tumblr page can look nice. Check out Witchmarsh and Megasphere

[jamesprimate]

oh, we have a website: http://rainworldgame.com

and like everything else it is absurdly out of date. but its like... we could spend a day updating that or we could do *actual work*, and with the crazy impossible deadlines we are slaving for, you can see what our choice tends to be.

but that said, there is a plan! (sort of.) If a couple of things come together we might be doing a re-brand for E3, fingers crossed. If that winds up being the case, updated website stuff is definitely in order. Also, a little bit further down the line once we start showing off the multiplayer build, i'll be gearing things up for streamers, and that will be our big pre-release push so efforts will be made.

for now though, keeping the head down and grinding it out.

[Crispy75]

Surely this is the sort of thing your publisher can help out with?

[jamesprimate]

holy shit! joar sent me a build with functional rain / flood cycle. its IN-CRED-I-BLE O_O

[chriswearly]

holy shit! joar sent me a build with functional rain / flood cycle. its IN-CRED-I-BLE O_O

I demand GIFs!! As soon as you've thoroughly enjoyed a few hours of playtime.

[jamesprimate]

i think i want to try to go all out and implement sound for it before doing any vids, for MAXIMUM IMPACT. because it sooooo deserves it.

literal tears of joy 

[JLJac]

Further somewhat unexciting stuff - the "effects" framework is working with inheritance and templates and all of that, now I'm moving on to palette fades, a functionality we've been talking about for a loooooong time in which James will be able to make certain rooms or screens have a blend between two palettes, to make soft transitions between regions and sub-regions. Seems to be going well enough! I think I will be butchering the old palette fade code though as that will get in the way, and create a new two-dimensional system where the palette status exists as a coordinate between a palette A and a palette B, and the "lit" sub-palette and the "shaded" sub-palette that it switches to as the rain gets closer. Sounds more complicated than I expect it to be, by tomorrow afternoon I think I'll have this down unless I run into some major unexpected trouble.

[JLJac]

Okay, got palette fades working and am now pursuing garbage worms functioning as supposed to. Sorry about the state of the devlog, we're pushing for a new build which as usual means less "adding fun stuff"-mode but instead "getting the previously added stuff to actually technically work"-mode.

[tortoiseandcrow]

I did something I've never done before, and I bought the alpha. There's a lot of tiny little control & level design details that jump out to me, but I don't want to sully the enthusiasm of this post with things I'm sure you'll turn your attention to when it's time to polish gameplay. Even in its current state, this game is exquisite. I've been having a lot of fun exploring the world already, and I can only wait in excited anticipation for the next build.

You've got something beautiful on your hands here.

[Caspar2000]

I did something I've never done before, and I bought the alpha. There's a lot of tiny little control & level design details that jump out to me, but I don't want to sully the enthusiasm of this post with things I'm sure you'll turn your attention to when it's time to polish gameplay. Even in its current state, this game is exquisite. I've been having a lot of fun exploring the world already, and I can only wait in excited anticipation for the next build.

You've got something beautiful on your hands here.

@tortoiseandcrow Where did you buy the alpha? I bought the game on the humble link, but I believe its not the alpha.

[tortoiseandcrow]

I used the humble purchase link, which does seem to indicate that it is alpha access, though of course not the precise version that Joar and James are currently working on. But there's always a chance I'm mistaken!

[jamesprimate]

I did something I've never done before, and I bought the alpha. There's a lot of tiny little control & level design details that jump out to me, but I don't want to sully the enthusiasm of this post with things I'm sure you'll turn your attention to when it's time to polish gameplay. Even in its current state, this game is exquisite. I've been having a lot of fun exploring the world already, and I can only wait in excited anticipation for the next build.

You've got something beautiful on your hands here.

thx thx thx we very much appreciate the encouragement! yep, its the alpha (or one of the many many alphas at least). if you bought it a while ago, might be worth using the humble key resender to see if there is a new version up: https://www.humblebundle.com/resender

one of the reasons we've been pretty quiet about posting pre-order links, etc, is that doing all the customer service stuff associated with it is a HUGE time sink, and we just dont have time to do it properly right now. So sorry if thats a nuisance for anyone!

that build was done for pax east, so is around 3 months old. i did a playtesting event with it last night (since its still the most stable), and man is it weird to demo old builds! all i wanted to do was show off the buggy new stuff, but alas its not ready for public consumption yet. E3 build is going to be quite a quantum leap of advancement. Joar is on a dev rampage!

Oh and just to spice things up a *tiny bit* from our boring text posts, Joar did a bunch of new procedural plants recently to give the region flora some diversity. These climbing vines from shadow urban are some of my favorites:


detail: https://i.imgur.com/WFIDwTg.png

[Christian]

Oh, that looks very cool

So this is your guys' first E3, right? Will Rain World be part of an Adult Swim booth or something Sony related considering Vita and PSN have been confirmed?

[jamesprimate]

i think were just showing at the adult swim booth and indiemix? idk, ive been so busy with dev i havent been keeping up on the business end tbh.  similarly, neither Joar or myself will be *actually physically* going to E3. too much work to do and we're saving our budget for actually finishing this thing rather than flights to LA and hotels!

yeah were boring, i know

[chriswearly]

i think were just showing at the adult swim booth and indiemix? idk, ive been so busy with dev i havent been keeping up on the business end tbh.  similarly, neither Joar or myself will be *actually physically* going to E3. too much work to do and we're saving our budget for actually finishing this thing rather than flights to LA and hotels!

yeah were boring, i know

Hey I'll go and be your Rain World representative :D