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[adge]

I really don't want to be nasty but the waves sometimes seem a bit edged. Fishes look totally awesome!

[marcgfx]

the new water expulsion looks great. one thing that has been bugging me for a while, that I just put down to a style decision are the black and white water drops. now that the water splashes have the water color, it seems even more out of place to me.

[JLJac]

Hahaha tough crowd >__<

I did some smoothing of the surface, but seriously, now I have to move on from water stuff. Could keep messing with it literally forever...

Also, free willy, gross edition!

[chriswearly]

Hahaha tough crowd >__<

I did some smoothing of the surface, but seriously, now I have to move on from water stuff. Could keep messing with it literally forever...

Also, free willy, gross edition!
img

Watched that about 20 times. Looks really good to me :D

[jamesprimate]

Also, free willy, gross edition!

LMAO that's amazing.  Messing with them in the new build, they have so much personality!

[Ashedragon]

That is too perfect.

[Christian]

Will these creatures have any procedural elements or markings? It's really fun to be able to tell the different lizards apart or see vultures with different skin tones

[jamesprimate]

from my playing i see procedural fins, whiskers and flippers. they can look pretty unique! not quite lizard-level, but more-so than the current vulture or any other creature so far.

[Christian]

from my playing i see procedural fins, whiskers and flippers. they can look pretty unique! not quite lizard-level, but more-so than the current vulture or any other creature so far.

Awesome

That next build is going to be amazing. Can't wait, got a new laptop now that can run the game without that shader issue and finally got a 360 controller

[oahda]

Suggestions?

I don't think these fishes need a water stream system to be fast at all, they already have two excellent long fins. And the resulting frog pose (and poop) in air does not look very charming. These crab-like claws look great, but you could place them at the tip of the head, because they look like small t-rex arms in the center of the body.

+1

[gimymblert]

-1 should not look charming but weird and off putting

[Christian]

-1 should not look charming but weird and off putting

Idk, I never got a gross vibe from the world. The lizards and vultures are fluid and graceful, the leeches flow through the water, the lantern mice are cute.

Creepy, weird, unnerving due to the predator-prey relationship, but not off-putting

But the other stuff that lurks in the darkness or the water might fill that off-putting niche

[Connor]

thank you so damn much for reminding me of the archer fish
i havent seen a picture of one since late elementary school, close to 8 years ago, haha

[Teod]

-1 should not look charming but weird and off putting

Neither version is off putting, both are weird and, for me, the first one is charmingly awkward, while the second one is actually threatening. If this was a vote, my voice would be for the second one.

[oldblood]

If it was a vote (and I don't believe it is), I'd vote they move on. It's great people are so enthusiastic about holding the game to the highest level but at some point, you've got to draw a line in the sand on how much time you dump into something like this. Joar's to-do list is likely gigantic, does he really need to revisit the poop-fish animations for 2 weeks when it works and looks quite good already? There are bigger fish to fry (no pun intended).

...sorry my inner-Producer kicked in.

[JLJac]

Update 444

Doing a little stealth/sneaking push. I hope that this, together with the now implemented creature noise tracking will finally introduce stealth as a viable tool to the player.

Basically what is going on is that the old binary laser vision of creatures (is there terrain in the way yes/no?) is giving way to a soft visibility calculation for any position on the screen.

The most basic part of this is that vision deteriorates with distance. But on top of that calculation comes other stuff - for example the lizards have a forward-centered vision, meaning that their vision is better in front of them but worse in the periphery. If the vision is worse to the sides, that means that the target needs to be closer there in order to give a "yes" in the vision check, which causes a bubble-shaped vision cone.



You can probably see that the vision is a bit movement dependent as well - when the player is moving the vision reaches a bit further. This motion dependency for the vision can be set creature by creature, meaning we could potentially have some creature that is virtually blind unless you move, making for some tense Jurassic park-style scenes where you remain totally still as some beast is sniffing around uncomfortably close.

The main factor in the above gif is however a camouflage mechanic, which is here applied to the player when sneaking (basically when crouching). When in sneak mode the player is 50% camouflaged, which is mirrored in the lizard's halved vision range. This is the same mode that makes you pretty much soundless as you move. I hope that these two things combined will actually make sneaking a real viable tactic when traversing the environments - after posting this I will give the game a spin trying to traverse a region and see how it feels.

Also, the vision system allows for using some elements of the environment to hide.




The water has two negative vision bonuses that can be set creature by creature. One is a simple negative that applies if either the "eye" position or the "test" position is under water, basically meaning that a creature might be able to see half as far under water or similar. The other is a negative bonus that occurs if the "eye" is above water and the "test" position is below, or vice versa. This symbolizes the surface itself as being difficult to see through with reflections etc - if you try to look down into the water you might have a harder time seeing what is going on than if you actually stick your head down there.

I don't yet know how this affect performance, but I can actually imagine it being for the better. I have put the super heavy ray-trace at the very end of this whole calculation, and of course only do it if the environmental factors, camouflage etc has not already ruled out that the vision check might be a "yes". So potentially it might save a ray-trace here and there!

[Christian]

 

As a huge stealth fan, that is amazing. I cant think of any other games in the genre that have realistic vision like that. Wow

So that means vultures could have eagle-like binocular vision? Could you hide better in shade/shadows/darkness? Creatures could have realistic night vision?

Amazing work

Edit: although technically, lizards should have monocular vision, poorer front facing vision and better on the sides, while the vultures should have the kind of vision seen in the GIFs



But it's an alien ecosystem so maybe that earth biology doesnt apply here. And gameplay reasons of course

[tortoiseandcrow]

You can probably see that the vision is a bit movement dependent as well - when the player is moving the vision reaches a bit further. This motion dependency for the vision can be set creature by creature, meaning we could potentially have some creature that is virtually blind unless you move, making for some tense Jurassic park-style scenes where you remain totally still as some beast is sniffing around uncomfortably close.

I really hope that you do implement a very deadly and highly movement-sensitive creature now, because that sounds like an incredibly fun scenario!

I hope that these two things combined will actually make sneaking a real viable tactic when traversing the environments - after posting this I will give the game a spin trying to traverse a region and see how it feels.

I'd love to read your description of that test-run! The game already has a certain amount of stealth built in that I'm embarrassed to say that I initially thought hearing had been implemented. So I'm very curious to hear how this changes the way the game plays!

[JLJac]

@Christian, yep, all of those are possible! When it comes to creatures with eyes on the sides, that's hard in this weird 2D context, as the sides would be towards and away from the camera. What makes sense from a gameplay and sneak perspective is having the vision be concentrated in front of the creature.

@tortoiseandcrow haha I will do the test run soooon! I'm just way too bad at actually playing the game hehe

Update 445

Made lizards swim. These standard sub-species generally just swim at the surface of the water, and quite awkwardly. But at least they can swim now! It felt really weird to have that strange cop-out with lizards dying in water but nothing else - the game world has been taken beyond that sort of stuff since then. With that out of the way there is another interaction that makes sense, and one less strange exception the player needs to learn.



Also it looks funny!

[Keith]

I can't even imagine all the code behind this game. To take account into everything you've done so far is mind blowing. This game will definitely win awards for best gameplay. Is this is all with an in-house engine?