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[gimymblert]

This will be the assassin's creed's animus of rain world

[ProgramGamer]

Maybe have the tutorial be about your parents teaching you how to survive?

Dad and Mom Slugcat sounds neat to me.

[JobLeonard]

Maybe have the tutorial be about your parents teaching you how to survive?

Dad and Mom Slugcat sounds neat to me.

Ooooh, I like this! You can also make it separate level with a different, younger slugcat, as if it is simply set in a different part of the world or a different time.

[theEasternDragon]

Why not have a "show by example" thing for the basic controls? I know that seeing an actual slugcat performing the actions is not possible because of AI limitations, but why not have one of you guys "mocap" the tutorial in advance?

All you have to do is play through it yourselves, and have some way of capturing keystroke data. Then, when you are following another slugcat in the tutorial, apply that keystroke data to it. Seeing as you already have a functional coop mode, that shouldn't be too hard. The only issue with this is the potential for the player to "derail" the tutorial slugcat. A solution for this would be to freeze the player in place, until the mocapped slugcat moves on to the next screen. Or you could simply disable physics for it... No way to move it.

In practice, you could have the "tutorial slugcat" perform an action, and show the keystroke combination overhead when it is doing it. Then, when it has left the room, the player is unfrozen and can perform the same action, (possibly show the keystroke over the player as a prompt, because redundancy...).

In terms of more complex gameplay mechanics, that gets into the weeds. The first issue is that there are some mechanics which probably shouldn't be apparent right off the bat, but be discovered as the player progresses, (i.e. region gates). In those cases, it would be most efficient to show the player a tutorial as they are discovered. The issue here is that you guys want to separate the tutorial from the actual game, and this is certainly breaking that rule. It is not going to be effective to cram so much stuff into the initial tutorial, as the new player might get kind of lost...

My idea, (which may be completely wrong, depending on how you plan on handling this), would be to show the player a tutorial of it in a dream, when they return to their shelter after a run.

In practice: suppose you find a region gate when you are playing. You have no idea what it is, and time is a wasting, so you hit the road. When you return to your shelter, you have a vision of how to open them. So, you might see a timelapse, fragments of runs, and the process of returning to the shelter. Repeat this five times, (or whatever the number is to open a region gate), and then show the slugcat standing in front of one, and it beginning to open. Having a number indicator for the days might be good as this is happening, maybe in the corner. It might also be good here to have a black background, to emphasize the "dreamlike-ness" of it, and to prevent showing any detail about areas you haven't found.

Another example: nightmares about the rain. That could actually be really cool. It could be a playable "minigame" of sorts, without affect on the overall game. So, a short little segment, where you drown/get pounded to death by the rain. Maybe an effect to show death visibly. After this, I would say the message is pretty clear: when the ground starts to shake, get the hell out of Dodge!

Sorry about the wall of text. Just a few ideas for how to handle the tutorial stuff.

[Wlad]

...

I really like your suggestions. I think that would fit nicely.

[Crispy75]

It's a long thread, but has anyone else ever noticed that Vi Hart drew and named the Slugcat way back in 2011?!

https://youtu.be/ahXIMUkSXX0?t=44

[gimymblert]

omg! we need an easter egg, toss some fibonnacci spiral there!

[jprosk]

Make a new graffiti decal with Pascal's triangle or something! Or of Wind and Mr. Ug! (Vi Hart is like, my favorite youtuber)

[Xonatron]

Vi Hart is awesome.

[banal]

Maybe have the tutorial be about your parents teaching you how to survive?

Dad and Mom Slugcat sounds neat to me.

I would play this.

[banal]

For Rain World, the whole narrative kicks off because you're a slugcat who's lost his family, right? Not sure how feasible it would be, but could you make that a tutorial? A "monkey see, monkey do" kind of thing? Traveling with an older/slugcat partner going through a linear area, the other slugcat performing moves and such, thus demonstrating to the player what to do?

Ideally, yes! This was my first suggestion waaaay back when we were starting the tutorial stuff, but apparently Rain World's character movement and AI are done in a manner thats completely opposite to "sockpuppeting": the movement AI is completely tied to pathfinding and a million other systems, so we can't just plop in another slugcat and ask it to act without rebuilding a bunch of super low level systems. Very annoying, but also not atypical for "Rain World problems." With our tools and engine it's easy to do weird Rain Worldy stuff, and hard to do normal basic gamey stuff.

 

One way to do this is to record your inputs and simulate another player using those inputs. Obviously you can tweak the inputs before giving them to the computer player. This player basically has the same interface as a player but you just hook up the controls to a list of inputs instead of actual computer inputs, where it fetches a new one from the list every game loop tick.

[tortoiseandcrow]

How's the testing going, by the way? Any new insights or developments?

[jamesprimate]

How's the testing going, by the way? Any new insights or developments?

Hallo friends! Doing pretty well, thanks for asking~

It's been intense on top of intense the past few weeks, but extremely productive. 2 weeks ago Lydia and I flew down to Adult Swim HQ in Atlanta for a solid week of testing, which was very enlightening.



The way it worked was that we had 2 sessions a day with groups of players who hadn't played the game before, and we observed how they handled the first 40 or so minutes of gameplay. They'd fill out questionnaires before hand about their experience as a gamer and then afterwards about what they liked / didnt like about the game, what was challenging, what didnt make sense, etc., and then we'd sit around and talk about it for a bit. Then at night, I would take the feedback to Joar (who was still in Sweden naturally) and we'd attempt to iterate a new build that solved some of the problems to test for the NEXT day, etc etc.

In early testing people always liked the art, mood, characters and sound, but generally found themselves frustrated by aspects or didn't understand what was going on, or often felt like the game was unfair. Even after playing the tutorial, it seemed to be an issue of the players not understanding how the various mechanics of the game fit together.

This was a little surprising and humbling for us because we have been showing the game for a long time, both among friends and with new players at conventions like PAX, E3, etc etc., (for years!) and observed people to generally pick it up pretty well. But what seemed to be the X factor at work here was that in those contexts for new players we'd always be standing right there chatting with the player beforehand, and just giving a super brief description when handing them the controller ("its a survival game where you play as this lost creature, have to catch food to survive, rain cycles, etc etc") was enough to give them the tools to piece together the various mechanics. And obviously a person playing the game blind in a test or downloading it from Steam or whatever, wouldn't have that.

And most importantly we had to realize that it wasn't that "its just not a game for everybody" (as we'd sometimes let ourselves off the hook with), it was actually that we were failing to give players the tools they needed to play the game. NOTHING is worse than watching in front of you someone who is really excited and enthusiastic about your game become frustrated and disillusioned, when 2 seconds worth of text hints or a controller diagram pop up would clarify everything.

So we had to fix all that. It was intense and stressful! I was working practically 24hrs a day for a good part of the week. But the results were nothing less than paradigm shifting and improved the new player experience (and i'd say the game in general) tremendously. Over the course of the week the tester surveys went from "looks beautiful, but is frustrating or i dont understand" to "i love this, can i play more, when does it come out, let me know if you need deeper testing", which is *extremely rewarding*



And after getting back from that we've been applying all that we learned from the testing sessions and sprinting to our upcoming gold date! Joar has been heroically slaying bugs, polishing gameplay and UI stuff, adding in new features to tie everything up; Del is somehow slogging through an impossible list of illustrations, and im tidying up levels, music, audio and organizing some last bits of deeper testing this week.

Anyway, we *really really* appreciate you guys still posting and checking in, staying enthusiastic even as we have been mute codeslaves for the past months, too exhausted from the pixel mines to make posts. This will change soon though! The light at the end of the tunnel is so bright I almost feel like Im outside!!!

[fall_ark]

This was a little surprising and humbling for us because we have been showing the game for a long time, both among friends and with new players at conventions like PAX, E3, etc etc., (for years!) and observed people to generally pick it up pretty well. But what seemed to be the X factor at work here was that in those contexts for new players we'd always be standing right there chatting with the player beforehand, and just giving a super brief description when handing them the controller ("its a survival game where you play as this lost creature, have to catch food to survive, rain cycles, etc etc") was enough to give them the tools to piece together the various mechanics. And obviously a person playing the game blind in a test or downloading it from Steam or whatever, wouldn't have that.

And most importantly we had to realize that it wasn't that "its just not a game for everybody" (as we'd sometimes let ourselves off the hook with), it was actually that we were failing to give players the tools they needed to play the game. NOTHING is worse than watching in front of you someone who is really excited and enthusiastic about your game become frustrated and disillusioned, when 2 seconds worth of text hints or a controller diagram pop up would clarify everything.

This is an important notion to bear in mind, but I'd also like to raise a counter-argument: Most players who buy and play the game will not be going in the game completely blind. They will either hear about the game from friends, see streams/videos of the game, or have read the Steam store description and watched the trailer of the game before picking it up. The way you describe how the test sessions went makes me feel that maybe the testers don't represent a common gamer's experience either. Anyway just my two cents.

I'm personally of the opinion that there should be a stand-alone in-game place giving information that "give [players] the tools to piece together the various mechanics", like a Game Info / Help page accessible from the menu. It can either be completely fourth-wall-breaking or be construed as some form of wildlife observation paper/doodle. A clear and concise Help page will be much more useful than a long tutorial session that forces myriads of new information on the player especially because some of the mechanisms will only be relevant sparsely. Imagine a new-ish player learning about an important mechanism early on only to have forgotten about it when it came up later. That's a situation you really don't want to have.

[Christian]

Sounds like things are going great, James! That shift in tester response is very cool. Glad Rain World is invoking that response in people (as it should)

This was a little surprising and humbling for us because we have been showing the game for a long time, both among friends and with new players at conventions like PAX, E3, etc etc., (for years!) and observed people to generally pick it up pretty well. But what seemed to be the X factor at work here was that in those contexts for new players we'd always be standing right there chatting with the player beforehand, and just giving a super brief description when handing them the controller ("its a survival game where you play as this lost creature, have to catch food to survive, rain cycles, etc etc") was enough to give them the tools to piece together the various mechanics. And obviously a person playing the game blind in a test or downloading it from Steam or whatever, wouldn't have that.

And most importantly we had to realize that it wasn't that "its just not a game for everybody" (as we'd sometimes let ourselves off the hook with), it was actually that we were failing to give players the tools they needed to play the game. NOTHING is worse than watching in front of you someone who is really excited and enthusiastic about your game become frustrated and disillusioned, when 2 seconds worth of text hints or a controller diagram pop up would clarify everything.

This is an important notion to bear in mind, but I'd also like to raise a counter-argument: Most players who buy and play the game will not be going in the game completely blind. They will either hear about the game from friends, see streams/videos of the game, or have read the Steam store description and watched the trailer of the game before picking it up. The way you describe how the test sessions went makes me feel that maybe the testers don't represent a common gamer's experience either. Anyway just my two cents.

I'm personally of the opinion that there should be a stand-alone in-game place giving information that "give [players] the tools to piece together the various mechanics", like a Game Info / Help page accessible from the menu. It can either be completely fourth-wall-breaking or be construed as some form of wildlife observation paper/doodle. A clear and concise Help page will be much more useful than a long tutorial session that forces myriads of new information on the player especially because some of the mechanisms will only be relevant sparsely. Imagine a new-ish player learning about an important mechanism early on only to have forgotten about it when it came up later. That's a situation you really don't want to have.

Agreed. I never ever buy anything blind. That's like going into a bookstore or Best Buy and buying a book or movie without knowing anything about it. I always at least read a review or watch a trailer, and a lot of people will likely check out Let's Plays or streams, or look for reviews and hands-on previews. So even the person who has never heard of the game before will probably know about the general gameplay before buying the game for themselves

[Teod]

Agreed. I never ever buy anything blind. That's like going into a bookstore or Best Buy and buying a book or movie without knowing anything about it. I always at least read a review or watch a trailer, and a lot of people will likely check out Let's Plays or streams, or look for reviews and hands-on previews. So even the person who has never heard of the game before will probably know about the general gameplay before buying the game for themselves

Not all people are like that. I buy plenty of things blind, based on reviews score, cool aesthetics, or "don't ask why, just play it" recommendations (which are fairly common recently). At least two of that can apply to Rain World.

[jamesprimate]

Yeah and it's not like an "either or" sort of thing, this was just a blind spot we had that's been corrected somewhat, so one doesn't take away from the other. Don't worry, it's still the same overly complicated, obtuse and confusing old Rain World, we've just workshopped the tutorial aspects so that it might now be actually be playable by people that aren't Joar and myself, lol!

Basically, long story short: issues that we thought were inherent to the game design turned out to just be a lack of communication to the player. Fixed! 

[David Berman]

How exciting and encouraging!

I think post-Souls games/proliferation of roguelikes there is for whatever reason a fear of playtesting leading to some kind of overtly focus-grouped/one-size-fits-all approach. Ultimately it doesn't really seem like Rain World should be a game that requires you to frantically check a wiki every 5 minutes, or that is super cryptic in its mechanics - and as long as playtesting doesn't lead to Rain World bizarrely becoming a on rails third person shooter I think the resulting feedback can only be good! I mean even Souls games have didactic instructions at the start for how to move/fight etc - you can do that and still leave plenty of features, moves, tricks, gameplay etc. for the player to discover past an overt tutorial stage.

Having said all that I do think it is important to let some things be instinctive or emergent - to let the player organically figure stuff out is obviously very empowering.

[tortoiseandcrow]

That sounds like a super satisfying development!

I don't buy games blind, personally, but that has more to do with finances than anything else I for one think that communicating "how to play" to players is essential right off the bat, no matter how much emphasis is placed on discovering mechanical interactions during play. You need to have a way to be able to discover those mechanical interactions in the first place!

You might not want to go into it for whatever reason, but if you care to share I'm really interested in hearing about what sorts of changes you ended up making to the tutorial that made it so much more user-friendly.

Anyway, we *really really* appreciate you guys still posting and checking in, staying enthusiastic even as we have been mute codeslaves for the past months, too exhausted from the pixel mines to make posts. This will change soon though! The light at the end of the tunnel is so bright I almost feel like Im outside!!!

Woo!

To be honest, I've been trying to avoid harassing you with enthusiastic comments, but if you guys would appreciate some cheerleading... [pulls a book on the bookshelf. A seam of light appears around the edges of the bookcase, and the room rumbles softly as the case slides to the side, revealing a uniform, faded with age. With reverence and grim determination, tortoiseandcrow takes the pom-poms from their hooks, and blows the dust from their feathers. It is time.]

[Christian]

From Twitter last week

FACT: Jellyfish are delicious #gamedev #slugcatlife

https://twitter.com/RainWorldGame/status/760820632120659968