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[JLJac]

Yeah, the project is starting to get big, so stuff like that might be necessary o.0

Update 29
Created spawnpoints for the players, and tied in the system with player and croc spawning in the shortcut system. This is mainly a question of lazyness, as now I won't have to make separate animations for a creature entering its hole and a creature entering a short cut. Basically the spawn points/home holes are shortcut openings, but instead of leading to another shortcut opening they lead to an invisible little flag, saying "this is a bear spawnpoint" or "this is a croc hole".

The croc is becoming more and more animated, now it has a body and a tail. Legs next, or head.

[JLJac]

Update 30
Did a lot of multiplayer playtesting, most of it went rather good. The crocs are actually just smart enough to play tricks on, which is a lot of fun. At one time I was hiding in a little pipe section while a croc was snooping around outside, and my opponent wanted to mess with me. He crawled up to a balcony above, and exposed himself. He knew that the fastest route up to that balcony was through the very pipe I was hiding in...

Made lizards collide with each other, which looks hilarious when a bunch of them try to cram themselves through a narrow opening or when they meet in a corridor.

The animation is doing its part, and their bodies have gotten some kind of mushy, soft quality that I'm definitely sticking with. They have a head and are able to do a little looking around. Next up is legs.

[JLJac]

Update 31
An entire day's worth of progress without even opening the game, only working in the level editor. Got tile sets up and running, so now I can create not only loose objects, but tile sets that will be rendered as larger, consistent structures, like concrete and the like.

The next step will be to finalize the level editor to the point where I can save a level project as a text file. Once this step is reached I can start working on levels for the game. I don't really need the level editor to be completely finished for that.

[JLJac]

Update 32

Got my first tileset working. Now I can create levels that have a mixture of objects and tiles. Currently it looks like this:



Up in the right corner you can see a border that's like... folded. That's the metal tileset, and the things it's folded around are loose metal tiles. Hopefully you'll be able to create some interesting stuff with this.

If you squint a little you'll notice the shadows. Sad thing people won't likely be squinting when playing the game...

[peous]

Wow! Begins to take shape!
The studded tiles everywhere really add a lot of volume, and shadows add a lot too !

[Franklin's Ghost]

That looks great, has definitely been worth the wait. Nice Job

[JLJac]

It's worth to note that I haven't gotten around to the effects editor yet, which will have a huge impact on the appearance of levels. It's going to be exciting!

Update 33
Made the level editor save the light to another layer, and made the game able to pick up the changed level format. Now you can, if you have a slightly stronger computer, enable the light to fade slowly back and forth. Maybe this represents clouds passing by... most importantly it brings a little bit of life into the level graphics. I want the levels to feel very still and quiet, for artistic reasons, and I think that this slow movement actually adds to this. If everything was static you'd assume it was because of technical limitations (which it, in part, is), but if there's one element of movement the other stuff look more still in comparison, I hope.

[JLJac]

Update 34
Effects editor halfway done, no effects made.

[JLJac]

Update 35
Effects editor more or less done! You can create effects and paint their area of influence, like so:



Variable brush size and all! This has been a user interface hell -.-

Later on the effects editor is how plants will get into the game. Right now it can do some erosion. In the game it won't be this extreme, I think, this is just to show you what it can do. For example the poles can't be allowed to grow into huge trunks.



The idea is to unify the tiles into one image, and to add an organic feel to the level. You can change the order in which effects are applied, which will have some significance. If you for example want the terrain to be heavily erroded but not the plants growing there, you can place the plants below the erosion in the effects list. If you, on the other hand, want dead plants with slime hanging from them, you apply the slime after the plants are drawn.

With the painting tool you can create gradients, like this:



Se how the geometry is molten to goo at the left side, but untouched with visible little pins and all at the right side? That's an effect gradient. It's possible to single out specific tiles to be affected or excluded as well, even though I don't know how that'll look...

This is one step closer to the landscapes that have been floating around in my mind for a while, heavily eroded industrial complexes with patches of old stone. In order to explain why I focus so much on erosion it might be appropriate that I start giving away a little about the overall concept. The working title I have at this point is
Rain World.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Effects editor looks like an interesting addition and helps to add more lived in world atmosphere

[RayJack]

Other than The Witness, this is the game I'm most looking forward to playing.

[JLJac]

Thanks! Your anticipation is turned straigh into motivation!

Update 36
Light editor more or less done, which means that all the planned editors are at least started on. All of them need som adjustments, though.

The image shows the light editor UI, the light being raytraced, and finally a level being rendered with the light applied.



In the light editor you should also be able to control the angle of the light.

My tiles are drawn with a top-left highlight. I was thinking about what to do when the light is coming in from the right, and think I have settled on a kind of weird approach. In the end it'll be easier for me, I think, to just flip the entire level, render it, and then flip it back, than to try to mess with all the individual tiles. This feels unintuitive, perhaps because a non-substancial thing(the light) is allowed to affect a substancial thing (the entire level), but this is programming and weird-feeling solutions are as good as any, if they work.

On another note I've been starting to touch upon a framework that will allow for some color in the levels. I don't know if I even want it though, will have to test and see.

Made a horrible little mock-up of some grass, through the effects editor. The fading density looked nice!

[JLJac]

Just wanted to share this most recent output of my level renderer:



This is just place holder plants, place holder colors, place holder everything, but I was surprised by how much I liked the look of this coloring method. It created just the sort of washed-out colors I wanted, the colors of a place tormented by decades of heavy rain.

[JLJac]

Update 37
The light angle is now changeable through the light editor, so from now on maybe all my screenshots won't have the exact same top-left lightsource.

[JLJac]

Update 37, continuation

Made the renderer support two effect colors.



Right now my intention is to cap it at two colors, both beacuse it's a hassle to add multiple gradient masks for every layer and every color, and also because it's stylish.

I am very much aware of how aful that sorry excuse for grass looks, and that it doesn't even grow on the slopes. Be assured that I'll get to this, right now I'm just trying to set up the color system. In other words, progress is still technical rather than art-oriented, even though I'm thinking about the art more now than ever. It's still hard to say how much like the above screenshots it'll look or how far it'll stray. I think, however, that I've found a technical approach that produces something I like, and I'm happy about that. Even though a level takes a solid 7 minutes or so to render -.-

Despite promises made I for some reason settled for the same old top-left lightsource.

[JLJac]

Update 38
Made a quick concept art, and put it in the main post together with some text that's more up to date.



Haha I actually think the actual game produces better looking stuff than this concept art, which is the wrong way around I guess, but many things are with this project!

The art doesn't really give away anything you didn't know already, I figure. The current title is "Rain World", and it's set in a very rained down place. Do you remember when I said that the game will be about hunting as much as possible in a limited amount of time? The premise is that the player creature can not survive the rainfall, and has to come out to hunt on the rare, short occasions when the sky is dry.

[Qqwy]

Do you remember when I said that the game will be about hunting as much as possible in a limited amount of time? The premise is that the player creature can not survive the rainfall, and has to come out to hunt on the rare, short occasions when the sky is dry.

In that case you should add some small 'dripping water' pixel effects in some of the levels. ^_^

I like the new name.

[RayJack]

Will the rain start and stop within the level or is it just like, the rain stops and then the leve starts and you have until the rain starts again?

by which i guess i mean

Will the rain be an environmental hazard or strictly a plot element?

[Franklin's Ghost]

Nice concept art and works well in getting the game world atmosphere across.

Will the rain start and stop within the level or is it just like, the rain stops and then the leve starts and you have until the rain starts again?

by which i guess i mean

Will the rain be an environmental hazard or strictly a plot element?

Was also wondering this. Will we see evidence of this rain downpour at the start of beginning of a level. Could be interesting for the player to see it pouring down and it all suddenly stops and things come to life as he runs out and looks for food.

[JLJac]

I think that the rain will be mainly a plot element, not a gameplay element. The idea is that it's such a horrible force that unless you're deep underground when it starts you're done for. I like the concept that you'll run around in a world that's heavily scarred by this force of nature that you never actually see, making it even more terrifying.

There will be dripping water pixels, trust me! Maybe you'll even see the first few drips of rain the seconds before escaping the level.

I have a bit of a problem with levels appearing as very static, which is because they are very static, they're basically just a still image. However I want to spend most of my milliseconds per frame on creature movement and AI, not grass moving in the wind. In the end I will do what I can to try to make the levels seem alive, but I will have to do it in cheap ways. We'll see what I come up with!