JLJac on April 23, 2012, 05:10:15 AM:

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 on April 23, 2012, 11:17:31 PM:

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 on April 24, 2012, 10:03:59 PM:

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...

JLJac on April 25, 2012, 12:41:00 PM:

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 on April 25, 2012, 11:08:47 PM:

Update 34
Effects editor halfway done, no effects made.

JLJac on April 26, 2012, 10:55:34 PM:

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.

JLJac on April 27, 2012, 10:45:00 PM:

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 on April 28, 2012, 01:01:33 AM:

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 on April 28, 2012, 10:48:30 PM:

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 on April 29, 2012, 01:12:25 AM:

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 on April 29, 2012, 01:48:57 PM:

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.

JLJac on April 29, 2012, 09:23:12 PM:

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!

JLJac on April 30, 2012, 10:47:30 PM:

I haven't really decided on what kills the creature, if it's unable to breath if wet, or the slightly more over-the-top idea that the rain can actually pound a small animal to death... Maybe I won't have to specify.

Update 39
Today I did a little work on the level editor. Not the level renderer, but the editor! Created a function that you can set up an axis for horizontal mirroring of your actions, which makes it considerably easier to paint a symmetrical level.

I made a level, which will be the first or the second one in the campaign. I also started to think about how the campaign will be set up, and how the format of the levels will look like.

I use the word "campaign" here instead of "single player game", because I have no intention of stopping two or more players from going through the campaign together. Maybe you'll have to be alone to progress and unlock new levels though, we'll see how hard it is to balance.

And, I made an important decision. From now on I'll stop working on random art assets, as I can't really motivate this by having to test the tile renderer any more. I got stuck in a pattern where I drew a lot of random tiles, thinking that I'd probably need them when creating levels later. This is a horribly unefficient method, as I in the end would likely have ended up with a lot of art assets that were never used.

The new approach is this; I create levels, and then I create the art assets needed for them. This will give me a slowly increasing library of tiles, and I will probably often find that the levels are faster and faster to make, as I can reuse old tiles. If art evolution occurs I can always go back to old levels and mix in some newer tiles to create consistency.

My thoughts on the level editor has also changed slightly. I no longer view it as a game feature, but a development tool. A development tool that I plan to release, but still a development tool. The difference here is that I don't need to focus on making the level editor look all slick, which would be wasted time anyways since half of the audience won't even open it, and those that are interested in making their own levels are probably more towards the nerdy end, and won't mind a little programming grit. What I'm saying is that I'll make the level editor mainly for myself to use, which means it's going to suck, but I still plan to release it.

In other other news I've started to set up some stats for two different types of lizards, the easiest one and the hardest one. My idea right now is that there'll be five types, one being the easiest, three being about equal but in different ways, making them depend on different terrains, and one being the hardest. This one won't be better than the three specialized ones in their specialized stat, but will have a higher over-all performance and a very persistent hunting technique, making it a fearsome hunter.

JLJac on May 01, 2012, 11:28:38 AM:

I'm thinking about releasing an alpha, so that a few first time players can try the game and provide some feedback.

Please let me know if you want to contribute by playtesting.

The alpha will be stripped of all art, it'll just be a couple of levels that you can try running around in, and some settings that you can change, to let me know what you think is a reasonable difficulty. I will only send away a maximum of five games, as I don't want to release an ugly, unfinished product to the public.

If you contact me and I send you a copy I will want some effort in return, probably a small sheet of questions answered, of course along with any free-form feedback you want to provide. The final product will of course be free, and if you want to do a little free work for me in return it'll be greatly appreciated.

The alpha won't be very cool, it'll probably suck, but by playing it you can contribute in making the final product something much cooler!

JLJac on May 01, 2012, 09:14:29 PM:

Cool! Let's hold it here.

I'll whip up a few levels, and hope to have a version released within the week. Once again, I don't want you to be dissapointed, so let me stress that it won't be all fun and games. The alpha will look awful, and don't expect a main menu or anything... (You'll have to select level by editing a text file and restarting the game I guess... it's going to be exciting!)

JLJac on May 01, 2012, 10:43:52 PM:

Update 40
Did some thinking on the layout of the game. At first I thought I wanted the campaign to be completely linear, but I changed my mind. If you are free to move a little between levels that adds two values. Firstly most people like to be able to move freely. Second, it means that the same levels will be passed several times, increasing the gameplay time/development time ratio. The idea is that during a "level" the player is supposed to get to a hunting ground with flies, hunt, and then get back within a limited time. More on this later.

I did some easy but important stuff with the Croc's thinking, again. For example there was a bug that if it saw you enter a shortcut it wouldn't always understand where you'd end up.

Did I mention that the croc does a little simulation of the player's movement in its head if it's unable to see a player? I made the physics of that simulation better, for example I added gravity. The simulated player also has a minimal amount of "AI", which will simulate the movement of a player character a slight bit better than just an object that continues in the direction of the tangent. This means that if the croc sees you passing by and dissapear into a corridor it'll have a slightly better hunch of where you might have gone once you left its field of vision.

Now, when a croc catches up with a player, it picks it up in its (yet nonexistent) mouth and quickly carries it back to its hole.

JLJac on May 02, 2012, 12:22:16 AM:

A video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnthCU1P1Ow&feature=youtu.be

This shows how some crocs fight over the body of a bear.

JLJac on May 02, 2012, 10:18:20 AM:

Haha it's funny that you say it's dark and creepy, because I actually didn't have that in mind. I just thought that it'd be reasonable for creatures of the same size to fight over their prey, and things ended up moving like this because of a combination of technical stuff and art choices. When I looked at the video again though, I totally saw what you mean o.0 They're ripping the little guy apart! 

I'm usually hesistant to talk about art stuff (if it can be said with words, why the art?) but I guess I should explain what's going on here. I'm not making a horror game, but I'm trying to portray a world that is very harsh, and where survival has to be fought for. There is a twist though, that instead of realistic harshness I want it to be harsh, but in a slightly twisted, cartoony way.

Weird little creatures that you don't really know what's going on in their heads fit the game medium, because things will inevitably move a little jerky, behave a little uncanny. Better to play with this than fight against it.

Rain World is not a horror game, there won't be excessive amounts of blood or violence for the sake of it. I will however do my best to convey a very different world, where strange creatures live and hunt, and if aspects of this are creepy, I'll go with that.

So, to actually provide an answer, I won't try to make the game creepy, but there'll be more of this. If you find this creepy, I hope you'll find the final thing even creepier!

JLJac on May 02, 2012, 10:15:11 PM:

HAHAHA! That's amazing, I never thought of it, but when you say it it's so clear! Yeah, the game will basically play like pac-man! Maybe with the difference that in pac-man the ghosts are always aware of where you are, here there'll be more focus on sneaking. I think pac-man is a great game though, it's a simple and very self-contained design, so I don't mind at all!

Update 41

Started to clean some stuff up as a first step towards the alpha version. Implemented death by falling, both for Bears and Crocs.



In a level like this the crocs will quite often end up fighting out above the open air, and end up falling. I made it so that if a single croc catches the player when climbing on the beams it doesn't shake him like it usually does, but when two of them are out there fighting there's really no keeping them from tumbling to their death.

In this level one interesting thing happened. You see the little left-facing dead end at the very bottom of the structure? That's a shortcut that leads to the upper-left island, through that ugly pipe-thingy sticking out to the left.

The blue lizard is a wall climber. When the red lizard caught me he was seen by the blue one, and the blue one started chasing him. He tried to take the route through the short cut, but the blue lizard actually didn't follow him, but rather climbed up to the exit he was going to appear out of, intercepting him and snatching the poor bear.

This shows the pros and cons of the shortcuts, through them you can quickly escape a site, but you're suddenly very predictable. Everything moves with the same speed in the shortcuts, and you always reach the same destination.

JLJac on May 04, 2012, 10:11:31 AM:

I had a fat deadline for school today, and have sadly not been able to work on the game. Now in the afternoon I've started to play a little with the level editor, to put some levels together for the alpha. Maybe it won't be released within the week as promised, but within a week it should be out.