JLJac on October 24, 2012, 11:04:01 PM:

Update 105
Here's just a random screenshot:



The graphics are not really turning out the way I want to. I think the problem is that the tiles are too small - I get a clutter of detailed small objects rather than fewer, bigger machines. Problem is that big things have to be custom tailored for a specific level, and can't be used again. Maybe if I started to draw machine parts rather than the whole machines, I could piece them together in different ways on the different levels...

jamesprimate on October 24, 2012, 11:29:14 PM (Last Edit: October 25, 2012, 01:27:39 AM):

you are talking about the background artwork I gather? IMHO it looks pretty good! I kind of agree with on the more detailed stuff though. the top and middle sections are nice because its just a solid clean silhouette and doesn't get in the way of the foreground stuff. the bottom background could be a bit less detailed maybe, not necessarily as rule but because the poles are such an important part of that level and need to more visually "present" I think. As it is now the poles kind of mix in with the background machines.

just my 2 cents! I love the art, you know that

JLJac on October 25, 2012, 11:34:55 AM:

I'm not really talking about the background art specifically, as I feel the foreground stuff has the same problems. Instead of looking like something that's consistent enough to be meant to function in one way or another, it just looks like a clutter of small building blocks... which is exactly what it is -.-

Yeah, the poles certainly could stand out more. The wierd thing is that in a way the level looks better and is more readable when there's no light at all, as such:


(Old one to the right for reference)

because then there's only one, simple rule - darker=closer. Buuut I really do enjoy having the light fade out when the rain is approaching, and I've put so much work into the shadow renderer already.

Anyway, I removed some of the clutter from behind the poles, and kept it a stone wall that doesn't draw too much attention!

jamesprimate on October 25, 2012, 02:58:17 PM:

oh, well I think the foreground stuff is really good! it looks like chunks of debris and worn down mysterious things... seems right on to meeeee! 

JLJac on October 26, 2012, 11:34:38 PM:

Hehe that sounds about right then, only that I'd like BIGGER worn down mysterious things!

I have waaay too much work right now - it'll get better next week. However I've been able to do at least something:

Update 106
I'm into another assault on what I think might be one of the games' biggest design flaws - that you can't really know where a shortcut will take you unless you've made the level yourself. Earlier I added a little spark that flows through the shortcuts so that you at least have a chance to see them, now I've started on another cue as well. Instead of drawing the shortcut symbols onto the level image, I've made them separate sprites. Next up is making them blink or change color when a player is close to them, in a similar manner to items on the ground.

The trick is that they'll change color in pairs, so that you can see which of all the exits is blinking when you get close to an entrance, and from that conclude where you'll end up.

After this I'll move on to more important but boring stuff I figure, such as... the main menu -.-

JLJac on October 27, 2012, 11:45:17 PM:

Update 107
Did a little bit of cleaning up - and made the new "shortcut symbols as sprites"-system work better. It wouldn't hurt to give it some more polishing, but now it is basically up an running as I want to, with the symbols following the screen shake and everything.

Also enabled the poor flies to release their chains when the rain is approaching. Up till now the ones that had formed chains would just be hanging there as everything else escaped back into their holes, now they too have the sensibility to let go and fly home.

JLJac on October 29, 2012, 02:42:12 AM:

108
Spent some time making the "rain getting closer"-stuff a little more polished. Spent about half an hour trying to figure out why the hell a sample wouldn't loop properly, until I realized that the file was named "rain loop" despite it not being loopable at all ... Thank you James 

Right now the game seems to almost always load and play the same song, I'll have to look into that. I'm just happy as long as the bugs are reachabe from the code I write, and not hidden in the basic functions of Macromedia Director. Everyone hates hunting bugs, but I tell you, you learn to appreciate hunting findable bugs after having tried to chase the ghost of something that can't be found and can't be fixed...

jamesprimate on October 29, 2012, 09:52:22 AM:

OOOOOOPS! ill look onto it.  is it just called "rain loop"? I rendered a ton of stuff from a folder called "rain loop", so it might have gotten mid-labeled. sorry! this happens sometimes when you do complicated work at 4am

JLJac on October 30, 2012, 12:37:55 PM:

Hehe no worries James, I loopified it myself - you've heard the result. If you don't think it's good enough lemme know

Haha Lingo is the latin of programming languages - dead and dusty. This is certainly the last thing I make in it, and probably the last thing that gets made with it as well. It's good to be using a software that creates applications that you can be kind of sure will be possible to use even in a few years. I guess I'll have to emulate windows xp if I wanna play Rain World in ten years haha!


Contrary to the idea I have but never live up to - to have fun and interesting posts high up on new pages to draw new readers in - I will give you a dead boring update today. I know myself from following devlogs that boring updates are at least less frustrating than several days with no updates at all. Hrm. So here you go:

Update 109
Made a system that enables player entrances to be shut off. As those of you who have been reading this somewhat regularly might know the game will contain levels that can both be reachable from an open world and opened up through a custom game kind of setup. In the open world scenario I want them to have only one entrance, while in a custom game I might want to have one entrance for every player or something like that.

So now I can create a level with as many entrances as I want, and then shut all but one of them down from the code when loading them in the campaign. I simply make them lizard dens, because as it stands that was a good quick fix - a player entering a lizard den will be spitted out again right away. Had to make them not be counted when the lizards try to decide where to emerge, so that the same lizards will still come out of the same holes. It seems to work ok!

JLJac on November 01, 2012, 02:01:05 AM:

Update 110
Now the game has flies - not the creature I've been calling "fly" but frankly is looking more like a bat kind of thing - but actual tiny little flies that buzz around. It doesn't really make any difference, but I hope it makes the world seem a little more lively.

JLJac on November 02, 2012, 01:01:47 PM:

Oh! Almost forgot about that! Don't worry though, the game is already pretty playable, so I'll have something for you guys!

Update 111
Let me take a moment to tell the story of how to add a graphical asset to Rain World.

Let's pose the example that I'd like to put in a machine looking something like this:



Here any sane artist would just open a graphics software and happily go at it. I, on the other hand, have chosen to make it as difficult as humanly possible.

I start out like this:



Then I write some instructions for how that material will be handled, like this:



Then feed this through the good old



Before reaching my destination - something I could've drawn in half an hour. I guess that the good part is that I then can use that same machine part again, but that hasn't really started to pay off yet...

jamesprimate on November 02, 2012, 05:25:58 PM:

ah that's gorgeous!

JLJac on November 03, 2012, 12:51:13 AM (Last Edit: November 03, 2012, 01:19:39 AM):

Hehehe welcome to the depths of my insanity!

Update 112
Added a few sounds I got from James. Worked a little with the bubble creature, changed its appearance a little.

Update: Aaaaand added eggs into the same framework as other objects, so they appear in one place consistently!

JLJac on November 04, 2012, 06:19:27 AM:

Update 113
What I should be doing right now (except from actual non-RW work) is adding a more decent main menu so that the Prince of Arcade guys won't bleed too much out of their eyes. It's hard though, because I don't know if I should start on the framework for the final main menu (and waste time making way for things that won't be used this time around) or if I should go for a quick fix (and waste time doing stuff that won't make it into the final game). Realistically I think I'll settle on changing the colors a little for the cascade of ugliness that's the main menu right now.

This is however not what I'm actually doing. I've been wrestling Macromedia Director's very 90's-ish code solutions once again today. A sound can have a "loop back here"-marker set in it, but the point from which you start playing the sound can't be set behind that point. This means that my plan, to have a song start playing at a random place and once it reached the end start over from the very beginning, was a no-go. This wasn't good, as a custom game session is shorter than the average song, meaning that there would be a lot of musical material that would never be heard.

I managed to fix it though, with a small hiccup in the looping. Maybe I'll get around to doing it differently for songs that actually start playing from the beginning, so that they won't suffer from the hiccup. Minimize the damages.

Ah well, it's sunday, I might as well make this a long post.

So, yesterday I made a small change to the level renderer that in turn made a small change to the level art. Very small, but I find it enjoyable.

Here, look:



Can't spot the difference? Try putting them in different tabs and switching between them. Here they are, overlayed:



The "earthquake" effect is because the second image is slightly scewed. I got tired of having everything completely straight and square, it seemed lifeless. But the problem was that I couldn't tilt or scew anything, because the game was mathematically built around a perfectly straight grid. The collision boxes of things would still be straight, even if the level was tilted.

The solution I found was this :



The level is rendered as 30 layers, and the objects of the game are drawn in layer 5. By having a "scewing factor" that increases as you move away from layer 5, but is fixed at 0 on layer 5 itself, it's possible to scew the background and foreground while keeping the actual gameplay relevant graphics in phase with their hitboxes.

I know the effect is very slight - I want it that way. When trying stuff out I made some renderings that made your truly sea sick, like this:



But I decided to keep it subtle. Maybe a little too subtle, now when I look at them I think I'll have a little more scewing in there after all... I'll settle on something. The point is that now everything isn't perfectly lined up, and just seeing a slight difference in angle between two things make the environments seem a little less artificial.

I guess I'm trying to strike a fine balance with the art. In one way I want it to look a little tile-ey, and not just like one big drawing made by hand. Not because I don't like hand drawn aesthetics, but because it has been done so many times before.

On the other hand I want one specific feature of the hand drawn aesthetic - the uniting of the graphics into one single image. Tiles tend to look like... tiles, different pieces that fit more or less well together. Reality - especially when dirty and worn down - tends to blend into one in a way that correlates more closely to the hand drawing than to tiles. But the drawing has certain quirks as well, such as some lines looking different than others because the drawing tool is held in one hand and not the other.

I want to have the cake and eat it. My goal is to create an aesthetic that looks like one unified image, but doesn't have the characteristics of the human hand. That's why I have this combination of tiles and effects going on. The tiles look technical and strict, while the effects make it look a little dirtier, and more importantly unifies it into one single image. What I want, after all, is to create images of worn down machines. I couldn't do without either the strict or the dirty.

On top of this comes another factor - the stylization. The game is - in a way - pixel art, with everything that comes with that art direction. One of those things is tiles. At the same time the game is not strictly classical pixel art, it's a subversion of sorts. I want to play with the pixel art aesthetic, but I don't want to play it straight. This is for example why the characters are kind of looking like pixel art, but not moving like pixel art  usually does. I want the same thing for the environments - something that's a wink to the classical pixel art genre, and something that's different.

I like to think of my game as a pixel art rendering of a world that is not a "pixel art kind of world".

The tiles are more in line with the pixel art tradition, while the effects and the scewing are something else. It's a hard line to strike, because if I get too happy about adding stuff I might go too far in one direction or the other. This is for example why I use blur in the graphics, but use it sparesly. If I just went ahead I would lose the aesthetic I'm aiming for.

So, in conclusion, now I have another factor to fine tune in this balance act!

JLJac on November 04, 2012, 08:40:57 AM:

Well, the way this works is that the software I'm making this in is kind of ancient and not really able to display any exciting graphics - so to evade that I'm rendering pre-baked levels that take several minutes each and then just display them as images. So no, no parallax scrolling, just fixed screens. Rest assured though, my next project I'll move over to something (anything) else.

JLJac on November 04, 2012, 10:08:08 PM (Last Edit: November 04, 2012, 10:52:50 PM):

Hehehe fact is I'm not a native speaker and don't have a clue how "skew" is spelled your weird ass language has no correlation between how something sounds and how it's spelled! Now I now though, thanks

Edit: changed "doesn't" into "don't". If one is unable to communicate properly in ones statement about one being unable to communicate properly, what is that even!? Unable to communicate-ception?

JLJac on November 04, 2012, 10:54:48 PM:

Haha yeah! I'd totally write this thread in esperanto, if it wasn't because I like to entertain myself with the idea that someone is actually reading it.

JLJac on November 05, 2012, 02:09:35 AM:

Update 114
Started to patch things up for the Prince of Arcade sneak peek release. It suddenly hit me that the game should probably be... playable until then.

The original design idea was that in a custom game, if one player died, the timer would be set to something very low so that the other players would only have just enough time to get to an exit. There's a problem here, as the light fading/sounds playing/screen shaking stuff that goes on when the rain is approaching is triggered by certain key frames, and those can't be skipped - meaning I can't instantly set the timer to something very low. I think I can work around that though, in a way more or less hideous code-wise.

Also started on the very basic frame work for a main menu.

jamesprimate on November 05, 2012, 03:37:19 AM:

when is this prince of arcades? sounds very cool, and I'll be very excited to hear the reactions!

JLJac on November 05, 2012, 09:09:52 AM:

Haha I should look that up!

Update 115
Worked some one the "rules" of the game, like how it handles the game aspects of what's going on. I've got it to a point I'm decently happy with.

If one player dies the other one is given just enough time to get back to a hole. This means that you can win even if you die, because if you had more flies than your opponent and he/she doesn't reach their hole in time, you still have the victory. It's however still a pretty huge advandage to not be the one to die first.

If one player is dead, the game is halted immediately as the other player goes into a hole, and you don't have to wait for the rain.

If both players go back into their holes at the same time the game is ended. I might change the requirements so that at least one player has to be dead for the game to end - sometimes you go into holes in order to escape lizards as well.

When the rain comes all players that are outside are counted as dead - those in holes as alive.

I still have to make it so that the game stops if one player is already in a hole and the other one dies.


On top of this I added a fun little detail - in competitive game modes a player can't go into a hole that's already occupied, you're spitted straight out again. I hope this will create some fun and frantic situations when players race for the closest hole. Some levels might even have less holes than players, then the gameplay becomes a balance of trying to hunt effectively and staying closer to the hole than your opponent.