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   JLJac on October 12, 2013, 09:35:48 AM:

What's differing?  Epileptic

Update 184

Not quite able to convince myself with these ones....






Favs? Suggestions?





   JLJac on October 13, 2013, 02:25:07 AM:

Thank you for your constructive feedback. You're not too harsh at all, this is exactly what I want to hear. It takes an outside perspective to spot some things. For example I didn't really know that Competitive was illegible, but now that you mention it I can totally see it.

Update 185
Today I pasued from the font stuff, and did something that I really don't know about... I had this idea that the game had become too much about just feeding spears to the lizards, and I wanted to get some of the fun back that was present back before the spears, when the game was much more sneak oriented.

So I made the lizards have hard heads. That means, if you hit them in the head the spear bounces off.

Basically the idea is that if you hit them in the body you do 4 times as much damage as when you hit them in the head. If you manage to hit them in their open mouths though, you get a damage bonus.

This makes the game like 100 times as fun to me, as an experienced player. Suddenly I can't just wait at a ledge for a lizard to peek over it and then throw a spear at it. All the dull tactics of just sitting somewhere with a spear in hand and waiting for them doesn't work any more. Instead I have to out think them, create manouvers, trick them into a narrow opening and attack them from behind. In close quarters I need to use wit rather than brute force. In open areas I need to pull off twice as impressive action manouvers. Like climbing up a pole, having the lizard climb after me, then drop down to the side of the pole and on my way down lodge a spear in the side of the lizard. It's much more in line with what the game was originally supposed to be about, which is interacting with and outsmarting the AI.

The problem is that this makes the game a loooooot more difficult. And that's not what I needed. However, the idea was never that the difficulty would be defined by how easy it was to kill lizards, as the game was never supposed to be about killing lizards, but about avoiding them. The only thing this actually changes is that spears are less powerful. And spears weren't supposed to show up until like halfway through the campaign either way, so maybe it won't make the difficulty curve that much steeper?

I don't know... On one hand it's so refreshing to once again have to put some thought into what you're doing when you're playing. On the other hand it feels like it's akward to introduce yet another rule that new players have to learn (they need to be attacked from behind). On the third hand ( Hand Money Left Hand Fork Left Cool Hand Metal Right) the game wasn't ever really supposed to be about killing lizards with spears. Out of nowhere I decided to add spears, so why shouldn't I be able to nerf them out of nowhere as well?

 Huh?





   jamesprimate on October 13, 2013, 12:42:17 PM:

whoa! having the lizards deflect spears front on is going to hugely change things. I'm scared already! you're totally right that at present it was basically "find spear, go on lizard skewering rampage". Maybe an idea to keep it "easier" at lower levels would be to have the spear damage done to the head be a random figure within certain percentages, and lizard types that appear earlier would just have a higher chance of scoring a higher percentage hit. that way it's not TOTALLY impossible if you somehow have to face one head-on, just more threatening.

I would say that even as it is now, it's not "easy" by any means. it seems to take at least 2-3 spears (or a thorough pummeling with rocks and things THEN a spear) to take down a lizard, and often you will be chased by 2-3 lizards, so that's still some skill to pull off as spears aren't terribly common in the wild. But I think the idea is really good.

When I first started playing, I don't think that spears were implemented yet, so sneaking around a lizard to hunt those last few flies with time winding down was palm-sweating and nerve-wracking, but also probably the most intense/fun id had gaming for a while. the satisfaction of when you DID finally kill a lizard, by tricking it into falling off something, or some other trick, was HUGE. sort of like in half-life two when you finally destroy that first helicopter that has been dogging you. so if this brings more of that atmosphere back into the late game stuff, it's a great development.

Also, I really love the match complete screens! Like many, I think the last panel seems to work the best, with the clean white/ bold black stroke lettering. I think because the font itself is already so complicated visually, the gradients and lighting and all that of the other 3 just makes it too fussy to read.





   JLJac on October 14, 2013, 06:12:31 AM:

@christian, I like your ideas. The spear could definitely be made more of a multi-tool. Already it's possible to lodge it in a wall and use it for climbing, but your idea for rigging it as a pole and trick lizards to drop on to it is awesome as well. The core of the game is to have few things, but explore many interactions between them, and more functionality for the spear certainly fits in that theme.

@Keo, thanks for being interested! We've been talking a lot about the font stuff in the thread already. I know your frustration, it's like "gaah! He's making a cool game, but then he has to go wrong with this one choice and mess it up! Doesn't he understand the art he himself is creating!?" and I've felt that way many times too... Thing is, there isn't really anything I can say that will make you go "AHA! In that case, the font is awesome!" Here's my attempt to explain, at least, from the last time this was brought up.

Klick the quote

Short version is that I'm not trying to create something "artsy", or maybe I am, but in that case it's going to have its roots firmly planted in cartoons, graffiti and pop culture. In order to create some kind of weird contrast, that will make it feel even more desolate. It's probably not going to work, and it's going to be frustrating as hell to whatch me ruin what could have been a super atmospheric game, but well, I've gotta try to do what I want to do Smiley If the failure is too crazily big I might go with a "gritty" typography instead, it's never too late to give up~

@James, yeah, I've found a way to keep it reasonable, which is that spears and rocks still stun when they hit the head, they just don't do much damage. That way a spear is almost guaranteed to get you out of a tricky lizard situation, because you can smack it in the face and leave in the ensuing confusion.

And yeah, I know it's not easy  Evil Good thing with making it a little harder though, is that the excitement/processing power index goes up, as fewer lizards pose more of a challenge. Now 2 or 3 of them is quite enough for me to try to fend of, while earlier I had kind of a walk in the park with 4 of them at the same time, which was tougher on the computer.

it seems to take at least 2-3 spears (or a thorough pummeling with rocks and things THEN a spear) to take down a lizard...

This is something I've changed now (or fixed, as it was more or less a bug). Lizards were never supposed to fight till death, as it's not a war, it's about creatures wanting to eat. Back when spears where new a lizard would retreat to its hole if you hit it with a spear, but later something happened that made them keep on going like zombies. Now I've patched up the old system, and once again they stop pursuing you when you damage them enough. So, even though it still takes 2-3 spears to kill a lizard, one solid hit is enough to get rid of it. Then of course you might still want to kill it, because otherwise it will take a valuable spear with it into its hideout.

Update 186

This is what a typical action sequence looks like with the current game rules:



It reads a bit better with sound. Basically what happens is that I spear them, and then I action around in attempts to retrieve my spears without them biting me. Because I only have 2 spears, and these enemies take a minimum of 3 hits to kill. When their heads flash white, that's when they're deflecting spears. It might be a little hard to understand what's going on without the sound indicating when I actually do hit them in the flesh, but you get the idea.

Note how the blue lizard tries to pick up a spear, but I snatch it from its jaws. That's a very dangerous manouver  Grin

Other than recording this gif I spent today polishing some of the new stuff that has come with the "hard heads" change. For example, now that the game actually keeps track of spears going in the mouth of the lizards, I added a new separate "throat health". When lizards want to do mouth based stuff, such as spitting or throwing out their sticky tounges, they need to check against their throat health first. So if you manage to jam a spear down there, or even hit them with a few rocks in their mouths, they won't be able to do that stuff any more.





   JLJac on October 14, 2013, 06:33:26 AM:

Yeah, they have that behaviour. In this case it's because he's stunned though, he just recieved a hit to the head. If you don't harass them they're usually able to manouver around quite well, but when they get hit in the head they're often turned around so that their orientation is different from what their path finding brains think, and then they need a moment to readjust.

A moment that I, in this case, used to my advantage Evil





   JLJac on October 16, 2013, 06:20:21 AM:

Yep, we're submitting it :D

Update 187
Panic work rush because of IGF submission. I finally implemented the end of match screen, a new pause screen, and a game over screen for single player. This is stuff I've been putting up for like, a year. No, seriously, a year is a reasonable estiamtion for when I first started to think "maybe it's time to fix the end och match screen". Today I sat down and DID IT.

For all the typography I've used what I currently have. I know it's not 100%, but I figure it's better for IGF than the placeholder stuff that I drew with my mouse in 4.2 seconds in order to know which image was which. Lol. But the technical setup I have should allow to change graphics pretty easily.

Only thing left to do is the "end of multiplayer game session" screen. When you play multiplayer, you select a few levels and they're added to a tier. When you finish one of them, there's an "end of match" screen that pops up on top of the level, that basically states who died and who survived, and how many flies each player caught. Also a match winner is nominated.

When this has happened a few times, and the tier is out of levels, the game should take you to the "end of session" screen, where a session winner should be nominated (the one with most matches won) and some statistics for each player should be visible. That's the thing I need to do now.

But, James says we can re-upload after the deadline, so maybe I'll do that if things get too frantic Smiley





   jamesprimate on October 21, 2013, 09:57:32 AM:

that's a good point. I put this devlog as the official webpage on the IGF submission  Shrug





   JLJac on October 22, 2013, 02:08:08 AM:

Thank you  Smiley As for website, idk... This is not a commercial game, it's just a hobby project. Even if it has been taken one level further by James convincing me to submit to IGF. The question is, would you really prefer for me to spend time on making a website, rather than making the game?

Update 188
I've been taking a few days off from Rain World after the big IGF work rush. Today I picked it up again. The game feels much nicer with finished menues everywhere! But some of the typography still looks pretty awful. For now I'm focusing on the functionality, and then I can return to the graphical specifics later.

This is the match over screen I've been talking about, now programmed and functioning, not just mocked-up:

(Click for full size)

And this is what I did today,

a special game over screen for waves mode that lists all the lizards you've killed. The little crosses even appear one by one (quickly) with one of James' sounds accompanying them. Pretty awesome!

Both of these end game screens can scale up and down to accommodate different amounts of crosses/players, and move up and down accordingly so they appear in a spot that's easy on the eyes. The match over screen can display different outcomes such as draws, doesn't say "Winner!" if there's only one player, etc etc.

And yeah, the menues change color to match the level they're on. Thought that would be a nice little detail Smiley





   JLJac on October 25, 2013, 01:32:06 AM:

We're up on IGF!  Grin

Update 189
James just sent me a new batch of sounds, menu sounds specifically, and I'll start implementing those. Other than that I've done a little level editing and tiles since last time.

Also:

STICK ARRAOUND!

The white lizards are the ones that change color to blend with the environment, and when they're hurt they glitch out and blink like that.





   JLJac on October 25, 2013, 12:25:35 PM:

Update 190
Biiiiig sound update. Now all the menu interactions have sounds. It makes a huge impact on the feel of the menu, really makes everything more solid.

Also I added other "HUD" sounds, such as "custom game match started", "game over", "score", "kill", etc. Still a few things to go perhaps, for example the pause menu is still completely silent.

And as a bonus I finally made a sound for when the slug cat is chewing on a fly. I mixed together some old stuff I had with some new stuff I got from James, and managed a chew with just a little bit of wetness to it. It sounds OK. A fly is eaten in three bites. I've made the last bite have a slightly more high pitched sound, as a subtle cue that the fly is finished.





   jamesprimate on October 25, 2013, 11:59:03 PM:

God I can't wait to hear this game with sound effects, it's going to be super raaaaaaad.

yaay! its going to be awesome! but... also might take a while to get right. immersion is a big factor in this game, and the last thing i want to do is have sounds that take the player out of the game world, breaking the tension or otherwise affecting the mood.

the menu clicks and bleeps are going in the right direction, we have a pretty good ambient/atmospheric sound world already in place (plus i personally really like the action sounds Joar did initially), and now were moving into getting the non-diagetic stuff like sfx for "points", player indications, etc., and that for me is going to be the tricky part.

When I first saw rain world, i had a very very clear concept. for me, a huge strength of the game is your emotional connection to this lone, cute white little creature in this crazy death filled environment, and i wanted the aural experience to amplify that. sound effects would essentially be extensions of the emotion and instinct of the character; a subtle "fly sense" when prey is nearby, an unsettling feeling when lizards are close, an impending sense of dread when the rains begin to come. Even much of the music was to be an extension of the character: the beating of the heart, blood pumping through veins, hunger in stomach, etc.

But! Of course getting that to work AND be clearly understandable to the person playing it may take a bit of time and trial and error. Anyway, ive been thinking about all this for over a year, so im just happy to get a chance to finally talk about it  Tears of Joy





   jamesprimate on October 27, 2013, 10:05:41 PM (Last Edit: October 28, 2013, 01:43:34 PM):

Surprised it wasn't posted yet, so here's the



ahhh the secret is out! i really appreciate you saying its awesome. it was a frantic, stressful weeks work for me. I had actually hired some video peeps to do it (as neither Joar or I have much video experience), but had to do it myself last minute when they didnt deliver.

Pretty positive that's just a stylistic choice for the trailer.

yeahhhh, this was my first time doing a trailer and i thought the effect was cool, but obviously didnt consider that it makes it look like the framerate is bad in-game :/ nothing could be further from the truth. its one of the reasons we didn't post the trailer publicly actually.

the judges will get to play the game and see for themselves, etc etc, but to preempt this i also included 2 little movement teasers in the IGF thing (you might be familiar with them):

Lizards:




Showdown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKqbqJF082Y





   JLJac on October 31, 2013, 12:23:37 AM:

Yeah, the framerate is looow. But a trailer was needed to submit to IGF, and as James said, the guy who was supposed to make one didn't really know what we wanted to have in it, so we ended up with a trailer that had a lot of unfinished levels shown. So James decided to make one himself, but neither of our computers are able to capture video very well, so here we are. As the game is not a commercial project it doesn't really matter that the trailer isn't the smoothest thing out there, as it's purpose isn't marketing, but just being a trailer so we could enter IGF  Tongue

Update 191
I've been away for a little vacation, if you wonder why I haven't been posting in a few days.

Yesterday I made a thing that I hope will have a big positive influence on the game - I threw together a sound prototyper for James. The sound prototyper is a special build of the game that can load sound files from a folder and replace samples in the game with these loaded sounds.

Earlier we have been having a problem where James make sounds, and send them to me, and I implement them and try it out. Then I give James useful feedback such as "It doesn't sound quite right. I don't know, just like, not quite right. Could you make it 'skueeeeshier'?" Then James would try to interpret that, make a new batch, send it to me, repeat and fade.

There is some kind of phenomena where a sound is percieved totally differently in the game than played by itself. I don't know if this is because of macromedia director's sound engine, or because of context. In either case a sound that appears to be perfectly awesome in windows media player can become lame in the game, perhaps because it doesn't sync with the animation.

Hopefully this problem is defeated now, as the sound prototyper allows James to work on the sounds and try them at the same time. The iteration process should hopefully be shortened from like two days to like two minutes.

I think this will make a big difference for the soundscape of Rain World, given that James can handle the horrible horrible user interface!





   jamesprimate on November 01, 2013, 11:50:34 AM:

ahh back working on stuff im actually good at!

yeah the sound prototyper is going to be great. it functions sort of like an ad hoc audio middleware, and will allow me to make essentially entire cohesive audio builds that I can send Joar, rather than just give him little pieces of the audio puzzle to sew together himself. (Certainly you guys with your modern game engines will laugh at this "why not use FMOD or WWISE?" youll ask, not realizing that this game is impossibly built in macromedia director hahaha)

One thing that Im not sure has been mentioned on here is that, as much of the character animation is physics / AI based, there is often no 'standard animation' for events, and thus by necessity much of the creature sounds are generative to one degree or another. Which is REALLY REALLY COOL. Despite collaborating on the generative audio for things like the lizard vocalizations, even I didnt know just how deep it all went until exploring with the sound prototyper and discovering subtle things like how the audio attached to each creature footstep or wing flap is actually generative within certain parameters. Pretty much everything heard in-world has aspects of randomness tied to the AI/physics behind it, which gives the game a deeply immersive, natural quality to it.





   JLJac on November 03, 2013, 12:43:50 AM:

Haha James, you're able to sell this game in a way I'll never will be  Grin But seriously, if you want a walking sound, you have to play it at each footstep, right?

Update 192
Adding new art assets...


(click for full size)

There are many new tiles etc, some of them can be seen in this image. See the metal spheres out on the left? Those utilize a new feature I've implemented for tiles, I call it vertical/horizontal displacement. To minimize confusion, let's talk about the vertical one. I have a tile that's repeatable. I chop it at some random height, and switch the parts. If I base the randomness of that chop height on the horizontal placement of the tile, all tiles that are in the same column will be chopped at the same place, and line up with each other. That way they will all be "scrolled" a random tile height up or down. I developed this for chains - now I can put several chains next to each other without them lining up perfectly.

Also I added a new framework for plant life. The thing in the screenshot I call "sprawlbush", and is the only implementation of that framework I have at this point. It basically creates branches and move them around at random in the 3D space, avoiding to collide with walls. If you look at how the leftmost plant has grown, you might notice that it has tried to avoid the airconditioner box or whatever it is. Previously I didn't have any plants that grew in the z-axis, and I think that these new plants have potential to look interesting with shadows - I'll do a little experimentation.

When moving in the Z axis the plants can never cross Z layer 5, because that's where the game is played. If a branch crossed layer 5 the player could pass through it, and it would look like it was cut off from the rest of the plant. Because of this these new plants are confined to either layers 0-5 or 6-29.





   JLJac on November 04, 2013, 01:56:19 PM:

Hi! A while back Chromanoid posted a summary of the technical stuff I'd written up until that point. I haven't really said anything significant since, so check it out,.
click the link thingie ^

@Artemi, I've been thinking myself about stuff such as tagging tiles as "dense plants" so that you would move slower, and other ideas. But since the plants are drawn into the level, they are not able to move, and it would looks strange if you interacted with them but they where completely static. So instead I've decided that the plants are never going to affect or interact with the player. There might be some deviations from that rule though, we'll see how it plays out.

Level color is different between areas, but the largest area by far is the one that's colored in the bluish grey you've seen in most screenshots. All levels may have 2 "effect colors", which are used to color plants etc. Plants can also be set to "dead", in which case they don't use effect colors.

The weird different fonts is an issue, yes. The grafitti/sign difference doesn't bother me much, because that's the way grafitti appears in real life as well; next to some sign with a industrial very proper san serif. But then Rain World has an asian looking alphabet as well, making the different writing styles as many as three (if you don't count the anonymous san serif in the menues). That might be a bit too much.

Update 193



More work on procedurally generated plants. This one is called "feather fern", and uses the same base code as the spraw bush. I don't know if I'm very happy with it yet... This is hard, takes a lot of iteration. At least it's nice to see 3D plants rather than completely flat stuff like I had before.





   jamesprimate on November 04, 2013, 11:43:44 PM:

 My Word!





   JLJac on November 05, 2013, 11:58:24 AM:

 Gentleman

Update 194



Fungi Trees. White fluorescent color and black. Like any plants their color can be anything, but I think I'm going to keep it to one (or maybe two) colours for each species.





   JLJac on November 08, 2013, 01:32:53 AM:

Update 195
Returned to single player a little after not touching it for a long time because of IGF reasons. Worked a bit on the shelter levels, how they're going to behave. For now it looks like the "death by rain" will be inactivated in the shelter, whether or not you're actually inside the doors. But if you're outside the doors, there'll be a jet stream of water that will kill you either way. Hopefully I'll have some graphics to show how this looks soon.

The case I'm still not very sure about is when you are inside the shelter, the time runs out, and you don't have enough flies. I don't think this will happen very often at all (if you screw up so royally that you somehow end up back at the shelter with no time left and no flies, you're probably just going to load your last game) so maybe an unsatisfying "You starved to death" - message will suffice.





   jamesprimate on November 08, 2013, 03:10:38 AM:

maybe an unsatisfying "You starved to death" - message will suffice.

maybe an animation showing you turning into a skeleton? it would cool because the screen would be black anyway, so you curl up like normal... then just whither away...