JLJac on January 05, 2014, 01:07:19 AM:

I'm kind of a purist when it comes to what is canon in the game. We have talked about having creating your own playable character as a reward - in that case there are two solutions I'm willing to go with:

Either the parameters of customization are extremely limited, basically just color.

Or people are allowed to put sunglasses on their slugcats or whatever, but the content is purely cosmetic, and unlockable only through some kind of far fetched key combination or something, so other people won't have to hurt their eyes by seeing it. Or perhaps a text file with a code that unlocks that specific character.

In this latter case you won't strictly have the whole game accessible to everyone, but it doesn't matter that much because all of the content you're missing out on is purely cosmetic, ridiculous and off-canon. You're not missing out on official game content, you're missing out on some dude's desire to play as a slugcat with Johnny Bravo hair, and that's not such a big tragedy in my eyes.

When it comes to crossovers, my canon purism also applies, but some very subtle little references to other media is acceptable as easter eggs IMO. Like, finding a secret room with a little drawing on the wall that could be interpreted as a wink to some other game or something.

jamesprimate on January 05, 2014, 11:27:52 AM:

uh oh!

JUST FOR CLARIFICATION: KICKSTARTER IS *NOT* IN TWO DAYS

We are aiming for the 9th, but there are still some hoops to jump through first.

jamesprimate on January 05, 2014, 04:00:58 PM:

no problem! 

joar has been hard at work on the press page, fixed some of the layout problems and added super cool fly section breaks. You guys have any further suggestions? http://joarportfolio.com/rainWorld.html

jamesprimate on January 05, 2014, 07:33:40 PM:

ill put them in there just for you :D

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, we really appreciate it!

jamesprimate on January 06, 2014, 10:43:15 AM:

STEALTH FERRET PLATFORMER

stealth.

ferret.

platformer.


 

jamesprimate on January 06, 2014, 09:20:01 PM:

Thanks Christian! Yes, greenlight i actually FORGOT ABOUT (until last night) with all the other stuff going on, but thats all lined up now.

ahhh regardless of the outcome of all this, in 30whatever days it'll be pretty great to go back to "actually working on the game"

jamesprimate on January 06, 2014, 11:34:09 PM:

totally. the way Joar has it set up now in the alpha, there are like 5 sandbox "multiplayer" modes where you can choose all the variables, and pretty much all are completely playable for single player. Like, there's an endurance mode where you face wave after wave of lizards of increasing difficulty, that sort of thing. when i play for fun now thats pretty much what i do

JLJac on January 07, 2014, 01:37:48 PM:

Thank you to everyone who's engaging themselves in this! It's very nice to see how concerned you all are about the success of our project :D

I'm putting a little bit of a lid on the devlog for a few days, in order to build up for the kickstarter release (and because I won't be doing as much work on the actual game). Michael who's on board as a sort of kickstarter consultant (care to introduce yourself, Michael?) has been telling me that it's better to not leak out any stuff on the side while making the preparations for a kickstarter. You don't want to release any pressure before the big opening of the flood gates. So hold tight people, and be excited about the kickstarter launch!

Right now we don't exactly know what date we're going for, 9'th is not entirely out of the question, but we could end up putting it a couple of days later as well.

jamesprimate on January 07, 2014, 02:42:49 PM (Last Edit: January 07, 2014, 03:08:10 PM):

you are all probably totally very right. ill set up a rainwold twitter account at the very least. maybe joar wants to do thw tumblr, being that hes super cool visual artist  

for now, mine is @brightprimate

UPDATED: Rain World twitter is at @RainWorldGame

and i wont neglect it!

jamesprimate on January 07, 2014, 10:31:44 PM:

thanks you guys rock! if you do follow us, let me know youre from TIG and we'll follow back of course 

JLJac on January 08, 2014, 06:47:03 AM:

Update 217

I'm breaking the "don't show anything" rule a little here, as I feel I need feedback in order to continue. We're in this situation where I pretty much have to finish the logo, a task that is completely out of proportion difficulty-wise for me, as you may know.

I tried modifying the old logo a little bit in order to make it less "cuddly" and a little grittier. What do you think?



What I'm looking for is basically something with a graffiti vibe that looks cartoony, but without looking like Care Bears. Like, gritty cartoony, if that makes any sense. And if it's somewhat legible that's a plus. Does this meet the criteria? For some reason I still feel like I'm not all the way there.

JLJac on January 08, 2014, 07:35:17 AM:

The symbols are the same language as is visible throughout the environments in the world. My idea was that it'd tie the artwork into the world more. IDK though, they're easy to remove...


How about this?

jamesprimate on January 08, 2014, 09:10:43 AM:

not that you need MORE opinions on the matter, but i agree with christian on the positioning. otherwise it looks fantastic in my humble musician opinion

jamesprimate on January 08, 2014, 05:23:58 PM:

HOLY SHIT!

jamesprimate on January 08, 2014, 06:17:07 PM:

jeez, i hadnt even seen half of those!

looks like we have quite a lot to live up to 

JLJac on January 09, 2014, 01:37:30 AM:

Wow, things are moving fast now! The timing for the kickstarter couldn't be better

As for selling the game vs it being free, right now seems like the most transformative few days in the history of the project, and thus might not be the time to make adamant statements. BUT, most of the time I've been developing this thing I've been a broke sucker, and I will always have a special place in my heart for other broke suckers out there, no matter where this goes. So if we end up selling it, pay-what-you-want or something like that would be the way to go. Or, in the worst case, I could pirate my own game hehehe :D


I agree with you guys on the ferret placement issue, and that's going to change. When it comes to the actual letter shapes... I've been looking at them all morning, doing tiny changes and then removing those changes. The big question now is how do you tell stuck from done? I have no idea, they feel exactly the same to me.

Let's make a check list:

Graffiti influence [YES]
Touch of old black and white cartoons [YES]
Legible [OK?]
Wet, melting, affected by rain [YES]
Not too childish, it shouldn't feel like disney, dora the explorer, care bears, etc [You tell me? Idk... Less childish than the last one, at least.]

Yeah, it's all about that last one. It is a very fine balance right there, I don't want it to be the dark grim future like warhammer 40k, and I also don't want it to be Spongebob. I want it to be a cartoon, but a dark cartoon.

jamesprimate on January 09, 2014, 09:06:00 AM:

I LOVE THIS ONE LETS DO IT!!!!!!!!!

JLJac on January 10, 2014, 01:05:48 AM:

Update 218

Thank you so much everyone for the help!   I think many of you have very good points - elements from the environment needs to be worked in there, and maybe we should drop the cat?

Michael and I talked some yesterday, and sent some images back and forth. One thing that came out of that communication was that I was more able to define what I want - I want something that's sweet & sour. Sweet as in cartoony, sour as in desolate. When doing these logos many people have been suggesting that I should more or less drop the sweet and go entirely sour - which I don't want. My problem, on the other hand, has been that what I've made is entirely sweet, not good that either. For it to be an interesting taste it has to have booth.

Michael works with an art collective, and they've been helping me with a little feedback. You can't imagine how nice it is to have some kind of reality check, rather than just doing something and then staring blankly at it trying to figure out if it's good or not!

One thing we came up with was, the same as many of you guys have been suggesting, to give the logo a bit of texture as if it was part of the environment and affected by the rain.

Here's the latest (and hopefully final) version:



The cat is dropped, it added too much sweet. It will be featured only on the press page, making it more of an "illustration" rather than an integrated part of the logo.

Michael and his artists didn't like the asian signs, but both James and I do, so we'll respectfully disregard that unless someone can come up with a killer argument to leave them out  

Still not 100% on the color - it looks less cute if you use for example blue instead of pink, but this pink/red is featured everywhere in the game's environments, and thus ties it together nicely. I've tried to fade the color down some in order to not have it appear too sugary.

JLJac on January 10, 2014, 06:48:59 AM:

Thank you I was actually pretty nervous to see whether ya'll would approve of it - it is my game and my decision and all that, but in the end it really does matter what people think. Like, something that's liked by 90% of people has to be better in some way than something liked by 4% of people... or defining quality becomes very difficult. So I want to make something that's my own, but also strikes a chord with the rest of you out there, and hopefully we've gotten there.

My friend expressed concerns that the asian text made it look like many japanese box arts, which apparently tend to have a big title in roman letters and then a smaller one in japanese. I didn't really think of this, but when shown some examples I totally see that it looks similar.

The problem with this is a complicated postmodern layer-on-layer culture kind of thing: It looks like the creator of the logo is trying to imitate japanese box art, but the creator is an idiot, and doesn't realize that japanese writing contains meaning. Instead he thinks it's just some sort of decoration some games have, and tries to imitate it.

Basically it looks like I'm "trying to be japanese" or "trying too hard to be cool" - and as we all know, trying hard to be cool is not cool. (Obviously I am in fact trying to be cool [I mean c'mon, look at it], but if this is too obvious it doesn't work, accordingly to the rules of cool) 

Does anyone else think this is a problem? I myself recognize the problem, but I suspect it's only a problem for those of us who are culturally hyper-sensitive or whatever you'd call it, and that even we may perhaps be able to look past it. Although, when it comes to the kind of people who back indie games on kickstarter, I guess cultural hyper-sensitivity is to be expected.