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   JLJac on January 10, 2014, 07:11:47 AM:

In the game, there are two alphabets you can see on signs etc. One has its aesthetic stolen from korean hangeul 한굴, the other is based on cyrillic/roman letters. These are the asian ones, exactly as they appear in the game. No entire fictional languages are created, I'm sorry to say, as I felt that might not be the place to put work when creating a game without dialogue.

The signs are grouped into two words, so I guess the most reasonable thing to assume would be that it's a translation of the title.

The question of offence is actually kind of interesting. Many Swedish people can recognize how annoying it is when people ignorantly use ÅÄÖ for their metal band logos etc. Motörhead for example. They just seem to assume that Ö is pronunciated as an O, which is obviously stupid, because O is filling that niche just fine. Or they don't at all care about us and our language, but are just trying to create a cheap rip-off of our culture/aesthetics that is entirely for and by non-swedes. That's annoying too - if you like our culture, freaking take 2 minutes to look it up on wikipedia then!

I myself am guilty of this cheap rip-off crime, I suppose.

In the game it's somewhat forgivable, as it's pretty obvious that it's just a fictional language that you're not even supposed to decipher. But in the logo... IDK...





   jamesprimate on January 10, 2014, 10:05:01 AM (Last Edit: January 10, 2014, 12:48:40 PM):

my argument for the faux language is thus:

#1. it looks awesome

#2. it adds an element of metatext that's a big part of the actual game atmosphere.

#3. it adds an essential element of incomprehensibility.

in the game there is a palpable sense of 'layers of history': the weathered dilapidated buildings and machines, objects that look familiar but who's purpose you cant discern, and a few varieties of vaguely recognizable text, as if different cultures lived in the same area over centuries of time. For me, this is all an essential part to reading the main character: an intelligent, tool using creature who is able to sense that there is meaning to the world s/he lives in, but that meaning is unknowable. this atmosphere is key, and the logo conveys that.

I don't think of this as "fake koeran" anymore than the other languages are "fake Cyrillic" or "fake English". it is a remarkably effective way of conveying that uneasy sense of *almost* understanding, like reading language in a dream. removing all that because of the possibility a few people might misunderstand is a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake in my opinion. plus it looks rad, c'mon.





   jamesprimate on January 12, 2014, 07:32:25 AM:

SOON....





   jamesprimate on January 12, 2014, 01:09:24 PM:

but like, for real this time!!!  Facepalm





   jamesprimate on January 12, 2014, 06:46:34 PM:

Hand Metal Left**OFFICIAL KICKSTARTER ANNOUNCEMENT THAT IM DOING BECAUSE JLJAC IS SLEEPING** Hand Metal Right

Tomorrow, Jan 13th at 7pm EST / 4pm PST / 1am Sweden, The Rain World Kickstarter will commence! For real!


Leading up to that, we will be doing a little pre-launch live-stream party and chat with JLJac (and myself), taking a peek at never before seen screenshots, videos, sketches and listening to 15 tracks from the Rain World soundtrack. This will be 6pm EST / 3pm PST / 12am Sweden, at: http://www.twitch.tv/rainworld

Thank all you amazing people for your help, comments and companionship this far! Rain World would not be what it is without your tireless enthusiasm and interest in the project. 2 years and 67 pages, oh my!!





   jamesprimate on January 12, 2014, 08:59:14 PM:

yes indeed! thank you friends!





   jamesprimate on January 12, 2014, 11:05:39 PM:

classic "make important post, immediately becomes new page" Facepalm just to reiterate...

Hand Metal Left**OFFICIAL KICKSTARTER ANNOUNCEMENT THAT IM DOING BECAUSE JLJAC IS SLEEPING** Hand Metal Right

Tomorrow, Jan 13th at 7pm EST / 4pm PST / 1am Sweden, The Rain World Kickstarter will commence! For real!


Leading up to that, we will be doing a little pre-launch live-stream party and chat with JLJac (and myself), taking a peek at never before seen screenshots, videos, sketches and listening to 15 tracks from the Rain World soundtrack. This will be 6pm EST / 3pm PST / 12am Sweden, at: http://www.twitch.tv/rainworld

Thank all you amazing people for your help, comments and companionship this far! Rain World would not be what it is without your tireless enthusiasm and interest in the project. 2 years and 67 pages, oh my!!

and my apologies for the redundancy





   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 02:46:28 PM:

HEY FRIENDS!

join us for a special top secret Rain World livestream, video preview, new screenshots, listen to 15 tracks of rain world music, kickstarter hype and all sorts of hanging out

http://www.twitch.tv/rainworld






   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 04:27:42 PM:

 Hand Money LeftKICKSTARTER IS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hand Money Right



http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rain-world/project-rain-world

 Beg





   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 05:22:07 PM:

rain world greenlight page, for those of you who are so inclined:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=213453611





   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 05:49:55 PM:

Backed! Good luck guys! And if you need a c++ guy, feel free to hit me up. [:D]

oooohhhhhhhhhh  Hand Thumbs Up Right





   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 09:12:03 PM:

Hello I'm the Michael guy the wonderful Rainworld devs were talking about before, and DevMicco on the twitch stream chat. I help indie people bring their games to the public.

^

Pandara has been a *fantastic* help. if you are willing to get serious and work HARD, talk to this man. (but maybe later, cuz hes busy right now)  Gentleman





   jamesprimate on January 13, 2014, 11:29:34 PM:


aww i was just writing a follow up email to him with more info! guess i need to be quicker  Durr...?

http://tigsource.tumblr.com/post/73282834344/johnsandoval-project-rain-world-a-game-by-joar

for great justice

good luck guise

i tried to upload the gifs but they run into tumblrs 2 mb cap Sad

great justice indeed! thank you Lord Sandoval!

Do you guys have any plans on doing another twitch streaming? That first one was awesome  Coffee

i had a lot of fun! id' totally do another one but problem is, both Joar and I have terrrrrible internet, so we had to get Panda to host this one for us XD

Maybe we should do another one for kickstarter update video launches or something? Then we can get him to give us his sweet, sweet internets again.





   jamesprimate on January 14, 2014, 10:17:42 AM:

Judging by how quickly the $200 rewards sold out, I would stop developing the game and rather start selling slugcat plushies  Hand Money Left

you guys DONT EVEN KNOW, hahahaha





   jamesprimate on January 15, 2014, 07:00:36 AM:

Seeing some stretch goal talk on KS page, posted this:

Other than Linux support, consoles, and online MP, I really don't want them to have stretch goals. The devs already stated their intentions and ideas for a bigger game; I'd rather see funds be used for polish and improving the game than just cramming features in because of stretch goals

How do you guys feel about stretch goals?

honestly, we've been sort of wracking our brains to figure out what to do for stretch goals that would generate some excitement but also wouldn't compromise anything. as Joar explains it, there is a kind of grey area no-mans-land between "comfortably funding Rain World as it is" and "totally rebuilding as Rain World 2.0 so its super slick". We sort of use the analogy of Spelunky vs. Original Spelunky, although its not quite that extreme.

RW2 would guarantee all the cool jazzy stuff: multiplatform, internet multiplayer, much easier console porting, etc etc., but is still quite a bit out of our grasp at this point. RW1, we can probably bolt on some cool stuff beyond the original scope, but Joar is already stretching poor Lingo to its breaking point, so without actually doing the work, its unsure how far exactly we can go with it.

Which makes me very relieved to see people say "more rain world" as a stretch goal, because we know for sure thats possible.

###

ALSO! We're trying to not be too annoying about KS stuff, but today Rain World is the Kickstarter pick of the day so I've got to be that guy and say "please share and RT and help us hype" or whatever, because, hey now is the time to do that right??





   jamesprimate on January 15, 2014, 01:33:44 PM:

^ this is great advice and we will take it into consideration. As you say, for the revamp we are talking about 4-5x ballpark, so there is a lot of space yet to go in that regard.

Anyway, on an almost DEVLOG sort of topic, we managed to work a nice little write-up of Joar's procedural animation style (with new gifs!!!) into our first kickstarter update. So that might be interesting and worth reading even if you aren't a backer!  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rain-world/project-rain-world/posts

(you may have to scroll through a bit of the usual fluff first though)





   jamesprimate on January 16, 2014, 12:07:18 PM:

thank you! seriously! im so excited that you guys are excited with us. but we're not quite there yet though. seems weird to say this considering the hype, but i'm not celebrating anything until we actually cross that line. still 28 days of kickstarter war to be fought Epileptic





   jamesprimate on January 16, 2014, 05:46:41 PM:

So you're asking for about $20k (after all the cuts/fees)... but that's just for a bare-bones version right?

It just seems like a kind of low number for a year's worth left in development. Are you expecting to hit some other goal that would allow for fleshing the game out more? Like at what amount would you consider the game to be no longer "bare-bones"

thats a good question! a significant aspect of this kickstarter is to allow for us to figure out what resources we are going to be able to put into Rain World in the coming months, and therefore to a certain degree the scope of the game. we've worked on this for years with no thought to money and would gladly do more, so its not about "recouping expenses" or "getting paid for the work" or anything like that.

the original goal was a figure that takes into account all the things that it would take for just Joar and myself to finish into a publishable state, including a little freelance programmer help on the side. the game itself wouldn't be 'bare-bones', thats probably an unfair statement to make and i feel kind of silly having made it, but i wanted people to understand that at that budget it would be basically limited to what the two of us in our basements could do. with more funding brings more options: new tools, better hardware, more time with awesome programmer wizard pros to help us out with things like internet multiplayer (and expanding the game in that direction), people to dig through code and port to new platforms, etc. all that jazz.

anyway, back to the actual question: i've talked a little in previous posts above about the differences between our ideas of "rw1" vs. "rw2.0", and it seems like a decent version of rw2.0 starts to be become feasible at around 100k KS (minus fees and related expenses). So, we're still a long way to go before that discussion!

but in related, amazing news: only $600 to goal!!!





   jamesprimate on January 16, 2014, 08:26:32 PM:

Hand Money Left Hand Money Left Hand Money Left Hand Money Left Rain World: FUNDED! Hand Money Right Hand Money Right Hand Money Right Hand Money Right








Thank you all for your incredible support and enthusiasm! It goes without saying that we wouldn't be anywhere without your help and encouragement. 2 days and 3 hours... absolutely unreal. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go slip into a brief coma.  Gentleman





   jamesprimate on January 17, 2014, 10:28:59 AM:

I asked in the stream, but I don't think it got noticed. Can you rebind this to play on a controller and what not? It doesn't... SEEM like you'd use that many buttons to play the game... lol

they were working on it way back in the devlog. iirc, it's already possible, even though the controls might not yet be finetuned for controllers.

yep! gamepad support is already implemented, i play on my 360 controller. needs a bunch of fine-tuning before its "ready", but totally functional.