JLJac on October 27, 2014, 10:46:54 PM:

Yeah, breathing animation needs some work... I think the lizards will somehow boil to death in the water, we'll see how it ends up looking!

Some dripping... yeah perhaps! Worth a go!

Update 348
James and I are really happy about the water, so now we set the next goal to get some rain cycle stuff in order to take steps towards a playable alpha. As I'm already in shader land messing with the palettes, I decided to do the palette fade effect today.



In the game, I doubt there'll be any scenario like this, fading from green to orange. I'm just showing it off using palettes I already had. Rather the idea for the actual game is that each palette will also have a darkened "rain is coming" palette, which it'll start fading to as a warning to get back in your shelter. There might be some intermediary areas between two areas that could use faded palettes as well, but I think we'll keep that at a minimum because the straight color lerps create some pretty desaturated and boring palettes.

The effect is accomplished by doing a copypixels operation on the texture the level coloring and water shaders use - meaning that the shaders themselves are not bothered by this at all. The palettes are fairly small (32*8 px) so I haven't noticed any frame rate drops.

All the objects are also told to update their colors, so things that use for example the "black" color of the palette will fade with everything else. As a new fade instruction is called, it copies the current palette into the From texture, meaning that a fade can start in the middle of another fade with everything remaining smooth.

I've also re-introduced the slight wetness distortion on the geometry that I had to remove when working with the water - now I just pass a float to the shader letting it know the water level, and don't do the distortion below that. Distortion + water didn't work because the water needs to mask itself against the level geometry, and if that geometry moves around there'd be weird little gaps. Also, I updated the cloud shadows passing over the level to make them moving rather than just a static scrolling image.

jamesprimate on October 28, 2014, 09:20:21 PM:

ohhh, good suggestion! that does look Quite Nice

JLJac on October 29, 2014, 12:29:54 AM:

Oh wow, you threw that together just like that? That's amazing! Yeah, I see what you mean, the scale definitely does seem a little weird. The reason why I have it looking as it does is mainly that I'm trying to keep the color count down in order to give it a "pixel art" look rather than "shader mania", but that's obviously a battle that's slowly and surely lost. You do have a good point in that multiple layer water would mimic how the backgrounds are constructed, which might give some consistency to it.

The scale issue is actually not that big of an issue to me personally. Might look a bit too small at times, but this is a weird cartoon universe where things aren't really that pinned down. I honestly couldn't tell you how tall a slugcat would be next to a human, which is kind of the point, because it never is next to a human - it lives in its own realm. The weird scale of the water reminds you of that a bit, which I'm not entirely opposed to. Then again, I'd prefer it being ambiguous to it being visually well-defined that the slugcat is small as a raindrop, because if you forced an answer I'd probably have to say that it's closer to an earth-mammal in size than a droplet of water.

Difficult stuff. But yeah, note taken. Right now I'm pretty happy to leave one week in shader land behind for a little while, but I'd be surprised if I didn't return to it. If we're doing some ocean-inspired areas your water would obviously be much more fitting, and I think James have some plans like that.

I've also been thinking about maybe having some reflections in the water surface - by now the body of water below the surface has gotten much more shader love than the surface, which is basically just a colored sheet. So... we'll see. Water round 2 might bring some changes. Thanks for your input!

Update 348
Made it so that creatures can be in dens. I had to mess around a bit with this because it means that a creature is in a room, coordinate-wise, but also not in the room as in that it can't interact with other creatures in the room. It seems like things are working out fine though, I've been able to have a lizard enter a den in a loaded room, as well as move to an off-screen room and enter a den there, in abstract space.

JLJac on October 30, 2014, 12:14:30 AM:

Thank you! We're not through yet though 

Update 349

Shortcut visualizations coming along.



Most things are still missing - there should be little indicators at the exits, the entire length of the shortcut should blink when you get close to it to make it apparent where you'll end up, etc etc. More tomorrow!

JLJac on October 30, 2014, 10:47:21 PM:

Our genetical engineers are on the task!

Update 350

That age old rain world question - Where the hell will I appear if I go in this shortcut!? - has been given some clarity.



Some feedback, what do you guys think? Am I overdoing it? To me it feels a bit too modern with the color fading - I'm thinking about if it might be possible to have it look more old school somehow. Right now I'm lighting the entire path up, and doing a "wave" of slightly lighter dots on top of that so you can see the direction it's moving in. And also I'm having the destination arrow blink like crazy.

Note that in most scenarios you won't have any idea where to look for the destination arrow if you're playing the room for the first time, so I don't really think this can be communicated too clearly - however, it shouldn't be too visually distracting either.

jamesprimate on October 30, 2014, 11:37:59 PM:

Las Rain Vegas World!

i think the mechanism probably works fine if done subtly. a little pulse of grey or something when you get close?

jamesprimate on October 31, 2014, 01:09:15 AM (Last Edit: October 31, 2014, 01:14:22 AM):

this is basically what was in the lingo build and it seemed to work fine. when you'd get close to a shortcut, the arrow and corresponding destination arrow would pulse subtly. i still think thats the way to go, not just for visual sensibilities but also because you'd sort of have to be looking around to figure out where you'd end up, kind of as a gameplay element. felt like "hunting" (and also, much more importantly, it didnt clutter up the view.)

but that said, no reason not to explore some possibilities!


 

JLJac on October 31, 2014, 03:40:59 AM:

I'm not sold on the idea of having only the blinking arrows, because it's not in all scenarios where it's only the player alone triggering those things. Multiplayer can have 4 slugcats running around, and then you can't just look for where it's blinking. But I totally agree with you on it being too saturated and bright, it does look a bit too much like neon lights. Maybe if the wave motion stays, but is toned down some? That would make it more about the blinking arrows, but there'd still be some motion to follow in order to get to the right arrow.

JLJac on October 31, 2014, 06:57:55 PM:

The color idea is really interesting! It's a ... weird one though, so I'll have to think about it.


What do you mean "when it wasn't obscured", do you mean the shortcuts or do you just mean like, an ordinary tunnel made from level geometry? Because those are different elements - one is not replacing the other I could try to do some kind of more "in-world" visual cue, but it'd be so incredibly forced that I'd prefer to just not try to go there. I don't know if you guys remember my post about how I think of in-world coherency from a few pages back? Basically the shortcuts are already a huge, weird exception from how the physical reality of rain world otherwise works, and as such I think it's way less awkward to embrace them as exceptions rather than try to shoe-horn them into some kind of more realistic representation.

For those of you who suggested more muted arrows, I tried toning down the color a bit and going back to the smaller size of the lingo build:



This is the size and color they were when I stood on the PAX floor and put my finger to them saying to people "THERE IT IS DO YOU SEE THE ARROW" and people were like "NO I DON'T SEE A THING", buuuut, I think that the expo floor was probably a pretty stressful context, where most people were playing the game for just a couple of minutes while standing up. Playing the game at home, sitting closer to the screen, people are probably able to pick up more subtle visual cues. What do you think, is it better?

Those of you that want to indicators at all - I totally get your point. Aesthetically they are a bit of clutter that we'd perhaps be happier without. But, the end product here is a game, not a bunch of gifs, so playability trumps aesthetics if all else equal. What the game looks like will appeal to you for a few minutes, but what it plays like is what's going to keep you for several hours, so I'll have to go with that. Then of course, if we can have both that's obviously the best alternative

jamesprimate on October 31, 2014, 07:08:36 PM:

looking Quite Nice 

jamesprimate on November 03, 2014, 05:09:58 AM:

Yo! So I'm meeting up with Joar in Seoul for the next few days, meaning that probably nothing at all is going to get done while I force him to play tour guide, hehe. No that's not true of course, one of the main reasons I'm here is so he can teach me some of the more arcane ways of the level editor (tile, palette, lighting aspects, etc), plus we'll be planning out some more of the long-arc / business stuff. But in the interest of full disclosure, we'll mostly be eating samgyeopsal or kimbap while doing so 

Talk to you guys in a few days!

JLJac on November 06, 2014, 09:58:12 PM:

Most of our talk has been about business stuff and how we will handle the logistics of the project - maybe not the most exciting but very necessary, and it feels good to have a more defined idea about how things are going to go. However we've also talked a little bit about how we want the world you play in to work. As you've seen James has made some pretty extensive maps, and we've been trying to flesh out the first areas a bit more which is definitely easier sitting at the same table. On top of that, James has had a crash course in the more intricate workings of the level editor, and we're hoping to be able to switch up to a new gear in actual content creation.

I think this division of work (I use the term loosely as we're both obviously going to be involved a lot in what the other person is doing) feels really good. Ever since the start I've mostly focused on the small scale - how the creatures actually look and interact. The game design issues of the larger scope - how the world will look and how you'll progress through it - I've generally been thinking of as something I'd get to "later", but I've been worrying that this might not give it all the attention it deserved. With James giving those aspects some serious attention, I feel secure in that they will be just as good as they have potential to be.

So, all in all, good productive talk. We're sorry about the gif sparsity though, promise to get right back at it next week when things return to normal!

jamesprimate on November 09, 2014, 02:31:46 PM:

^agreed on all counts

JLJac on November 10, 2014, 01:04:10 AM:

Update 351
Back at it! Today I added tools for creating and adjusting water in the level editor - I have high expectations for what's going to come out of that when James gets his hands on it. As so far we've only added the water to already made levels, we haven't created a level designed for water yet. Going to be pretty cool to see what comes out of that.

The rest of the day has been spent trying to get the AI to have some basic understanding of the water's existence. Both flies and lizards are pretty hydrophobic, so in those cases it's just a matter of of marking wet tiles as illegal (which isn't as easy as it sounds, as there are a million references to asking about and setting the legality of AI tiles all over the code). I've also created a marker for creatures that enables me to give them a somewhat more sophisticated relationship to water, for example they can be air dwelling but accept touching water at the surface though not diving into it, or water dwelling, or completely amphibious.

Somewhere in the process I managed to break some parts of the code that saves AI data to the level file, which really was the last thing I wanted to revisit this week, but it doesn't seem all that bad so let's keep our hopes up. I'll probably sort it out pretty quickly as it doesn't seem to be about the hexadecimal data storage, which would've been the true nightmare situation...

JLJac on November 10, 2014, 11:49:42 PM:

Thanks :D

Update 352
Finally managed to make the AI understand water, and patch up everything I broke during that process. There are a few things still that need to be addressed, such as some system for saving whether a node in abstract space is submerged. Without knowing that, a room that exits abstract space could end up spawning a bunch of fish on land and a bunch of flies under water, or similar. Also it would be necessary in order to avoid weird off-screen diving by creatures that shouldn't be able to dive.

Other than that I've added a health state to the lizards, finally enabling them to be injured and die. The injured state is handled by a per-frame chance of getting a bit stunned, which increases with how damaged the creature is. This works pretty well in my opinion, as it means that a very injured lizard will be mostly incapacitated, but if the random numbers line up it can get a sudden burst of movement, making sure that you never feel completely safe around it.

For death condition I'm doing a similar thing, the lower under 0 the health is, the greater the per-frame chance that the lizard will finally shut down. However, there's also a 50% chance of death when reaching 0 health, and a 100% chance when health reaches -100%. It looks good so far, with some lizards collapsing immediately when hit by a spear while others manage to crawl a step or two.

Lastly I've finally made sure that spears don't duplicate when off-screen, but thinking of how many time I've written that already the gravity of the wording "made sure" seems to be dropping quickly. Well, at least the spears seem to stay un-cloned in the situations I can create right now.

JLJac on November 12, 2014, 12:34:37 AM:

Hahaha ok, I'll post a gif for you!

Update 353
Polish, polish, polish. I'm trying to wrap up the mechanics I have to a playable state now, before moving on. That means a lot of tiny little things that needs fixing. Today I revisited spears - how they stick, how they do damage, etc. The new spear stuff in combination with the lizard damage stuff means that the game is much more of a game recently, which feels kind of cool.

The player has also finally got a throwing animation, if you look closely you can see the slugcat lean into the throw a bit, and some hand movement as well.



Other additions of the day include lizards being able to understand that they should return to their holes when injured, and the ability for lizards to casually attack some close by creature they're not actively hunting if they think the creature looks tasty, or are just generally pissed.

As it's becoming more of a game the differences in difficulty between Unity and Lingo version also becomes more obvious, and I've been trying to tune that a bit. The difficulty was way too low, and now it might be a bit too high - but I've implemented it so that it's dependent on a few breed-specific variables in the lizards that can be tuned up and down very easily, so we'll get there.

jamesprimate on November 12, 2014, 01:29:39 AM:

WOOOOW! That GIF looks like a quicker, smoother version of the classic lingo ones. Suuuper impressive!

jamesprimate on November 12, 2014, 02:41:05 AM:

throwing is just forward. keeping it simple! rain world is no twin stick shooter 

jamesprimate on November 12, 2014, 01:13:21 PM (Last Edit: November 12, 2014, 01:34:32 PM):

we've been working on the next gen version for so long, you forget how it used to be. its crazy to see the same sorts of scenes side by side. The frame rate difference is RIDICULOUS. And the gif is only at 30fps i think? in game its like 100fps+, laser crisp and smooth. Plus notice how much more depth and detail is present in the backgrounds?

The lizards in the new version are still lacking a lot of the "personality" behaviors that were in the lingo, so they look a bit "im running straight towards you to bite you", but other than that WOW what a difference! The arm motions, the limping, the escape behavior. There is still TONS more to do with that stuff and it compares well already.

Still feel the throw motion is a bit off somehow. Maybe not quick enough arm? Also the spear rebound animation is pretty wacky, haha. BZZZOOOM! Could probably be slowed down if possible.

Yep, the lizard heads are armored to various degrees. The point being that you shouldn't REALLY be taking them on head to head unless as a last resort.

ANYWAY!

I just got back from a week in Korea studying rain world tiling with Joar, and i think the results are looking pretty nice:



non horribly compressed version here: https://i.imgur.com/55PL17h.png

Finishing up the first tiling pass on the initial area of Rain World proper: the ~25 room "suburban" region that will be teased in the first build... which we are planning on having ready pretty soon!

Gentlemen, it looks like this might actually turn into a videogame after all! 

jamesprimate on November 12, 2014, 04:58:02 PM:

None yet. Despite my enthusiasm above, I should note there is still quite a way to go!