jamesprimate on January 05, 2015, 03:32:23 AM (Last Edit: January 05, 2015, 03:40:51 AM):

thank you! happy new years to you guys too :D

nothing terribly exciting going on in rain world land the past few days. in between snorkeling in thailand ( ), Joar has been feeding me some pretty fantastic new tiles to work with plus making moves on a palette for the current region and possibly next one as well.

for me new tiles means a lot of time experimenting to see how they look / interact with previous tiles, figuring out how to best utilize them for the type of geometries were trying to explore in the region, etc. hopefully the end result being a distinct look and mood created just with the tiles. then joar slam dunks it with a unique color and lighting palette, like so:


detail: https://i.imgur.com/C87sCFQ.png

Joar would want you to know that the above palette is still very WIP, but im already in love with it.

the lighting and contrast for this region (now called "Heavy Industrial") is a bit tricky to nail down as many of the rooms blend inside and outside elements, so getting the right balance that will work for both aspects winds up being very dependent on the makeup of the individual rooms. so seems like it might be a bit of a back and forth. lookin good so far though 

jamesprimate on January 07, 2015, 10:28:17 PM (Last Edit: January 07, 2015, 10:37:09 PM):

whats better than a slugcat? TWO SLUGCATS!



aka co-op multiplayer is now hooked up... in sort of a loose "slap it in the setup.txt" sense. but it works well and feels really fantastic to finally jump around this new world with a friend! even just goofing around with my GF to get footage was dang fun. its been quite some time since i felt that sense of joy when playing (hard to do when you know every single pixel, tick and bit!) so i am suuuuper happy with this new build. Thanks Joar!!

also note the updated Heavy Industry palette, looks so nice and vaguely toxic



in this region im really trying to give a much larger impression of scale and weight to the rooms. these gifs are some of the earlier attempts, but should give you some indication.

JLJac on January 09, 2015, 12:07:28 AM:

@AxezDNyde
Hey thanks! Yeah, I'm really happy about the near-surface distortion as well It's actually just the horizontal distortion that's present everywhere in the water that gets increased with an exponent near the surface. For the caustics (thanks for teaching me that word) - actually they are not the same color as the static highlights, it's just the gif format that bakes them together. So the wall distortion thing you saw is probably not as bad in the actual game. As for the shader cycle speed, I want it to somewhat work with a pretty still surface as well as with an upset surface that you're currently swimming through, so I settled for a medium-ish speed. I could have it change speed depending on how tall the waves are, but I do tend to get caught up in little cosmetics like this forever, so I try to move on from that stuff at a reasonable time and get back to actual gameplay programming. Especially as if I know myself, walking down that road would mean having the speed be locally affected by the water below that specific place, and that seems like trouble :S

@akryl9296
Awesome map! Bigger it's gonna be - this is one area of like, ten o___0 Remember also that this was the first area James did, so it's a bit experimental. Being the first area, and maybe the most loosely defined theme-wise, I'd bet that this particular one is going to go through some pretty damn big changes before release! Sorry to say when you've spent so much time on that map... Feedback is most welcome! Just remember that everything is super WIP. You can either post it here or PM me, depending on if you think it would be an interesting read to others as well

jamesprimate on January 09, 2015, 02:05:15 AM:

ahh this is rad! im really interested to see how people visualize/organize the world geometry. in my head the world isnt necessarily constrained to a 2d flat surface, rather a side-perspective representation of a 3d world, so rooms sometimes connect in varying degrees of weird z-axis. but obviously thats going to be interpreted linearly, so its really cool to see how people make sense of it in that format, and honestly it helps me a lot.

as Joar was saying, the suburban region as seen in the alpha is little more than a starting point for constructing the world at large. i think its super important that the first region be pretty slick and impressive, so we plan on completely re-working it (and to a lesser degree the other regions as well) once we have the complete map assembled and have all of the tiles / effects / creatures at our disposal. it does serve a fairly specific structural function between 3 other regions so the general layout will probably remain somewhat the similar, but yeah the individual rooms are WIP to be sure. Just something to jump around in for a bit! 

jamesprimate on January 09, 2015, 01:13:33 PM (Last Edit: January 09, 2015, 02:20:18 PM):

whoa thats quite the write-up, thanks for taking the time! as it will probably be for a little while, the answer to most of that is "eh, its an alpha movement demo", but its all good to keep in mind going forward. i'd like the to not to get TOO wrapped in of discussion of the many alpha foibles for that reason (though we'll be all about that sort of thing when we hit beta!) and because we prefer to keep the devlog on things we HAVE done rather than things we WILL do, but let me hit some individual ones:

1. one of the (many) game mechanics that aren't in the alpha is that once you eat bats and survive a cycle, the nest of bats that you caught them from is depleted the next round (possibly permanently?), forcing you further and further into the world to avoid starvation. the little 3 room lair area was kind of designed as "baby's first bat hunt" to let you catch some and learn the controls, but without the enforced scarcity you can just sit there camp bats of course! booooring. BUT then we could be lazy and not have to implement multiple slugcat shelters yet

per some of your later questions on it, the rain cycle in general is pretty much just a mock-up at this stage.

2-7, 20-21. yep, controls are something that we will be spending some serious time on when the world is in a more feature-complete stage. There are a few aspects where we need to make some fairly significant design decisions on, which will inform how we tailor the controls (so no use messing with them until that point), but even from the lingo people have been on us about them XD

8,9. the crawlspaces are one of those design decisions i was walking about. as its planned now, some of the more challenging subterranean regions begin to focus on a more tight crawly maze-like game play style, but until we are there and actually messing around with the creatures and geometries that we'll be using, no use in messing with it.

Only somewhat related, but worth mentioning since were on the subject: crawling will not just be for entering tunnels, but also a "stealthed" silent movement which help you avoid AI detection, letting you sneak past predators and sneak up on prey.

10. no worries on that! there are around 20 notable creatures, plus various NPCs and decorative fauna planned. (though to a degree the bleakness IS an aspect we are going for?)

12,13,15,17,19. Plenty of work to do on the Lizard behavior for sure. Though I seriously doubt Joar will EVER get them to a place that he's 100% happy with them, haha. Although I have to take some of the blame for this, as the lizard AI reacts to the room geometries, and some of these alpha rooms are asking lizards to do things that they dont like to (sloped tiles, drops that are just out of their comfort zone, etc etc), which creates weird behavior.


this is a good question that im kind of dealing with now. right now in the level editor we are limited to rendering rooms of 3 screen heights max. very soon Joar is going to fix that, so i think that "fall off screen" death drops will then only be in certain regions where it's called for (aerial regions, tall towers or deep pits, etc), plus perhaps the occasional scattering of them here and there just to be mean. Then we'd obviously implement death if you fall a certain distance, etc., possibly anything greater than 2 screens. BUT the point being that in most cases the traversable world will be mapped out and visible, death pits and all.

jamesprimate on January 09, 2015, 02:36:25 PM:

totally a possibility! we will definitely be balancing the tunneling speed of the cat and other creatures for sure, plus possibly adding some sort of tunneling "move set" for the cat (heck, we haven't even discussed regular slugcat moves here yet!), so you can maybe get short bursts of movement in tunnels. another possibility is objects (or creatures) that can be used to block tunnels. but again, this is all a bit ahead of us!



I think we'd like to do at least one more before actual beta? That is somewhat related to time, as whenever we do a public build it takes planning and a week or so of tying together random things to make it palatable for a non dev, and that time could be otherwise used for actually progressing work on The Game proper. PLUS you get a million emails about things that aren't in the build yet, etc etc. Pretty sure the next one will be focused on the multiplayer aspect though, which I think will be pretty fun to see.

JLJac on January 11, 2015, 11:00:55 PM:

The feared, the infamous, the in horror anticipated Level Editor Overhaul is here 

Q: What is the level editor overhaul?
A: An attempt to make the level editor spit out rooms larger than 3 screens big.

Q: Why can't it?
A: Because director only has a limited memory, and as is the level editor creates a voxel build of the entire room that's 30 voxels deep. In the case of large rooms, which might be something like 1000 * 4000 pixels large, we get 1000 * 4000 * 30, and then * 4, because each layer keeps track of color for each pixel, shadow status for each pixel, and effect coloration. 1000 * 4000 * 30 * 4 pixels is more than director can handle it seems. So instead I'll try to make the level editor only render a voxel space for a little box around where the camera is for each screen, and get around those huge bitmaps.

Q: Why is it dreaded?
A: Because it's boring. It's a looooot of work, and digging into old code, and the end result won't be exciting at all. In actuality it will be exciting when the game is actually played, because it'll allow us to create really big rooms, but on screenshots you guys won't be able to notice any difference.

Q: Why now?
A: Because the earlier the better - James will have had access to better tools for a larger percent of dev time the earlier this gets done. Also the devlog has been dormant during my winter vacation thingie, and I figured it would be better to have it stay dormant for a while rather than wake it up and get you guys all hopeful, just to shut it down again. I won't devlog about the level editor overhaul, because it basically all boils down to "In frustration I messed around with 3 years old lingo code in futile attempts to solve petty little problems in order to get to the exact same spot where the level editor already was, but this time with support for larger rooms".

Also there will be some other level editor work, such as adding a Prop Editor where James can place some objects (say plants, cogs, chains) in the environment manually instead of trying to make the randomization of the Effect Editor hit the right spot by changing the seed over and over. And make the level loader understand sub-folders, and other exciting stuff.

So, I'm going to just go head first into this mess and try to survive through. Might be a couple of days! So see you in a bit

JLJac on January 12, 2015, 11:45:29 PM:

Good news! Talking to James, we decided that I'll do some creatures on half speed on the side of level editor overhaul. I tend to get into big structural projects rather than create content, and the game needs some content, so this time around we'll try doing structural stuff and content in parallel. Definitely more fun!

Update 379
This is going to get spoilery! I won't bother keeping the devlog spoiler free, because then I will be able to post less and less stuff, and the devlog will become worthless at its purpose, a log of development 

James is working on the sky region, and I've started sketching on a flying predator to go with it.




The idea is that these arms/tentacles double as wings and it can walk/climb or fly depending on the situation. Seems difficult... We'll have to see how it develops in the actual implementation!

JLJac on January 13, 2015, 05:04:30 AM:

Oh! I plead innocent, I haven't played metroid! But if the overlap is too jarring, I could definitely come up with some changes. Or you're talking more about the mood than the actual design? If it's more a mood question I think that'll settle when it's rendered in the RW art style, as you say!

JLJac on January 14, 2015, 04:17:08 AM:

Thank you! Yeah this one is certainly venturing into some more alien territory. It's also pretty technically ambitious, even more than the lizard animation-wise, but it doesn't have the multiple breeds like the lizard does so it should be a bit easier to handle. I don't really have a solution for the devlog spoiler issue, as I kind of use the devlog as a tool for my personal motivation as well - if my progress is recorded somewhere else than just on my own computer it feels more like I'm moving forward...

Update 380
Started setting up the framework for creature codename SKY KRAKEN. There's a creature template and all that now, as well as an actual physical representation that can move around a room with path finding. Everything is as usual just slightly more complex than what I can hold in my head at a time, but by breaking the problems down I keep getting around them. This time around I'm also making a little "setting up a creature instruction manual", which will hopefully speed up the process later by keeping me from doing stupid mistakes like spending 15 minutes debugging why the critter is just lying there, until I realize that I didn't spawn the AI module, etc.

The tentacles will need some physics fiddling. Currently we have lizard tails, but those are completely limp and only 7 segments or so. These tentacles will be way bigger, and as they're not purely cosmetic they're going to need to be a little bit more robust in their terrain interaction. It can't be hand waved that two segments end up on opposite sides of a wall and the like. So now I'm doing a thing where each segment is forcefully kept in the line of sight of the previous one - no terrain can be in between them. I'm veering into Actual Physics Engine stuff here, and I'm a complete amateur, so wish me luck lol! We'll see how it goes, worst case I'll have to simplify stuff a bit to get around the physics issues.

JLJac on January 14, 2015, 08:19:43 AM:

hhrrrrrrurrrgh this better be worth it!

Yeah, some independent AI per each tentacle will definitely be necessary - not that they're completely autonomous, but some hunting grab positions etc. Lizard feet already do actually, but here it'll be more visible.

jamesprimate on January 14, 2015, 02:46:24 PM:

NICE! This is sort of exactly the intention: when you first encounter creatures they are terrifying, but as you learn their individual behaviors, they can become an asset.


Flying creatures will have a massive advantage in certain terrains thats for sure, but will be unable to go through tunnels and tight spaces. Basically once you are below ground they arent really a threat. Lizards have much more terrain in common with the slugcat, so the more dangerous of the lizard breeds should actually be way more overpowered than the sky kraken, at least in terms of relative danger to the player.

I mean, to clarify: this creature itself will be a complete terror. Sky Kraken is supposed to be Death From Above. But were thinking that clever level design and some as-of-yet unmentioned game mechanics will be the determining factor in keeping it manageable. (Sorry trying to keep the spoilers down!)

JLJac on January 14, 2015, 03:36:50 PM:

Yeah, as it's turning out the sky kraken needs a 3 tiles wide space to go in, so as long as James gives the levels some pits and corners to dive into it should be possible to tune the difficulty quite nicely.

JLJac on January 15, 2015, 05:22:22 AM:

Update 381
Tentacle Hell sounds gross/exciting depending on your preferences, but is actually just standard tedious, fun, demanding programming work. I feel in my element, and am at the same time not sure if I can do it. A nice challenge! After wasting half a day trying a proper physics engine solution that ended up glitching in infinity I decided to try something else, and am now doing the tentacles in tile space instead of float space, with the intention to overlay them with float space physics later. We'll see how it goes. Still nothing much to show, though progress is steady, so no gif yet. Hopefully I'll have some images for you tomorrow! Grabbing tentacles seems totally viable, although I think this critter might use them mainly for locomotion. But by this point I've spent so much time on tentacle code that if this actually does work out, we'll definitely explore some other tentacle critter down the line. Will see how it pans out though, maybe sky kraken ends up grabby as well!

jamesprimate on January 15, 2015, 05:48:23 AM:

since Joar is all wrapped up in tentacle/code hell, ill drop some screenies from the wrap up of the Heavy Industry region:

a little transition aesthetically towards the Garbage Dump

detail: https://i.imgur.com/7rT5WVi.png

and this one transitions directly into the next region, Chimney Canopy

detail: https://i.imgur.com/CogqqMo.png

over the past few days ive been finishing up the rooms, getting the whole region connected and placing creature dens. one big aspect of this region is that unlike the last two that we did, this one lizards totally run the show. they have access to everywhere here, so it was the first real test of the large scale terrarium AI vibe and... im actually super impressed right off the bat.

Whereas the previous regions were more room to room (intentionally) and platformy, this one finally we get to see Joar's AI work in action with multiple lizard breeds churning, fighting, snapping at each other while chaotically chasing you all over the map. it is DANG fun, and hopefully just a glimpse at things to come!

jamesprimate on January 15, 2015, 07:44:11 AM:

some day young padawan, you too will possess such magnificent wall jumping prowess:

jamesprimate on January 16, 2015, 08:34:54 AM:

there have been some good debates about that on various message boards, my favorite one being one guy who argued *vigorously*, using footnotes, wikipedia links and and citations, that slugcat fur was similar to otter fur due to the way the slugcat looks when coming out of the water in one gif. i salute that man! 

jamesprimate on January 16, 2015, 07:09:40 PM:

we usually only post game stuff here and leave the business end out of it buuuut....



i felt like you should all know 

jamesprimate on January 16, 2015, 11:02:03 PM:

yeah totally. probably pretty essential. im hoping to incorporate it into the opening narrative, but another possibility is to have some progressively more difficult "training grounds" rooms in the sandbox mode. lot of things we could do with that i think!

jamesprimate on January 17, 2015, 08:21:06 AM:

nooooo stop breaking the alpha LOL