JLJac on July 04, 2015, 02:04:55 AM:

A related question: is it allowed to buy a unity asset, but then not use it in its entirety but instead pick it apart to get the pieces you want? Or just look at how it works and partly re-create the same solution?

JLJac on July 04, 2015, 10:24:42 AM:

Thank you gimmy! Once again your assistance paved the road to glory 

JLJac on July 05, 2015, 09:01:02 PM:

 

Update 449

Lizard vocalization is in! For each sub-species there are 5 audio triggers that can be used to give different individuals a randomized voice. On top of that they randomize a specific pitch and some other variables from their ID seed. Each lizard gets a "phrase" - a sequence of pitches and volumes - and the sounds it actually makes are combinations of a few pre-set phrases that depend on context, and this own individual identity phrase. For example, when reacting to a noise that the lizard doesn't know the source of, it will make a sound that pitches up slightly towards the end to signify surprise or curiosity. That would be the curiosity pre-set phrase, and it's blended with the lizard's individual phrase to determine the final sound.

The idea behind this is that the combination of a randomized sound trigger (basically a selection out of 5 samples) and these pitch and volume modulations will make each lizard sound a little bit unique, while at the same time making it so that the experienced player might get a bit of a clue as to what's going on from hearing the sound.

It seems to be working pretty well ~ it definitely needs some tuning, but the technicalities are basically in. When two pink lizards have one of their dominance battles you can (or at least I can, haha!) differentiate two different voices creaking at each other.

JLJac on July 06, 2015, 12:09:36 PM:

Thanks Christian! A perfect summary of what we're striving for!

On the subject of releasing a build, we're actually at a pretty bad stopping point right now - lots of stuff that's half-implemented... But I'll talk to James about it, we're definitely excited to show you guys the progress when we get to a spot where we can do so!

JLJac on July 07, 2015, 07:41:03 AM:

Update 450

Big sea monster under construction!



This scene is actually under water as you can see from the floating slugcat, but I turned the water sprite off to see what I'm doing.

My inspiration for this thing is that fear you get from seaweed when swimming - the fact that it's a lot of floating flaps in constant movement makes you uneasy because you can't tell what's what. The idea is that this thing, partially obscured by the water shader, will cause the same sort of discomfort, combined with the fact that it's huge. Tail and all it's about two screens long!

As of now it's not as dangerous as it's scary (not that it can even grab you at all, but just from testing whether it's able to move up to me and boop me with its head) so it might need some sort of extending mouth parts to make it live up to its appearance.

For the behavior I have several things I haven't decided on yet, such as if it will hunt you near the surface or not. On one hand it would be cool if it never came up to where you could see it clearly, because if you never get a good view of it it will remain ominous. But it's really cool when it breaks the surface and creates a bunch of waves as well, so idk!

JLJac on July 08, 2015, 09:28:59 AM:

The big fish is gonna eat everything, is the idea. Like, why wouldn't it? It will have trouble catching up with the jet fish though!

Here's technical guide in case you want to do it yourself:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1133480#msg1133480
The basic principle is that the creatures are composed of several 2D points with velocity vectors, that are locked at certain distances.

JLJac on July 08, 2015, 12:12:42 PM:

Oh yes!

Update 451

Progress coming along nicely! First a moody one with the water, showing what this beast will mostly look like in the actual game. Swim slugcat swim!



This next one represents about the maximum amount of the creature you'll see in the actual game - the water is my friend here, because it's super hard to do the psuedo-3D stuff I usually implement on this scale, so everything being obscured by the water is a godsend. The idea is that never quite seeing the creature in its entirety will both make it feel ominous and also allow me to cut some much needed corners in the animation.



Here's a slow motion gif of what I've got for the mouth parts so far:



I think it's an interesting visual contrast that the entire thing is some sort of soft mushy kelp-grub, but the mouth parts are straight up heavy duty industrial machinery. It also serves a gameplay purpose - in the monochrome underwater environment the dangerous mouth parts need to be somehow distinct from the rest of the creature. If everything was just billowing tentacles you'd not be able to understand what part it was eating you with, it'd just feel like sometimes touching it randomly kills you.  Hopefully this will provide a visual contrast that works even in monochrome; squishy parts - not so dangerous, square parts - very dangerous.

Currently my plan is that the mouth will extend to the position where both jaws are parallel but slightly apart. There it will pause for a little while, before very forcefully with an almost instant movement smash together, and then pull into the head again. Anything that had the bad luck of being in the square-ish area between the jaws at that particular frame gets pulled in with it. Once retracted, the jaws will glide outward towards the resting position again.

jamesprimate on July 08, 2015, 10:07:14 PM:

hahaha you know we cant just spill all the narrative and world aspects here right? that would spoil all the fun! 

jamesprimate on July 09, 2015, 08:56:04 AM:

oh no, there is plenty of deep to swim in, so you'll get to see them in their full glory in the deep dark below. he means that physical creature size (for singular independent moving creatures at least) wont get much larger than the leviathan, as we could use water physics and huge open water rooms to make it work out.

jamesprimate on July 09, 2015, 09:27:46 AM:

oh yeah definitely! that all has to be tweaked and re-balanced for navigating the open water swimming aspects of this shoreline region. right now its completely unplayable, lol

JLJac on July 09, 2015, 11:43:38 AM:

Oh I really like this one!



So, on the subject of this car compressor jaw haha! It's a tough balance for me, on the one hand I have my vision, on the other I of course take in what you say. It might be the case that it looks a little out of place compared to the already existing creatures, but according to me that's because the other creatures aren't enough like this, not the other way around. My idea for this world has always been a broad gradient of strange biotechnological stuff and less strange stuff, with something like intestines in a box on one end and an apparently all-natural leech on the other. This is the first one where I've really gotten some clear, unambiguous machine parts in (the vulture feathers are metal in my head, but I don't know about you), and I'm pretty stoked about it. However I can see that some of you might not be, if you started following this project thinking it was something else.

It was the same with the blinking lizard heads, if you remember? I had my idea, I knew what I wanted it to look like, and no-one agreed. To get pretentious for a bit, I think the problem is inherent to sharing an art process. Why do we make art - because we have some idea we want to get across where we need pictures and music and stuff, because words just doesn't work to explain this particular thing in its entirety. If James and I could write everything we wanted to express in this project, we would have done so, it could not possibly have been more time consuming 

So, because of this, it's sort of by definition impossible for me to fully explain what I want this thing to be, because that explanation is nothing more or less than the final product. We're working our way there!

That said, it's definitely not impossible or unnecessary to talk about a creative process. And I really do value you guys' input, it has contributed to huge improvements. Remember a couple of weeks ago when you just wouldn't leave me alone about those water jets? Water jets now look 800% better because of it!

Also when talking about lore and world building stuff your input has been really valuable. But in this domain, James and I have to have the last word because, well, it's our project ~ The cool thing about being indie is that you're not trying to appeal to some focus group or something, after all! So, I guess we'll have to ask you to just trust us a bit here - we have a cool idea, when things start coming together you'll get a better picture of it! Maybe you'll be disappointed because it doesn't line up with the idea you had imagined for the project's future, but we can't possibly line up with everyone's ideas, so just give us the benefit of the doubt that it might still be a pretty cool idea regardless

TLDR; I hear you, but wait and see for a bit and I hope it will make sense. If it doesn't it's definitely not impossible to change cosmetic stuff later!

Update 452

Jaw slamming shut:



I've also made it able to eat creatures. Contrary to other RW creatures that usually need to bring their prey back with them to their dens, this one just swallows them whole there and then. Even several at a time!

JLJac on July 10, 2015, 01:45:37 PM:

Thank you everyone! Glad you like it  Still a bit of work on this one, but now it will be mostly AI stuff.

Update 453

The next waypoint is making this beast swim between rooms, but the "map" we had (colored squares, you might remember) got broken in the region connection project which would make it very hard to know if I had managed to make it roam the world, haha! So the question was, make a new map or fix the old one? As the old one basically didn't work - it was just colored squares and to check if two rooms were connected you had to search for squares of the same color hahaha - I decided to go with a new map. This new map gives soo much overview compared to anything we've had up till now, feels really good to watch the little creatures move around in abstract space!


(Note that this is not some canonical arrangement for the region - how the rooms are located relative to each other you'll have to ask James about, this is just me pulling them into some configuration where I can see them.)

On top of this I actually got the leviathan swimming between rooms ~ but it's not completely finished yet. It can use this "sea highway" as we call it to teleport between rooms if swimming off-screen, but it also needs an AI behavior that tells it to do so. I imagine this working pretty much exactly as the vulture; it will slowly roam the region, if arriving in a room where there are edible creatures it'll make a quick detour into that room.

JLJac on July 13, 2015, 06:09:39 AM:

Update 454
General technical housekeeping. The leviathan needs to be able to travel and hibernate in a system completely free from the normal den-and-exit framework for abstract space, which means that some new abstract node types need to be defined. This opens up for a long awaited other change as well - no more vultures through shortcuts! With this new system vultures and leviathans alike should be able to travel between rooms completely without using the usual shortcuts.

Seeing the dev interface map, James and I had another talk about in-game maps. What we would trade away is obviously the complete no-UI purity, but we would gain some pretty nice pros as well. One is of course playability, it will just be easier to navigate this huge world if you have some sort of map system to guide you - however minimal it will be a huge difference from not having any at all. The other would be vanity, haha - these environments are HUGE and very complex, but that doesn't come through very well viewing it screen by screen. A map would give an immediate visual impression of how large these regions actually are, giving more credit to all the work James has put in.

Here is a 5 minute mockup I made using a few of the HI rooms. It's put together very haphazardly and the region depicted doesn't match the screenshot behind it haha, but it might be a starting point for a conversation:



The idea for a map like this would be that it fills in organically as you move through the environments, and that everything is drawn as a unified shape somewhat breaking up the very distinct room-by-room nature of the game and making it feel more like a united whole.

One problem that James brought up is that in games with a map, there is a tendency that the player will end up "playing the map" rather than the game. I can imagine a few solutions to this, one of which would be that you can't actually move as the map is up (the controls instead pan over the map) and/or that you can place a waypoint on the map and when you then bring the map down you instead get some very small piece of UI that only guides you to the waypoint, such as a little compass or something. That way you could bring up the map, place your waypoint, and then not have to bring it up again until you've gotten there. Basically any idea that keeps the player from having the map up all the time is game, because even if a map might be a nice aid we want the player immersed in the game, not the map.

Another question is what a map should look like if one is included. If it could look more "slugcat instinct" than "computer interface" that would be cool, but it still needs to be crisp and clean.

jamesprimate on July 13, 2015, 08:20:32 AM (Last Edit: July 13, 2015, 08:27:42 AM):

im torn on this too. personally, i hate the UI aspect and think it will break immersion. but on the other hand the game world is so large and complex that there needs to be some way for the player to visualize it. also, to if we are to convey destinations and locations to the player, how do we do it without a map of some sort? its either that or literally "showing the way" (arrows or illuminated exits) which i think would be even worse, as that removes the sense of exploration altogether. its not something that is going in right now, so we'll ponder it for a while as we go.

one thought i had was to have the map develop as you explore, but have it only be viewable from certain locations, say some sort of large map terminal in rooms connected to the region gates or something. then you can have some way of planning your route region per region and seeing where is unexplored, but its also far enough away that it doesnt have you "playing the map" breaking the immersion. joar doesnt like this idea and im kinda meh on it as well.

another possibility that might work similarly would be to have the map only be visible during hibernation. this solves a couple of problems actually, as for now the hibernation is sort of just "there" without much utility. having it be the time when you can peek at the "slugcat dream map" creates an added function for it, keeps immersion and doesnt interrupt the flow of the game at all, making use of a natural pause in the gameplay. the more i think of this the more i like it.

JLJac on July 13, 2015, 11:17:49 AM:

Wow, loooots of interesting discussion! 

#Arrow pointing back to den: This would be really easy to implement, and maybe sufficient, or at least a great step up from nothing at all. It would basically be a breadcrumb system, but where the breadcrumbs are deleted if you double back - so if you go back and take another branch or cross your previous path the trail would just be cut at that point and then continue in whatever other direction you started off in.

#One-way rooms: If we do have a bread crumb system, a one way room will become a risk and that's kind of fine right? I imagine a rat would be hesitant to drop down a pipe or something for this very good reason.


Nice line up! All of them except number one seems to have some UI though, so if we are going to rip that band aid, maybe try to get max value out of it and go all the way?

This is also a nice idea, as it would give hibernation a sense of purpose. Maybe if you could see what swarm rooms are active in this mode (slugcat sense!) and place a marker, and then when you go out you get a compass to that marker or something? Would make for a nice "planning mode" similar to DF's embark screen. "This is the idea, but we all know it's gonna go to chaos once we get out there."

This is also a valid point. But if the hibernation mode feels very separate from the game, almost more like a between-mission menu screen, maybe you wouldn't get that frustration? Also coming home to the den and getting to see the map grow when your newly explored rooms are added could be a nice end-of-cycle reward?

JLJac on July 14, 2015, 07:59:07 AM:

Hm, I don't know... I think the very expressionistic and emotional stuff is a bit stylistically off-key. The game is rather matter-of-factly in its general tone, the idea is that what happens might be emotional but the presentation is a very straight forward. I generally want to avoid forcing a subjective experience on the player, and from the level work I get the impression that James is on the same page. It's not like Lion King where there is an Evil Land at the horizon, instead it's just strange environments fading into each other and it's up to you how you want to feel about them. The slugcat's mind should be a little bit of a black box, not because it doesn't have emotions about what is happening but because if it is a blank slate you will project your own emotions on it. Then there can never be an awkward dichotomy when the game tells you that you should have this or that emotion about something, but you actually experience something else.

So, if we're diving in slugcat's mind I'd be way more comfortable with accessing information in there rather than emotion! But, death star assault map certainly doesn't sound like what we want either haha! So, maybe information but animal-like information, somehow? As someone pointed out animals have a great spatial sense. I was amazed a few weeks ago when I was babysitting a dog how it was always able to know the direction back home after taking several turns on city streets, way better than I would be. I read somewhere that if you teach a rat a maze, and then change the maze, the rat will still tend towards the coordinate where the food previously was when exploring the new maze, proving that it doesn't simply memorize an array of lefts and rights, it has a developed concept of space. Humans obviously have a lot of that going as well (if there is road work you aren't just stopped in your tracks because your memorized order of left and right turns is broken, you find a way around) but in the super artificial environment of this 2D game that sense is definitely impeded and might need some extra enhancement to make it not frustrating. I guess the key question would be what is the minimum that can be done to achieve that? Just a little compass arrow, perhaps? Or a very simple map?

A very valid point as well! There will be maps around, and the last thing we want is people playing in windowed mode switching back and forth to some pdf they've downloaded... If it can't be avoided, maybe make the best of it?

Update 455
Good news, vultures through shortcuts is over! And they work much better for it 

Today I'm doing some art assets. Very time consuming, but relaxing to get some time away from the code!

jamesprimate on July 14, 2015, 10:05:36 AM:

I really like the sea grass concept! Will keep it in mind for when we return to that region in polish pass

JLJac on July 15, 2015, 12:33:12 AM (Last Edit: July 15, 2015, 12:39:50 AM):

I draw it pixel art style! But then I split it up in an array of images, usually 10 for an asset, that represents the different depths. That way the level editor can render it in a kind of semi-voxel fashion (basically 30 bitmaps) and create some subtle 3D effect.

Puh, these things are complex!

JLJac on July 15, 2015, 02:39:51 AM:

Yeah, maybe in the water it could work. This has come up a few times and I've been pretty obstinate towards the idea because we have these super static, pre-rendered backgrounds with plants and everything in them, and those are a very base component of the game that's not gonna change. If the entire environment is super static, including plants, but there are some plants that moves, that would bring even more attention to the static nature of everything else. For that reason I'm doing a strict division in the artwork: creatures move, plants and environments stay still. However, in the water there is already the water shader that slowly wobbles the entire picture, so there it might actually be game to do something like that. As you say though, actually filling one of those rooms completely with physics-based seaweed isn't really viable. However it would perhaps be possible to further use the visual obstruction of the water to make some magic happen with shaders or similar.

JLJac on July 15, 2015, 02:47:34 AM:

In other news - everyone who's enthusiastic about Rain World should definitely check out this short film I found the other day:



http://www.omegastopmotion.com/watch.html

It's amazingly similar to Rain World in many ways! If you dig it you should also check out this article about the making of:

http://makeitshort.fr/eva-franz-omega/

Not surprisingly they mention two main sources of inspiration that overlap with rain world's - nature documentary and (japanese) science fiction.

Isn't it awesome? If Rain World could be basically that but interactive, the dream is real!