JLJac on July 15, 2015, 11:45:55 AM:

Update 456

Pixelling along ~

jamesprimate on July 15, 2015, 01:41:48 PM (Last Edit: July 15, 2015, 01:50:03 PM):

early testing of some of the harvester tiles in context:


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

top looks a bit messy, will clean that up in future iterations.

and some concepts for a deep crevasse / chasm:


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

the procedural sway of the thorn growers plant in that last one is so nice 

jamesprimate on July 17, 2015, 02:40:23 AM:

we've discussed something similar actually, but was thinking of attaching some sort of colored _______ to spears, so you could place them like a flag to mark routes. idk, infinity choices is hard. if only i were garnet or muad'dib...

anyhoo, showing some more of the WIPs going on with the Line Farms region:


detail: https://i.imgur.com/4TJag0b.png


detail: https://i.imgur.com/Wl5EoMB.png


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

jamesprimate on July 18, 2015, 01:10:09 AM:

Hey Saijin! Good question, thats something weve talked about a lot.

The general audio experience is mostly ambient / atmospheric / environmental sounds to establish a sense of place, with "music" being used to establish specific moods we want to convey to the player, such as when discovering a new region, highlighting the emotion of a narrative point, or surrounding some object / creature / whatever that has some significance attached to it.

In this context the audio should function almost like a natural HUD, giving you hints as to what creatures are nearby, how close the rain is, etc., so we dont want to clutter it up too much with music-for-music's-sake.

JLJac on July 21, 2015, 10:41:44 AM:

Update 457

Worm grass!



The worm grass is not very dangerous though a bit creepy. It's mainly sticky and slows you down:



However, if you really get stuck in it, it can actually eat you:



Basically, the higher speed you keep the less dangerous it will be. If you jump and roll, or even just run at a good pace, it won't get you, but if you slow down it can get a grip, and then you get slower, and more worms latch on, etc...

JLJac on July 21, 2015, 10:16:27 PM:

I don't see the problem  In all seriousness tough, this shock value is sort of what I was going for - I trust James to introduce them gradually to make it fair for the player though.


I was actually going for something like this:



rather than a plant per se. It's kind of in the nature of a plant not to be able to move and grab stuff after all! As for the shader stuff, yeah there will likely be some graphics settings to turn the effects down or off. I recognize that we have lost a certain quality that the older, more lo-fi look had, but we've been gaining a lot of other qualities in exchange!

JLJac on July 22, 2015, 12:45:42 PM:

Thank you :D

Logo sketches over the years. Please ignore the different levels of finish, and try to look at the general shapes and moods.

1:


2:


3:


4:


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14:

jamesprimate on July 22, 2015, 03:31:26 PM (Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 03:37:26 PM):

it probably seems like quite a lot dropping all these ideas all at once, but we've been working on this in the dark for months and months and months of course, (with multiple graphic designers even!) and quite a lot is skipped over as well, haha.

Note that the work Joar is showing here is about the font specifically, as the setting and use of the illustration are just quick mockups to show context. In that regard, *i humbly request that these not be shared around* as we intend to do a cool "Big Reveal" sort of thing when it is all polished and where we want it to be. The ceiling is MUCH higher than this 


Yes indeed! We've been working with the extremely talented Del http://deldraws.tumblr.com/ for a couple of months now, and have some Big Plans in that direction. These just are some of the early pose sketches shes done for us so far:



Detail: https://i.imgur.com/sx89CJR.jpg

jamesprimate on July 22, 2015, 03:48:16 PM (Last Edit: July 22, 2015, 04:06:40 PM):

sorry, bumping so it doesnt get lost in the page turn:



@ Oldblood: indeed indeed! its a really big change from the past...3? 4? years. tbh I expected much more of a *cars flipped and trashcans on fire* sort of response, so im quite relieved, haha.

The clean style of the fonts will follow through to the UI and blend really well with the updated aspects of the visual presentation, which is super essential. As much as we both liked the funky distorted style of the alpha and the clever architectural rain silhouettes, they just introduce too much visual noise to be able to do anything else with, meaning that we'd have to be introducing other fonts, figure out ways of making it work with the illustrations, and it just gets super messy.

Perhaps most importantly, we came to the conclusion that the thing people care about in Rain World is THE SLUGCAT of course. So thats where we should to put the focus. Everything else should serve to support that, rather than fight for visual space.

jamesprimate on July 23, 2015, 03:56:12 AM:

@ crispy: this aspect is something were really cognizant of, and plan on keeping the two visual realms as discreet territory so as to avoid visual conflict. in fact, thats one of the reasons why we stopped working on the "architectural letters" concept, was that it required a lot of already very visually-distinct elements to be represented in a different style. the characters are tiny, 24 pixels or whatever, so there is a lot more leeway. and if you are going to take that leap and do detail on *anything*, its got to be slugcat!

its a tale as old as time though, and pretty much every videogame has to deal with this visual incongruity in one way or another and each path has its own potential pitfalls haha

jamesprimate on July 23, 2015, 12:55:14 PM:

 just talking about the font work here tho. we've got some cool plans for the actual logo and title-screen presentation, so wait and seeeeee

But for people who do like that 3 color architectural logo, I do plan on using it for tshirts   

JLJac on July 25, 2015, 01:52:49 AM (Last Edit: July 25, 2015, 02:10:03 AM):

Hey everyone! We have a candidate now that both James and I agree is good and which has been getting generally positive responses I'm sorry if it feels like we're bulldozing a bunch of your opinions here, that's not at all our intention - but we are in a slight tight spot because we're stuck between a deadline and our talented illustrator being off to a convention, so we had to pick something and go with it for now.



It's pretty probable that the illustration might change - this one was actually created as a "sketch" by Del and then given a slight clean up and pixel finish by myself, so I think we'll give her an opportunity to do a final version at one point or another. Also I have this idea that I'd want to see a version similar to this but with the slugcat looking out to the left which would add a bit of drama to the composition, I imagine.

That said, we are really stoked about the direction of this one - it's clean and stylish, legible contrary to the old one, and the slugcat hits that sweet spot between cute and creepy!

As a result of showing the game at conventions we know from public feedback that to many people the game is "the slugcat game", meaning that the slugcat being the main character of the logo would make a lot of sense for public recognition. For this reason we also decided to go with a rather toned down version of the typography - the slugcat should draw the eye, the letters are there to discover next. You might also notice that the letters aren't quite as bright as the highlights on the illustration. Still the character is lit as if it was the typography giving off the light, bringing the two elements together and placing them in the same imagined space.

(Edit - cropped it a bit so it fit in the forum formatting ~ )

jamesprimate on July 25, 2015, 02:02:22 AM:

You guys don't even know how much I am in love with this logo 

jamesprimate on July 25, 2015, 10:41:05 AM:

ROFL

JLJac on July 26, 2015, 01:11:20 AM:

Oh interesting! I'm not convinced about those Rs of yours, to me they have a bit of club foot with that one leg being thicker and extending to outside of the curved line, but I really like that W!

The font is based on a public domain font called rodondo, but has undergone some modifications where I've for example made it thinner and adjusted a bunch of stuff around. If you look at the R there you'll see that it's actually even more pinched together than the one I'm rolling, I've been moving that leg out a bit. So I agree with you in kind but not in scale, if that makes sense  

The all white slugcat looks pretty nice IMO! Actually I have been doing a few tests like that myself as well, as a logo needs to be able to work in one color print. Maybe the silhouette could be a bit more distinctive in some places, but as said we're rushing to a deadline right now and it's pretty likely we'll return to this down the line.

As for the reduced color count on the slugcat, that was my attempt to clean it up a bit and make it closer to the graphics of the game, but I would be totally up for seeing what a smooth unlimited color finish would look like as well! As long as the outline is sharp rather than blurry and there's a way to get around obvious brush strokes. Maybe when we get Del back!

JLJac on July 27, 2015, 12:11:49 PM:

Thanks! As I said I'm pretty sure we'll return to it for polish, so I'll try it out then 

Update 458

New creature coming up!



The idea is that this critter will be able to lay on the floor like a big sea elephant/grub, but then it can also shoot up in the sky with looooong extendable legs.

I'm very inspired by Dali's long legged elephants for this one.



With these long legs it will be able to stride across the worm grass fields and then pull them in and lay down to eat some sort of plant in its grazing pastures in between. The leg movement is supposed to be a little bit less clumsy, though I don't know how good I can make it. Good thing it's all fantasy creatures  

I'll work a bit more on locomotion, and then my plan is that in the skinning phase I will draw legs on top of these tentacles that are only somewhat true to their orientation, hopefully enabling me to fake a slightly less wobbly movement haha!

jamesprimate on July 28, 2015, 08:48:19 AM (Last Edit: July 28, 2015, 09:09:28 AM):

^^^ actually, i think Joar will *love* that you are making that connection!


Thanks for opinions gentlemen! All will be considered. For the time being, it is water under the bridge though. As Joar mentioned, we had a tight deadline for this aspect, and assets have already been shipped for the purposes of this particular logo iteration. It will likely be revisited again when we get nearer to release and we have everything else set. We've had universal positive response to it outside of the devlog, the people less familiar with the project, so we'll look at this all with the long view a few months down the line and see how things feel 

(Whats amusing for me is remembering how much everyone HATED the last logo, and the nightmare thread fires that happened around the creation of that. Now of course many people fondly remember it, haha. As always, change is bad.)


Anyway, moving on! We've got a lot of game to make, so have to keep on the grind. I was very much enjoying the posts of screenshots from The Mist and war of the worlds, etc, as inspiration for this new beast (nicknamed the Raindeer, yes yes we know.) As for the behavior and role, I dont want to spoil too much of course but as usual Christian and Teod have made some very close guesses.

I havent been posting much recently, as most of the level stuff right now isnt so flashy. Im currently working on a subregion that connects Suburban to Linear Farms, so ive been experimenting with finding a gradation of the plainer, boxy "valley" SU style and assets with the more much detailed open horizon LF style:


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

you'll notice a liberal application of worm grass, which has quickly become my favorite rain world creature. 

and other task is creating the wide stretches of crop farms:

detail: https://i.imgur.com/r5990VA.png

not terribly exciting, i know. that should change soon though, as new tiles are incoming.

We're probably a solid halfway through the region, but of course i want to wait to see how the Raindeer plays before going too much further with LF room geometries, as the rest of the terrain will be its turf.

jamesprimate on July 28, 2015, 10:53:46 AM (Last Edit: July 28, 2015, 11:08:46 AM):

oh we're definitely not doing steam early access or anything like that. i hope that hasnt been implied anywhere, as it was never considered. it'll be more as you have described: a closed beta with the adult swim games testers, some kickstarter backers, some old rain world pros, etc. the "early access" of the kickstarter tiers was for the alpha versions we've been sending out over the past months, but they were essentially mechanical prototypes stripped of the narrative and progression elements, aka "the game".

but this is just planning ahead, were not there quite yet. its as you've said, there is a looooot of work yet to be done and we have no desire to show off our bugs just yet!

JLJac on July 28, 2015, 11:57:39 AM:

For the logo stuff James said it ~ we are gonna return to it when the general packaging is to be touched up close to release, but for now we're really happy with what we have, especially the cute cartoony aspect actually. The mood we're going for is "grim cartoon", with the slugcat being more "cartoon" and most other stuff being more "grim". Still its black stare and the dramatic lighting conveys a hint of that gloomy atmosphere, meaning it hits the right balance for us.

Update 459

More work on locomotion and I also started a bit of the skinning process of the legs, as it didn't really make sense to work on leg movement without knowing somewhat what it will end up looking like.

Also the creature is now better at handling uneven terrain; instead of just throwing its body out over a ledge (and stumbling and falling) it carefully places a leg or two on the below level and then ease itself out.



Going up a ledge is a bit more difficult as the corner tends to "cut off" the trailing legs and make the creature lose its support, but by having it stay a bit more clear of the actual corner this behavior is also getting better.

JLJac on July 28, 2015, 01:37:32 PM:

@christian, yeah, good point. ATM it doesn't really have a good distinction between front and back, it mostly just thinks of them as "my four legs", but that could def be a nice touch!

@Keith, thank you sir! If you go one page back you can see a debug visualization of what the legs work like behind the skin that is pasted on top of them. Those tentacles are composed of two main components, the semi-transparent "ghost tentacles" which work in tile space and make sure that they never overlap terrain, and the jointed physics tentacles on top of that which provides a bit more plausible movement.

The creature ray-traces from its body downwards trying to find a good grip position when it moves a tentacle, and when it does so path-finds a way to it in tile space. Then the tile space "ghost tentacle" starts to move along that path, dragging the floaty physics tentacle with it.

On top of that I draw what you actually see in this post above. I use the positions of the physics tentacle in the debug visualization, but relate to them somewhat liberally, basically just using them to make sure that the leg is not super obviously sticking through a piece of solid terrain. The elbow bends are accomplished with a simple inverse kinematic formula, google inverse kinematics for more info.

Hope that was somewhat helpful, it's getting a bit late over here haha