jamesprimate on August 27, 2015, 09:30:42 AM:

i wouldnt take much from the audio in the coub videos, as coub automatically apply volume normalization and huge amounts of compression that isnt in the actual audio. you can hear it really strongly in the leviathan video, which should be all subtle background sounds and ambient water swishes with tons of headroom. whatev.

jamesprimate on August 27, 2015, 04:37:35 PM:

Thank you based oldblood!

Anyway, I'm off to PAX Prime for the next few days, to interact with the masses! If you happen to be there too, I'll have the newest build [150826-b] to play over at the adult swim games booth so stop by and say hi

Joar is going to keep on trucking here, so I expect to have like 5 new pages of devlog to read when I get back 

JLJac on August 31, 2015, 07:09:35 AM:

So happy people are enjoying the game 

@prinsessa, The game has creepy elements, but we don't want to go all out horror!

@Teod, Yup, we're totally aware of the promo material situation! It's just that it's just the two of us, and we're all caught up in making content atm. When we finish the map up (soon) we'll probably need to get a grip and make an effort in those areas.

Update 467

Tube worms!



(Sorry about the gif artifacts!)

These guys shoot a mucus rubber slime tongue thing at a wall or a pole, tube along it, retract it, and shoot it somewhere else. Sometimes they hit a creature passing by, or each other - it can end up a pretty tangled mess.



If you catch a creature with it and then release it, it will continue to dangle from the creature but try to attach to terrain with the other end. This means it can be used to restrain creatures - In two player mode with my cousin we've had a lot of fun trying to tie down a vulture with a bunch of these, as well as creating horrible tangled messes with for example a vulture, a lizard, three worms and the other player in a katamari ball of despair.

JLJac on September 01, 2015, 11:13:56 AM:

For science!



Update 468

Next creature coming along! This time it's turn for "daddy long legs", a huge spider monster with thin tentacle legs.



Currently working on locomotion, trying to get the legs right and have the thing feel weighty as it moves. I want to make it so that the legs are at their strongest when they pull, so that the body is basically suspended between the legs, and it has to get legs in front of it in order to move forward.

The generic tentacle class is coming in handy yet another time! This time I'm rolling a hybrid between the old tentacle code and the new rope physics developed for the tube worm - the tentacle behavior is similar to the vulture, but the rope physics engine is used to connect the segments of the legs making them a bit more solid when it comes to terrain interaction. These very long legs were sort of unforgiving visually as you'd see any movement through terrain clearly, but this combination of methods seems to be something I think I can make look good.

jamesprimate on September 01, 2015, 06:02:39 PM:

yes definitely! we were actually just talking about that a little bit. in the old Lingo alpha, multiplayer and sandbox were combined, so you could throw creatures and players into levels of your choosing and just go at it. what were planning now is a bit of an elaboration on that, tying in the narrative portion of the game so as you explore the world in single player / co-op, you are unlocking new content (rooms, regions, creatures, etc) for use in the multiplayer/sandbox mode. this will get us a lot of extra mileage from fun stuff like the water elements, tube worm grapple, cicada jumps, etc., that otherwise would just be confined to a region or two.

but more related to your question, i know Joar is super keen on having some sort of ecosystem observation mode, so a "vivarium" that pulls from these same elements sounds perfecto.



Also hey hello hi im back from PAX! Did a ton of interviews and talks with media peeps about Rain World, so i expect to see that stuff popping up the next week. Probably nothing new for you long-time devlog readers, but who knows!

We had front and center billing at the adult swim games booth, which was pretty slick...



and got to finally see the new slugcat pup plushies that Sanshee is going to be putting out...



and most importantly, the game didnt even freeze ONCE.

JLJac on September 01, 2015, 10:51:05 PM:

Welcome back James! 


Oh man, you don't even know... 


Good call! This one will have a quite interesting design ~ I'll not spoil it but let you guys see it as it develops!


Yes, I'm also fond of this aspect so I'd like to see something like this go in the game. Maybe not a separate mode per se, but something where you can just watch, maybe as the credits roll or the start screen or something. Also I don't see why sandbox mode should force you to spawn players, you should be able to just place a few critters in the arena and see what happens!


Yep ~ that's actually a perfect description of the task. What is going on is the latter, what I try to make it look like is the former. It's the same for all the creatures in the game, none of them actually "move with their legs" in an actual sense, rather they are just pulled along and then made to look like they're affected by the legs with smoke and mirrors. I've been achieving results I'm happy with for the other creatures, so I think I will for this one too!

JLJac on September 02, 2015, 12:40:40 PM:

Yeah, that's the idea! Violence as a messy last resort when everything else fails - never a goal in its own right.

Update 469

More daddy long legs work. The locomotion still has some wonks, but it's getting better. This creature has a new challenge - it's more procedural than most because this time around the body shape and the amount/length of the tentacles are randomized as well, not only cosmetic details. This introduces the difficulty of not knowing exactly what the body I'm writing locomotion code for will look like, but at the end of the day the general body plan is always similar enough for it to work - chunky body in the middle, halo of tentacles around it.

This creature will use its tentacles to grab, and today I did some work on making it reach into narrow spaces to try to pull you out. What's tricky about this is making it able to think about how to interact with spaces it's not actually allowed in itself. The solution I'm going with is to rely on the tentacle pathfinding I already have - the tentacles are sort of autonomous and just gives the main AI some hints on how to make their activities easier. This autonomy should also bring with it the ability to hunt two or more different prey with different tentacles at the same time.

jamesprimate on September 02, 2015, 04:01:35 PM:

Sure, but not too much more to tell yet. Joar has had the framework for this system in for quite a while actually, and the effects can be seen currently in the behaviors of the cicadas and the jetfish. But its one of those numbers things that's probably going to require a bit of fussing with and balancing to make it work well, so we will get into that more when we're in the polish phase, where the world is complete, creatures are done and we have this big ecosystem web of creature behaviors to mess with. I think it should be pretty fun! Really looking forward to what Joar can do with it 

As for your other question: so far lizards don't really eat bats (though they might snap at them from time to time.) Did I say something otherwise in the interview? If so, blame it on 4 days of PAX craziness

JLJac on September 03, 2015, 12:06:12 PM:

@EddieBytes thanks for the input! If I understand correctly I think this is basically what I'm doing, except I can't just calculate leg positions for the final position, but have to do it continuously along the way to get there as well. The main thing would be points 4 and 5, that's basically where the difficulty comes in. Please feel free to elaborate if I didn't understand you properly!



Update 470

Did some work on the tentacles, trying to get them to properly probe in tunnels without clipping through terrain. Also I have a basic system for dividing tasks between tentacles so that only tentacles not strictly necessary for locomotion are tasked with hunting etc. On a floor it could be pretty cool that the creature in some tense moment abandoned locomotion and collapsed to the floor, using all tentacles to hunt. However, Underhang architecture is all about ceilings and death pits below, and in a context like that it has to be always supporting itself.

James and I had a quick talk on creature design. As it's coming along, the daddy long legs has slow body movement, but pretty quick tentacle movement (which can't easily be turned down because it also uses them for climbing, and then the body would be even slower) and super long range. This means that basically the creature becomes a slow moving little thing with a screen-sized orb of death around it, which is a problem as it will make it practically impossible to move through the rooms.

We talked a little about this issue and came up with a solution that I think is both gameplay appropriate and pretty cool. The idea is that the daddy is blind, instead it uses hearing and its sense of touch to hunt you. When you collide with the tentacles it will be made aware of you, but not immediately grab you. If it hears something move, it will send a tentacle over there to feel around and check it out. This creates a reason for it to make sense that the creature is basically only long legs - it sits in some corner spreading its legs out throughout the room like a spider's web, and when something moves through there it tries to grab it and move it towards its center.

I've gotten started on this alternative sensory system by making it blind, but give it hearing (just turning on the hearing module, yay modular AI!) and make it able to "see" creatures that are overlapping its tentacles. Seems to work, but is so far a little unpredictable which is cool because it makes the creature feel alien, but definitely makes it harder to play against. Will need some tweaking.

Next up is making it able to send a tentacle to check out an unknown sound. This means that tentacles need to be able to switch between three tasks, Locomotion, Hunting and Examination. The tasks should also be prioritized in that order. More visually interesting updates tomorrow!

jamesprimate on September 03, 2015, 03:07:07 PM:

I see whats going on here. Gimmy wants this devlog to go on for 5 MORE years 

jamesprimate on September 04, 2015, 05:34:21 AM:

We already have plans for our next game after rain world, it's going to be called "sleep for an entire year and contemplate our misspent youth."

JLJac on September 04, 2015, 12:59:15 PM:

Wow, that poster is really really cool! 

Update 471

Tentacle task allocation - blue is locomotion, green is checking a sound, red is hunting (without being able to actually catch me atm).



The creature is blind and the touch/hearing hunting behavior is now working. It plays weird, not like any of the other predators in the game. I'll have to try it more extensively together with the grappling hook, as those will occur in the same area and the grappling hook is sort of a game changer. It's very interesting though - you can run right past it no problem, but as soon as you start jumping around those fast tentacles are right there. Will be really interesting to see how this one plays combined with other creatures.

Making it able to always keep enough tentacles dedicated to locomotion to not fall down was a bit of a challenge but I think I figured it out. Spawned 7 juicy cicadas that it felt very much like hunting with 7 different arms - and made sure that it didn't fall to the ground in that situation, which should ensure that it doesn't fall to the ground in any other situation either!

jamesprimate on September 06, 2015, 03:48:06 PM:

ive been playing with the current daddy build the past few days and they are AWESOME. very unique creature with a completely different AI "personality." Very alien. i was telling Joar, i think its an addition on par with the vulture as far as how it expands the ecosystem experience.

per the tentacle discussion, its just flat black tentacles in mine and i dont really think anything further is necessary for visual indication... the ones that are grabbing for you are the ones that are grabbing for you. basically if you are close enough to where you are thinking of which tentacle is which, its already too late 

JLJac on September 07, 2015, 01:16:21 PM:

Update 472

Working on a skin for the big daddy! Not finished yet, but lots of progress today.



First of all, I smoothed the tentacles out with a bezier curve. Bezier curves are actually super easy if you're familiar with 2D lerping.



As you can see from this wikipedia gif, it's just lerping from one thing to the other, then lerping from that to another lerp point, etc ~ Lots of lerps basically!

Tentacles still have some issues with vibrating back and forth. That's not in the skin but in the actual tentacle behavior - however I think I can perhaps solve it in the skin by just checking for repeating positions and ignore them. We'll see what's easiest.

The creature will also get some detail on its body.

JLJac on September 08, 2015, 09:48:23 AM:

Oh that's impressive!


Yeah we've been thinking about this too. It should have some way to handle creatures larger than itself. Don't have any definitive solution just yet, but maybe it can wrestle them for a bit, get a "taste" and then give up and leave them alone. Don't want to go too complex as this creature doesn't seem like the contemplative type, it's more like a "grab and eat" kind of personality.


This actually points out what the workflow usually goes like ~ Do you remember how the vulture was used to be called "Sky Kraken" way back? Basically I set out with one idea, but then it changes as the creature develops. This is what's so fun about being the programmer and the artist! I don't have to make the thing look like some sketch or some original idea, if the spider looks cooler as an octopus halfway through, I can make it an octopus

The idea for this creature is that it's sort of both spider and spider's web. Its idle behavior is sitting in some open place with the tentacles spread out, hoping for something to run into them.

Update 473

Now you can see when it hears you, which makes it a lot easier to play.



The decreased fuzziness surrounding what the creature is up to makes it way more fun to play against, now you can for example throw a rock to distract it and get an immediate idea about whether the distraction worked.

JLJac on September 08, 2015, 11:44:00 AM:

Yeesssss it got across 


Not checking the code or anything, just off the top of my head, I'd say it's:
Leech > Bat > Snail > Lantern Mice > Cicada > Frog > Slugcat > Lizard > Vulture > Long Legs > Rain Deer > Leviathan
Though the vulture/long legs relationship might switch around if you count only the body, not the limbs.

I keep thinking of the long legs as "not really alive, just a pattern of matter set on consuming low-entropy matter and turning it into more of itself" but then I realize that's basically what life is haha!

JLJac on September 09, 2015, 12:23:14 PM:

Update 474

Remember these guys? The yellow lizard was a subspecies in the lingo build that is now making its return.



They hunt in packs, using their antennae to telegraph your position between each other. This basically means that if one of them can see you, all of them can.

They also use their numbers to their advantage by trying to surround you. In the gif you can see how they use two separate paths to get to me.

JLJac on September 09, 2015, 01:40:09 PM:

Yep! Less infighting - longest antennae is the alpha

jamesprimate on September 09, 2015, 05:28:23 PM:

love these new yellows so much!!!



great minds! been thinking along these lines as the concept for the trailer for over a year 

JLJac on September 10, 2015, 12:22:06 PM (Last Edit: September 16, 2015, 12:11:23 PM):

Update 475
One of these frustrating days. Working with the yellow lizards I got annoyed with them getting stuck in corners, so I dove into some of the old lizard movement stuff, trying to make it smoother. Problem is that the code is a year and a half by now, and not so great. Soooo a lot of messing around just in order to understand what I was even looking at. After a lot of work I managed to get the thing done I had set my mind to, but I can't tell for sure if it's a great improvement. However, I've been tidying up that old code a bit and refreshed my memory on it, for whatever that's worth