JLJac on January 25, 2016, 05:26:02 AM:

Very very good points, all of those. Very good points. 

JLJac on January 25, 2016, 05:54:47 AM (Last Edit: January 25, 2016, 06:05:51 AM):

One-dimensional lookup texture apparently not a good idea. Resolution doesn't work out, giving these jagged lines, even at 10 000px wide.



Remains full sized 2D lookup texture, which is gonna be like 40mb in RAM  

Edit: Full size 1366x768px texture gives the same artifacts. I'm gonna go back to using some simple maths and trying to make an estimate that places the markers as good as I can tune them.

JLJac on January 25, 2016, 06:22:55 AM:

Yeah, if I just return the grabtexture value in the shader I see a smooth radial gradient from black to red, like supposed to. Same with the 2D lookup table.

This here:



is the result of a tuned approximation. I hooked up the base and the exponent of the displacement values to the mouse coordinates and moved around till I got the best result, then copied those values. It will have to do for now. Unless someone comes up with an incredible revelation I think I have to move on now, we send builds to Adult Swim at the end of each month and I still have a couple of things on my to-do list. Thank you so much for all the help, guys! Hope we can find a mathematically perfect solution for it some time!

JLJac on January 25, 2016, 12:59:56 PM:

This is just an approximation, I do an y = bx^k where I've tuned b and k to make it baaaaasically line up, although you can still see a few pixels of displacement in some cases. Had to be pragmatic here, working on schedule and previous attempts to come through to James, AS and everyone else I work with on why mathematical purity is worth 16+ extra work hours towards a very similar looking result has always yielded somewhat limited amounts of understanding 

Please do tell more about splines!

Update 520

Worked on the shader displacement issue, as you may have noticed. Also implemented a damage system. Previously damage within the game has always operated on a sort of rouge basis, where every creature has code such as "on damage, check if the damage source is a spear, in that case immediately die". This generally worked, but say that we wanted to tune the damage a certain interaction does, or make a creature more or less tough - then you need a system.

So I set up a simple little thing which tracks damage types (stab, blunt, bite, etc) and sends a Violence message to the affected object with a damage type like so, as well as a damage severity value (working on the base 1.0 is the damage of a spear), a stun bonus (for items such as the rock that need a little extra stun on top of the very tiny blunt damage stun it does) and a momentum of the damaging force. Creatures can then either override this function and mess with it, such as in the case of the lizard "head shield" that bounces off spears, or just let the default virtual method run.

In the critter templates they have a basic toughness parameter which incoming damage is divided with, a basic stun toughness param which does the same for stun, and a list of all the damage types with specific fine tuning possibilities to create weaknesses/strengths against certain damage types.

On top of this, I implemented a system with "appendages" which are basically all the long parts of a creature. Before this, spears and rocks would pass through the necks or wings of vultures for example if they didn't connect with a "chunk" - meaning it was possible to very frustratingly get a spear throw that passed gracefully between a vulture's body and head without doing any damage.

The appendage system basically checks for line intersections between the "appendage" and the movement line of the projectile, and can detect a hit even if no chunk has been overlapped. Spears can stick to appendages, and poke out in the correct angle.

The system is very easy to implement for any creature, and currently I have it set up for a few secret critters and for the vulture. Where you previously couldn't hit the vulture's neck, you now get a nice double damage bonus for a spear to the throat, and you can also hit the wings.

I quickly set it up so that the vulture wings have a separate health state each, taking about 3 spears to be completely taken out. It's pretty tragic to watch the thing trying to climb and fly with a broken tentacle, but really fitting to the general Rain World mood which is supposed to have an element of more "realistic" lasting consequences of violence.

So far so good! Had a quick discussion with James about Daddy Long Legs and damageable tentacles, so might give that a go too before moving on. Otherwise the daddy is basically a damage sponge that feels no pain and can't be stunned, so even if all the tentacles might end up shielding the body completely it might probably be a welcome change to be able to take a tentacle or two out rather than not being able to affect it at all, haha!

jamesprimate on January 25, 2016, 07:45:58 PM:

i dont even want to think of it until post-release when we have regained vaguely normal body weight, sleep and mental health baselines. 

JLJac on January 26, 2016, 11:41:08 AM:

Haven't really recorded any gifs of those, so they're lost to the wind I guess 

Update 521

Working on the main menu. This might be stuff we don't really want to reveal yet, but I can say as much that we have a direction we're happy with and which we think works really well with the style of our talented illustrator Dell.

It looks like the game will feature two kind of distinct art directions, of course the pixelly style of the game itself, and then a more HD illustrated approach for the menu background etc. Getting the two styles to go together is going to be a bit of a challenge (especially in for example the sleep screen where they are going to meet - illustrated slugcat and pixellated map) but it should be possible to get to work, and when we do I think it's going to be a big benefit to the experience.

Whereas the flat-color pixels of the game are good for getting creature behaviors etc across, I think that the illustrations will do a really good job of complimenting that with giving a feel for the grit, grime, textures and smells of Rain World.

JLJac on January 26, 2016, 12:43:06 PM:

Anyone knowledgeable of fonts and/or pixel graphics around here? Menu work has forced us to start considering a font, but it's a bit difficult. A completely hard pixel font looks a bit rough - even though the game does only have hard edges, most of those are moving in a soft way, and the static jagged lines of a pixel font looks kind of harsh. On the other hand, putting an anti-aliased font on top of pixel graphics obviously makes the entire composition look like something a kid pasted together using random google images assets and ms paint

Is there some happy in-between? I was contemplating the idea of a pixel font with 1 in-between color for AA, but maybe that's really bad for some reason? What are the general dos and don'ts of game fonts?

(and yes I know I'm supposed to be a graphic designer, but they never taught us how to do neo-semi-retro video games, just like... print and stuff...)

jamesprimate on January 27, 2016, 05:37:07 AM:

good suggestions! we are considering all of them. honestly, were probably only in this pickle because I fought to keep the game text-free for so long. over time I have seen the error of my ways and hereby officially renounce my text-extremism!

jamesprimate on January 27, 2016, 07:45:41 AM:

OH don't worry, we're not going to compromise the animalistic concept with text, but it will be necessary for in game tutorials and such that exist on a player-level rather than a Slugcat level. Originally I had intended for the player to learn exclusively from world interactions, but we have testers that have been playing for 2 years and still haven't caught on to a few of what I would consider pretty basic gameplay elements. And that's an essential part of the game design, sort of? It's a chaotic world that can be traversed in whatever way the player is able to, but at the same time we need to be able to quickly communicate "to preform a pounce, stand still for a moment then press forward + jump" 

jamesprimate on January 27, 2016, 10:16:39 AM:

agreed

jamesprimate on January 27, 2016, 02:13:50 PM:

exactly this sort of thing has been considered (and we may further consider!) but it would require an entirely new system for AI creature "puppeting" that would probably not be the best time investment at this point if its just going to be used here. Plus there are a lot of concerns about "scripted" creature behavior: joar has worked very hard to make believably intelligent AI with its own agency, and making scripted creature events that wouldnt compromise this with wooden "acting" or awkward looping behaviors would be very time consuming.

loooooong story short: some-well executed text could potentially solve all of these problems with very little effort. But were not quite there yet, just thinking about it in the context of a menu mockup for now!


i completely agree!

JLJac on January 27, 2016, 03:00:45 PM:

As James says, it's partly a question of dev time investment/returns. Learning new moves isn't a huge part of the game (say that there are 6 or so "special moves" out of which maybe 2 or 3 would need explicit explanations) and making some system that shows you how to do those 3 moves in a text-less way would be some work if it's to be the same quality as the rest of the game. The other option is to put text on the screen once or twice in the very beginning of the game, which is of course very easy. And when it comes to how we'd like to spend our time (of which there never seems to be enough in a day, month, year, what have you) we'd rather spend that time working on some epic end game set pieces etc that we know will stay with the player and affect them on an emotional level.

That said, we don't entirely count "clever" solutions out, so if we get to actually implementing some sort of tutorial and an idea that doesn't require us going out of our way for two weeks pop up, we grab it!

Update 522

Game has a working menu! It has four buttons, new game, continue, options and exit. Options doesn't do anything yet. Continue is properly greyed out if there's no save file in the root folder.

This is not the final menu set up, but a place holder. Later as we get to the playable pups, I think the "new" and "continue" buttons will be swapped for a button that takes you to a slugcat select screen ~ so you can do that thing with a separate save state for each slugcat which we talked about.

Everything seems to work! You can start a new game, load a game, start a new game and abandon it and load a game and have your map exploration from that last game wiped, etc.

Also the menu has gamepad, keyboard and mouse support. Clicking the mouse once puts it in mouse mode, pressing a key or a gamepad button takes it back to keys/gamepad mode.

jamesprimate on January 27, 2016, 07:13:35 PM:

HMMMMMM i like this, yes

jamesprimate on January 28, 2016, 09:53:57 AM:

nah, anything dealing with the world-level iconography, signs etc., has serious narrative ramifications. the slugcat is a stranger is a strange land; a lonely animal making its way through the remains of an ancient civilization. so having a sign with a slugcat on it breaks that immediately, lmao

JLJac on January 29, 2016, 06:18:14 AM:

We'll have no tutorial or tip stuff about actual creature interaction I think - kind of the point of the game is figuring that stuff out for yourself. The entire extent of the tutorial will basically be "crouch and pause for a bit then press forward+jump to leap, slide and jump to backflip" and the extent of/time put into the tutorial will be proportional  

JLJac on January 29, 2016, 06:20:56 AM:

As for a "separate tutorial mode", we have a sandbox mode planned, which will basically be running on the engine of the multiplayer but where you can throw in one player, two players, a player and some creatures you've discovered, or just some creatures you've discovered and no players at all. So that would both allow for practicing moves in an empty room, practicing a specific creature interaction, or observing interactions between non-slugcat creatures and learning from that.

jamesprimate on January 29, 2016, 08:01:24 AM:

It will be a selection of individual arena-like rooms, some from the main map and some specifically for multiplayer/ sandbox. region-themed content (creatures and rooms) unlocks as you make your way through the main game.


Not on that quite yet, but initially the idea was a "creature egg" that you have to find and bring back to your den.

And yes the gladiator mode is suuuuuper fun, even in the old alpha! So I'm really looking forward to it with all the new creatures. It will definitely take some thought on our part to get it to not be a UI/menu hell though.

JLJac on January 29, 2016, 02:04:08 PM:

Sorry about the lack of updates! We send end of month builds to the people at Adult Swim, and this run-up turned out a bit extra intensive. Promise to be back at it very soon!

jamesprimate on January 30, 2016, 08:42:21 AM:

Hey Christian, what was the size of shadow complex?  i just finished up the first round of polish on the 12 regions and did a "final" screen count just for, uh, fun: 1427 before gates and shelters 

jamesprimate on January 31, 2016, 08:10:58 PM (Last Edit: February 01, 2016, 01:02:56 AM):

WOWOWOW things are really really coming together this month. Adult Swim had us on a pretty insane ambitious timeline, and despite literally wanting to die for the past few weeks (i worked 25hr straight yesterday for instance), somehow it all came together for this build. Rain World is now a 100% playable game, with a (gorgeous) menu, saving, progression. First round of polish is done for all 12 regions. Gates are functional and spiffed up with some new visual effects, UI is looking surprisingly good, in-game map is complete and has had some nice polish. ITS HAPPENING GUYS 

Anyway, I know i cant show too much now but wanted to keep you guys in the loop 

EDIT: oh, before anyone gets the wrong impression: this was just a deadline for a milestone , not *The Big Deadline*, so still a while to go... But still it was a pretty big milestone!