jamesprimate on May 26, 2017, 03:26:10 PM:

AH! For clarification, I was talking about the PS4 patch! Responding to this:


And that one just brings the PS4 version to parity with the current PC v1.015, with some huge added PS4-specific stability improvements.


But as soon as that goes out we'll start making official announcements about the timeline for the *new* update for PC! It just seemed wrong for us to be talking about the third update for the PC version before the PS4 even had one go through :/

jamesprimate on May 26, 2017, 07:46:03 PM:

YO thats very very cool! I wont lie though, im intentionally *not* going to look at anything like that until we've wrapped up our own expansion plans, as i dont want to have that in my head even subconsciously (if that makes sense!)

But once we finish up our plans, we've discussed bringing the rain world level editor to steamworks and letting yall go wild with it. (and by "go wild" i mean "suffer the horrible tedium and instability that we did" lol) No timeline on that of course, but just letting you know that we're keeping yall in mind 

jamesprimate on May 27, 2017, 04:43:17 PM:

ahhh thank you thank you ! thats funny, im actually really good friends with Rich AKA Disasterpeace so for some reason its hard for me to think of my dude who i get weird pizza and watch seinfeld reruns with as being "my favorite soundtrack" or a huge musical influence, but theres no question that he is. to be honest, hes the person who suggested i do game music in the first place! so yeah, huge influence both from Rich's music and as a person. i owe him a ton. cheers to Rich!




Yes! 1.01 was the update and 1.015 was to fix the stuff that we broke in 1.01, lol


its not dead yet!!




Ahh! You are digging deep, haha. That was written early on, intended to be for the first Daddy encounter. Early on we had some vague ideas about Superstructure and the Leg where we'd have rooms seal off and you'd be stuck in them with some monstrosities until figuring out some puzzle or another, so I made some more traditionally scripted extreme horror music to go along with that. But that concept clashed a bit with the general concept of the game, so we quickly abandoned it. Now only remnants such as Polybius remain!

jamesprimate on May 29, 2017, 01:54:18 PM:

Interesting! This is a new one. Joar has responded in the steam thread. We'll need some more info to proceed, so if you can give steps to reproduce as well as what your PC specs are (in the steam thread, not here) that would be very helpful for the diagnosis.

The grind continues!



Not necessarily true. We have a big content update planned for the relatively near future, but if there are game breaking bugs that are fixable we can do minor bugfix updates pretty quickly without much fuss. Let's see if we can find it and fix it first though!

jamesprimate on May 30, 2017, 10:46:58 PM:

After many long trials and tribulations... the Rain World PS4 v1.01 update is finally live! Details below!

Hello friends and slugcats! We present to you PS4 patch #1: Rain World v1.01

This patch is intended to accommodate some early player feedback and polish assorted rough edges on the various game systems, etc. These were all low-hanging fruit that we think improves the player experience without taking anything away from the concept of the game. Rain World should be an existential experience: unforgiving and even occasionally unfair. But it should be the jaws of a Lizard that gets you or the terrifying Rain, not some ragdoll physics wonk or design oversight!

This patch puts the PS4 version at parity with the current PC v1.015

Gameplay improvements:
* “stuck in holes” fix - disconnected exits will no longer snag you
* subtle backlit slugcat in low visibility swimming situations
* quicker turning around in tunnels
* larger lung capacity while swimming
* nerfed the more intense waterfalls in Shoreline to prevent repeated drownings
* more pearls near Scav tolls in Garbage Wastes
* more food in central Garbage Wastes
* more food in central Shaded Citadel
* more karma flowers in world
* karma gate requirements on the Shaded Citadel, Drainage System and Underhang side were lowered to prevent players becoming stuck in challenging regions
* food / karma flowers regeneration now ticks forward on deaths (helps eliminate stuck / starvation situations at low karma)
* players will now keep map progress between deaths (Id say 99.5% of people asked for this)
* map now features gate karma symbols and shelter icons when locations are discovered
* karma depletion on game exit removed if done within 30 seconds of sleep cycle
* full karma drop on exit bug fixed (that was a brutal one, sheesh!)
* intro cinematic is now skippable
* upon respawn after death, shelter doors cycle through opening animation faster
* many many minor room fixes

Stability improvements:
* Save file corruption fixed
* map loading bug fixed
* gate crashing bug fixed, as well as multiple other rare crashing bugs
* assorted additional stability improvements

Thanks for your patience!!
--RW Devs

jamesprimate on June 04, 2017, 03:36:12 PM:

nothing terribly new to report, im afraid! just doing the boring parts right now such as "making it all work together", placing the new bits, making sure the new bits dont break the old bits, etc.

jamesprimate on June 07, 2017, 08:21:52 AM:

sadly, were in the "wait for things to come through from the publisher" holding pattern for the moment. but on the upside that just means there will be more content when it does happen! planning on making an official post this week detailing what we have so far

JLJac on June 08, 2017, 03:51:14 AM:

Update 539

Ninja gecko lizards! My intention with these guys is that they'll be used to make life difficult for Red slugcat, but it's James who places creatures in the world so we'll see what happens. In either case, I think they have a lot of potential to be fun in multiplayer.



Jumping hasn't really been a thing for rain world creatures so far, because I couldn't sort it out with the path finding. Basically, once you open the pandoras box of jumping, pretty much every tile on the level is connected to pretty much every other, through the means of these really complicated parabolas. Was quite difficult to find a solution for that in terms of path finding.

My work around was this: From where the creature is, I follow its pathfinder around 5 or so tiles forward. This is a spot the creature can be expected to be in in about a second. At this position I plop down a "jump finder", which at a high frequency tries a bunch of random jump directions and velocities and traces out those parabolas with super simple physics.

It also keeps track of its "best jump so far". Every time it has a successful parabola (landing on actual terrain etc) it checks that landing spot against the "best so far". If the path finding weight is lower (closer to destination), this is the new best. Because it's very quick, it will pretty soon find some decent jump proposals.



Once the lizard reaches the jump finder, it checks whether the current best jump of that jump finder is valid and worth it (does it actually take me closer to my destination? Is it a reasonable jump arc and not a super high and narrow one that will bring me 3 tiles forward but take me on a 6 second rocket launch into the sky?). If so, it jumps!

When jumping it places a new jump finder on the expected landing location, which will be working during the air-time. With a bit of luck it will have found a new nice jump to be chained on immediately when landing.

Some more gifs!

JLJac on June 09, 2017, 12:36:30 AM:

It wasn't about that specifically, that was more of a symptomatic thing ~ still wouldn't be able to make anything that looked remotely non-wonky. Scavengers are my honest attempt at a creature with sort of the slugcat moveset, for reference  We want to do the pups at some point though!


Don't worry, we're very much steering clear of having the game come out more difficult after the update - rather the idea is that it will be a little easier. Or, to be clear, we will have 3 playable characters:

White - classic - not easier but a few quality of life improvements.
Yellow - this one will be easier. There are currently people who want to see the game but are unable to progress through it, which is a shame, so yellow will be a little milder in a bunch of ways.
Red - hardcore mode for hardcore players. This is probably mostly where the new horror critters will be used.

So don't worry if I post stuff that seems absolutely horrifying, we're aware that the game is quite challenging as is!

JLJac on June 10, 2017, 02:39:02 PM:

Update 540

Dropwig!



This one is still WIP ~ the dropping in particular needs tuning to be dangerous while not being an insta-kill out of nowhere. Again this is stuff intended for Red. The dropwig is supposed to keep you always on your toes and never quite able to relax - every room is a potential danger and you need to be on your best game always!

The drop itself is supposed to be somewhat dangerous but avoidable with good reflexes. Once the dropwig is mobilized though, you have a quite dangerous predator on the floor next to you, and a situation that needs to be dealt with quickly. Although if you're playing Red it's assumed you're a pretty good spear thrower, and it shouldn't be too difficult to fight it off.

jamesprimate on June 10, 2017, 05:30:46 PM:

SO GROSS

JLJac on June 11, 2017, 06:48:42 AM:

Yeah sadly we're put a little bit on hold right now  We're trying to make the most of it though by continuously adding stuff so that when the update comes out it will be really cool. I've been adding creatures (some of which not announced) and it's a pretty good number now actually! Depending on how generous your definition, there are either 5 (with the most conservative definition) or 8 (if you're more forgiving and for example count adult needle worm and baby needle worm separately ~ which would make sense to do if you consider the lizard colors "different creatures" I think!) new creatures coming up, and a ton of other stuff as well, including the multiplayer/arena mode and the different playable slugcats. So I think the update will be pretty good! Here's to hoping we're allowed to move forward and get into QA etc soon!

JLJac on June 12, 2017, 01:03:55 AM:

This is all James so you'll have to ask him, but it wouldn't be technically hard to throw in a couple of them in the easier modes just to Have Them Exist!

Update 541

...

JLJac on June 12, 2017, 01:50:43 AM:

Mostly blue fruit is the idea, but yeah whatever item is attractive to creatures 

JLJac on June 13, 2017, 12:41:33 AM:

Me too! Just taking it out of the incubator environment and into the real game and will start checking how the interactions play out.

@crankykong, trust me, when it's *somewhere* in a room and you aren't primed to look for it, it's not that easy to see at all! In the single player context you won't even know whether it is in a specific room or not, and have plenty of other things to worry about ~ so in the tests I've done it definitely seems surprising enough.

Actually the bait items are intended to be a little bit of a help to the player ~ from a lore perspective it's a "smart" thing for the bug to do, but from a gameplay perspective it's acting more like a help to the player. Like, "why is this item here, that seems out of place... ohhhh". The bug is heinous actually, so camouflage isn't really the main thing here - once you know where it is, you still have a real problem to deal with.

I'm leaning this way myself and I think James is too, but having them exist in some optional corner of the world would add content to the experience essentially for no effort, which is hard to pass on! Listen to me, I've become all "content output per work hour" - I'm basically EA at this point  

@Manray as a matter of fact there's an unannounced creature that would fit into this category, and the needle worms are sort of there too! I agree that it tends to get a little predator heavy ~ which is because passive creatures by their nature have less interactions. To be EA again it's the same amount of effort but with basically nothing "happening" to the game, why they tend to not get as high a prio. In Rain World most critters are both predator and prey though, so the distinction is a little blurry! If you're talking about slugcat food sources in particular, a bunch of those have actually been added  

jamesprimate on June 13, 2017, 04:38:47 AM:

this is all good discussion and things ive been pondering myself. my perspective is that theres no reason not to have some of the new creatures at least be *possible* to find, either through lineage or some out of the way rooms, in the easier modes. I certainly dont want all to be accessible from yellow and were not going to change the overall experience of white too much, but i think it would be cool that the knowledge one gains of the new creatures when playing through yellow and white would give you a big advantage experience-wise when going into red. if that all makes sense!

JLJac on June 14, 2017, 04:08:57 AM:

Update 542

Bubble grass!



Don't know how or if James would like to use it, but the idea is that it could help smooth out the watery sections a little particularly for yellow.

It doesn't have an infinite use time but slowly depletes - how long that should take is to be subject to a bit of tuning.

JLJac on June 16, 2017, 07:56:11 AM:

James was thinking along the same lines but I have to admit I actually discouraged it  We get into these feature creep loops where I add a a thing so James has to add a thing to mirror that thing, then I have to add a couple of things to make that stuff work, repeat and fade... And update already has plenty of good content so we want to get it out! Soo, while it's still up to James of course I don't think a new region is what will happen, but we're talking about some additions to the current regions.

jamesprimate on June 16, 2017, 12:34:14 PM:

good question! actually thats one of the reasons that its going to take a bit of time is that we need to make sure that all this new stuff is thoroughly tested and rock solid compatible with old sav files. so short answer: yes

jamesprimate on June 23, 2017, 03:17:35 PM:

ahahaha if you guys reverse engineer a level editor before we can even get this dang update out im going to laugh so hard