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[More_Badass]

Lizard infighting!

This has taken the entire day, but I think I'm getting somewhere. The actual animation, i.e. how the lizards move, still needs polish, but the more general behavior seems solid enough.

Basically it goes like this - the lizards have an AgressiveRival relationship towards each other, of varying intensity. They're mostly aggressive towards others of the same breed. As they move around, they can get annoyed with each other, because of various reasons. If they're very aggressive, just because the other is too close, otherwise in situations such as the other being too close to the prey they're hunting, and in particular when they bump into each other and block each others' path.

Much more detail on the AI systems at the link:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1115456#msg1115456

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Something tells me these guys watched a lot of wildlife documentaries.

So impressive the amount of thought that's going into this game.

 

[More_Badass]

New alpha gameplay:
http://youtu.be/EXbdKF4YxlE

What's going to be in the next backer alpha (aka the PAX build):

• 4 huge playable regions: Suburban, Drainage System, Heavy Industrial and Chimney Canopy (over 160 rooms!)
• 28 swarm rooms to raid
• 12 shelters to discover
• 11 different creatures to eat or get eaten by (probably the latter)
• Gameplay sort of moving toward how its sort of supposed to be
• Glorious 16:9 widescreen
• Gamepad support
• An Actual Menu Finally
• approximately 1 million bugfixes
• etc.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rain-world/project-rain-world/posts/1149924

 

[More_Badass]

Individual traits for lizards. Every lizard will be different. Wow

Working on giving lizards individual traits. It's difficult, as the most important thing still is that the breeds are easy to tell apart.

---
The next step was to map the "spine", or body mesh, of the lizard. This isn't so obvious as it might seem, as the lizard isn't one single mesh but actually consists of a body and a tail, and a head, and there are troublesome transition areas between all of these. After some fussing I got this result:

---
When I got this spine mapping in order, the obvious first thing to do was a ridge of scales/bumps/spikes along the back of the lizard. Later I want to add more stuff, like maybe little tassels on the tips of their tails, or some feathery/scaly appendages sticking out of their shoulders, as well as different stuff that might be attached to the head rather than the body. At this point I have some individual variations looking like this:

I'm happy with where things are headed, and I'm having a lot of fun, but as you can imagine this stuff can soak up an infinite amount of work, so I'm going to have find some point where it's good enough for now.

As you can see I've already started working a little bit with the balance between individual traits and breed traits. For example the greens are more prone to have a comb of scaly things along their back - the pinks sometimes do, but it's generally smaller and less colorful. The greens tend to have the more "feathery" appendages, whereas pinks usually have the "spiky" ones, when they do at all. This here sample isn't the best to show it, but there are some differences in how fat/skinny they are, compare the two leftmost pinks on the second row. There are also differences in head size and tail length/width, but that stuff had to be downplayed quite a lot as it made many individuals look absolutely ridiculous.

Here's a better example of skinny and fat specimens:

More behind-the-scenes details at the link:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1116379#msg1116379

 

[Shibalan]

This looks like an incredible game. Really pretty, and potentially a blast to play, especially in coop.

But it seems far from done. Does the developper have an ETA ?

 

[More_Badass]

This looks like an incredible game. Really pretty, and potentially a blast to play, especially in coop.

But it seems far from done. Does the developper have an ETA ?

They hope to have it done by this year. But yeah, far from done. The PAX build will have four regions. They plan for the final game to have 12

 

[More_Badass]

Some lizard action, now with 100% more individual traits

 

[More_Badass]

Get hyped

Now hurry up with the new Pax/alpha build...
---
we may or may not be uploading that right this second

 

[Polioliolio]

Neat idea but man I'm getting real fatigued of 16bit inspired "indie" games.

I don't understand how you can get fatigued by it.. NES and SNES/Genesis along with a lot of 2D Saturn and PSone stuff.. these generations made up the first (and probably more entertaining) half of my gaming life. You can't just get tired of that.

I'd also argue the style is timeless. It's not really even a style so much as a basic framework. Style infinitely varies within the 2D space.


So, in short, you're crazy.

 

[More_Badass]

Rain World has a Steam Page. Coming this summer

 

[Figboy79]

Never heard of this game until today. Looks awesome. Will buy on Vita.

 

[More_Badass]

One of my favorite aspects of Rain World's visuals is that region has its own unique style and atmosphere while always feeling like it's part of the same world

 

[More_Badass]

nvm

 

[More_Badass]

The new alpha build should be out for backers on Humble.

 

[More_Badass]

Am I the only here who pledged at the early access tier? No one else is playing the alpha?
---
Just learned that the music from the teaser trailer is from the game's soundtrack
Track 29 - Beautiful Arps
---
This is nice. From Adult Swim's Twitter:

 

[More_Badass]

Never gets old seeing the vulture in motion

 

[More_Badass]

Big devlog update

Our newest mechanic that we're really excited about - darkness!

Creatures also cast shadows:

And some creatures can emit light!

Note that we do not plan to have the main character emit light by default, in the game you're going to have to work with light sources. Just wanted to show off my shadow shader here, which is why I stuck a light to the slugcat

 

[red731]

Damn, son.
When this'll be out, I'll buy it day one.

Thanks for updating us, More_Badass.

 

[oldboss]

can't come soon enough

 

[More_Badass]

can't come soon enough

Tell me about it, been following this game for 2+ years now

 

[ced]

You know this is neat looking and all, I hope with all this work they make it fun to play.

 

[More_Badass]

You know this is neat looking and all, I hope with all this work they make it fun to play.

Oh it is. Here are my inpressions of the PAX build

The PAX build consists of four regions out of a planned twelve: the overgrowth-choked rooms of Suburban, the dank water-logged tunnels of Drainage System, the rusted machinery of Heavy Industrial, and the open spaces and heights of Chimney Canopy. Lizards roam the lower regions, leeches swarm in the sewer water, and vultures rule the skies around the canopy. Your goal in this build is simple: explore, eat bats, and return to your shelter before the rain comes.

Visually, Rain World has progressed massively since the early screenshots and videos seen on the game's Kickstarter page over a year ago. This alien world feels alive, as shadows shift across the background, water drips from above, and the sky rumbles. The game's ecosystem cements the atmosphere. Each lizard looks unique, with different body sizes, spines, ridges, tail turfs, and each species reacts to each other and to your slugcat in their own unique way. White lizards blend into the environment, surprising you with their chameleon-like tongue, while heavy green lizards charge forward with unexpected speed. Blue lizards scale walls and ceilings and pink lizards chase you down relentlessly.

Enter a room and you might see lizards of the same species fighting for dominance or hunting another lizard. But lizards pale in comparison to the vultures. These aerial creatures swoop down from above, their fleeting shadow your only warning before they descend for the kill. Using biological thrusters and their tentacled appendages as both wings and walking limbs, vultures are fast, agile, near-unstoppable apex predators. As a slugcat, your best options are to flee and hide or...better yet, lure a lizard into the vulture's waiting mandibles.

The world of Rain World isn't the only aspect that's been improved. Your slugcat is more agile than ever before, able to backflip over lizards, roll and perform high jumps, and chain these new maneuvers together. These skills are your greatest strength, allowing you to deftly evade predators and scurry out of sight or provide some breathing room to nail a devastating spear throw. Jumping and climbing around is fun thanks to the fluid animations, and using your agility to avoid or fight predators makes each encounter a tense game of cat-and-mouse.

Rain World is far from complete. New creatures and regions in development, such as the pack-hunting yellow lizards and the Garbage Wastes, promise to evolve the game even further. But even now, as an alpha with a few (albeit quite large) regions and species, it's already an impressive and engaging experience.

 

[More_Badass]

Kotaku interviewed the devs at PAX

 

[More_Badass]

Another track from the game:
https://clyp.it/v2v2et5r

I kind of dont like showing tracks outside of the context of the game, because this is just one piece of the audio puzzle, but imagine something like this fading in and out, blended with wind, rain, atmospheric and creature noises and you'll sorta get the drift!

And some details on the sound effects and soundtrack (yes even the audio has a procedural element)

If you guys haven't already, take a read through the early devlog talking about audio parts of the old lingo build, which used a procedural approach to audio event triggering even then. One of my favorite bits was for the lizard growls and shrieks. I did a bunch of audio for each breed at various "threat levels" varying in intensity and character, then Joar took those waveforms and wrote a function that matched the actual lizard jaw movement to the physical shape of the sound wave.

Depending on what was going on with that particular lizards AI (taking into account whether it was hunting/idle/frustrated/hurt etc.) the audio would play procedurally selected clips taken from that breeds threat level audio samples, so the result is lizard audio that fits the AI mood and actions of the moment, was never the same twice, and each sound lined up with the lizards actions and animation.

That's suuuper cool stuff to play with and I'm really excited to do more now that we have a more robust sound engine! We want to take a similarly dynamic approach to ambient and weather audio as well. Ideally each region will have a pile of characteristic ambient audio separated into songs, weather sounds, atmospheric stuff, etc., and depending on things like rain cycle position and game narrative, these elements will get blended into a unique soundscape for that moment.

If we have enough time to do it right, the player might never hear the same soundscape twice. Right now i have about 75 "songs" written for the soundtrack not  including ambient or atmospheric stuff, so i definitely think its possible!

 

[Jac_Solar]

So many things in this game looks amazing, and genuinely interesting, but I wonder how the actual gameplay will work in the full game?

While the enemies and A.I seem to be incredible, and the general framework of the overall design seems like it's supposed to support complex gameplay, my impression is that the Slugcat seems to have a rather limited move set, especially in terms of combat -- the gameplay seems to be entirely about getting to a point on the map while avoiding enemies.

So, is the gameplay all about getting to a point on the map while avoiding enemies with complex A.I (Alternatively throw something at them, and with or without mini slugcats.)?

 

[More_Badass]

So many things in this game looks amazing, and genuinely interesting, but I wonder how the actual gameplay will work in the full game?

While the enemies and A.I seem to be incredible, and the general framework of the overall design seems like it's supposed to support complex gameplay, my impression is that the Slugcat seems to have a rather limited move set, especially in terms of combat -- the gameplay seems to be entirely about getting to a point on the map while avoiding enemies.

So, is the gameplay all about getting to a point on the map while avoiding enemies with complex A.I (Alternatively throw something at them, and with or without mini slugcats.)?

Rain World is a platformer with a focus on stealth, exploration, atmosphere, and AI. Rain batters the surface periodically, crushing and killing everything, so between downpours, you need to leave your den and gather food while evading and dealing with predators. The game will consist of an open world with 12 regions, from the dark underground to the canopy where vultures roam, and different areas and creatures will offer different challenges. The upper regions more on platforming, the sewers with water and swimming and avoiding leeches and using snails, etc. The big thing here is the interaction between species; the game is almost puzzle like in that aspect. If you know how species will react to each other and in certain situations, you can use that to your advantage

So the core gameplay has you exploring the world, gathering food, and finding shelters before the rain comes. While you do have limited moveset, the devs are working on expanding that with more items. For example, snails let out of stunning shockwave when disturbing so you can use them like grenades to gain a few seconds to escape from predators or pacify a swarm of leeches. Another idea was being able to knock the skull covering off a vulture's head and carry it around to ward off lizards.

Regarding combat, the limited moveset is by design. You're prey in this world. You're supposed to feel outnumbered, outmatched, and pretty much always on the back foot against lizards and vultures and other things. Fleeing and hiding is usually your best option. Your agility is your greatest advantage. When you see a vulture shadow sweep across the screen or a white lizard reveals itself, it's always tense.

But as you master the game and your skillset, you become more proficient. Rather than running away, you could lure a lizard, backflip over it when it charges, and use a stone to knock off a ledge. Or spear a lizard to a wall to distract another hungry predators. The devs have likened the game to a metroidvania; instead of new gear keeping you from areas, it's your own skill. Once you're a better player, you can reach new areas you couldn't before, take on odds and enemies that would have killed you

 

[Kozuka]

I want it on my glorious Vita, so excited

 

[More_Badass]

An awesome breakdown of the game's vision from the developer

It's always been my intention that the story of Rain World is that of the character, rather than that of the world, and that it is produced by the game engine rather than through writing. If you decide to take down a Vulture, and actually succeed, that is the story. If you save pups, or don't, or befriend some creature or kill some creature, that is the story.

That said, we do love our environments and of course we have ideas about what's what in the world, and we would like to try some "environmental storytelling." But don't expect to get some super clear linear array of events spelled out to you haha, we'll be hinting here and there but you'll have to do most of the work yourself.

The main character is a creature that's somewhere on the edge between animal and human thinking, meaning that it can only almost make sense of what it sees around it. It can maybe understand that the symbols on the wall bear meaning, but it can't understand the meaning. It can see that one machine connects to another through pipes, but it can't decipher the functionality much beyond that. It can guess that this big place might have served some big purpose, but it can never quite reach a clear understanding of that purpose. We want to mirror this experience in the player.

Man, NYC subway rats are such an awesome source of inspiration! It's exactly the thing - they live in a huge weird environment which they have no idea about why it looks like it does, and they mind their own business. I saw one yesterday that had its home in a drain pipe between the tracks, coming out between trains to look for cheetos and whatnot people might have thrown down there. Does the rat understand what a drain pipe is? Maybe some incredibly vague notion is in there, but a full understanding of what's going on will always be beyond reach. Still the pipe works as a place to live, and the intentions of the almighty creatures that once created the drain pipe isn't all that relevant to the rat at the end of the day - cheetos are.

So, if the back story is the complete architectural blueprint of a subway station, expect to understand about as much of it as a rat living between the tracks of said station. I'm joking, but yeah ~ we won't spoon feed you any back story for sure. You'll have to work really hard to piece stuff together, and even then you won't have a complete picture. Mystery is a huge part of the appeal, and if the entire back story was available on the internet a week after release that would sort of ruin the experience. Instead you'll get some scattered pieces to make your mind wander by itself

Oh, another thing - Rain World isn't a planet. Or I guess it might probably be on a planet, just as Lord of The Rings, Sex And The City, Zelda and Frankenstein's Monster are probably technically on a planet, but just as in those examples the planet aspect isn't really relevant at all. Rain World is more of a fantasy world or a dream world, not somewhere you can go in a space ship...

 

[gingerbeardman]

I hope this will work on the Vita-like PlayStation TV.

 

[Dr. Buni]

Any info on the release date/window?

 

[KimonoNoNo]

Any info on the release date/window?

They said they're hoping to be done in about 6 months time but no promises.

 

[More_Badass]

They said they're hoping to be done in about 6 months time but no promises.

The speed these two work at, I bet they'll achieve that easily

James said darkness was a mechanic that they hadn't even begun implementing. Five days later, Joar has GIFs of dark areas and shadows and glowing lizards.

 

[Dr. Buni]

They said they're hoping to be done in about 6 months time but no promises.

Nice. Seems like most (indie) games I am looking forward to aren't coming until 2016, but at least this one is.

 

[wanderingprostheyltite]

Sex in the City an inspiration confirmed.

In all seriousness I'm very much looking forward to this, been lurking on its progress for the most part. What they're doing with AI and the ecology of the world is so exciting, these kinds of emergent systems are exactly what I like to see devs experiment with. Atmosphere and art style is just perfect, animation obv fantastic. Can't wait to play it. So is alpha access currently restricted to those that pledged early? Wouldn't mind going EA on this at all if the option is there.

 

[dosh]

I don't know how I managed to miss this project for so long. And I fail to remember a 2d video game character that looked as nimble as the slugcat - these animations are really impressive. The gameplay sounds really intringuing, too. In my Steam wishlist it goes.

 

[More_Badass]

Thought it was cool to include. You know that OST track a few posts up? This is what it started as:
https://clyp.it/obyjx1dg

Yes, they literally took a random clip of audio from their PAX booth and transformed it into some weird jungle tribal music. Amazing

Here's the evolution from audio to music

Literally me recording us talking at the PAX booth and showing him the soundwave loading:
https://clyp.it/obyjx1dg

The same sample pitched down for effect and to create better material to grab from:
https://clyp.it/udnp13qu

Selecting audio points in that sample to capture from, i do this weird semi-randomized arpeggiated thing:
https://clyp.it/ddlxzmds

And from there the track takes shape. Adding percussion and other instruments (many of them also taken from that same audio clip, manipulated to suit my ends through sample and hold techniques or whatever):
https://clyp.it/v2v2et5r

 

[More_Badass]

WIP Bloom effects

 

[Deleted member 80556]

It's looking so good. Have they talked about other platforms, or are they focused on PC and Vita only?

 

[More_Badass]

It's looking so good. Have they talked about other platforms, or are they focused on PC and Vita only?

I've asked about PS4 before. They said they just want to focus on working on the game and there's "big console news" coming up.

When I asked about Xbox, they said:

our plate is already pretty full with platforms, but down the road obviously the more places you can play rain world the better. first things first though: make actual game

But mainly it's up to Adult Swim to work out the console stuff.

 

[More_Badass]

Some more info and images of the new region being worked on: Sky Islands

...it's some sort of antennae and relay technology. Some sort of signal is being broadcast or received. In this area there'll be less heavy machines and pipes, and instead more fine machinery (assumedly more information technology rather than heavy industrial technology)

"scaling some large antennae:"

"crumbling information relay structures:"

"and finally, a taste of the sky islands themselves:"

 

[More_Badass]

Devs decided to make some fundamental changes to the gameplay

The big change is about the slugcats offensive abilities. We definitely felt that the game was lacking something, and it took us a while to figure out what. However, we came up with some ideas, and I've started on some basic implementations:

Not really done yet, I want to add some flying shells as well, but I'm really happy about the lighting effects   Obviously there should be sparks on impact as well, but I need to get some basic infra structure for the bullet physics down first.

Other than rocks and spears, we want to expand the slugcat arsenal in order to give the gameplay more variety. We want the new equipment to work with the world, so instead of just adding standard weaponry we have some ideas that are more in line. I don't want to give too much away, but other than this (admittedly fairly standard) machine gun, we want some sort of weapon that shoots spears as well - basically a spear bazooka. I've also made a few sketches of a rock grenade, basically a bomb that shoots rocks in all directions upon detonating.

This is really gonna change things up. Will be super interesting to see how these new pieces interact with the existing enemies. In order to make the enemies challenging, we will probably have to equip some or most of them with new offensive capabilities as well. I'd like for the lizards to have head-mounted machine guns, but we'll see what works.

 

[5taquitos]

So a complete combat revamp? 2017 release confirmed

Edit: Or is this an elaborate April Fools joke?

 

[More_Badass]

So a complete combat revamp? 2017 release confirmed

Edit: Or is this an elaborate April Fools joke?

Guns, bazookas, and grenades in Rain World? Posted on April 1st?

 

[ShockingAlberto]

So a complete combat revamp? 2017 release confirmed

Edit: Or is this an elaborate April Fools joke?

It's not all that elaborate

 

[Ricky Ricardo]

LOL, April Fools shenanigans aside, this looks amazing. Definitely onboard now, just added to my Steam Wishlist.

 

[Haunted]

in before "I like it better with guns"

 

[Harpuea]

Wow. . . It got even better. I have been keeping an eye on Rain World and I have to say the improvements are impressive.

That freaking vulture gives me the creep. How do you even fight the damn thing. Wow.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I love the look of this. The animations are gorgeous and the attention to detail looks amazing. Definitely in for a Vita or PS4 version when it releases. I'm assuming it'll launch on PC first and those versions will follow later.

 

[More_Badass]

First details on a new creature

The new creature is based on a backer suggestion, and basically a mix between a flying squid and a cicada. It's roughly slugcat-sized and a very quick and proficient flyer. Here are some sketches, even though judging by how things have been going so far the actual implementation tends to end up not looking a whole lot like the sketches.

What I'm most excited about with this creature is that they're the first one that actively and purposefully migrates through the world on a large scale. Cicadas eat bats, and upon spawning in specific cicada den rooms they map out a route to a closeby active swarm room. Then they move there, through abstract or realized space. In the swarm room they hang out, hunting some bats. They can't eat bats on the fly like the slugcat, but rather have to bring them back to stow them in their dens similarly to how the lizards stow you in their dens and then re-emerges to hunt some more. After storing a bat, they head back to hunt some more if the rain timer permits it.

This means that between the cicada rooms and the swarm rooms there's a traffic of cicadas, travelling in one direction with bats in their clutches and in the other without. This stuff really works

The cicada-player relationship is based around the cicadas viewing you as a rival in their bat-hunting. They won't actually hunt you, because they're too small to eat you, but they'll antagonize you. Their standard method of harassment is bumping into you with a quick charge attack or grabbing on to you and pulling you in some random direction, both of which is actually really dangerous in the Sky Island terrain where it's easy to fall to your death.

One thing I'm not done with in their behavior is that I want them to only attack you if you're actually close to a swarm room, but for that I need to do something I call Dynamic Relationships, which is a small AI rewrite I haven't gotten around to. Basically right now the creature relationships are all defined on startup and can never change during play - if one creature views another creature as prey it will always do so, for example. With the dynamic relationships I want to take that data and filter it through some context, such as "attack this creature only if it's close to a room of this specific type" or similar. This same system will also run stuff like the Vulture Mask (if you're holding it lizards are scared of you, otherwise they hunt you) as well as the individual traits (stuff like aggression can be weighted through the individuals specific setup) and the individual relationships (if you save the life of an individual, that individual might stop hunting you). Lots of exciting stuff when I get around to that, which will be soon!

The last note on the cicadas is that you can pick them up, similarly to how snails can be picked up. When you hold the cicada it will try to fly, and this grants you the ability to do long, floaty jumps. As it carries you, the cicada loses stamina, which is replenished when you're on the ground and it doesn't have to actively carry you. This means that you can't use the cicada as an infinite parachute, which is both a gameplay limitation and a rationalization of the fact that you still die from fall damage if your fall off the sky islands.

We've been talking a bit about how easy it should be to catch the cicadas, and we think we have an idea but it'll need some tinkering for sure. I don't want you to be able to just run into them and grab them as they're actively attacking you, or they'd sort of lose their role as a threat. The current idea is that when they're buzzing their wings you can't catch them, but if they're sitting on a wall or momentarily stunned you can.

 

[Crispy75]

I can't believe this is an actual game and not just a bunch of "wouldn't it be cool" chat on a forum