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Rain World - Hunt prey, evade predators, survive as a Slugcat (March 28th, PS4/PC)

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More_Badass

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Scavenger tools
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A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Having not gotten in on the kickstarter, is there anyway for me to get hands on the prototype to try the game out a bit?
 
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Alo81 said:
Having not gotten in on the kickstarter, is there anyway for me to get hands on the prototype to try the game out a bit?
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Here
More_Badass said:
Yeah, here's the Humble link.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/product/rainworld_earlyaccess_soundtrack/FpSDLkj8s
Preorder + alpha access + soundtrack upon release

The available alpha is quite old, at least a year, only a few regions, no music or sound effects, less advanced AI and only a few species. But the animations, basic movement, basic combat and interactions are all there, and you can tweak the txt file if you want to, say, set up a lizard battle royale or flood a pool with 500 leeches

The OST will be the 10 layers that act as the dynamic music, plus 130 regular tracks
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W

WordAssassin

Member
More_Badass said:
Here
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Not being super familiar with this, I know what the Windows icon looks like but am I to assume the musical notes next to it mean it's also available for Mac? Or does that just mean you get the game for Windows and the OST?

Edit: Reading helps, says it's cross platform. Ok good now I know in the future that the iTunes logo means Mac compatibility!
 
D

dangeraaron10

Unconfirmed Member
Keep in mind that the Alpha it gives you is a very outdated build. It also has a "How to Play" control scheme but with a controller. For keyboard play, here are some basic commands that should help you start out:

-Arrow Keys move you let and right
-The Up arrow key changes you from four legged "stealth" mode into your normal bipedal mode that lets you run much faster
-The Down arrow key changes you into a four legged stealth mode of sorts that makes you harder to track and lets you enter tight corridors. You start the game in this mode so when you first boot up the Alpha, hit the Up key to go bipedal.
-Press Z or Space to jump
-Press Up arrow when near a pipe to begin climbing it
-Press X to pick up and throw objects, which flash white if they can be picked up. You'll find stones and spears to use, although it takes multiple spears to finish off even weaker Lizards.
-There are other moves and even console commands but I have not figured them out yet.

Here are some more helpful tips:

-You need to eat 7 bats and return to the nest before the 400 second timer is up and the rain falls. If you are not in the nest when it happens you won't have an ability to try to ride out the rain, it will just go into a cutscene you can move around in and kill you anyway. The current Beta game has you eating a minimum of 4 but you can eat an additional 3 that carries over into the next day.

-Bats are quite clever and know how to avoid you. Being a little slugcat that can't jump very high will make catching bats quite difficult, especially if there are other predators around. You can try to outsmart the bats by waiting at the end of connecting pipes if you notice them coming into the room, but they are still fast and hard to catch. The best way to get bats is to use a rock and throw it at a swarm of bats and you will likely knock down multiples of them. You can easily get your 7 bats this way and then proceed to explore a bit.

-If 400 second rain cycles are too short for you, you can edit the game's text files to increase (or decrease) the time between rain cycles. You can also set many other parameters this way.

-The Alpha has no sound, so you might want some atmospheric music playing in the background or something.
 
M

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Oh, this is promising
We will have some news about the *real* release date very soon though, so stay tuned!
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From Twitter

===

Shibalan said:
I just bought the early access. Did they ever talk of a playable beta for early buyers, after the alpha ?
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They've been doing private playtesting (perks of having a publisher!), I think they ended up wanting to keep a lot of the recent additions, regions, creatures, and narrative a secret, especially for the fans who have been following. Since part of the experience is the discovery and learning about the world
 
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Joar talking about Rain World reminds me of Sean Murray talking about No Man's Sky. They both have that very watchable personality, humble, personable, kind of nervous but still excited
 
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James on the delay
Content is wrapped up and we are doing final group testing with new players on controls and tutorial elements. The only thing left other than that is some polishing up of art / UI elements and assorted bug-fixes.

As for the change in date, the past few months we've been sprinting like crazy to hit a certain release window (that was really soon), but some 3rd party stuff came up last minute that couldn't be avoided and now we have to wait until the next window. It's not AS bad as you probably think, but we can't announce it until some other things get locked into place.

For some context, at this point, there are a bunch of other moving pieces beyond just when the game is finished. Publishers and porting teams and platforms all have packed release schedules the next few months, and for a successful launch, everything has to line up just right for all of them. With all the time, money. and blood (so much bloooood) that's been poured into this project, we have to nail these last steps.

No question that we're disappointed though, because we absolutely killed ourselves to get things wrapped up in time (seriously, its been brutal), only to get derailed by elements that were out of our control. But honestly... this is best for the game too. In order to make the sooner timeline work out, we were compromising on the quality of certain things in ways that neither of us were comfortable with. Now with this added time we can polish the polish and add that last 5%... and get that big content update ready to go for post-launch
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That said.... I think we're going to have some really cool stuff for you guys before that!

Things have been dark on here because of us being consumed by this last sprint and E3 death march, but man, you guys don't even KNOW.
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QuarrelsomeLoathsomeCony.gif
 
S

Samemind

Member
Honestly, if they were having to cut corners to squeak it out in time I'm happier to see them get to bring the game to a state they're satisfied with. A game that's this unique really ought to be as well executed as it can.
 
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WordAssassin

Member
Yeah it kind of sounds like "2017" is just a nebulous buffer zone and if things fall into place like they want, we'll still get it in 2016. But it's better to say "sorry 2017" and have things work out and get it early, then to promise 2016 and have things not work out and have to delay it again.
 
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More_Badass

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Been a while, huh?

Some cool tidbits from Twitter and devlog updates
...we have @RainWorldGame at 60 cuz it looks nice and crisp. can even go up to 120 if we want to!
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FACT: Jellyfish are delicious #gamedev #slugcatlife
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https://twitter.com/RainWorldGame/status/760820632120659968

And an interesting post about playtesting over at Adult Swim HQ
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1268917#msg1268917
It's been intense on top of intense the past few weeks, but extremely productive. 2 weeks ago Lydia and I flew down to Adult Swim HQ in Atlanta for a solid week of testing, which was very enlightening.

The way it worked was that we had 2 sessions a day with groups of players who hadn't played the game before, and we observed how they handled the first 40 or so minutes of gameplay. They'd fill out questionnaires before hand about their experience as a gamer and then afterwards about what they liked / didnt like about the game, what was challenging, what didnt make sense, etc., and then we'd sit around and talk about it for a bit. Then at night, I would take the feedback to Joar (who was still in Sweden naturally) and we'd attempt to iterate a new build that solved some of the problems to test for the NEXT day, etc etc.

In early testing people always liked the art, mood, characters and sound, but generally found themselves frustrated by aspects or didn't understand what was going on, or often felt like the game was unfair. Even after playing the tutorial, it seemed to be an issue of the players not understanding how the various mechanics of the game fit together.

This was a little surprising and humbling for us because we have been showing the game for a long time, both among friends and with new players at conventions like PAX, E3, etc etc., (for years!) and observed people to generally pick it up pretty well. But what seemed to be the X factor at work here was that in those contexts for new players we'd always be standing right there chatting with the player beforehand, and just giving a super brief description when handing them the controller ("its a survival game where you play as this lost creature, have to catch food to survive, rain cycles, etc etc") was enough to give them the tools to piece together the various mechanics. And obviously a person playing the game blind in a test or downloading it from Steam or whatever, wouldn't have that.

And most importantly we had to realize that it wasn't that "its just not a game for everybody" (as we'd sometimes let ourselves off the hook with), it was actually that we were failing to give players the tools they needed to play the game. NOTHING is worse than watching in front of you someone who is really excited and enthusiastic about your game become frustrated and disillusioned, when 2 seconds worth of text hints or a controller diagram pop up would clarify everything.

So we had to fix all that. It was intense and stressful! I was working practically 24hrs a day for a good part of the week. But the results were nothing less than paradigm shifting and improved the new player experience (and i'd say the game in general) tremendously. Over the course of the week the tester surveys went from "looks beautiful, but is frustrating or i dont understand" to "i love this, can i play more, when does it come out, let me know if you need deeper testing", which is *extremely rewarding*

And after getting back from that we've been applying all that we learned from the testing sessions and sprinting to our upcoming gold date! Joar has been heroically slaying bugs, polishing gameplay and UI stuff, adding in new features to tie everything up; Del is somehow slogging through an impossible list of illustrations, and im tidying up levels, music, audio and organizing some last bits of deeper testing this week.

Anyway, we *really really* appreciate you guys still posting and checking in, staying enthusiastic even as we have been mute codeslaves for the past months, too exhausted from the pixel mines to make posts. This will change soon though! The light at the end of the tunnel is so bright I almost feel like Im outside!!!
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CamHostage

CamHostage

Member
More_Badass said:
And an interesting post about playtesting over at Adult Swim HQ
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25183.msg1268917#msg1268917
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I'll echo that feeling of the gameplay being obtuse at first blush. I figured when I played the show demo that the confusion I was experiencing was just from inexperience and a collector-oriented mindset (I kept trying to get something that was difficult to reach or kept trying to light up lights that apparently weren't needed for the stage), and some helpful explanation from the demonstrator got me further in, but I have been a little worried about what the final product would be, Polish, folks! You have so much promise on your hands and we can wait to enjoy it.
 
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Drencrom said:
"Counting down to gold"

Are they close to finishing up the game already? Wasn't this supposed to be released in 2017?
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It was said to be content complete in April; they've been doing a lot of testing. Seeing if people understand the mechanics, if people get lost or frustated, how to teach the controls. That kind of tweaking and development.

And remember, the stuff in this almost-20 page thread is only a fraction of what's in the game. There are entire regions, species, mechanics, set pieces, narrative, etc. that we haven't seen at all that they need to polish
 
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A bit more on the game's dynamic music system
The "pulse" idea [music sounding akin to your pulse pounding during an intense moment] was the inception of this system. Initially the concept was that it would *just* be the pulse, as if you were hearing the slugcats heart beating louder and the adrenaline rushing, but that got boring quickly. Also at that same time, we were having an issue with the world feeling a bit too quiet generally (despite having 120+ music tracks, its just so large!) so we used this to solve both problems in an appropriately rain world way

Each region has tiered system of 8 to 12 layers of "threat music" that can stack up depending on how dire the situation is for little sluggie. to avoid becoming repetitive, Each tier of audio pulls from a pool of possible tracks, with many many possible combinations. The pool for the early layers (first to come in) is generally pretty simple and subtle: a pulse beat or white noise elements but as the layers stack up it becomes more recognizably "music", with the final layers being a melody or lead line.

At this point it works pretty well! There are certain situations where the threat level ramps up too quickly for my taste, such as when vultures drop down from above, and there are some track layer combinations that work better than others of course, so i might give it a bit more polish soon.
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More_Badass

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A promising PAX impression from the TIG devlog
I got to try this at PAX, it lived up to the 5 years of hype! I was super impressed by the AI, it's one thing to read a discussion on how the AI works and to wonder about how effective that will really be in-game, and another to be in that world and acting and reacting to the living agents that are all around you. Combined with the glorious sound work and distinctive visuals it was my favorite experience at PAX
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Crispy75

Member
Godamnit more_badass. I swear I check the TIG thread every few hours and yet somehow I always read about new updates here first thanks to you :-D
 
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More_Badass

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Another progress update
Things have been *extremely* busy for us the past few months. In addition to continuing to wrap up the dev work, right now Joar is moving to Seoul, South Korea (after spending a week showing RW at Busan Indie Connect, where it was nominated for excellence in Art, Sound and the Grand Prixe prize!) while I've been showing the game at PAX West in Seattle (where it was shown at 3 locations: Adult Swim, Sony and Sanshee) and then the XOXO Fest Arcade in Portland for the past 2 weeks.
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And some discussion on what's it's like from the dev side and why devlog updates have slowed down in recent months
I think something that's lost on these boards and even in documentaries like indie game the movie etc is just how many roles you have to take up as an indie developer. There may have been a time when someone could code a game in their basement and release it on steam the next day and that would do well, but it is definitely not the case now. Pretty much every indie budget game that I've seen succeed the past few years has been accompanied by tireless promotional work. I was talking about this with Joar yesterday, how there's basically this unspoken under-culture of devs as "marketing nomads" going from convention to convention perpetually, in different states and countries,  exposing a game to new audiences, making journalists aware of it, building support from various communities, etc etc. It's like running a political campaign or something! But if you've spent years of your life and all of your savings account developing a game, you can't take the risk of just throwing it out there and hoping for the best.

Outside of the traveling circus of the industry I don't think anyone is really aware of it. Like, the average person might go to a convention and see a dev there with their game and assume "oh cool, they are at this convention", but the truth is that they are at EVERY convention, and they probably have been for months or years, writing code in the hotel room, sending emails on shitty Starbucks wifi. This goes for the most polished indie darling to the roughest unity asset flip. Kind of fascinating, really. Even devs that are considered to be "reclusive" by the online gaming  community I see regularly at these events, working hard. Phil Fish was at XOXO, Tarn Adams was at BIC, etc etc

And as an indie you are doing this with a very small team of course, so long story short sometimes we're not reading too deeply into the TIGS comments, or will forego responding to questions that are answered elsewhere in the thread 
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A little taste of Del's incredible illustration work
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This is a little corner of a much bigger, and spoilery, pic. So we're going to wait until the trailer is out at least to release. Del wants to do a whole bunch of proper wallpapers and extended illustrations too, which might fill in some story points and backgrounds of other characters. Looking forward to it!
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"Other characters" makes it sound like the game's narrative might actually be more complex than I had imagined

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