This is an exciting update.
After toiling in the darkness of "placeholder graphics" for months and months, we've been able to put some big pieces into place the past few weeks, and WOW! It sure does look like Rain World Next Gen is starting to come together!
We've got bats...
and bats...
and more bats!
SLO MO BAT GRAB.
and we have lizards of course.
Check out this comparison between the new version and the old version in the same location. (ignore the difference in background lighting color, that can change to whatever)
New:
Old:
I think you'll agree that everything looks spot on! The only differences are the improvements: smoother animation, deeper interactions, cleaner everything, with a hugely improved frame-rate. Just check out that dynamic lighting and shadow effect that Joar has been working so hard on. Looks so nice!
BATS!
Hey remember bats? We're excited to have them back! You've already seen the finished versions up top, so i sort of spoiled the surprise, but why not see the ugly stuff we've been looking at the past few weeks to see how we got there:
Early bat physics prototype...
evolved, with art assets, plus both individualistic and swarming behaviors...
Notice these bats are a bit more physics-accurate than the originals, with each wing flap propelling the creature a certain amount in a different direction. Why that detail? Idk, looks cool.
Long story short, we now have some rad bats.
PREY!
After all that hard work these past months on making deadly intelligent "hunting" predator AI for the lizards, it totally wouldn't be fair to have dumb prey, would it? So Joar has been slaving away at making AI that is clever at getting away. A smart prey's primary AI role is going to be focused on evading its hunter, but the problem with doing something like programming a simple "creature runs away" thing is that in a 2d environment you could easily just trap it in a corner and that's that. Not very smart. So programming in intelligent fleeing/evasion was a bit of a challenge.
I'm briefly summarizing intense weeks of work here, but the solution that Joar eventually hammered out is a "fleeing" AI behavior that is able to analyze its surrounding area in real-time, locating both immediate threats from predators and also the areas of the map it is aware of that would be more or less dangerous to flee to. Then acting upon that information, choosing what it perceives to be the safest option.
In these AI visualizations, the red coloration represents areas less threatening to the creature, and the blue areas are more threatening. The moving area of color is a representation of the creatures "awareness" as it moves around:
In this second one, there is added "threat bonus" to dead ends and tight places, so it avoids getting itself trapped too easily, and two "threat bubbles" interacting. The one around the cursor and the one around the slugcat:
What's really nice about this is that now since we have a fully fleshed-out AI "prey" module that intelligently flees, plus the robust "hunting" and path-finding module already built for the lizards, we can begin to build a web of behavior between all the creatures! A food chain of AI creature relationships: who eats who, who is scared of who, etc. For instance, in this test, something has happened making the pink lizard afraid of the slugcat! Behold, Reverse Rain World:
Here is a little taste of a possible lizard relationships web (including incomprehensible AI overlay!) The green lizard is hunting the blue, the blue is scared of everything, and the pink is totally annoyed at both of them:
Cool stuff that we have big plans for!
BIG WORLD
Changing gears a bit, lets bring up a subject that we haven't talked about too much yet, but will soon become a focus in the next stages of development: Levels. The game world. We've dropped a few hints in previous updates, but one really significant thing that the new game engine makes possible is for much larger room environments. We want to explore this in more depth with you in later updates (once we have some of these playable), but for now we can show you a few concepts we are working on without spoiling too much. Think of each of the large black rectangle overlays as representing the width of a 16:9 screen.
At its most basic, these larger rooms could be things like taller, multi-level building interiors...
or wider, arena-like Colosseums...
deep chasms...
or perhaps long, wide, sweeping set-pieces, like this concept for an area called the Garbage Wastes...
As you can probably see, it opens up some huge possibilities for narrative, environment and game-play that we are very much looking forward to exploring. We'll be back with more info on this as it develops!
And last, but most certainly not least...
STREAMING SLUGCAT PLUSHIE CONSTRUCTION!
I'm pretty excited about this! Starting on Monday, Kim at SleepyPuppyPlushies will begin what we hope to be a regular event: streaming the slugcat plush construction process! These first bunch of streams will be making a few classic white slugcats, plus testing some materials and color combinations for the roll-out of the custom options, but the idea is that those of you who snagged yourself a slugcat (and anyone else of course) will eventually be able to tune in and watch your very own custom slugcat plushies being made! How cool is that??
She'll be streaming at 11:30am PDT mon/tues, thurs/fri at twitch.tv/aeogamer and you can get updates and more info on her twitter at
https://twitter.com/AeoGamer
As always, thanks again for going on this awesome adventure with us! We will talk to you again soon! --James & Joar, Rain World devs.