The first encounter I had with scavengers was a weird one. I was just running around with a spear in my hand, looking for food. When 3 scavengers suddenly emerged and all ran to me, throwing rocks at me to knock me out. They then stole my spear, and ran away... I got fucking mugged.
Some points I really like about the AI: If you stumble upon a scavenger post and are spotted by only one of them, it will point towards you to alert the others. The others will first look at the one that spotted you then over where they're pointing. If you've hid by then, they may just not believe the one pointing. Also as lizards are afraid of vultures, if a lizard has seen a vulture recently and you make noise without having been seen by the lizard, it will assume it to be the vulture and hide.
I'm 90% sure the community has still not even found all the quirks of the AI because things like the vulture thing are so hard to spot it's amazing anybody figured it out at all. There's got to be things that nobody's noticed yet, or at least that they haven't figured out fully
one more thing i'd like to add about scavengers, they have certain parameters in their AI that can be selected based on other factors or just random chance, which dictate them being aggressive towards you or another creature. one of these parameters is "for-fun" or something, which means that if that scavenger hasn't attacked anything in a long time and you don't have an overwhelmingly positive reputation, but they have no other reason to attack you, they may decide to do so just for shits and giggles.
they also have different dodging skill levels (Quoted from the wiki) "They also have the ability to dodge objects thrown at them, though each scavenger has a different level of skill in this regard."
The lizards also have a befriendment system.if you kill and repeatedly give them food, they start following you and sometimes protect you from other lizards. This alliance can be short lived though as it is purely food based. If you fail to feed your lizard it will snap there teeth near you to tell you that it’s hungry. If you continue to fail it can attempt to eat you
One of my favorite moments in the game was befriending a leap lizard, and then having that same lizard save me from a vulture trying to carry me off later.
@@mozarteanchaos It does. It also can lead to more dangerous lizards coming into the region due to the lineage syatem. Kill enough and you really wish you hadnt
one thing that i find neat about the game are the vultures, particularly how if you manage to take a vulture's mask, other creatures will run away from you out of fear because you have the apex predator's face. But, if the vulture is still alive and you have its mask it'll never forgive you, and always be tracking you. Even between zones, a vulture that lost its mask will follow you
@@Phi_Lix though, ironically vultures that have lost their masks are much easier to kill, due to the combination of their weak spot being exposed and them never retreating.
that is incorrect. they cannot follow you to new zones, but yes, they uniquely save their "demasked state" and can come back for vengance if they escaped. which is terrifying because demasked vultures have a 100% lethality bite chance instead of the usual 0% lethality chance of normal vultures. Also interestingly, normal vultures will harrass to death other vultures without a mask, as "losing their pride" makes them an enemy.
Fun fact: Scavengers have a lot of stat data that varies between combat skills and persnality. There is a particular scavenger ID called by "Robbin" by the community who has the highest stats on everything, this means will always parry your spears throwing something back, will duck or jump over your spears if is disarmed, has no fear to anything, doesnt hesitate to attack, has perfect accuracy and almost no spear cooldown. There are videos where this scavenger takes down red lizards alone.
I've never heard of this 'Robbin' before. It sounds really interesting but I can't find anything about it. Could you put a link to anything about it in the comments?
the other things I love are interesting mechanics such as rain deer bowing to other rain deer with larger antlers, or vultures hunting down other vultures who don't have masks, or baby noodleflies following you if you hatch the egg since they think you're their parent. it's the little details/mechanics like this (as well as literally everything you said in this video about scavengers and lizards) that really make it feel like the other species in the game have their own societies and just generally work in their own unique way. it's a very cool game :) sorry if this comment was long haha
Just dont take the noodleflies that are already born, once I blocked a mother noodlefly with a karma gate, she was in the room outside of the shelter the next cycle and killed me.
Also a noodlefly who see her baby are dead doesn't automatically know who is the culprid. If they see a creatre killing their baby, they'll hunt this one down...but if the next thing they are aware after the death of their baby is you....they'll kill you, evne ifyou are NOT the murderer.
also the baby noodleflies will follow you slightly if you kill their mother. is funny because noodlefly mothers kill each other on sight. thats why i think they have multi colored babies, they kinda go arround taking the babies of other mothers
Once you mention all the tiny details for the scavengers, you instantly sold me on how its the best AI already The pure detail in communication itself is so impressive
@@hypnosisguy Yeah. I’m not sure if anything has changed, but you can kill one of those giant fly things and, with caution, give it to a lizard. If I remember correctly, it’ll take it back to it’s den and then it will begin to follow you around passively. It’ll even sleep in your den with you when it floods. Note: I think sometimes you need more than one though. I remember someone taking a red lizard after gathering around 10 of those things
@@LividAF to clarify: different lizards take different time to tame. You can tame them by either feeding them, or by saving them from a sky kraken (or vulture)
another interesting fact about scavengers is that they will actively be hostile towards your guide the Overseer, or as the community likes to call him "iggy", because of reasons regarding the game's lore. even if youve befriended scavengers, sometimes you can get mixed in the crossfire and die because a scav was trying to spear iggy.
@@flyingstonemon3564 Spoilers Iggy works for the iterators, like Sister Moon and Five Pebbles. Supposedly, the scavs came from the farm arrays, and were enslaved to work the fam systems to produce food. When everything broke down, the scavs got free and wandered everywhere, but they still hold that grudge.
While some of the creatures might initially appear like 3D models, they're actually stitched together partly from graphics drawn from sprite sheets layered on top of physics colliders and part procedural graphics to give the impression of being 3D animated models. I think a much greater (and much less appreciated) facet of Rain World is how rich the procedural content is, from the procedural plants (which have stuck through since the early prototypical stages) to the layers of shading applied to the tiles the world is assembled from (I bet a larger than normal number of people didn't notice this fact at all). This is further evidence of the attention to detail paid from the largest components to the smallest.
when i first played rain world i was convinced for HOURS that the game used 3d models for everything. rain world is easily one of the best looking games ever made.
running around in the dark areas with a light, or after you become glowy, you really start to notice how amazing the games shading is. everything has highlights and those highlights move perfectly and smoothly as the light source does, its so immersive
i didn't notice how deep the shading went until I ate a neuron fly and got the glow effect. That's the moment that really sealed in how genius this game is.
Yup! A easy way to visualize this is Ridley's tail in Super Metroid. The segments are just balls coded to follow the previous segment on a delay. Rainworld turns that concept up to 11
I find it absolutely hilarious that scavengers among other personality types have one that kills the slugcat for fun, they really are identical to the player
That's the funniest but also most ridiculous aspect of their status system imo, like they didn't had to go the extra mile for that specific personality trait but they did and now we got bored scavs trowing shit at slugcat for giggles, and I imagine it was no simple task to code all this stuff together.
Rain World has gotta be one of my top favourites, I've played this game long enough to where I can admire the AI since I can learn from the behaviors of the different creatures on each death or encounter to help increase my chances on progressing in the game. Hunter, as difficult as it is, was my personal favourite mode to play
Bro same! I’ve never heard someone else say that I’m so glad others share the sentiment. Sad though, can’t play Hunter anymore cause my save data got fucked so I would have to play all of survivor again to get him
I love just watching the various creatures do their thing while i'm still in the tube between rooms. It's so fun seeing how they all interact with each other :)
@@Arcticfox-ce8hd if you put a text file named "unlockred" in the root folder of the game (next to the executable) it unlocks Hunter without playing through Survivor's campaign.
One time I was walking outside of a shelter, and upon seeing a Lizard I was like “ah crap”. But all of a sudden a Vulture appeared one second and picked up the lizard and swept him away to his hideaway. Somehow, this game gave me a teaching moment and a spooky cutscene at the same time, without it being scripted. This game is so amazing.
A few interesting notes (taken from the code): Rain World's graphics isn't actually directly tied to what happens in the game, instead, there is a physics system - each object is made out of some "body chunks" (which are spheres), and an AI acts by moving those chunks. These chunks, in addition to directly the creature AI's state in some cases, cause the graphics, although some things are entirely graphical and have no bearing on gameplay. There's quite a strong separation between graphics and physics because the physics runs at a fixed 40fps, while graphics runs faster and generates in-between frames by interpolation to make things smooth. There's actually so much physics that as an optimisation every physical object has a circle around its main body chunk and can only collide with other objects that have overlapping circles, presumably because otherwise checking each pair of body chunks individually was too slow; but instead of abandoning that, they did something that was equivalent but ran faster. Fun fact: some things in the game aren't even made out of sprites. A lot of things are sprites that just get repositioned according to code, but a few things, notably including the slugcat's tail, are entirely assembled by code, which literally dynamically generates the locations of triangles. Scavengers have even more detail than you identified in the video. The speed and duration of the actions they take are determined by their personality: for example, the animation to indicate that the player is allowed to go through a toll advances every frame by a half plus the square root of the product of energy and agitation, divided by 20. When a scavenger sees a creature for the first time that it either attacks or is afraid of, and it has at least 20% sympathy, and the creature seen seems to be pretty close (the exact threshold is lower if the scavenger is more sympathetic), and a sufficient number of nearby pack members either don't know about the creature or are not scavengers, it will point at the creature. If any nearby pack scavengers are already pointing at something, it has a 50% chance to decide to not point. And yes, it is not a given that everyone in the pack is a scavenger, if the scavenger likes you enough then *you* are considered part of the pack. Which means that they will point at creatures in order to tell you that they are there. The duration of the point animation is also interesting: it is shortened if the scavenger is nervous (a combination of their personality nervousness value and current agitation), and lasts for longer if some of the scavengers in the pack still haven't noticed the thing being pointed at yet, with more effect the more sympathetic the scavenger is. The general setup of the AIs is quite interesting: they don't just take predefined actions, they have a list of things that they care about and act on whichever one is most important. By far the simplest of these is rain, which increases in importance the closer the rain gets (as you'd expect) and generally causes an attempt to get to shelter, but there are all kinds of other things: friends, threats, food, aggression, injury... Creature AIs are not omniscient. They have trackers for creatures that are maintained entirely separately from their real states, and they are only immediately aware of things that happen in the room that they're in. When they hear a noise, they don't know what it's from, so they look at each possible noise source they're aware of and look at how much it makes sense for that thing to have made noise, and if that doesn't find anything good they look at every creature they're aware of, and if that doesn't find anything good it's classed as "mysterious" - investigating mysterious noises is another thing that some creatures find important, and it's more important the more interesting the noise is. It would have been far easier to have the AIs just read out the exact game state, but they decided not to. In general there is a huge amount going on. You're definitely right about one thing: there is so much detail in here even if almost nobody will ever notice it, just so that the game can feel like a real, unscripted world. If anyone is curious about anything else, I've got pretty good at reading the code so I should be able to answer any questions.
The AI looking for random things in the room to see if it made noise explains my sometimes frustrating attempts to bait lizards! Sometimes I'll make noise to make them move and they'll just do their head flashing thing and then look around and not come near me. I guess they just thought they found the source of the noise. That, and some of them hate moving and just won't move for crap even if they can see you, but that's usually just white lizards.
Can you please give a crash course on game character AI? Is it plain if - elses, or is it trained with machine learning? If the former, why don’t they adopt the latter in general?
@@brownvented6059 Its probably a more traditional state machine, just one thats implemented cleverly. Deep learning is not necessarily a good fit for this game I would think, deep learning models take advantage of quirks of their environment in ways that might break immersion, (like taking advantage of a glitch to achieve their goals --- for example, in a "hide and seek" simulation using deep learning algorithms, seekers learned to stand on top of objects and lift them, literally lifting themselves by their bootstraps and levitating into the air.) Developing a system that makes different individuals have different personalities with deep learning is also not easy and would balloon how much memory the game takes up. Stuff like that. Deep learning can be applied to character AI, but its not ALWAYS a silver bullet.
@@brownvented6059 Yeah it's just lots of code, no machine learning. I can think of a few issues with using ML here: 1. The game doesn't really distinguish between what a creature "can" do and what it "wants" to do - limits like how fast something can move are just the implicit result of the AI code never moving it faster than that. If you wanted to embed ML as the AI, it would have to be treated as properly untrusted, which would be a lot of work defining exact creature capabilities. 2. The AIs have certain realistic behaviours that would be difficult to get from ML - scavengers attempt to communicate with you using gestures, lizards will get frustrated if they can't reach their prey, that kind of thing. Doing stuff like that doesn't really help with any goal that it would make sense for the creatures to have, you basically have to write them in explicitly if you want them at all. 3. Rain World is a rather complicated environment. I don't have much experience with AIs so I don't know exactly how much computational resources you would need to train a competent AI at RW, but it might be quite a lot. There's also the problem of making sure it learns the same problem as it's going to be asked to do - if it will be deployed in an environment containing a human player, it should be trained in an environment containing a human player, or at least a good enough approximation of one, or it might just get confused and start doing nonsense the first time it sees a slugcat. (You could try just training an AI slugcat too, but if your slugcat AI doesn't behave enough like a real player...)
3:00 personally i prefer to name them "yeet lizards" over "leap lizards". when the DLC comes out i hope they redo the raindeers to make them a bit more... "alive" and less of a glitchy taxi
Well, you can already download mods which fix the glitch, and I'm pretty sure the mod that fixes the raindeer glitch was included in the pre-released bug fix mod that the people making the DLC made, so, at the very least, the DLC will fix the glitchiness, though I do also hope it adds some more raindeer behavior.
You can now tug on their antlers to get them to move and they don’t abandon you to go offscreen now. Congrats, I just got to subterranean, spoilers for Downpour below. I finished the game with the Outer Expanse ending and a pup named Blueberry.
@@rosyyt4130 i still found rain deers to be pretty bugged. when i did my a hunter playthrough a few weeks back i died atleast 3 times because i ran out of time waiting for a rain deer to come and pick me up. i ended up enabling the dev tools and just teleport to the end of that room.
Honestly, the giant moose and bird AI being bugged isn't a major issue considering how dumb hooved animals and birds can be. Evolution causes many wonderous things, and sometimes the wonderous thing is the mental damage we take from noticing how stupid something is and wondering how it survived for so long.
A small detail about lizards: if you injure them every circle repeatedly, the next time you see them they'll probably try to run away or play dead to catch you off guard. Also the squidcadas are pretty interesting. They hunt flies on their own and will continuously bump into you if you are considered as a threat
Maybe I'm biased bc I love this game so much, but even the broken AI gives the creatures more personality. I've noticed how bugs unrelated to creature's initial behavior can end up effecting it anyways. I've seen lizards glitch out and come out of a pipe twice after only entering once, and proceed to enter an enhanced 'rage' state. After accidentally linking a scav to me with the batspear glitch, I saw the poor thing shivering and sprinting around in an attempt to escape from the madness it was caught in.
i think i remember reading one of the devs said they were testing out white lizards' AI by just spectating a white lizard moving around. the lizard got badly injured in a fight and was still alive, but unable to move, and somehow its AI figured out that it could use its tongue move to pull itself along and make its way to a shelter. the devs were shocked because they had not intended this to happen at all and had no idea it was possible
@@timob1681 Yeah the lizards are really good at finding alternative ways to travel! I've seen lizards abuse physics by spinning in circles until they get launched so they can reach a pipe or platform they otherwise couldn't have. I actually had a video of this but I lost it :(
Odd things that certain parameters cause that weren’t expected by the developers are always amusing. Reminds me of that Dwarf Fortress bug where cats were dying in bars because their paws got soaked in alcohol. They’d lick their paws and promptly die of alcohol poisoning
The biggest thing that wasn't mentioned in this video I'd like to bring attention to is how scavengers will sometimes block your thrown spears with their own spears or rocks during combat if you throw from such a distance they can see it coming and react.
they can also duck or jump to dodge projectiles, these factors are unique to each scav along other 10+ atributes between personality and skills, a scavenger with the highest stats on anything can melt red lizards like nothing and are almost impossible to kill by yourself (the buff world mod makes all scavengers like this)
I still like the raindeer! They have a really cool looking model and their derpy-ness just makes them cute, despite the occasional setbacks it can cause (unlike when the metal birds glitch out, THAT I hate) XD
I agree, and actually see those glitches, as they just quirky, like a dumb ass cat who will lay near you, but as soon as you try to touch it - it goes nuts.
One more note with the scavengers: If your reputation with them does indeed get bad, they can send out death squads which are heavily armed with explosives, raid your shelters at the start of the cycle. A trader however has a different coding and AI from other scavengers, if you go in to a trader room they will either not have any expresions and just trade with you for whatever you give them or sometimes be scared and go to their special shelter, in other words they will not attack you right at the spot for no reason but only after you made clear that you are a threat. Stealing from trader rooms also can give you bad karma though
I just started playing Rain World after catching it on sale and fell in love with it immediately. I keep looking it up just to find more content and I was excited to see a brand new video. The game has so much nuance and features that I might have brushed past, thanks for the great video! I'll definitely have subscribe for more content :)
I think Rain World turns a lot of people off by being daunting at first. There's a lot going on and the game tells you nothing about any of it. But when you get through that barrier I think it's one of the best games ever made
@@htwo1 Agreed, I'm honestly floored I never found this game sooner, it ticked a lot of my boxes with the style and mood alone, I'm definitely going to try and tell more people about it
@Minh Nguyễn I saw the latest video! I'm really excited for the Saint and Rivulet after seeing how mobile they are. I'm glad I get to be a part of the hype for Downpour now
What’s really cool is if you just got in to rain world now, you didn’t need to wait as long as some of us for new content, as a new dlc has been announced.
Repeatedly killing enemies, such as lizards will make them run from you, this can happen to a single lizard if they are hurt enough. The cool thing about this is that lizards have different amounts of fear. Some lizards run at the slightest damage and some keep fighting until they die.
Rain World is probably the best game I've played so far. From the insanity of the deep lore and the complex movement system to the IA that makes everyone's experience so unique. It's also one of those game that gets better when you know what you're doing, after a few playthroughs. Just like a darksoul would feel after a few beat.
I've always felt like Rain World barely feels like the same game when you're experience at it. It's more like a survival game when you're new, but becomes a lot more of an adventure game as you become experienced
You forgot to mention that the lizards can be tamed by feeding them. If you feed a lizard enough (depending on the subspecies' intelligence/threat level) they'll follow you around to protect you, and tamed lizards will even enter save points with you.
I know a lot of people have already pointed out the being able to tame lizards thing, but one of my favorite things about the creatures in the game, which you already somewhat went into with the scavengers, is the reputation system which goes even deeper than just them. Other creatures outside of scavengers that are connected to reputation systems are for example Squicadas, Jetfish and, like mentioned previously, Lizards! For example, if the player starts hunting a lot of Squidcadas the reputation with them will go down, meaning they go from generally leaving the player alone to annoying them when they see them. The wiki hosted on fandom is a bit old, but for extra details the newer wiki hosted on miraheze is a great ressource when researching things ^^
As buggy as the rain deer can be, they will always be one of my favourite creatures when I once saw one help pick another deer out of a hole. I also love the miros birds because of how broken they move, their bodies jerking around in the dark is really creepy.
This video just got recommended for me and I was NOT disappointed. This is my introduction to Rain World, but it definitely seems like my kind of game. Thanks!
If you're interested in playing the game remember. Rain world is a hard game. It takes some patience to appreciate it , but it's worth it. It's easily one of the best games I've played so in case you'll play it remember to not give up
If you play it, here's a BIG tip: Don't try to progress. Don't try to "get to the end". Let yourself wander an explore, but most importantly, focus on survival and on food. It's a game meant to feel like you're a wild creature trying to survive and my first mistake was trying to get through the story, finding areas that were INCREASINGLY painful to get through because I hadn't stopped to sit and observe the world around me first (Hidden mechanics, AI behaviors, how the world itself behaves because every day is different, etc)
I think it was a mistake with the ai where the scav was telling you to pass through the toll in the middle of a fight. It is still a cool way to interpret it though.
If you're having trouble going backwards through sky islands on hunter with that hell jump at 0:19 remember that the mushrooms near the shelter give you a movement speed boost. I feel like a lot of the clips were you being stuck there lol.
I am glad that someone else has gone over the amazing AI in Rain World. I do think that you missed a very crucial part, and that is the animals' priority system. They prioritize their own survival over killing you. If they are in danger, they run away and completely ignore the player. The same things happens with the rain; if the rain is coming, the animals all bolt to some shelter while completely ignoring the player. This makes the AI seem much more realistic because it values self-preservation above just being an obstacle for the player.
A ton of this game’s AI reminds me of WolfQuest’s Anniversary Edition game. It was primarily made for conservation and education purposes to teach people about what life is like for Wildlife (specifically wolves) in Yellowstone (put in a literal satellite generated terrain of the area in Yellowstone wolves reside in) but the amount of work and accuracy they put into the AI ecosystem always impresses me and make it so interesting to play. Like Rain World, every animal operates away from your player wolf and each species has different behaviors mirroring how their irl counterparts behave. Predators have a fight or flight meter that will fluctuate as they assess a situation and its changes, and depends on the animal they are, but like all wildlife, they won’t fight and risk injury if they don’t have to or don’t feel it neccessary. If you’re a lone wolf for example, some larger herds of elk are less likely to be intimidated by you to run and will hold their ground and even fight you, so it might take a lot of threatening emoting to spook the whole herd into moving, they’ll raise their heads as they do irl when being chased to widen their field of vision to see u behind them better-and ones who are weaker are more likely to do this right away, and will turn on you quicker to fight you and will be slower, and mother elk will defend their calves, cougars are naturally flighty and elusive but still might put up a good fight if they’re defending a kill, bears are apex so they usually won’t be able to be bruited off a meal, (if anything they’ll do that to you), but if you’re patient and play your cards right with intimidation body language, it might persuade it to leave-or piss it off into charging you if you get too close-each bear is different, coyotes are weaker and smaller than wolves so will generally be easy to chase off a kill or defend your pups from-but if there’s more than one coyote and they outnumber you it might embolden them into harassing you by nipping at your legs when your guard is down. You can also see them hunting rabbits, which golden eagles also hunt and dive on, meanwhile bald eagles dive for fish, and on rare occasions might drop one which u might come across and be able to eat, foxes are no threat at all b/c of their size so they’ll always wait back until the other predators are done eating (once found a carcass with a dead fox near it, smelled around and saw coyotes were there-which shows they likely killed the fox who was likely getting too close) and sometimes you can see them “mousing” for rodents under the snow, you can see other wolves hunting prey, and if you’re smart, can use that as an opportunity to get a weakened animal if they give up the hunt, or can try and challenge them for the kill or wait off to the side for them to finish if they’re successful for easier food, old male bison travel together, some die and make an easy meal for you, but it’s practically impossible for you to hunt one successfully on your own or with your mate, if you get too close the way they hold their tails shows how angry they are-holding it all the way up shows they’re very angry and intimidating you to back off one more time before charging, Bull elk in fall experience the rut season and u can hear bachelor herds screeching near herds of females to challenge their lead male to a fight, the winner goes back to claim the herd, deer are solitary but the males have the same fighting system, elk are weaker in winter b/c of less food so their health may be lower than in summer when they’re thriving. U might come across a lone bull elk with low health after likely losing a fight u can take advantage of, Elk herds migrate to different areas of the map according to the seasons-will be in the mountains and hills during fall-summer but will move to lower land in winter where food will be, each wolf AI has its own personality on a scale of Bold, cautious, loner, social, lazy, energetic, and will affect how they respond to conflicts and hunts, more cautious ones will stand back in more dangerous conflicts and hunts against stronger animals and be careful about what opening they take and personalities of parents will have some effect on the personalities of the pups, there’s a genetic system using 26 irl wolf genes that determine coat colors/tints and genetic health, choosing a mate with higher diversity makes larger litters that have more resistance to disease, Other wolves can track you by using the scent system and howling, and will respond back if you howl, hostile wolves will assess the situation when they approach you in their territory: if they outnumber you or you’re low on health there’s little chance you’ll be able to intimidate and chase them off, if you’re with your mate it makes the chances higher, and outnumbering them will usually result in a quick surrender and retreat, if you manage to kill one of them that’ll always guarantee to make the others show submissive body language and run, Rival packs have their own territories they patrol, defend, and mark, (like the player gets) and their territory sizes will fluctuate as they will fight other packs for territory, sometimes resulting in a wolf dying in a fight, dispersal wolves from other packs travel freely around the map and through other territories looking for a mate, you can sometimes see male and female dispersals courting each other with friendly emotes, your pack will so the same: pups interact and emote with each other, you, and the mate AI, in ways irl packs do, often showing their own personalities you can catch onto, if you find a potential mate they’ll at first assess you, as you do them, for a few days to see if they wanna stick around. During this period you’ll have to hunt and defend/fight off other predators with them to increase your chance of impressing them. If you pull your weight in a hunt they’ll decide to stay, and lazier wolves will be much easier to win over, Mate AI might go on their own at times away from the den to hunt for food if they’re hungry enough or you haven’t fed the pups(they may or may not be successful), or go and mark an area of the territory that’s low and u can watch where they are on the map, they help you defend the pups from threats and retrieve a pup if it wanders too far off depending on their personality they may be great at helping or no help at all, they may even show annoyance with a pup AI if the pup had wandered off several times in a day and might growl at them, You can whine to get the mate AI to follow you out to hunt or patrol, and they’ll do the same to you if they want you to go hunting with them, the mate AI can stay behind and watch the pups as you traverse the territory and will actively fight and command the pups into the den or safety if a predator attack happens while you’re gone, and all the wolves in a specific save game stay consistent so you might recognize some of them and have more than one run-in with the same wolves, but if they die or you personally kill them that wolf won’t respawn. Everything from the trees and plant life, to the weather bird sounds in the background is accurate to the area of Yellowstone, they even have tree species growing where they actually would irl depending on the altitude they can be found growing in it’s just… I could go on but I won’t..too long already, but this game definitely reminds me of that-and it’s intriguing considering AI like this is pretty rare. That scavenger AI is amazing.
Thanks for pointing out specifically that the ai creatures can make mistakes thats one of my favorite aspects of this game its wonderful to see a daddy long legs falling right off the edge of something :)
If you grab a Noodle Fly baby it start attacking you, and usually the babies cry for their mother if that happen, so you technically can't escape thou, if the mother changes scenarios and you grab one baby and throw it a lizard, the mother can think it was the lizard who attack their young and begin to kill it Also you can find Noodle Fly eggs in some maps and if take them to your Shelter they can be born and follow you around You may also feed some small creatures to lizards and tame them, they'll pick up food you throw at them and carry it to their den, if enough food is given, they'll follow you and protect you from certain dangers. You can also tame them if you save one that's being grabbed by a Vulture
This is also why it kinda sucks that a lot of potential players were scared off by the game's initial difficulty barrier back when it first released: The Hunter and, more importantly, Monk weren't available for a fair while, so you just had to contend with the brutal difficulty Survivor has It's a beautiful game, and I wish more people gave it a chance
You missed Lantern mice! These creatures (in my opinion) are some of the most realistic in the game. They know to be scared of you because you are larger than them, if they see a spider, (or anything, really) kill one of it's kind, they will immediately leave, well, if they haven't already. I also think they move very realistically, they kind of skitter around like real mice and hide at any chance they get. I know these guys don't really get a lot of attention, but honestly they're my favorite!
How the lizards fight over food is similar to what happens in the game STALKER. How I understand it is all NPCs were programmed to seek out food to add to their inventory or to eat. This was a blanket AI rule and extended to animals and wildlife too. But wildlife don't really have the same kind of inventory as a person so they don't carry pieces of food. They only "carry" what they drop when killed and all wildlife have the potential to drop meat. The AI can see this and so the wild dogs and other aggressive predators can be observed hunting other creatures specifically to consume the edible drops. This was emergent behavior not originally intended by the devs but left in because it made the world feel more alive. I may be misremembering the details or reasoning but that's roughly how it was explained to me. It's got a very interesting AI system. Not... the best in a lot of cases. But very challenging when it works correctly.
Nope, simple faction based AI, they just attack enemies of their faction. The AI in STALKER is pretty good, dogs attack in packs, cats stalk and ambush from behind, humans suppress and flank etc, but they don't have needs to fulfill.
@@Coffin17I I'm pretty sure there's a bit more to it than that. Yes faction is a huge factor and while the AI doesn't actually *eat*, it does want to carry food in its inventory. Probably for immersion reasons. No food means they go and look for some to loot. humanoid NPCs will loot containers or bodies. In fact if you buy food off of an NPC and you follow that NPC they'll pick up the next bit of food they come across. But animals don't have an inventory and will go after anything carrying edible items creating hunting-like behavior.
@@AgentSapphireBelieve whatever you want, but your theory kinda contradicts itself, seeing as wildlife doesn't have any items on it until it's killed, at which point it's randomly picked from their loot pool.
@@olixx1213 Nope. AI stalkers without any items on them will still aggro wildlife. Removing drops from wildlife does not change their targeting behaviours. They attack enemies as designated by their faction.
Just dropping in to let everyone know that Rain World is getting a DLC now called Downpour, which officializes the More Slugcats mod and greatly expands the world map.
Eh, I don't know. For me, even the more extreme (and occasional) cases of AI jankiness ADD to the immersion. Who hasn't heard tales of the stubbornness of donkeys, or witnessed their cats doing all sorts of quirky and absurd things, like lick blankets for minutes, or take mice home unharmed to play tag with them. Not to mention, wild animals are often diseased, sometimes diseases with direct neurological consequences such as rabies and distemper. Organic life is messy, and that mess was captured down to these fine details - even if unintentionally so - by Rain World. This game is just so, so ahead of its time. One day, people will understand the brilliance and no one will accept the cheesy, soulless, fake, canned animations and worlds and agents of old anymore.
Calling manually created animations "soulless" and "fake" seems unnecessary Alot of time, work and effort goes into making animations for nearly any game I wouldn't discredit somebody's work just because they didn't have an AI do it for them Plus, manually created animations have numerous upsides of their own, such as being exactly what ever the creator(s) want them to be, whether it's extra flashy for an action game or extra cartoony for a light-hearted game Finally, sometimes it's faster and/or simpler to just manually animate than to hope the AI uses a rig the way the creator(s) intended for it to be used
@@spartanwar1185 Yes, but rainworld's procedural animation is unironically so well don't that it beats ALOT of game's animations entirely. Especially scavengers, they express so much emotion. Well, every creature does that but you won't see it visually most of the time, it's on how they behave after different kinds of interactions. That and the devs ensured that the jank is a part of the game 🤣
yea one time i got into a fight with a green lizard, we exchanged blows but eventually i lost sad part was i had wounded it so badly it couldnt walk. also when it had bit me it accidently let go so i watched as it helplessly stuggled to grab me, slipping and eventually grabing me and using me to sorta drag its self along the ground till it got to its den and at that moment i realized i was just incapacitated lol
I bought rain world on a whim one day and started playing it completely blind as to what it was about. I instantly fell in love with the organic movement of the creatures as it's been something I've been looking for in survival games for a very long time, and to this day rain world is still my absolute favorite game. This isn't to say it's completely perfect, sometimes the games own ai will cause weird occurrences to happen. Such as how a daddy long leg can move faster if it has all tentacles on a surface. This sometimes just makes them yeet themselves forward which looks as funny as it sounds.
I tried so hard to love rain world but the controls always felt so clunky for some reason I could never stick with it. Also how does this video only have like
Like everyone's saying about the controls, there's lots of hidden depth, and they're really fun when you master them-- but I'd just like to make a sort of... backwards defense, and say that it's actually a good thing they kind of suck at first, (not that this'll magically make it more fun lol, the start of my journey with Rain World was nothing but PAIN and I totally sympathise, I wasn't sure it was for me for AGES... almost didn't finish it, and quit many times.) If you had a reference for Rain World's controls, say they controlled like Mario, it wouldn't be as immersive. You're barely older than a pup, separated from the pack; your character does not have full autonomy over their body, and so neither do you. figuring out how it (your lil body) works is a journey you go on together towards autonomy. It's one of many little inner journeys you experience in tandem with the character, but since this comment was only about the controls I'll leave it there :D
Htwo, you helped encourage me into getting rain world, honestly, I think I might have quitted if I just had to brute force through that difficulty spike at the start, because I am not the type of person who likes a lot of difficulty, but with help of you, and some other content creators, I was able to use the most powerful thing in rain world, Knowlage, and the difficulty became just right for me.
I this comment is old and everything but I just wanted to say that it was exactly the same for me, this and one other video was what single handedly bound me to this game to the very end
I'm so happy someone's finally talking about how amazing scavengers are. From the moment I interacted with them I adored them, and it makes me sad to see most people in lets plays talk about how they hate them or try to kill them. Justice for my fluffy boys!
I really loved this video so Im gonna share a story of my own: There was this one time where I was near a lv5 karma gate. Due to dying a lot in previous areas I was only karma lv1. Instead of giving up and going back like a normal person I decided to get trought that karma gate n o m a t t e r t h e c o s t. What followed were +10 in game days of going back to get food very very far away and coming back to the shelter near the karma gate while praying a single godforsaken lizzard didnt randomly decide to end my day. One of those times, I was lv4 karma and ready to go to my shelter and finally go past that damm gate. THEN A DAMM VULTURE DESCENDED FROM THE HEAVENS SAID FUCK U AND KILLED ME WHEN I WAS EXACTLY 1 COMPUTER SCREEN AWAY FROM THE SHELTER God I fucking love this game
Here's my story. I was new to the game, and I was lost. I was at the shelter in Sky Islands that is right next to the gate to Farm Arrays. I hadn't seen Moon, or gone through the "more intended" route at all, so I had no idea what was going on and I didn't have enough karma to get through the gate. I was so stuck, and kept dying so often before getting enough karma, that I literally restarted the entire game from the start because I was too shit to get through the karma gate and progress and I refused to turn around and go a different way. I love this game too
I also have a story lol. Basically it was my first time venturing into drainage and I was trying to find a shelter so I could save and after a few minutes of looking I died to rain so after even more time of me trying to get more karma for the gate and dying more I came back to drainage and got to a screen with a shelter I see the shelter and start heading over to it and as I'm like about to hop in I just barely touch a pole plant and it kills me and then it takes me even more time to get back to drainage and I successfully avoid the pole plant and hop in the shelter and I don't have enough food and then I consider rage quiting for the rest of time lmao.
@@htwo1 I was super determined on my first playthrough but in a different way. I was willing to give up certain goals but I absolutely REFUSED to restart when I'd get stuck. So I spent half a real life day getting through drainage system while NOT KNOWING THAT BOOSTING IN WATER KILLS YOU. I got through drainage, only to end up in filtration system, which was way too dark so I immediately left and went back to drainage, and had to escape while being booty butt TERRIBLE at wall jumping and not knowing how to swim properly. It was hell, but I was too stubborn to just restart the game and ended up making it out of drainage on my own. Again, without even knowing that boosting drowns you... I don't know how I did it. I didn't even use snails to stun leeches. I just kept powering through. Almost all of my play time in that run came from being stuck in drainage system next to filtration system.
@@eyisu6175 ikr, when i first discovered this channel like a month ago i was stunned by the low subcount. But then again i was so glad that i could be one of his first 5k subs and brag about when he gets big
Great video. Rain World's AI is unbelievably stunning, isn't it? Ya know, on my first meeting with a scavenger, I honestly wasn't sure they _weren't_ a player. I thought that... maybe the game had some sort of strange, asymmetric multiplayer integration I wasn't aware of at first-- and then my brain REALLY started to hurt, because I realised they were more expressive and gave more signs of intelligence and life than I was even capable of AS A PLAYER. Me! Real person! Actual creature, not an illusion-- these fake, simulated little guys were more convincing as individual creatures expressing themselves in a unique way than I was, which was a weird feeling at first. I mean-- I have nearly 7 gigs of footage on my PS4 of me cataloguing weird, funny interactions-- I have MORE footage of UNIQUE, terrifying, epic, and sometimes plain funny interactions with fictitious creatures, almost all of them reading as believable and incredibly interesting-- MORE of _that_ than the actual game's file size, which is to say that, the game is so stuffed with its ingenious AI, it really shouldn't be able to all fit in there, haha!! I've spent... at least a couple hundred hours in this game's world and it's arenas, prodding it's systems, and it keeps coming back with NEW shit to show me, new things for me to learn. It's honestly wild how much you can get out of Rain World even after the credits roll, if you only put the time in to learning it. and... sort of side note, thank you thank you THANK YOU for getting this game in front of more people's eyes! It's astonishing how overlooked it is-- and beyond frustrating how poorly the game reviewed on launch. (side rant) Stg, so many reviews I saw showed clear signs of having NOT BEATEN THE GAME. Just shithouse, honestly, giving a verdict from a place of authority and writing it off without ever even bothering to spend the time to see how it ends?? Can you imagine if it was okay for film critics to just... up and leave a movie halfway through and pass off their opinion as fully informed? I'm not saying they necessarily would've loved it if they did get there, but... it definitely clicked for me in that last quarter or maybe third, (though, I got very lost and spend quite a few extra hours searching around, so keep in mind, for most people this point comes at the halfway mark)... For the whole game up until that point, I had no idea where I was going, what the purpose of my travels were, if there was an ending, if I had the strength and patience to get through it-- but I kept going, and finally figuring it all out was nothing short of revelatory-- felt almost like a spiritual experience at times haha!
Though I agree regarding the review bombing, I would like to add, that many people did struggle with the unique controls with which you have to get used to first. When I read those back in the days as it was new, I had similar feelings about the critics. Regarding complex and challenging "physic"-based movement I was more on the defensive side and shared your sentiment, but I also could understand the statements. I myself struggled first too and lost interest at first to be honest. The Game is in its presentation more on the subtle side, and you do not know what actually to do. It seems like an open world, but turns out to be something more linear with a lot of backtracking (and I personally hate back-tracking). I did not make a review, but If I would have, I would have not recommend it. Installed it later, got some fun, but was bored out soon since moving trough the environment and evading constantly hunting Lizards and those mosquitos was not exciting, if not getting annoying. This game is sometimes too tense and demanding. The timer, where you have to find shelter before the heavy rain comes was not doing a favor to experience the game in its beautiful aspects. It is definitely not for casual players or those, who would like enjoy just watching the creatures doing their stuff. The start of this game also is... confusing, slow and, dependent on players skill level, somewhat over- or underwhelming compared to the interesting part you get to see later. I believe third or forth time I tried, I got to the first vulture... dunno if I came further and do not remember, but that was over a year ago and I did not touch it since then. Maybe I will give it another try. But... when I remember the start, I am like "meh, start over again?" The game is for me more fun to watch than to actually play. It would be more interesting, If you could play different species or just be a spectator, or if it have a mode, where you are a god and can manage the environment and spawn creature you wanna see interact. (About Your side rant) I must disagree. If a movie is that bad, you do not need to watch the rest. Besides that: You cannot compare a movie with a game. The time it demands are completely different. The experience that will have is always different, since the ability to play it will determine how far you will come. I saw people speed-running it. They can reach a lot within the 2 hours. But a new or casual gamer will reach nothing in those 2 hours! A game is not worth my time, if the interesting clicking aspect is in the last third or quarter part of the game. ps: hope my opinion does not offend you or makes you defensive about the game. I still did not wrote a review, since I wanna give that game a chance. But it had not shown respect to my invested time yet.
@@Chareidos Hey! Uhh... yeah, no offence taken, totally get where you're coming from, but I would like to... try and counter a couple of your points in a friendly way-- I hope none of this comes off as judgy or anything, I just... really like discussing this game with people. :D I'd honestly be more than understanding if you straight up HATED playing Rain World; it's...not exceptionally fun at the beginning of your journey. It feels frustrating and clunky and very confusing, and you're right-- getting to the good part does take a great deal of commitment... but my comment about film critics was not necessarily saying you can't watch half a terrible movie and then tell your friends not to watch it, because its that painful-- but more about when you say that, ESPECIALLY if you're reviewing the thing and there are people who trust your opinion who are coming to you to decide if they're gonna watch it, you have to make clear you didn't finish it, in the interest of being fair to the work. The reviews for the game frustrate me, because, most people would assume, from the fact that they're grading _the entire thing,_ that they've beaten _the entire thing,_ and I just... have a lot of trouble believing that. One, because, honestly, it took me like 40 hours to beat, (which is a totally variable number considering how nonlinear the game is, and how it doesn't tell you where to go) and I sometimes quit the game for a few weeks... I don't imagine they had time for that. But second, their statements about the nature of your journey give the impression of someone who hasn't yet entered the second half (last quarter of _my_ journey, but like I said, I had a very long one) of the game, which is nothing short of revelatory. The whole game asks _you,_ not the protagonist, but _you_ to search for meaning, in what seems like a cruel, confusing and pointless existence... It can feel genuinely despairing for YOU, not just the character. While you're searching for that meaning, from my experience, you straight up don't know what you're doing, where you're going, or if you have the strength to make it there. And neither do the reviewers, who _should_ know... Not that they should spoil it-- just, give off any sign that they do know. so... one of the main ideas this game really wants to explore is the incredibly painful journey towards finding meaning in a cruel world where everything is taken from you, and you're never sure if there is a point, that uses its difficulty to immerse you in the character's desperate plight... these reviewers only experienced the set-up, and not the pay off, which... is a majorly important part of how the game comes together. I know comparing it to watching movies is not a clean comparison, like you pointed out, because of the dedication, but... just think about how much an ending can transform the film you watched retroactively-- think of your favourite film ending and how it feels like the movie is completing itself. Everything up until that point, all the set-up, the ideas it was putting forth, they aren't resolved or made complete until that ending where everything comes together... Rain World is the same in that way, it just asks a lot more of you to get there. And again, I really don't blame you not wanting to pick it back up, but I would still implore you give it another shot if you enjoy the game's presentation at all and you haven't had it spoiled for you by speedruns. there is incredible depth in the game's movement systems and... other systems, that I'm still learning more about hundreds of hours later. (and I'll make this point quick but... no one ever starts off as a speedrunner, or as a player who can get further than another in my opinion, EVERYONE is a stumbling, bumbling fool, starting Rain World. it takes time and practice to get to a level where you can traverse the world with ease; the odd controls kind of even the playing field, meaning everyone has an equally bullshit-hard time getting anywhere at first, but it's very satisfying to learn.) In fact, this is... only tangentially related to one of your comments, but I think the game's extremely weird controls end up becoming a massive plus in the long-run... (this is aside from them _becoming_ very fun and fluid when you master them... I'm gonna be talking about why the journey to mastery itself is so effective for the game's subtle storytelling) If you had a reference for the character's movement, say, they moved exactly like a traditional platformer, (Mario/Celeste) you couldn't immerse yourself in... learning the slugcats body. (god that sounds weird) but think about it! The physics animation is there to lend this sense of physicality and weight and awareness of your body, (and also reactivity and adaptability in yourself and the creatures you encounter, but we'll just focus on the first part) and since your character is actually not fully grown, not much older than a pup when separated from its family, and not fully autonomous when you start your journey, it only makes sense that the player isn't either. And then, as you get better at the game, at controlling the character, it's like the slugcat is learning to have autonomy over its body as you do. SO many design decisions in the game are made to put you on the same journey as your character... for instance, every creature, including yourself, is stuck in a literal endless cycle of death and rebirth, the trailer wasn't being poetic. So when you die, your slugcat remembers that pain and that frustration and that bullshit/cruelty, same as you do... and if you feel tired, and worn out by the world, chances are the little guy does too. The game _wants_ you to feel hopeless, it banks on it-- it knows what you and your little friend are feeling and shows you in dreams... your little guy dreams of his family, then later, in another dream, they dream of their family again, but then they're shown waking up, scared, realising they're all alone. I like to think of this as a subtle turning point of sorts, where they realise they're never going to find their family, and so the question for the player becomes… If I’m not looking for my family, if I’m all alone in the world… what is the point? Same questions the character must be asking, and it feels very bleak. In the second half of your journey, the game uses your hopelessness, (because it KNOWS you feel hopeless) as character motivation/catalyst for the rest of your journey. After that long journey of pain, you understand in your bones that this world is awful, and devoid of meaning, and you understand why the slugcat wants to pursue the quest it sets out on in the end. You want it too. I'm trying to dodge spoilers in case you don't know where the game goes in the last quarter. I wasn't entirely sure how to respond to the comment about backtracking, because its something I kind of dislike in games, and I didn't think Rain World really did that... can you tell me a little bit more about your perspective/experience with that in Rain World? Also, sorry this comment was so long. :)
@@ZedAmadeus I am sorry if I am not getting on all the points. I will take my time to read your comment more proper, when I am less tired, but I try to give some response to some of the points right now. I agree to that , that you need to get into something, sometimes to the end, to get the full grasp on the twist of a game. This is the very reason why I did not write a review so far. But I do not see, why the actually interesting part has to be at the end quarter. I am not willing anymore to sunk time into challenging games, since EVERY (pardon me here) effing game does that already. :) I always see potential in games, that get ruined for me with the ridiculous amount of investment, be it time, energy and nerves, you have to put in. While I really can see the appeal of that, and the releave of such a journey, it is not mine anymore. I want to see physics and the ecosystem in action, observe and be fascinated by it. Yea.. maybe even engaging if feel so. But if the game is really about that I shall feel exhausted and depressed, I think it overdid itself. Or maybe it is not for people with mental illness? I dunno. I think I suffer under something like Gaming Burnout. There is no fun anymore. The Reward does not come. And it is not because I played much games with quick reward mechanics... I do not like gambling and rng. After addictively enjoying Diablo 2 back then, no game with similar formular could hook me anymore. I've seen it all already, and I even began to despise this formular. One game that broke me really hard, and that was also one I wanted to love, is Noita! This is a Game I REALLY learned to HATE. With Rainworld it is different. It failed to hook me. And maybe I am looking for a different experience. But I also like the Notion of the world not being about you, but I also just want to be an observer and not to be thrown into this world and being involved in it any further. About the physics: They are not the problem. On the contrary. They and the notion of it being a Ecological System get me into it, and will likely bring me back. This is the Reason why Rocket League is the ONE game, where I really feel free, and where all my frustration is just temporarily, since all is either my fault or the opponent was really better. Nonetheless my reward is my own REAL skill (and not a set of numbers of odds and chances). This is the reason why I might look into Rain World again. You are the Body. If there would be a pvp, or any other game mode with little challenging maps or parkours, I would love to play again, right now! But I do not like to see the very same regions, over and over. And I do not like to be stressed, be it that I have always to run or to be fast before the rain falls. I also do not care about story driven games anymore. The world around me is already twisted, depressing and what not, I do not need a Game putting me into this feeling. I already feel it. Rain World looks so nice and beautiful in many aspects (beside the industrial stuff), that it makes me actually really sad, that it is just "another challenging game". To your last Question: Backtracking was maybe not the correct term I used here. But I remember that I was going in circles without knowing where to go. The other thing, that contributed negatively was the fact of the "timing" for the checkpoints (shelters) to be reached in certain cycles and their placement being behind certain dangers, you have to overcome. The Punishment was too much for me. As of right now, I am looking into mods, that might be worth a shot to this game, but as I know me it will end with a fruitless search for the one experience no game delivers. I hope not to depress you with my answer. :)
@@Chareidos No, no, that's all perfectly fair and interesting. :D I think the upcoming DLC might make you happy, by the way-there is a gamemode called Safari which just lets you observe all the creatures going about their business and even take control of ANY one of them you see! Should be really fun. If you do get back into the base-game, I feel like I should mention there's absolutely no shame in tuning the difficulty to make it more bearable, despite what I think about the game's storytelling, and how _hard_ and _cruel_ and _bleak_ the journey is "supposed" to be, (I'm realising I was being a bit pretentious lol) I also believe you can approach it in whatever way is most enjoyable, since there are so many different things to love, like the AI, or art direction + music... If you've been playing Survivor on your playthroughs I'd highly recommend going with The Monk instead, it should be a more peaceful, explorative time. The whole bleakness of the story is really a matter of perspective I guess, if you go in with the intent of being a tourist in this really cool world and don't mind being eaten quite a bit, it can be a _kind of_ relaxing, funny, exciting and beautiful time, as shown by all the youtubers who make videos on the game and always take a very lighthearted, comedic approach... And, like, being totally honest, in my playthroughs after the first one, I'm mostly there just having a good time, it only felt a little bleak my first go around. Just... try stay away from Shaded Citadel if you want to have a light time, it's very dark and confusing and creepy. I "enjoyed" it, because I like horror, but... it's not especially _fun_ being eaten by spiders you can't see in pitch black darkness There's also an easy mode mod which you could try out, which keeps the focus on combat of survivor (which is kind of missing from The Monk, since they're weaker and slower, and the enemies are less aggressive) but makes the game easier across the board, making you stronger, more agile, changing areas of the map to be easier to progress. I haven't tried it, but people in the community highly recommend it :D Also, keep a look out for karma flowers, the yellow ones you eat-- if you die, your karma will stay in the same place, and a new one will grow from where you last died, (learned this only recently, and it's been very helpful) so remember to go back there and eat it to keep your karma locked in place if you die again. If you don't make it there, a flower should reappear where you originally found it after a few cycles, so try to remember where you found it first, their placement isn't random :D I hope none of this patronising, I don't know how far through the game you are exactly or how much you know about its weirder mechanics
12:08 it's the small indie games that actually try to do anything new. only later do AAA studios come along and borrow the idea, usually dumbing it down in the process
scissor birds are probably my favourite enemy AI in the game, at least aesthetically. i always assumed them getting stuck was just a lost/slow one waiting for another pack to run with. also them randomly stopping adds a lot more tension for what is already an extremely intense area of the game, and makes getting caught in the rain a real possibility no matter how well you traverse the area.
The quality of this content is honestly shocking and amazing, i don't even know how i stumbled onto this video, autoplay recommended this and i have to say that this is quality, as other comments say, don't stop!
At 7:44, I think that one was actually intentional. On my playthrough, the Rain Deer would feel out patches of worm grass and pools before crossing, almost like it's testing if it's safe to cross. I do admit that getting stuck on the edge of a room with a Rain Deer sucks tho lol
I watched the whole video without realizing that it had ONLY 500 views instead of 500k which I thought it had, this is really high quality and deserves far more views.
Fun fact: Just like scavengers, lizards also have a reputation system if you feed them enough or save them from other creatures, all lizards in the region your in will become more passive towards you if you feed one lizard enough, it will become your friend and will follow you around and protect you, even sleeping in shelters with you, which gives you an ingame achievement
The AI of scavengers is something amazing. You can't truly understand it until you have been an unknown creature, their friend and their enemy. I personaly love being their friend. Sure, somethimes they blow up themself and everyone around, but so I do (I can't really blame them) . Maybe if they didn't try to kill the overseeker (which always follow you) I'd feel more comfortable around them
I once played rain world with my friend using a coop mode and he loved the game so much we ended up playing it for several days almost without switching to different games, which is a lot
Starting with procedural animations and going all the way through the AI and amazing art, this game feels so incredibly alive and you've done a great job describing that I never agreed with a statement more than I did when you said "Scavengers have the best AI in any game," I did a lot of experimenting with scavengers and it's amazing how immersive their AI is.
I've been playing rw for a while now and had already figured that its ai is cool. And idk if this is on purpose, but I've observed that some of the creatures such as the red centipede can develop movements after the slugcats, such as doing a backflip over one. I got the centi to move backward to catch me after some experimenting.
Still am yet to find a game that feels more "alive" than rain world a masterpiece of it's own breed Also I too love cyan because they are great long term companions
@@brunopagnoncelli975 I love hollow knight, but because of the A.I it falls into the same trap most games fall into where the immersion is lost if you just stand still do to certain limitations, like enemies always spawning in the same spot doing the same thing. Skyrim is another good example of this, but many games have this problem, and I understand why coding a A.I to act abnormally is very difficult especially when you also have to balance difficulty. I still hold hollow knight in high regard though for the great combat and immersion when it comes to A.I rain world is certainly a good candidate for the gold standard in lifelike A.I since there is abnormal behavior that can be associated with living animals
@@angsty_saint in hollow knight defense, it isn't meant exactly to be inteligent, since they're all braindead because of the infection, and for mantis who are inmune to it, they are highly abnormal sometimes but they still follow a certain behavior due to "tradition" i guess.
@@brunopagnoncelli975 true and it's not just enemies, NPCs can fall into this two, through either being stuck in a remote location like a shopkeeper, or quest marker. because the amount of coding it takes to make a character that can do whatever he wants is crazy big, and why even though rain world is full of impressive creatures, the scavengers are truly the golden achievements. having successfully made a creature with personality you can interact with anywhere, trade with, socialize, or battle with, and even communicate with through simple sign language, and on top of that they have to be able to interact with the rest of the world aswell as hazards. The scavs have some of the best A.I I've seen in all of gaming let alone a Indi title.
One of my personal favorite interactions with scavengers was when some were following me after I traded with them and then bravely ascended to the skies with explosives to save me from a lizard
when I started getting into indie games I realized that alot of indie developer put alot of care and details into thier games. and like even the atmosphere too. indie games just be giving off vibes and stuff you don't normally get from a triple A game like this video makes me wanna play this game now..reminding me of like hollow knight and ori and the will of the wisps Celeste is also a good one too
I'm so happy this game is being noticed lately and clearly this video is doing a lot to boost it, I've always thought that Rain World was special, some sort of unique experience, so to know how much people will try it out in the near future when Downpour comes out makes me really excited for the future.
rain world is a little like duskers where when you start, everything's fucking terrifying because you know literally nothing. it gets better only after dying a number of times and learning the shit
I can't believe it's 2023 and I have never heard of this game before. Going to download it onto my PS5 as soon as I finish typing. I looked up a physical release on PS4 and holy crap $$$ but considering the classic potential and rarity might be a good investment. On a side note, this is giving me some serious nostalgia for Oddworld from the PS1 era and the feeling of strange/mystical/otherworldly/retrofuturistic in the best possible way. And obviously more fleshed out and modern. Thanks for spotlighting this game.
Im really a fun of animals and their psychology, so can you image how much fun i had spending hours analyzing lizards behavior :D ? Its truly something and perfectly build that feeling of what world around you is alive. Trying to outsmart them and damn electro centipedes make me feel what im just a little slugcat on the bottom of foodchain, all i can do is either run or attack them with spear (and it often was unsuccessful), so best decision for me was to run.. or trying to tame them. I have a story with one. Once a tamed green lizard and get really attached to him - he loved to follow me everywhere and sleep next to me in the safe places. We hunt together, rest together, and i always shared food with him. But it couldn't last forever as i need to move forward to next location. Green lizard followed me as usual. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but there was a situation where I was attacked by another lizard - and my tamed green boi rushed to destroy the hell out of the wild one, which saved my life! So sad i couldn't take him with me to next zone :'))) edit: yoooo, game received an update! 5 new slugcats!
a really cool thing is that even when you leave regions lizards that were tamed stay tamed when you go back so it should be fine if you go back later and feed it something :)
Thank you for covering this game it is one of my favorites of all time and the more exposure the better! These devs are so passionate and with the new DLC coming out it is going to be so amazing for so many people!
You also forgot that you can tame lizards, literally all of them including the salamanders, and even the RED lizards, which are literally the toughest. It works in 2 ways, either by feeding them a certain amount of food or saving them from a vulture by spearing it for it to drop the lizard. And about the orange lizards, you are somewhat right of them being the smartest. However if they are alone or have no alfa they are pretty much stupid, which actually kinda makes because they have much better survival if they work together just like wolves
@@LineOfThy sort of? it's more like whenever there's an alpha around they're all smart, and can communicate with each other to try and cut you off etc. but if the alpha isn't there they become stupid
11:48 i'm going through my very first playthrough and stumbled across some scavengers in the shaded citadel. i was just slowly crawling toward one of them because i didn't know my way around, so i was kinda just following me. it kept chucking rocks at me lol
I love how deep this game is without shoving it in your face. Has anyone else mastered the backflip stab? I managed to gain favor with the scavengers but they are quite fickle
So I've been saying this myself for years now. Developers created life from literally nothing but data and a fully functional biosphere contained in a game that's not all that big. How did they not get an award for this?
One cool thing to be mentioned about one of the enemies: those massive birds that swoop down to attack (vultures) can have their masks knocked off. If you manage to do that, that specific vulture will be hellbent on killing the player character for several cycles. Sometimes even other vultures will attack the maskless one
6:43 Now that actually makes sense, because if the entities' animations are more based on contexts, and considering the fact that an AI or bot doesn't understand contexts very often, it makes sense that an entity won't know what to do
5:15 my brain went; ''He's going to talk about parallel universes''- Also I think you can tame the Lizards. I've seen some videos bout it. Don't know if that is a mod though or not, but the Ai of the game is still amazing!
You made me found my favorite game more than a year ago, in mid 2022. thank you, if it weren't for this video I wouldn't have had the amazing experience to play rain world, its lore, and the fanbases concepts. its my favorite game.
most underrated game ever made i've bought copies for everyone i know, and still they refuse to play it. it's the kind of game where you need to spend a few hours with it before you start actually enjoying it, must most people give up in the first 15 minutes, thinking it's too hard or the movement feels too weird
This video is 2 years old, but one thing Rain World does that I really like is that enemies don't automatically know where you are once aggro'd but rely on line of sight. I've jumped down pipes while being pursued by vultures, and the vultures would either fly between exits trying to spot me or wait on one end waiting for me to come out, even after I escaped.
damn I was kinda like expecting this to be a sarcastic video, but this was generally interesting learning about Rain World's unique AI, tbh I never knew they had this, I only seen some game play or vids of rain world and just forgot about it, glad this vid popped up in my recommendations
Got somethin' you missed about lizards. You can tame them, by either giving them dead prey such as scavengers or by saving them from an enemy, and if you have caused harm, it will take more food for them to trust you. Oh, and giving them food isn't just for taming them, it can also be a good way to save yourself, if your getting chased by one, since their just creatures hunting for food, not (always) for you.
@@anexplosion5436 i think if you kill a vulture and/or steal its mask, they'll run from the mask because they're scared of vultures and you are showing them you've beaten one. idk about killing them though
@@timob1681 removing masks also interacts with the Vultures themselves: de masked Vultures will be more aggressive, and other Vultures will attack their maskless bretheren.
@@ethanhinton4549 the unmasked ones will specifically hunt you down when they see you if i recall, dropping anything else they're doing to kill you. i think they might even follow between rooms in places like chimney canopy, but I'm not sure
I have NEVER noticed the background ambient noises like machinery buzz, manufacturing work, or other things until I played it. It's something you never notice in videos and when I first found it I was stunned by the attention to detail.
I had the absolute privilege to enjoy this game almost entirely blind (I knew about the periodic flooding) and had a blast when i got into it, I didn't do very well at it but it never once deterred me. It's just got so much soul to it that you can't really find in many places anymore.
0:31 I saw this warning almost 2 years ago, and here I am now. Feels amazing knowing I can finally watch all the content I missed. Meanwhile, feels terrible that almost half that content is locked behind Downpour. Yet, feels amazing once again that I can experience the game 5 more times.
My guess for why the rain deer and miros birds are so stupid is because they’re too basic. Miros birds only really walk across screen looking for something to kill and occasionally squabble with eachother and rain deer just walk along large patches of red worm grass and bend over for slugcats, maybe acting quicker if they have a spore on them. They both feel like late editions because they’re largely isolated from the rest of the world and are practically invincible. You could take both their sections out and the game would be barely different if not a bit shorter. It also could be because they’re legs are both really long and not all noodly like long legs’ are. Also they’re making a new rain world expansion with a bunch of new creatures so this video might age poorly.
2:38 the alpha lizard does not always have the longest antenas, the leader is determined by the personality of the lizards, while the antenas are a randomly-generated physical features.
Scavengers just feel like they have some machine learning built in And it works HELLA fast Basically, I was in the shaded citadel, and I think I found either a stash with a scav inside? or a trader, who looked hella anxious? scared of me? I didn't leave em be, just crawled around, and then ANOTHEE SCAV got in, clearly (not for me back then) showed me a sign of disgust, like telling me to leave da hell away I didn't, then he started swinging his spear, giving a cleaner sign which I didn't get either, and then I just hear 2-3 stab sounds after he hopped closer to me, HE GAVE ME THOSE WARNING STABS SO I'D FINALLY UNDERSTAND THAT I SHOULD LEAVE! He didn't instantly skewer me, but just found out that It's possible for him to go full-on melee and scare me off, which worked perfectly, I ran away from there Gosh, scavs are hella clever sometimes!
I would love to have more games that is about an ecosystem or life of a species to have this type of AI. It just gives the feeling of an actual ecosystem, food chain and interactions with other characters
scavenger personalities in a nutshell -hmm what is this slug thing? is it friendly? -oh i like you, you can pass -hey you have to pay in order to pass -ew nasty slug thing, imma kill it
Very minor detail; slugcat will lift its tail away from danger. So if you're standing on a pole that a lizard is also on slugcat will bring its tail closer to its chest.
The first encounter I had with scavengers was a weird one.
I was just running around with a spear in my hand, looking for food.
When 3 scavengers suddenly emerged and all ran to me, throwing rocks at me to knock me out. They then stole my spear, and ran away...
I got fucking mugged.
LMAO
slug cat is white, scavengers are black... *wait a minute*
@@internetduck1114 I see what you did there 😂
Welcome to Britian
@@FinnishCrystal oi, you go’ a loicense for that stick?
Some points I really like about the AI:
If you stumble upon a scavenger post and are spotted by only one of them, it will point towards you to alert the others. The others will first look at the one that spotted you then over where they're pointing. If you've hid by then, they may just not believe the one pointing.
Also as lizards are afraid of vultures, if a lizard has seen a vulture recently and you make noise without having been seen by the lizard, it will assume it to be the vulture and hide.
that's so sick 🦔❄
I'm 90% sure the community has still not even found all the quirks of the AI because things like the vulture thing are so hard to spot it's amazing anybody figured it out at all. There's got to be things that nobody's noticed yet, or at least that they haven't figured out fully
red lizard
Red lizard probably hate when hear a vulture just for find a little annoying rat
I heard a story about a lizard that sat there and acted tamed, and then when the player trusted it... CHOMP and the lizard gets a meal
one more thing i'd like to add about scavengers, they have certain parameters in their AI that can be selected based on other factors or just random chance, which dictate them being aggressive towards you or another creature. one of these parameters is "for-fun" or something, which means that if that scavenger hasn't attacked anything in a long time and you don't have an overwhelmingly positive reputation, but they have no other reason to attack you, they may decide to do so just for shits and giggles.
they also have different dodging skill levels
(Quoted from the wiki)
"They also have the ability to dodge objects thrown at them, though each scavenger has a different level of skill in this regard."
that is the most relatable thing ever haha
@@tobyk5091 🤨
no wonder they're always killing me for no reason :(
Thats literally hilarious
Hello I am from Finland and I would like to confirm that reindeer being frustratingly stupid is entirely realistic.
Yeah we have deer here and they glitch out all the time
@@ARVash it really sucks when their AI stops working on roads
what if he has some disease? realistic actually..
Me being Swedish can confirm
Good sense of smell, not much else!
The lizards also have a befriendment system.if you kill and repeatedly give them food, they start following you and sometimes protect you from other lizards. This alliance can be short lived though as it is purely food based. If you fail to feed your lizard it will snap there teeth near you to tell you that it’s hungry. If you continue to fail it can attempt to eat you
If you get them to sleep with you in the safe houses they become permanent ally
Wow
One of my favorite moments in the game was befriending a leap lizard, and then having that same lizard save me from a vulture trying to carry me off later.
repeatedly killing lizards will also make lizards in the area afraid of you, from what i've heard.
@@mozarteanchaos It does. It also can lead to more dangerous lizards coming into the region due to the lineage syatem. Kill enough and you really wish you hadnt
one thing that i find neat about the game are the vultures, particularly how if you manage to take a vulture's mask, other creatures will run away from you out of fear because you have the apex predator's face. But, if the vulture is still alive and you have its mask it'll never forgive you, and always be tracking you. Even between zones, a vulture that lost its mask will follow you
That honestly sounds terrifying, the knowledge of being hunted by something that you *know* is out for vengeance
@@Phi_Lix though, ironically vultures that have lost their masks are much easier to kill, due to the combination of their weak spot being exposed and them never retreating.
If you take the Alpha Vulture's mask the other vultures attack it and become scared of you
that is incorrect. they cannot follow you to new zones, but yes, they uniquely save their "demasked state" and can come back for vengance if they escaped. which is terrifying because demasked vultures have a 100% lethality bite chance instead of the usual 0% lethality chance of normal vultures.
Also interestingly, normal vultures will harrass to death other vultures without a mask, as "losing their pride" makes them an enemy.
Sounds like you could re-enact John Wick. Play on hardest difficulty, get lowest scavenger reputation, piss off lizards and vultures.
Fun fact: Scavengers have a lot of stat data that varies between combat skills and persnality. There is a particular scavenger ID called by "Robbin" by the community who has the highest stats on everything, this means will always parry your spears throwing something back, will duck or jump over your spears if is disarmed, has no fear to anything, doesnt hesitate to attack, has perfect accuracy and almost no spear cooldown. There are videos where this scavenger takes down red lizards alone.
I've never heard of this 'Robbin' before. It sounds really interesting but I can't find anything about it. Could you put a link to anything about it in the comments?
@@jevmenyt3422 Ah alright then. I'll have a look on there, thanks.
@@jevmenyt3422 like, dual wielding? Or 2 in 1 hand?
@@johncronk8867 it literally throws 2 spears in the same frame
@@jevmenyt3422 found some clips of Robbin doing fighting, throwing 2 spears at the same time seems not to be the case for her?
the other things I love are interesting mechanics such as rain deer bowing to other rain deer with larger antlers, or vultures hunting down other vultures who don't have masks, or baby noodleflies following you if you hatch the egg since they think you're their parent. it's the little details/mechanics like this (as well as literally everything you said in this video about scavengers and lizards) that really make it feel like the other species in the game have their own societies and just generally work in their own unique way. it's a very cool game :)
sorry if this comment was long haha
Just dont take the noodleflies that are already born, once I blocked a mother noodlefly with a karma gate, she was in the room outside of the shelter the next cycle and killed me.
Also a noodlefly who see her baby are dead doesn't automatically know who is the culprid.
If they see a creatre killing their baby, they'll hunt this one down...but if the next thing they are aware after the death of their baby is you....they'll kill you, evne ifyou are NOT the murderer.
also the baby noodleflies will follow you slightly if you kill their mother. is funny because noodlefly mothers kill each other on sight. thats why i think they have multi colored babies, they kinda go arround taking the babies of other mothers
"we live in a society"
@@ballom29 Nice.
Once you mention all the tiny details for the scavengers, you instantly sold me on how its the best AI already
The pure detail in communication itself is so impressive
It's more impressive that you can tame lizards as well
@@peculiarjack617 you can?
@@hypnosisguy Yeah. I’m not sure if anything has changed, but you can kill one of those giant fly things and, with caution, give it to a lizard. If I remember correctly, it’ll take it back to it’s den and then it will begin to follow you around passively. It’ll even sleep in your den with you when it floods.
Note: I think sometimes you need more than one though. I remember someone taking a red lizard after gathering around 10 of those things
yeah what the dude said
@@LividAF to clarify: different lizards take different time to tame. You can tame them by either feeding them, or by saving them from a sky kraken (or vulture)
another interesting fact about scavengers is that they will actively be hostile towards your guide the Overseer, or as the community likes to call him "iggy", because of reasons regarding the game's lore. even if youve befriended scavengers, sometimes you can get mixed in the crossfire and die because a scav was trying to spear iggy.
Polnareff would be sad
Oh really? I wonder why iggy got beef with them
@@flyingstonemon3564 Spoilers
Iggy works for the iterators, like Sister Moon and Five Pebbles. Supposedly, the scavs came from the farm arrays, and were enslaved to work the fam systems to produce food. When everything broke down, the scavs got free and wandered everywhere, but they still hold that grudge.
@@mr_girr3488 Ohh I see now, thanks
@Qagmez 7668 You can actually kill the in-game guide in rainworld if you have good positioning and a spear.
While some of the creatures might initially appear like 3D models, they're actually stitched together partly from graphics drawn from sprite sheets layered on top of physics colliders and part procedural graphics to give the impression of being 3D animated models. I think a much greater (and much less appreciated) facet of Rain World is how rich the procedural content is, from the procedural plants (which have stuck through since the early prototypical stages) to the layers of shading applied to the tiles the world is assembled from (I bet a larger than normal number of people didn't notice this fact at all). This is further evidence of the attention to detail paid from the largest components to the smallest.
when i first played rain world i was convinced for HOURS that the game used 3d models for everything. rain world is easily one of the best looking games ever made.
running around in the dark areas with a light, or after you become glowy, you really start to notice how amazing the games shading is. everything has highlights and those highlights move perfectly and smoothly as the light source does, its so immersive
When the AI is so good the model basically just seamlessly changes shape to animate movement
i didn't notice how deep the shading went until I ate a neuron fly and got the glow effect. That's the moment that really sealed in how genius this game is.
Yup! A easy way to visualize this is Ridley's tail in Super Metroid. The segments are just balls coded to follow the previous segment on a delay. Rainworld turns that concept up to 11
I find it absolutely hilarious that scavengers among other personality types have one that kills the slugcat for fun, they really are identical to the player
That's the funniest but also most ridiculous aspect of their status system imo, like they didn't had to go the extra mile for that specific personality trait but they did and now we got bored scavs trowing shit at slugcat for giggles, and I imagine it was no simple task to code all this stuff together.
@@JUJUJUNO "Dang it's been 2 hours since I've done anything"
(Sees Slugcat)
"Dang I found someone. Time for some Trolling. YEET!"
Rain World has gotta be one of my top favourites, I've played this game long enough to where I can admire the AI since I can learn from the behaviors of the different creatures on each death or encounter to help increase my chances on progressing in the game. Hunter, as difficult as it is, was my personal favourite mode to play
Bro same! I’ve never heard someone else say that I’m so glad others share the sentiment. Sad though, can’t play Hunter anymore cause my save data got fucked so I would have to play all of survivor again to get him
@@Arcticfox-ce8hd it's not that bad, if you know what you're doing you can do it in a few hours
I love just watching the various creatures do their thing while i'm still in the tube between rooms. It's so fun seeing how they all interact with each other :)
@@idontwantahandlethough you'll enjoy safari mode
@@Arcticfox-ce8hd if you put a text file named "unlockred" in the root folder of the game (next to the executable) it unlocks Hunter without playing through Survivor's campaign.
One time I was walking outside of a shelter, and upon seeing a Lizard I was like “ah crap”. But all of a sudden a Vulture appeared one second and picked up the lizard and swept him away to his hideaway. Somehow, this game gave me a teaching moment and a spooky cutscene at the same time, without it being scripted. This game is so amazing.
God that must have been like an introduction cutscene to Vultures for you
A few interesting notes (taken from the code):
Rain World's graphics isn't actually directly tied to what happens in the game, instead, there is a physics system - each object is made out of some "body chunks" (which are spheres), and an AI acts by moving those chunks. These chunks, in addition to directly the creature AI's state in some cases, cause the graphics, although some things are entirely graphical and have no bearing on gameplay. There's quite a strong separation between graphics and physics because the physics runs at a fixed 40fps, while graphics runs faster and generates in-between frames by interpolation to make things smooth. There's actually so much physics that as an optimisation every physical object has a circle around its main body chunk and can only collide with other objects that have overlapping circles, presumably because otherwise checking each pair of body chunks individually was too slow; but instead of abandoning that, they did something that was equivalent but ran faster.
Fun fact: some things in the game aren't even made out of sprites. A lot of things are sprites that just get repositioned according to code, but a few things, notably including the slugcat's tail, are entirely assembled by code, which literally dynamically generates the locations of triangles.
Scavengers have even more detail than you identified in the video. The speed and duration of the actions they take are determined by their personality: for example, the animation to indicate that the player is allowed to go through a toll advances every frame by a half plus the square root of the product of energy and agitation, divided by 20. When a scavenger sees a creature for the first time that it either attacks or is afraid of, and it has at least 20% sympathy, and the creature seen seems to be pretty close (the exact threshold is lower if the scavenger is more sympathetic), and a sufficient number of nearby pack members either don't know about the creature or are not scavengers, it will point at the creature. If any nearby pack scavengers are already pointing at something, it has a 50% chance to decide to not point. And yes, it is not a given that everyone in the pack is a scavenger, if the scavenger likes you enough then *you* are considered part of the pack. Which means that they will point at creatures in order to tell you that they are there. The duration of the point animation is also interesting: it is shortened if the scavenger is nervous (a combination of their personality nervousness value and current agitation), and lasts for longer if some of the scavengers in the pack still haven't noticed the thing being pointed at yet, with more effect the more sympathetic the scavenger is.
The general setup of the AIs is quite interesting: they don't just take predefined actions, they have a list of things that they care about and act on whichever one is most important. By far the simplest of these is rain, which increases in importance the closer the rain gets (as you'd expect) and generally causes an attempt to get to shelter, but there are all kinds of other things: friends, threats, food, aggression, injury...
Creature AIs are not omniscient. They have trackers for creatures that are maintained entirely separately from their real states, and they are only immediately aware of things that happen in the room that they're in. When they hear a noise, they don't know what it's from, so they look at each possible noise source they're aware of and look at how much it makes sense for that thing to have made noise, and if that doesn't find anything good they look at every creature they're aware of, and if that doesn't find anything good it's classed as "mysterious" - investigating mysterious noises is another thing that some creatures find important, and it's more important the more interesting the noise is. It would have been far easier to have the AIs just read out the exact game state, but they decided not to.
In general there is a huge amount going on. You're definitely right about one thing: there is so much detail in here even if almost nobody will ever notice it, just so that the game can feel like a real, unscripted world.
If anyone is curious about anything else, I've got pretty good at reading the code so I should be able to answer any questions.
The AI looking for random things in the room to see if it made noise explains my sometimes frustrating attempts to bait lizards! Sometimes I'll make noise to make them move and they'll just do their head flashing thing and then look around and not come near me. I guess they just thought they found the source of the noise. That, and some of them hate moving and just won't move for crap even if they can see you, but that's usually just white lizards.
Can you please give a crash course on game character AI? Is it plain if - elses, or is it trained with machine learning? If the former, why don’t they adopt the latter in general?
@@brownvented6059 Its probably a more traditional state machine, just one thats implemented cleverly. Deep learning is not necessarily a good fit for this game I would think, deep learning models take advantage of quirks of their environment in ways that might break immersion, (like taking advantage of a glitch to achieve their goals --- for example, in a "hide and seek" simulation using deep learning algorithms, seekers learned to stand on top of objects and lift them, literally lifting themselves by their bootstraps and levitating into the air.) Developing a system that makes different individuals have different personalities with deep learning is also not easy and would balloon how much memory the game takes up. Stuff like that. Deep learning can be applied to character AI, but its not ALWAYS a silver bullet.
@@peppermintgal4302 makes sense. Thanks
@@brownvented6059 Yeah it's just lots of code, no machine learning. I can think of a few issues with using ML here:
1. The game doesn't really distinguish between what a creature "can" do and what it "wants" to do - limits like how fast something can move are just the implicit result of the AI code never moving it faster than that. If you wanted to embed ML as the AI, it would have to be treated as properly untrusted, which would be a lot of work defining exact creature capabilities.
2. The AIs have certain realistic behaviours that would be difficult to get from ML - scavengers attempt to communicate with you using gestures, lizards will get frustrated if they can't reach their prey, that kind of thing. Doing stuff like that doesn't really help with any goal that it would make sense for the creatures to have, you basically have to write them in explicitly if you want them at all.
3. Rain World is a rather complicated environment. I don't have much experience with AIs so I don't know exactly how much computational resources you would need to train a competent AI at RW, but it might be quite a lot. There's also the problem of making sure it learns the same problem as it's going to be asked to do - if it will be deployed in an environment containing a human player, it should be trained in an environment containing a human player, or at least a good enough approximation of one, or it might just get confused and start doing nonsense the first time it sees a slugcat. (You could try just training an AI slugcat too, but if your slugcat AI doesn't behave enough like a real player...)
3:00 personally i prefer to name them "yeet lizards" over "leap lizards".
when the DLC comes out i hope they redo the raindeers to make them a bit more... "alive" and less of a glitchy taxi
Well, you can already download mods which fix the glitch, and I'm pretty sure the mod that fixes the raindeer glitch was included in the pre-released bug fix mod that the people making the DLC made, so, at the very least, the DLC will fix the glitchiness, though I do also hope it adds some more raindeer behavior.
Nah, that glitchyness makes them even more alive.
Real reindeer just freeze up and stare at cars driving towards them
You can now tug on their antlers to get them to move and they don’t abandon you to go offscreen now. Congrats, I just got to subterranean, spoilers for Downpour below.
I finished the game with the Outer Expanse ending and a pup named Blueberry.
@@rosyyt4130 i still found rain deers to be pretty bugged. when i did my a hunter playthrough a few weeks back i died atleast 3 times because i ran out of time waiting for a rain deer to come and pick me up.
i ended up enabling the dev tools and just teleport to the end of that room.
Honestly, the giant moose and bird AI being bugged isn't a major issue considering how dumb hooved animals and birds can be. Evolution causes many wonderous things, and sometimes the wonderous thing is the mental damage we take from noticing how stupid something is and wondering how it survived for so long.
raindeerlopes being seizure-prone may as well be in the lore
Draw a line infront of a chickens face and theyll limp & collapse
Nature is a truly wonderous thing *slowly zooms in on Miros Bird flailing around*
Twitter
just like koalas
A small detail about lizards: if you injure them every circle repeatedly, the next time you see them they'll probably try to run away or play dead to catch you off guard. Also the squidcadas are pretty interesting. They hunt flies on their own and will continuously bump into you if you are considered as a threat
They also hunt leeches
Maybe I'm biased bc I love this game so much, but even the broken AI gives the creatures more personality. I've noticed how bugs unrelated to creature's initial behavior can end up effecting it anyways. I've seen lizards glitch out and come out of a pipe twice after only entering once, and proceed to enter an enhanced 'rage' state. After accidentally linking a scav to me with the batspear glitch, I saw the poor thing shivering and sprinting around in an attempt to escape from the madness it was caught in.
i think i remember reading one of the devs said they were testing out white lizards' AI by just spectating a white lizard moving around. the lizard got badly injured in a fight and was still alive, but unable to move, and somehow its AI figured out that it could use its tongue move to pull itself along and make its way to a shelter. the devs were shocked because they had not intended this to happen at all and had no idea it was possible
@@timob1681 Yeah the lizards are really good at finding alternative ways to travel! I've seen lizards abuse physics by spinning in circles until they get launched so they can reach a pipe or platform they otherwise couldn't have. I actually had a video of this but I lost it :(
Damn, they gave these guys artificial ai learner
The machine learning white lizard
Odd things that certain parameters cause that weren’t expected by the developers are always amusing. Reminds me of that Dwarf Fortress bug where cats were dying in bars because their paws got soaked in alcohol. They’d lick their paws and promptly die of alcohol poisoning
The biggest thing that wasn't mentioned in this video I'd like to bring attention to is how scavengers will sometimes block your thrown spears with their own spears or rocks during combat if you throw from such a distance they can see it coming and react.
they can also duck or jump to dodge projectiles, these factors are unique to each scav along other 10+ atributes between personality and skills, a scavenger with the highest stats on anything can melt red lizards like nothing and are almost impossible to kill by yourself (the buff world mod makes all scavengers like this)
@@jevmenyt3422 I heard the guy with max stats is called robbin.
@@mishagaming1075 ye that one is called Robbin. They can take down Red Lizards, they mastered the ways of Dodging, Parrying, and Running fades
@kendrickcrawfordjr6165 then you gave yourself an unfair advantage or... are you sure you didn't make any typos?
I still like the raindeer! They have a really cool looking model and their derpy-ness just makes them cute, despite the occasional setbacks it can cause (unlike when the metal birds glitch out, THAT I hate) XD
I agree, and actually see those glitches, as they just quirky, like a dumb ass cat who will lay near you, but as soon as you try to touch it - it goes nuts.
One more note with the scavengers: If your reputation with them does indeed get bad, they can send out death squads which are heavily armed with explosives, raid your shelters at the start of the cycle. A trader however has a different coding and AI from other scavengers, if you go in to a trader room they will either not have any expresions and just trade with you for whatever you give them or sometimes be scared and go to their special shelter, in other words they will not attack you right at the spot for no reason but only after you made clear that you are a threat. Stealing from trader rooms also can give you bad karma though
I just started playing Rain World after catching it on sale and fell in love with it immediately. I keep looking it up just to find more content and I was excited to see a brand new video. The game has so much nuance and features that I might have brushed past, thanks for the great video! I'll definitely have subscribe for more content :)
I think Rain World turns a lot of people off by being daunting at first. There's a lot going on and the game tells you nothing about any of it. But when you get through that barrier I think it's one of the best games ever made
@@htwo1 Agreed, I'm honestly floored I never found this game sooner, it ticked a lot of my boxes with the style and mood alone, I'm definitely going to try and tell more people about it
@Minh Nguyễn I saw the latest video! I'm really excited for the Saint and Rivulet after seeing how mobile they are. I'm glad I get to be a part of the hype for Downpour now
What’s really cool is if you just got in to rain world now, you didn’t need to wait as long as some of us for new content, as a new dlc has been announced.
@@mr.armadillo6374 I really chose a great time to get into it, enough time to finish the characters and be blessed with new content
Repeatedly killing enemies, such as lizards will make them run from you, this can happen to a single lizard if they are hurt enough. The cool thing about this is that lizards have different amounts of fear. Some lizards run at the slightest damage and some keep fighting until they die.
If you attain the vulture mask, all lizards will fear you, and you can trick Scavs into thinking your one of them. (As long as the mask is on.)
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 I didnt know about the scav part lol
@@notimeforcreativenamesjust3034 but mask cant sacre only one lizard
Rain World is probably the best game I've played so far.
From the insanity of the deep lore and the complex movement system to the IA that makes everyone's experience so unique.
It's also one of those game that gets better when you know what you're doing, after a few playthroughs. Just like a darksoul would feel after a few beat.
I've always felt like Rain World barely feels like the same game when you're experience at it. It's more like a survival game when you're new, but becomes a lot more of an adventure game as you become experienced
@@htwo1 What game is shown at 6:00?
@@Kallixede Ori and the will of the wisps, great game.
@@Kallixede Ori and the Will Of The Wisps. Very good game
@@ascended313 Zoro defo gets lost
You forgot to mention that the lizards can be tamed by feeding them. If you feed a lizard enough (depending on the subspecies' intelligence/threat level) they'll follow you around to protect you, and tamed lizards will even enter save points with you.
I know a lot of people have already pointed out the being able to tame lizards thing, but one of my favorite things about the creatures in the game, which you already somewhat went into with the scavengers, is the reputation system which goes even deeper than just them. Other creatures outside of scavengers that are connected to reputation systems are for example Squicadas, Jetfish and, like mentioned previously, Lizards! For example, if the player starts hunting a lot of Squidcadas the reputation with them will go down, meaning they go from generally leaving the player alone to annoying them when they see them. The wiki hosted on fandom is a bit old, but for extra details the newer wiki hosted on miraheze is a great ressource when researching things ^^
As buggy as the rain deer can be, they will always be one of my favourite creatures when I once saw one help pick another deer out of a hole. I also love the miros birds because of how broken they move, their bodies jerking around in the dark is really creepy.
This video just got recommended for me and I was NOT disappointed. This is my introduction to Rain World, but it definitely seems like my kind of game. Thanks!
If you're interested in playing the game remember. Rain world is a hard game. It takes some patience to appreciate it , but it's worth it. It's easily one of the best games I've played so in case you'll play it remember to not give up
If you play it, here's a BIG tip: Don't try to progress. Don't try to "get to the end". Let yourself wander an explore, but most importantly, focus on survival and on food. It's a game meant to feel like you're a wild creature trying to survive and my first mistake was trying to get through the story, finding areas that were INCREASINGLY painful to get through because I hadn't stopped to sit and observe the world around me first (Hidden mechanics, AI behaviors, how the world itself behaves because every day is different, etc)
Yup, me too. Going to check price now 😆
Same here. The graphics remind me of Flashback, this immediately draws me in.
At 10:32 you can actually see the scav calling you to help it
I think it was a mistake with the ai where the scav was telling you to pass through the toll in the middle of a fight. It is still a cool way to interpret it though.
@@BrotherLongLegs8 there is no effigy there, though
If you're having trouble going backwards through sky islands on hunter with that hell jump at 0:19 remember that the mushrooms near the shelter give you a movement speed boost. I feel like a lot of the clips were you being stuck there lol.
There's an easier way. Pick up a squidcada. When you jump holding them you jump higher
Or, just ride a vulture, duh
/j
@@protomedia8325
Clearly the best option
@@pearls2565 or even ride a cyan, or a winged centi
I am glad that someone else has gone over the amazing AI in Rain World. I do think that you missed a very crucial part, and that is the animals' priority system. They prioritize their own survival over killing you. If they are in danger, they run away and completely ignore the player. The same things happens with the rain; if the rain is coming, the animals all bolt to some shelter while completely ignoring the player. This makes the AI seem much more realistic because it values self-preservation above just being an obstacle for the player.
A ton of this game’s AI reminds me of WolfQuest’s Anniversary Edition game.
It was primarily made for conservation and education purposes to teach people about what life is like for Wildlife (specifically wolves) in Yellowstone (put in a literal satellite generated terrain of the area in Yellowstone wolves reside in) but the amount of work and accuracy they put into the AI ecosystem always impresses me and make it so interesting to play.
Like Rain World, every animal operates away from your player wolf and each species has different behaviors mirroring how their irl counterparts behave. Predators have a fight or flight meter that will fluctuate as they assess a situation and its changes, and depends on the animal they are, but like all wildlife, they won’t fight and risk injury if they don’t have to or don’t feel it neccessary.
If you’re a lone wolf for example, some larger herds of elk are less likely to be intimidated by you to run and will hold their ground and even fight you, so it might take a lot of threatening emoting to spook the whole herd into moving, they’ll raise their heads as they do irl when being chased to widen their field of vision to see u behind them better-and ones who are weaker are more likely to do this right away, and will turn on you quicker to fight you and will be slower, and mother elk will defend their calves,
cougars are naturally flighty and elusive but still might put up a good fight if they’re defending a kill,
bears are apex so they usually won’t be able to be bruited off a meal, (if anything they’ll do that to you), but if you’re patient and play your cards right with intimidation body language, it might persuade it to leave-or piss it off into charging you if you get too close-each bear is different,
coyotes are weaker and smaller than wolves so will generally be easy to chase off a kill or defend your pups from-but if there’s more than one coyote and they outnumber you it might embolden them into harassing you by nipping at your legs when your guard is down. You can also see them hunting rabbits, which golden eagles also hunt and dive on,
meanwhile bald eagles dive for fish, and on rare occasions might drop one which u might come across and be able to eat,
foxes are no threat at all b/c of their size so they’ll always wait back until the other predators are done eating (once found a carcass with a dead fox near it, smelled around and saw coyotes were there-which shows they likely killed the fox who was likely getting too close) and sometimes you can see them “mousing” for rodents under the snow,
you can see other wolves hunting prey, and if you’re smart, can use that as an opportunity to get a weakened animal if they give up the hunt, or can try and challenge them for the kill or wait off to the side for them to finish if they’re successful for easier food,
old male bison travel together, some die and make an easy meal for you, but it’s practically impossible for you to hunt one successfully on your own or with your mate, if you get too close the way they hold their tails shows how angry they are-holding it all the way up shows they’re very angry and intimidating you to back off one more time before charging,
Bull elk in fall experience the rut season and u can hear bachelor herds screeching near herds of females to challenge their lead male to a fight, the winner goes back to claim the herd, deer are solitary but the males have the same fighting system,
elk are weaker in winter b/c of less food so their health may be lower than in summer when they’re thriving. U might come across a lone bull elk with low health after likely losing a fight u can take advantage of,
Elk herds migrate to different areas of the map according to the seasons-will be in the mountains and hills during fall-summer but will move to lower land in winter where food will be,
each wolf AI has its own personality on a scale of Bold, cautious, loner, social, lazy, energetic, and will affect how they respond to conflicts and hunts, more cautious ones will stand back in more dangerous conflicts and hunts against stronger animals and be careful about what opening they take and personalities of parents will have some effect on the personalities of the pups,
there’s a genetic system using 26 irl wolf genes that determine coat colors/tints and genetic health, choosing a mate with higher diversity makes larger litters that have more resistance to disease,
Other wolves can track you by using the scent system and howling, and will respond back if you howl, hostile wolves will assess the situation when they approach you in their territory: if they outnumber you or you’re low on health there’s little chance you’ll be able to intimidate and chase them off, if you’re with your mate it makes the chances higher, and outnumbering them will usually result in a quick surrender and retreat, if you manage to kill one of them that’ll always guarantee to make the others show submissive body language and run,
Rival packs have their own territories they patrol, defend, and mark, (like the player gets) and their territory sizes will fluctuate as they will fight other packs for territory, sometimes resulting in a wolf dying in a fight,
dispersal wolves from other packs travel freely around the map and through other territories looking for a mate, you can sometimes see male and female dispersals courting each other with friendly emotes, your pack will so the same: pups interact and emote with each other, you, and the mate AI, in ways irl packs do, often showing their own personalities you can catch onto,
if you find a potential mate they’ll at first assess you, as you do them, for a few days to see if they wanna stick around. During this period you’ll have to hunt and defend/fight off other predators with them to increase your chance of impressing them. If you pull your weight in a hunt they’ll decide to stay, and lazier wolves will be much easier to win over,
Mate AI might go on their own at times away from the den to hunt for food if they’re hungry enough or you haven’t fed the pups(they may or may not be successful), or go and mark an area of the territory that’s low and u can watch where they are on the map,
they help you defend the pups from threats and retrieve a pup if it wanders too far off depending on their personality they may be great at helping or no help at all, they may even show annoyance with a pup AI if the pup had wandered off several times in a day and might growl at them,
You can whine to get the mate AI to follow you out to hunt or patrol, and they’ll do the same to you if they want you to go hunting with them, the mate AI can stay behind and watch the pups as you traverse the territory and will actively fight and command the pups into the den or safety if a predator attack happens while you’re gone,
and all the wolves in a specific save game stay consistent so you might recognize some of them and have more than one run-in with the same wolves, but if they die or you personally kill them that wolf won’t respawn.
Everything from the trees and plant life, to the weather bird sounds in the background is accurate to the area of Yellowstone, they even have tree species growing where they actually would irl depending on the altitude they can be found growing in it’s just…
I could go on but I won’t..too long already, but this game definitely reminds me of that-and it’s intriguing considering AI like this is pretty rare. That scavenger AI is amazing.
Thanks for pointing out specifically that the ai creatures can make mistakes
thats one of my favorite aspects of this game
its wonderful to see a daddy long legs falling right off the edge of something :)
I always imagine the cartoon whistling sound effect when enemies fall off the edge, especially bigger ones.
@@chaosinc.382 "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HOO HOo Hoo hoo"
dlls cant see
If you grab a Noodle Fly baby it start attacking you, and usually the babies cry for their mother if that happen, so you technically can't escape
thou, if the mother changes scenarios and you grab one baby and throw it a lizard, the mother can think it was the lizard who attack their young and begin to kill it
Also you can find Noodle Fly eggs in some maps and if take them to your Shelter they can be born and follow you around
You may also feed some small creatures to lizards and tame them, they'll pick up food you throw at them and carry it to their den, if enough food is given, they'll follow you and protect you from certain dangers. You can also tame them if you save one that's being grabbed by a Vulture
The best part about siccing a noodlefly on a lizard is the noodlefly typically wins the fight. Apparently they can even 1v1 vultures as well.
This is also why it kinda sucks that a lot of potential players were scared off by the game's initial difficulty barrier back when it first released: The Hunter and, more importantly, Monk weren't available for a fair while, so you just had to contend with the brutal difficulty Survivor has
It's a beautiful game, and I wish more people gave it a chance
You missed Lantern mice! These creatures (in my opinion) are some of the most realistic in the game. They know to be scared of you because you are larger than them, if they see a spider, (or anything, really) kill one of it's kind, they will immediately leave, well, if they haven't already. I also think they move very realistically, they kind of skitter around like real mice and hide at any chance they get. I know these guys don't really get a lot of attention, but honestly they're my favorite!
How the lizards fight over food is similar to what happens in the game STALKER. How I understand it is all NPCs were programmed to seek out food to add to their inventory or to eat. This was a blanket AI rule and extended to animals and wildlife too. But wildlife don't really have the same kind of inventory as a person so they don't carry pieces of food. They only "carry" what they drop when killed and all wildlife have the potential to drop meat. The AI can see this and so the wild dogs and other aggressive predators can be observed hunting other creatures specifically to consume the edible drops. This was emergent behavior not originally intended by the devs but left in because it made the world feel more alive.
I may be misremembering the details or reasoning but that's roughly how it was explained to me. It's got a very interesting AI system. Not... the best in a lot of cases. But very challenging when it works correctly.
Nope, simple faction based AI, they just attack enemies of their faction.
The AI in STALKER is pretty good, dogs attack in packs, cats stalk and ambush from behind, humans suppress and flank etc, but they don't have needs to fulfill.
@@Coffin17I I'm pretty sure there's a bit more to it than that. Yes faction is a huge factor and while the AI doesn't actually *eat*, it does want to carry food in its inventory. Probably for immersion reasons. No food means they go and look for some to loot. humanoid NPCs will loot containers or bodies. In fact if you buy food off of an NPC and you follow that NPC they'll pick up the next bit of food they come across. But animals don't have an inventory and will go after anything carrying edible items creating hunting-like behavior.
@@AgentSapphireBelieve whatever you want, but your theory kinda contradicts itself, seeing as wildlife doesn't have any items on it until it's killed, at which point it's randomly picked from their loot pool.
@@Coffin17I Wildlife can see the inventory(or drops) of other things and will try to get it
@@olixx1213 Nope. AI stalkers without any items on them will still aggro wildlife. Removing drops from wildlife does not change their targeting behaviours. They attack enemies as designated by their faction.
Just dropping in to let everyone know that Rain World is getting a DLC now called Downpour, which officializes the More Slugcats mod and greatly expands the world map.
Nah man, that ain't a bug, slug cat is having a stroke
6:51
Eh, I don't know. For me, even the more extreme (and occasional) cases of AI jankiness ADD to the immersion. Who hasn't heard tales of the stubbornness of donkeys, or witnessed their cats doing all sorts of quirky and absurd things, like lick blankets for minutes, or take mice home unharmed to play tag with them. Not to mention, wild animals are often diseased, sometimes diseases with direct neurological consequences such as rabies and distemper.
Organic life is messy, and that mess was captured down to these fine details - even if unintentionally so - by Rain World. This game is just so, so ahead of its time. One day, people will understand the brilliance and no one will accept the cheesy, soulless, fake, canned animations and worlds and agents of old anymore.
Tbh I agree with every type of AI jank except for the deers. They just look buggy and super unnatural.
Calling manually created animations "soulless" and "fake" seems unnecessary
Alot of time, work and effort goes into making animations for nearly any game
I wouldn't discredit somebody's work just because they didn't have an AI do it for them
Plus, manually created animations have numerous upsides of their own, such as being exactly what ever the creator(s) want them to be, whether it's extra flashy for an action game or extra cartoony for a light-hearted game
Finally, sometimes it's faster and/or simpler to just manually animate than to hope the AI uses a rig the way the creator(s) intended for it to be used
@@spartanwar1185 This, as much as I love a good organic ai world I think carefully crafted work should still be saluted
@@spartanwar1185 Yes, but rainworld's procedural animation is unironically so well don't that it beats ALOT of game's animations entirely.
Especially scavengers, they express so much emotion.
Well, every creature does that but you won't see it visually most of the time, it's on how they behave after different kinds of interactions.
That and the devs ensured that the jank is a part of the game 🤣
yea one time i got into a fight with a green lizard, we exchanged blows but eventually i lost sad part was i had wounded it so badly it couldnt walk. also when it had bit me it accidently let go so i watched as it helplessly stuggled to grab me, slipping and eventually grabing me and using me to sorta drag its self along the ground till it got to its den and at that moment i realized i was just incapacitated lol
I bought rain world on a whim one day and started playing it completely blind as to what it was about. I instantly fell in love with the organic movement of the creatures as it's been something I've been looking for in survival games for a very long time, and to this day rain world is still my absolute favorite game.
This isn't to say it's completely perfect, sometimes the games own ai will cause weird occurrences to happen. Such as how a daddy long leg can move faster if it has all tentacles on a surface. This sometimes just makes them yeet themselves forward which looks as funny as it sounds.
man, I'd love to see a clip of that
I tried so hard to love rain world but the controls always felt so clunky for some reason I could never stick with it.
Also how does this video only have like
well the thing with the controls is like 90% is hidden and never told like backflipping, rolling and slide jumping
Your prayers have been answered. 36k and growing, lol.
believe me, once they stick, you will see how amazing they are
Like everyone's saying about the controls, there's lots of hidden depth, and they're really fun when you master them-- but I'd just like to make a sort of... backwards defense, and say that it's actually a good thing they kind of suck at first, (not that this'll magically make it more fun lol, the start of my journey with Rain World was nothing but PAIN and I totally sympathise, I wasn't sure it was for me for AGES... almost didn't finish it, and quit many times.)
If you had a reference for Rain World's controls, say they controlled like Mario, it wouldn't be as immersive. You're barely older than a pup, separated from the pack; your character does not have full autonomy over their body, and so neither do you. figuring out how it (your lil body) works is a journey you go on together towards autonomy. It's one of many little inner journeys you experience in tandem with the character, but since this comment was only about the controls I'll leave it there :D
Are 234k views enough?
Htwo, you helped encourage me into getting rain world, honestly, I think I might have quitted if I just had to brute force through that difficulty spike at the start, because I am not the type of person who likes a lot of difficulty, but with help of you, and some other content creators, I was able to use the most powerful thing in rain world, Knowlage, and the difficulty became just right for me.
I this comment is old and everything but I just wanted to say that it was exactly the same for me, this and one other video was what single handedly bound me to this game to the very end
I'm so happy someone's finally talking about how amazing scavengers are. From the moment I interacted with them I adored them, and it makes me sad to see most people in lets plays talk about how they hate them or try to kill them. Justice for my fluffy boys!
I really loved this video so Im gonna share a story of my own:
There was this one time where I was near a lv5 karma gate. Due to dying a lot in previous areas I was only karma lv1. Instead of giving up and going back like a normal person I decided to get trought that karma gate n o m a t t e r t h e c o s t.
What followed were +10 in game days of going back to get food very very far away and coming back to the shelter near the karma gate while praying a single godforsaken lizzard didnt randomly decide to end my day. One of those times, I was lv4 karma and ready to go to my shelter and finally go past that damm gate.
THEN A DAMM VULTURE DESCENDED FROM THE HEAVENS SAID FUCK U AND KILLED ME WHEN I WAS EXACTLY 1 COMPUTER SCREEN AWAY FROM THE SHELTER
God I fucking love this game
Here's my story.
I was new to the game, and I was lost. I was at the shelter in Sky Islands that is right next to the gate to Farm Arrays. I hadn't seen Moon, or gone through the "more intended" route at all, so I had no idea what was going on and I didn't have enough karma to get through the gate. I was so stuck, and kept dying so often before getting enough karma, that I literally restarted the entire game from the start because I was too shit to get through the karma gate and progress and I refused to turn around and go a different way.
I love this game too
@@htwo1 Must have been a blast
My small Story:
*DO NOT GO TO EXTERIOR AS A HUNTER (no spoilerz so I cant tell it)*
I also have a story lol. Basically it was my first time venturing into drainage and I was trying to find a shelter so I could save and after a few minutes of looking I died to rain so after even more time of me trying to get more karma for the gate and dying more I came back to drainage and got to a screen with a shelter I see the shelter and start heading over to it and as I'm like about to hop in I just barely touch a pole plant and it kills me and then it takes me even more time to get back to drainage and I successfully avoid the pole plant and hop in the shelter and I don't have enough food and then I consider rage quiting for the rest of time lmao.
@@htwo1 I was super determined on my first playthrough but in a different way. I was willing to give up certain goals but I absolutely REFUSED to restart when I'd get stuck. So I spent half a real life day getting through drainage system while NOT KNOWING THAT BOOSTING IN WATER KILLS YOU. I got through drainage, only to end up in filtration system, which was way too dark so I immediately left and went back to drainage, and had to escape while being booty butt TERRIBLE at wall jumping and not knowing how to swim properly. It was hell, but I was too stubborn to just restart the game and ended up making it out of drainage on my own. Again, without even knowing that boosting drowns you... I don't know how I did it. I didn't even use snails to stun leeches. I just kept powering through.
Almost all of my play time in that run came from being stuck in drainage system next to filtration system.
I just wanna tell u man, NEVER stop making videos, even when u feel that ur not growing enough, because u will. Trust me.
This comment made me subscribe
It feels like the video was professionally made. If I didn't read this comment, I wouldn't even have noticed the low sub count
@@eyisu6175 ikr, when i first discovered this channel like a month ago i was stunned by the low subcount. But then again i was so glad that i could be one of his first 5k subs and brag about when he gets big
111 👍
Why trust you
Great video. Rain World's AI is unbelievably stunning, isn't it?
Ya know, on my first meeting with a scavenger, I honestly wasn't sure they _weren't_ a player. I thought that... maybe the game had some sort of strange, asymmetric multiplayer integration I wasn't aware of at first-- and then my brain REALLY started to hurt, because I realised they were more expressive and gave more signs of intelligence and life than I was even capable of AS A PLAYER. Me! Real person! Actual creature, not an illusion-- these fake, simulated little guys were more convincing as individual creatures expressing themselves in a unique way than I was, which was a weird feeling at first.
I mean-- I have nearly 7 gigs of footage on my PS4 of me cataloguing weird, funny interactions-- I have MORE footage of UNIQUE, terrifying, epic, and sometimes plain funny interactions with fictitious creatures, almost all of them reading as believable and incredibly interesting-- MORE of _that_ than the actual game's file size, which is to say that, the game is so stuffed with its ingenious AI, it really shouldn't be able to all fit in there, haha!! I've spent... at least a couple hundred hours in this game's world and it's arenas, prodding it's systems, and it keeps coming back with NEW shit to show me, new things for me to learn. It's honestly wild how much you can get out of Rain World even after the credits roll, if you only put the time in to learning it.
and... sort of side note, thank you thank you THANK YOU for getting this game in front of more people's eyes! It's astonishing how overlooked it is-- and beyond frustrating how poorly the game reviewed on launch.
(side rant)
Stg, so many reviews I saw showed clear signs of having NOT BEATEN THE GAME. Just shithouse, honestly, giving a verdict from a place of authority and writing it off without ever even bothering to spend the time to see how it ends?? Can you imagine if it was okay for film critics to just... up and leave a movie halfway through and pass off their opinion as fully informed? I'm not saying they necessarily would've loved it if they did get there, but... it definitely clicked for me in that last quarter or maybe third, (though, I got very lost and spend quite a few extra hours searching around, so keep in mind, for most people this point comes at the halfway mark)... For the whole game up until that point, I had no idea where I was going, what the purpose of my travels were, if there was an ending, if I had the strength and patience to get through it-- but I kept going, and finally figuring it all out was nothing short of revelatory-- felt almost like a spiritual experience at times haha!
Though I agree regarding the review bombing, I would like to add, that many people did struggle with the unique controls with which you have to get used to first. When I read those back in the days as it was new, I had similar feelings about the critics. Regarding complex and challenging "physic"-based movement I was more on the defensive side and shared your sentiment, but I also could understand the statements.
I myself struggled first too and lost interest at first to be honest. The Game is in its presentation more on the subtle side, and you do not know what actually to do. It seems like an open world, but turns out to be something more linear with a lot of backtracking (and I personally hate back-tracking).
I did not make a review, but If I would have, I would have not recommend it.
Installed it later, got some fun, but was bored out soon since moving trough the environment and evading constantly hunting Lizards and those mosquitos was not exciting, if not getting annoying. This game is sometimes too tense and demanding. The timer, where you have to find shelter before the heavy rain comes was not doing a favor to experience the game in its beautiful aspects. It is definitely not for casual players or those, who would like enjoy just watching the creatures doing their stuff.
The start of this game also is... confusing, slow and, dependent on players skill level, somewhat over- or underwhelming compared to the interesting part you get to see later.
I believe third or forth time I tried, I got to the first vulture... dunno if I came further and do not remember, but that was over a year ago and I did not touch it since then.
Maybe I will give it another try. But... when I remember the start, I am like "meh, start over again?"
The game is for me more fun to watch than to actually play.
It would be more interesting, If you could play different species or just be a spectator, or if it have a mode, where you are a god and can manage the environment and spawn creature you wanna see interact.
(About Your side rant)
I must disagree. If a movie is that bad, you do not need to watch the rest. Besides that: You cannot compare a movie with a game. The time it demands are completely different. The experience that will have is always different, since the ability to play it will determine how far you will come.
I saw people speed-running it. They can reach a lot within the 2 hours. But a new or casual gamer will reach nothing in those 2 hours!
A game is not worth my time, if the interesting clicking aspect is in the last third or quarter part of the game.
ps: hope my opinion does not offend you or makes you defensive about the game.
I still did not wrote a review, since I wanna give that game a chance. But it had not shown respect to my invested time yet.
@@Chareidos Hey! Uhh... yeah, no offence taken, totally get where you're coming from, but I would like to... try and counter a couple of your points in a friendly way-- I hope none of this comes off as judgy or anything, I just... really like discussing this game with people. :D
I'd honestly be more than understanding if you straight up HATED playing Rain World; it's...not exceptionally fun at the beginning of your journey. It feels frustrating and clunky and very confusing, and you're right-- getting to the good part does take a great deal of commitment...
but my comment about film critics was not necessarily saying you can't watch half a terrible movie and then tell your friends not to watch it, because its that painful-- but more about when you say that, ESPECIALLY if you're reviewing the thing and there are people who trust your opinion who are coming to you to decide if they're gonna watch it, you have to make clear you didn't finish it, in the interest of being fair to the work.
The reviews for the game frustrate me, because, most people would assume, from the fact that they're grading _the entire thing,_ that they've beaten _the entire thing,_ and I just... have a lot of trouble believing that. One, because, honestly, it took me like 40 hours to beat, (which is a totally variable number considering how nonlinear the game is, and how it doesn't tell you where to go) and I sometimes quit the game for a few weeks... I don't imagine they had time for that. But second, their statements about the nature of your journey give the impression of someone who hasn't yet entered the second half (last quarter of _my_ journey, but like I said, I had a very long one) of the game, which is nothing short of revelatory. The whole game asks _you,_ not the protagonist, but _you_ to search for meaning, in what seems like a cruel, confusing and pointless existence... It can feel genuinely despairing for YOU, not just the character. While you're searching for that meaning, from my experience, you straight up don't know what you're doing, where you're going, or if you have the strength to make it there. And neither do the reviewers, who _should_ know... Not that they should spoil it-- just, give off any sign that they do know.
so... one of the main ideas this game really wants to explore is the incredibly painful journey towards finding meaning in a cruel world where everything is taken from you, and you're never sure if there is a point, that uses its difficulty to immerse you in the character's desperate plight... these reviewers only experienced the set-up, and not the pay off, which... is a majorly important part of how the game comes together.
I know comparing it to watching movies is not a clean comparison, like you pointed out, because of the dedication, but... just think about how much an ending can transform the film you watched retroactively-- think of your favourite film ending and how it feels like the movie is completing itself. Everything up until that point, all the set-up, the ideas it was putting forth, they aren't resolved or made complete until that ending where everything comes together... Rain World is the same in that way, it just asks a lot more of you to get there.
And again, I really don't blame you not wanting to pick it back up, but I would still implore you give it another shot if you enjoy the game's presentation at all and you haven't had it spoiled for you by speedruns. there is incredible depth in the game's movement systems and... other systems, that I'm still learning more about hundreds of hours later. (and I'll make this point quick but... no one ever starts off as a speedrunner, or as a player who can get further than another in my opinion, EVERYONE is a stumbling, bumbling fool, starting Rain World. it takes time and practice to get to a level where you can traverse the world with ease; the odd controls kind of even the playing field, meaning everyone has an equally bullshit-hard time getting anywhere at first, but it's very satisfying to learn.) In fact, this is... only tangentially related to one of your comments, but I think the game's extremely weird controls end up becoming a massive plus in the long-run... (this is aside from them _becoming_ very fun and fluid when you master them... I'm gonna be talking about why the journey to mastery itself is so effective for the game's subtle storytelling)
If you had a reference for the character's movement, say, they moved exactly like a traditional platformer, (Mario/Celeste) you couldn't immerse yourself in... learning the slugcats body. (god that sounds weird) but think about it!
The physics animation is there to lend this sense of physicality and weight and awareness of your body, (and also reactivity and adaptability in yourself and the creatures you encounter, but we'll just focus on the first part) and since your character is actually not fully grown, not much older than a pup when separated from its family, and not fully autonomous when you start your journey, it only makes sense that the player isn't either. And then, as you get better at the game, at controlling the character, it's like the slugcat is learning to have autonomy over its body as you do.
SO many design decisions in the game are made to put you on the same journey as your character... for instance, every creature, including yourself, is stuck in a literal endless cycle of death and rebirth, the trailer wasn't being poetic. So when you die, your slugcat remembers that pain and that frustration and that bullshit/cruelty, same as you do... and if you feel tired, and worn out by the world, chances are the little guy does too. The game _wants_ you to feel hopeless, it banks on it-- it knows what you and your little friend are feeling and shows you in dreams... your little guy dreams of his family, then later, in another dream, they dream of their family again, but then they're shown waking up, scared, realising they're all alone. I like to think of this as a subtle turning point of sorts, where they realise they're never going to find their family, and so the question for the player becomes… If I’m not looking for my family, if I’m all alone in the world… what is the point? Same questions the character must be asking, and it feels very bleak.
In the second half of your journey, the game uses your hopelessness, (because it KNOWS you feel hopeless) as character motivation/catalyst for the rest of your journey. After that long journey of pain, you understand in your bones that this world is awful, and devoid of meaning, and you understand why the slugcat wants to pursue the quest it sets out on in the end. You want it too. I'm trying to dodge spoilers in case you don't know where the game goes in the last quarter.
I wasn't entirely sure how to respond to the comment about backtracking, because its something I kind of dislike in games, and I didn't think Rain World really did that... can you tell me a little bit more about your perspective/experience with that in Rain World? Also, sorry this comment was so long. :)
@@ZedAmadeus I am sorry if I am not getting on all the points. I will take my time to read your comment more proper, when I am less tired, but I try to give some response to some of the points right now.
I agree to that , that you need to get into something, sometimes to the end, to get the full grasp on the twist of a game. This is the very reason why I did not write a review so far. But I do not see, why the actually interesting part has to be at the end quarter. I am not willing anymore to sunk time into challenging games, since EVERY (pardon me here) effing game does that already. :)
I always see potential in games, that get ruined for me with the ridiculous amount of investment, be it time, energy and nerves, you have to put in.
While I really can see the appeal of that, and the releave of such a journey, it is not mine anymore.
I want to see physics and the ecosystem in action, observe and be fascinated by it. Yea.. maybe even engaging if feel so.
But if the game is really about that I shall feel exhausted and depressed, I think it overdid itself. Or maybe it is not for people with mental illness? I dunno.
I think I suffer under something like Gaming Burnout. There is no fun anymore. The Reward does not come. And it is not because I played much games with quick reward mechanics... I do not like gambling and rng. After addictively enjoying Diablo 2 back then, no game with similar formular could hook me anymore. I've seen it all already, and I even began to despise this formular.
One game that broke me really hard, and that was also one I wanted to love, is Noita! This is a Game I REALLY learned to HATE.
With Rainworld it is different. It failed to hook me. And maybe I am looking for a different experience. But I also like the Notion of the world not being about you, but I also just want to be an observer and not to be thrown into this world and being involved in it any further.
About the physics: They are not the problem. On the contrary. They and the notion of it being a Ecological System get me into it, and will likely bring me back.
This is the Reason why Rocket League is the ONE game, where I really feel free, and where all my frustration is just temporarily, since all is either my fault or the opponent was really better. Nonetheless my reward is my own REAL skill (and not a set of numbers of odds and chances).
This is the reason why I might look into Rain World again. You are the Body. If there would be a pvp, or any other game mode with little challenging maps or parkours, I would love to play again, right now!
But I do not like to see the very same regions, over and over. And I do not like to be stressed, be it that I have always to run or to be fast before the rain falls. I also do not care about story driven games anymore.
The world around me is already twisted, depressing and what not, I do not need a Game putting me into this feeling. I already feel it.
Rain World looks so nice and beautiful in many aspects (beside the industrial stuff), that it makes me actually really sad, that it is just "another challenging game".
To your last Question:
Backtracking was maybe not the correct term I used here. But I remember that I was going in circles without knowing where to go.
The other thing, that contributed negatively was the fact of the "timing" for the checkpoints (shelters) to be reached in certain cycles and their placement being behind certain dangers, you have to overcome.
The Punishment was too much for me.
As of right now, I am looking into mods, that might be worth a shot to this game, but as I know me it will end with a fruitless search for the one experience no game delivers.
I hope not to depress you with my answer. :)
@@Chareidos No, no, that's all perfectly fair and interesting. :D I think the upcoming DLC might make you happy, by the way-there is a gamemode called Safari which just lets you observe all the creatures going about their business and even take control of ANY one of them you see! Should be really fun.
If you do get back into the base-game, I feel like I should mention there's absolutely no shame in tuning the difficulty to make it more bearable, despite what I think about the game's storytelling, and how _hard_ and _cruel_ and _bleak_ the journey is "supposed" to be, (I'm realising I was being a bit pretentious lol) I also believe you can approach it in whatever way is most enjoyable, since there are so many different things to love, like the AI, or art direction + music... If you've been playing Survivor on your playthroughs I'd highly recommend going with The Monk instead, it should be a more peaceful, explorative time.
The whole bleakness of the story is really a matter of perspective I guess, if you go in with the intent of being a tourist in this really cool world and don't mind being eaten quite a bit, it can be a _kind of_ relaxing, funny, exciting and beautiful time, as shown by all the youtubers who make videos on the game and always take a very lighthearted, comedic approach... And, like, being totally honest, in my playthroughs after the first one, I'm mostly there just having a good time, it only felt a little bleak my first go around.
Just... try stay away from Shaded Citadel if you want to have a light time, it's very dark and confusing and creepy. I "enjoyed" it, because I like horror, but... it's not especially _fun_ being eaten by spiders you can't see in pitch black darkness
There's also an easy mode mod which you could try out, which keeps the focus on combat of survivor (which is kind of missing from The Monk, since they're weaker and slower, and the enemies are less aggressive) but makes the game easier across the board, making you stronger, more agile, changing areas of the map to be easier to progress. I haven't tried it, but people in the community highly recommend it :D
Also, keep a look out for karma flowers, the yellow ones you eat-- if you die, your karma will stay in the same place, and a new one will grow from where you last died, (learned this only recently, and it's been very helpful) so remember to go back there and eat it to keep your karma locked in place if you die again. If you don't make it there, a flower should reappear where you originally found it after a few cycles, so try to remember where you found it first, their placement isn't random :D I hope none of this patronising, I don't know how far through the game you are exactly or how much you know about its weirder mechanics
@@ZedAmadeus Thanks for the Tips and the calm and wholesome conversation.
I am looking forward to buy the dlc and to explore the Safari Mode! :D
12:08 it's the small indie games that actually try to do anything new. only later do AAA studios come along and borrow the idea, usually dumbing it down in the process
scissor birds are probably my favourite enemy AI in the game, at least aesthetically. i always assumed them getting stuck was just a lost/slow one waiting for another pack to run with. also them randomly stopping adds a lot more tension for what is already an extremely intense area of the game, and makes getting caught in the rain a real possibility no matter how well you traverse the area.
The quality of this content is honestly shocking and amazing, i don't even know how i stumbled onto this video, autoplay recommended this and i have to say that this is quality, as other comments say, don't stop!
At 7:44, I think that one was actually intentional. On my playthrough, the Rain Deer would feel out patches of worm grass and pools before crossing, almost like it's testing if it's safe to cross. I do admit that getting stuck on the edge of a room with a Rain Deer sucks tho lol
I watched the whole video without realizing that it had ONLY 500 views instead of 500k which I thought it had, this is really high quality and deserves far more views.
Fun fact: Just like scavengers, lizards also have a reputation system
if you feed them enough or save them from other creatures, all lizards in the region your in will become more passive towards you
if you feed one lizard enough, it will become your friend and will follow you around and protect you, even sleeping in shelters with you, which gives you an ingame achievement
The AI of scavengers is something amazing. You can't truly understand it until you have been an unknown creature, their friend and their enemy.
I personaly love being their friend. Sure, somethimes they blow up themself and everyone around, but so I do (I can't really blame them) . Maybe if they didn't try to kill the overseeker (which always follow you) I'd feel more comfortable around them
even tho rain world has gotten a bit of a spotlight in recent years i dont think most people realize how good the game is on a technical level
I once played rain world with my friend using a coop mode and he loved the game so much we ended up playing it for several days almost without switching to different games, which is a lot
Starting with procedural animations and going all the way through the AI and amazing art, this game feels so incredibly alive and you've done a great job describing that
I never agreed with a statement more than I did when you said "Scavengers have the best AI in any game," I did a lot of experimenting with scavengers and it's amazing how immersive their AI is.
I've been playing rw for a while now and had already figured that its ai is cool. And idk if this is on purpose, but I've observed that some of the creatures such as the red centipede can develop movements after the slugcats, such as doing a backflip over one. I got the centi to move backward to catch me after some experimenting.
Still am yet to find a game that feels more "alive" than rain world a masterpiece of it's own breed
Also I too love cyan because they are great long term companions
Search hollow knight
Actually nevermind that game is made to look like everything is dead.
@@brunopagnoncelli975 I love hollow knight, but because of the A.I it falls into the same trap most games fall into where the immersion is lost if you just stand still do to certain limitations, like enemies always spawning in the same spot doing the same thing. Skyrim is another good example of this, but many games have this problem, and I understand why coding a A.I to act abnormally is very difficult especially when you also have to balance difficulty. I still hold hollow knight in high regard though for the great combat and immersion when it comes to A.I rain world is certainly a good candidate for the gold standard in lifelike A.I since there is abnormal behavior that can be associated with living animals
@@angsty_saint in hollow knight defense, it isn't meant exactly to be inteligent, since they're all braindead because of the infection, and for mantis who are inmune to it, they are highly abnormal sometimes but they still follow a certain behavior due to "tradition" i guess.
@@brunopagnoncelli975 true and it's not just enemies, NPCs can fall into this two, through either being stuck in a remote location like a shopkeeper, or quest marker. because the amount of coding it takes to make a character that can do whatever he wants is crazy big, and why even though rain world is full of impressive creatures, the scavengers are truly the golden achievements. having successfully made a creature with personality you can interact with anywhere, trade with, socialize, or battle with, and even communicate with through simple sign language, and on top of that they have to be able to interact with the rest of the world aswell as hazards. The scavs have some of the best A.I I've seen in all of gaming let alone a Indi title.
Oh boi, I can't wait for the official Downpour DLC to come out >.<
Guess I'm gonna go back and play Rainworld juuuuust a bit more...
I'm praying for a 2022 release but I doubt it'll be so soon :/
@@htwo1 2022 is confirmed
@@topbrasshimself5606 Oh is it really? That's so good
@@htwo1 take a look at the FAQ for downpour in the steam updates tab (where the patch notes for games are normally located)
wait DLC??? FOR RAIN WORLD??? YESSSS
One of my personal favorite interactions with scavengers was when some were following me after I traded with them and then bravely ascended to the skies with explosives to save me from a lizard
when I started getting into indie games I realized that alot of indie developer put alot of care and details into thier games. and like even the atmosphere too. indie games just be giving off vibes and stuff you don't normally get from a triple A game
like this video makes me wanna play this game now..reminding me of like hollow knight and ori and the will of the wisps
Celeste is also a good one too
I played celeste, hollow knight, and i know ori and the will of the wisps.
I'm so happy this game is being noticed lately and clearly this video is doing a lot to boost it, I've always thought that Rain World was special, some sort of unique experience, so to know how much people will try it out in the near future when Downpour comes out makes me really excited for the future.
rain world is a little like duskers where when you start, everything's fucking terrifying because you know literally nothing.
it gets better only after dying a number of times and learning the shit
I can't believe it's 2023 and I have never heard of this game before.
Going to download it onto my PS5 as soon as I finish typing.
I looked up a physical release on PS4 and holy crap $$$ but considering the classic potential and rarity might be a good investment.
On a side note, this is giving me some serious nostalgia for Oddworld from the PS1 era and the feeling of strange/mystical/otherworldly/retrofuturistic in the best possible way.
And obviously more fleshed out and modern.
Thanks for spotlighting this game.
Rain World is one of those criminally underrated and underrepresented games that really should get more attention
Im really a fun of animals and their psychology, so can you image how much fun i had spending hours analyzing lizards behavior :D ? Its truly something and perfectly build that feeling of what world around you is alive. Trying to outsmart them and damn electro centipedes make me feel what im just a little slugcat on the bottom of foodchain, all i can do is either run or attack them with spear (and it often was unsuccessful), so best decision for me was to run.. or trying to tame them. I have a story with one.
Once a tamed green lizard and get really attached to him - he loved to follow me everywhere and sleep next to me in the safe places. We hunt together, rest together, and i always shared food with him. But it couldn't last forever as i need to move forward to next location. Green lizard followed me as usual. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but there was a situation where I was attacked by another lizard - and my tamed green boi rushed to destroy the hell out of the wild one, which saved my life! So sad i couldn't take him with me to next zone :')))
edit: yoooo, game received an update! 5 new slugcats!
a really cool thing is that even when you leave regions lizards that were tamed stay tamed when you go back so it should be fine if you go back later and feed it something :)
"I broke his face" made me laugh way harder than I should.
Especially combined with seeing its derpy face
Thank you for covering this game it is one of my favorites of all time and the more exposure the better! These devs are so passionate and with the new DLC coming out it is going to be so amazing for so many people!
You also forgot that you can tame lizards, literally all of them including the salamanders, and even the RED lizards, which are literally the toughest. It works in 2 ways, either by feeding them a certain amount of food or saving them from a vulture by spearing it for it to drop the lizard.
And about the orange lizards, you are somewhat right of them being the smartest. However if they are alone or have no alfa they are pretty much stupid, which actually kinda makes because they have much better survival if they work together just like wolves
yeah i think they're one of the least intelligent lizards actually, but they have ridiculously good hearing and their alpha can direct them super well
@@timob1681 so ONE of them is smart
@@LineOfThy sort of? it's more like whenever there's an alpha around they're all smart, and can communicate with each other to try and cut you off etc. but if the alpha isn't there they become stupid
@@timob1681 so a group project
11:48 i'm going through my very first playthrough and stumbled across some scavengers in the shaded citadel. i was just slowly crawling toward one of them because i didn't know my way around, so i was kinda just following me. it kept chucking rocks at me lol
I love how deep this game is without shoving it in your face. Has anyone else mastered the backflip stab? I managed to gain favor with the scavengers but they are quite fickle
So I've been saying this myself for years now. Developers created life from literally nothing but data and a fully functional biosphere contained in a game that's not all that big. How did they not get an award for this?
One cool thing to be mentioned about one of the enemies: those massive birds that swoop down to attack (vultures) can have their masks knocked off. If you manage to do that, that specific vulture will be hellbent on killing the player character for several cycles. Sometimes even other vultures will attack the maskless one
6:43 Now that actually makes sense, because if the entities' animations are more based on contexts, and considering the fact that an AI or bot doesn't understand contexts very often, it makes sense that an entity won't know what to do
5:15 my brain went; ''He's going to talk about parallel universes''-
Also I think you can tame the Lizards. I've seen some videos bout it. Don't know if that is a mod though or not, but the Ai of the game is still amazing!
it's 100% possible, give it a try!
This is what I always try to make clear when reccomending RW. It's more like playing a "ecosystem simulator" than playing a game.
As a huge biology nerd, if a game has a realistic ecosistem, its 1000000 Times better
im so late but *ecosystem
You made me found my favorite game more than a year ago, in mid 2022. thank you, if it weren't for this video I wouldn't have had the amazing experience to play rain world, its lore, and the fanbases concepts.
its my favorite game.
most underrated game ever made
i've bought copies for everyone i know, and still they refuse to play it.
it's the kind of game where you need to spend a few hours with it before you start actually enjoying it, must most people give up in the first 15 minutes, thinking it's too hard or the movement feels too weird
I really like how leathal league blaze arcade mode make you fight yourself at the end, it behaves just like your previous fights
"ive ever seen in any game!"
raindeer: im bout to end this mans whole career
WOoooooow thank you so much for this video, I was waiting for this kind of game since the nineties.
dude im so glad rain world is getting attention on youtube, its so deserved, and with the dlc coming out its definitely worth checking out.
This video is 2 years old, but one thing Rain World does that I really like is that enemies don't automatically know where you are once aggro'd but rely on line of sight. I've jumped down pipes while being pursued by vultures, and the vultures would either fly between exits trying to spot me or wait on one end waiting for me to come out, even after I escaped.
I’ve never seen or heard of Rain World, but based on your video, and a little research it looks fun and really cool, I’m gonna try it out
Dont forget!This game is hard at start,
but when You get used to it, It is a lot of fun and impressive!
damn I was kinda like expecting this to be a sarcastic video, but this was generally interesting learning about Rain World's unique AI, tbh I never knew they had this, I only seen some game play or vids of rain world and just forgot about it, glad this vid popped up in my recommendations
Yeah their IA is very well done
Also he didnt even cover the whole thing!
(no spoilerz:D)
Got somethin' you missed about lizards.
You can tame them, by either giving them dead prey such as scavengers or by saving them from an enemy, and if you have caused harm, it will take more food for them to trust you.
Oh, and giving them food isn't just for taming them, it can also be a good way to save yourself, if your getting chased by one, since their just creatures hunting for food, not (always) for you.
I've heard that if you kill enough Lizards they'll start running away from you.
@@anexplosion5436 If you kill enough lizards the Red Lizard appears
@@anexplosion5436 i think if you kill a vulture and/or steal its mask, they'll run from the mask because they're scared of vultures and you are showing them you've beaten one. idk about killing them though
@@timob1681 removing masks also interacts with the Vultures themselves: de masked Vultures will be more aggressive, and other Vultures will attack their maskless bretheren.
@@ethanhinton4549 the unmasked ones will specifically hunt you down when they see you if i recall, dropping anything else they're doing to kill you. i think they might even follow between rooms in places like chimney canopy, but I'm not sure
I have NEVER noticed the background ambient noises like machinery buzz, manufacturing work, or other things until I played it. It's something you never notice in videos and when I first found it I was stunned by the attention to detail.
Rainworld my beloved
I had the absolute privilege to enjoy this game almost entirely blind (I knew about the periodic flooding) and had a blast when i got into it, I didn't do very well at it but it never once deterred me. It's just got so much soul to it that you can't really find in many places anymore.
3:52
the way the player sprite just looks at them like "what a bunch of idiots" lmao
0:31 I saw this warning almost 2 years ago, and here I am now. Feels amazing knowing I can finally watch all the content I missed. Meanwhile, feels terrible that almost half that content is locked behind Downpour. Yet, feels amazing once again that I can experience the game 5 more times.
My guess for why the rain deer and miros birds are so stupid is because they’re too basic. Miros birds only really walk across screen looking for something to kill and occasionally squabble with eachother and rain deer just walk along large patches of red worm grass and bend over for slugcats, maybe acting quicker if they have a spore on them. They both feel like late editions because they’re largely isolated from the rest of the world and are practically invincible. You could take both their sections out and the game would be barely different if not a bit shorter.
It also could be because they’re legs are both really long and not all noodly like long legs’ are.
Also they’re making a new rain world expansion with a bunch of new creatures so this video might age poorly.
2:38 the alpha lizard does not always have the longest antenas, the leader is determined by the personality of the lizards, while the antenas are a randomly-generated physical features.
Scavengers just feel like they have some machine learning built in
And it works HELLA fast
Basically, I was in the shaded citadel, and I think I found either a stash with a scav inside? or a trader, who looked hella anxious? scared of me?
I didn't leave em be, just crawled around, and then ANOTHEE SCAV got in, clearly (not for me back then) showed me a sign of disgust, like telling me to leave da hell away
I didn't, then he started swinging his spear, giving a cleaner sign which I didn't get either, and then I just hear 2-3 stab sounds after he hopped closer to me, HE GAVE ME THOSE WARNING STABS SO I'D FINALLY UNDERSTAND THAT I SHOULD LEAVE!
He didn't instantly skewer me, but just found out that It's possible for him to go full-on melee and scare me off, which worked perfectly, I ran away from there
Gosh, scavs are hella clever sometimes!
I would love to have more games that is about an ecosystem or life of a species to have this type of AI. It just gives the feeling of an actual ecosystem, food chain and interactions with other characters
scavenger personalities in a nutshell
-hmm what is this slug thing? is it friendly?
-oh i like you, you can pass
-hey you have to pay in order to pass
-ew nasty slug thing, imma kill it
Cool
Very minor detail; slugcat will lift its tail away from danger. So if you're standing on a pole that a lizard is also on slugcat will bring its tail closer to its chest.