old ending variants? *spoilers*

[AZART]

Except Downpour DLC, there certainly were at least two variants of ending of the game. They all were about ascending.
The main thing is that I mean that old version of the game, that there was only one survivor slugcat. I saw at least two endings - one with the whole family on a tree, and one with the red slugcat - which is certainly not a hunter - without tree with some symbol at background. If you know something about these, pls tell me what are the circumstances of getting any of them.

That how the alternative ending looks:
https://i.imgur.com/n9yQZQB.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/GhN7KHE.jpeg

That's the original one:
https://i.imgur.com/p1Kw50Y.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/vu2P7Zt.jpeg

[Five Pebbles]

Ooooh, that's cool. I've never seen these before

[dingus]

never seen these before

[dingus]

some people say you get the alt ending by cheating and ascending without max karma

[Metric Guard]

You can get that alternate ending by ascending before reaching max Karma, which can only be done if you either cheat with dev tools or use an old exploit that can be enabled with the "Vanilla exploits" option in Remix.

The alternate ending was added in the 1.9 update (and might require Downpour?). It's inspired by a rare glitch present in earlier versions that caused the normal ending scene to load incorrectly, which some players mistook as a secret bad ending.

[dingus]

hmm ok

[Metric Guard]

Just did some testing, and not only does the alt ending require More Slugcats Expansion enabled in the Remix menu, it seems only the Survivor can receive it. Monk, Hunter, and the other slugcats just get their normal endings if you cheat to the Void Sea.

Interestingly, regardless of which slugcat you're playing as, the Karma symbol will blink red when entering the Void Sea with insufficient Karma.

[AZART]

Originally posted by Metric Guard:

You can get that alternate ending by ascending before reaching max Karma, which can only be done if you either cheat with dev tools or use an old exploit that can be enabled with the "Vanilla exploits" option in Remix.

The alternate ending was added in the 1.9 update (and might require Downpour?). It's inspired by a rare glitch present in earlier versions that caused the normal ending scene to load incorrectly, which some players mistook as a secret bad ending.

As I said earlier, that was at really old version, could not say in which one, but I saw it in the let's play video recorded 6 years ago. The guy who played has max karma and was at Five Pebbles during his play. So no, this can not be anyhow connected to Downpour and is not likely a bug.
I can't state he hadn't used any exploits, he could, even if he didn't realise it, but the karma level was tenth (or whatever a cross means).

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by PixelSlime:

As I said earlier, that was at really old version, could not say in which one, but I saw it in the let's play video recorded 6 years ago. The guy who played has max karma and was at Five Pebbles during his play.

Again, the treeless ending was a glitch that occurred in older versions (v1.0 & v1.01). The circumstances that caused it are random and not determined by max Karma. The glitch was fixed in v.1.5.

With Downpour content enabled, the treeless ending will be shown if you ascend as the Survivor without max Karma. What was once a bug is now an easter egg.

[AZART]

Originally posted by Metric Guard:

Originally posted by PixelSlime:

As I said earlier, that was at really old version, could not say in which one, but I saw it in the let's play video recorded 6 years ago. The guy who played has max karma and was at Five Pebbles during his play.

Again, the treeless ending was a glitch that occurred in older versions (v1.0 & v1.01). The circumstances that caused it are random and not determined by max Karma. The glitch was fixed in v.1.5.

With Downpour content enabled, the treeless ending will be shown if you ascend as the Survivor without max Karma. What was once a bug is now an easter egg.

Was it really random? Do you mean there was no way to get it intentionally? And if it is random and caused by, I guess, the absence of background in the ending, why was there some type of symbol in the last picture?

[guyaoun]

I just did some testing, ascending without max karma as monk doesn't change their ending, but ascending as survivor without max karma gives the alternate ending. The first picture wasn't present though (single golden slugcat), it showed the regular variant (many slugs, some golden). Also there was one image that isn't listed here.

[guyaoun]

The red "symbol" in the background could be a distorted karma 10 symbol, or perhaps a distorting effect from the slugcat like that of the echoes.

[AZART]

Originally posted by guyaoun:

The red "symbol" in the background could be a distorted karma 10 symbol, or perhaps a distorting effect from the slugcat like that of the echoes.

Why would there be some special symbol, if it is a bug? More likely there would be no tree on background. I took screenshots of an older version.

[Metric Guard]

Originally posted by PixelSlime:

Was it really random? Do you mean there was no way to get it intentionally? And if it is random and caused by, I guess, the absence of background in the ending, why was there some type of symbol in the last picture?

Cutscene images are made up of several different layers, which you can look at individually in Rain World\RainWorld_Data\StreamingAssets\scenes. What makes the glitched ending look the way it does is that some of the layers of the final scene fail to load for some reason. There may be factors that make the glitched ending more likely to occur, but as far as I know, there's no known way to consistently get it intentionally.

Regardless, any meaning it may have is accidental, even now that there's a way to deliberately get it as an alternate ending with Downpour installed.

[AZART]

Originally posted by Metric Guard:

Originally posted by PixelSlime:

Was it really random? Do you mean there was no way to get it intentionally? And if it is random and caused by, I guess, the absence of background in the ending, why was there some type of symbol in the last picture?

Cutscene images are made up of several different layers, which you can look at individually in Rain World\RainWorld_Data\StreamingAssets\scenes. What makes the glitched ending look the way it does is that some of the layers of the final scene fail to load for some reason. I'm unsure if there's factors that make the glitched ending more likely to occur, but there's no consistent way to get it intentionally.

Regardless, any meaning the alternate ending may have is accidental, even now that there's a way to deliberately get it with Downpour installed.

Ok, thank you! If everything you explained is true, then the guy I wathed surprisingly had got it accidently and didn't even notice.

[guyaoun]

Originally posted by guyaoun:

Originally posted by PixelSlime:

Why would there be some special symbol, if it is a bug? More likely there would be no tree on background. I took screenshots of an older version.

The symbol seen in the screenshots and ingame when i tested it.

I've never heard of this bug before i read this thread, i just tested ascending as some slugcats without max karma and wrote my observations here. How am i supposed to know. Its possible that layers of the regular ascension image are missing causing lighting/shading to look like a structure/symbol in the background but i cant do much more than speculate.
Either way, since it now is a feature and the devs probably wouldn't have left it in if it meant nothing so i think its valid enough to have some fun with speculating what it could mean.