Crescent Loom 1.0 is a huge success in so many ways, Bravo in so many ways, keep up the excellent work your doing. The foundation is amazing and solid. i will certainly keep an eye open for your work coz' anything that follows will certainly be great , interesting , touching etc thanks
Sorry for the late reply! Thanks for the bug report. If you still have it installed, could you look in the logs/ folder next to the executable and send any crashlog.txt files to crescentloom@gmail.com?
As for the local HTML version: it's a little tricky to get working. Browsers sensibly have a security feature for local files that restricts access to other files on your hard drive. I should probably add steps to get it working to a readme or something. Your options are to either:
Launch a browser with "--allow-file-access-from-files" mode enabled.
However, the local html5 version is identical to the one hosted at crescentloom.com — I've included it in the available files because a teacher requested it to get around a firewall issue at their institution.
The stand alone player consistently slows down and eventually crashes as I play between 30 minutes and an hour, but it saves what your last build was and replaces it on restart so I'm not even mad. Though if it stayed stable long term I would definitely just set up an aquarium of little custom critters and let it run.
I would love to get the physics efficient and stable enough for that! I've had a dream of making a twitch stream of that kind of aquarium full of the creatures people upload to the server.
I would definitely watch that, love these little guys. I guess while I have you here I have one note and one suggestion. The note is I can't seem to see, on standalone or embedded, uploaded creations past page 56, entry 1000, which ends in the middle Gs. The suggestion is, and I don't know how easy or possible it would even be, I would love to limit color vision on eyes so that a creature could potentially recognize and avoid predation or sharing space on its own kind, which also opens up mimicry through camouflage.
Hi, I am create a co-op bundle to celebrate World Environment Day, I want invited you to join, all content related with nature and environment can be join, if you are interested you have join in the follow link: https://itch.io/jam/world-environment-day-bundle-2022
I'm excited and I appreciate your interest and your participation, thank you very much and good luck!
Hi! Thanks for the detailed error report. CL is in no way abandoned, I'm pretty sure it's going to see me into the grave. 🙃 Recent development has just been been on other aspects of the game e.g. the connectome explorer & working on securing funding.
Odd, it's working OK for me on all browsers. Looks like it might be some kind of problem with hosting it through itch.io. I'll investigate when I get some time this weekend. Thanks again!
OK, I still haven't been able to replicate this, but I've added a locally-hosted mirror of the game here, also linked to in the troubleshooting steps. The first one is still preferable as the main because of bandwidth costs, but this should work as a fine backup.
Please let me know if you continue to see problems.
Hi Olive, Thanks for your reply! Oddly enough it is working for me now on all the links you provided here. If I remember correctly, there was some CORS error in the log, which I did not include in my first post. Maybe there was some config issue on the backend/3rd-party? Anyways, thanks for replying to my post and sorry for calling the project abandoned - in my quick search I did not find too much recent activity and maybe I am a bit of a burnt child in that way :S
I am new to the game. I did the tutorial to the point it tells me to press play and watch my creature move, but after that, i am not sure what to do next. is that the end of the tutorial or is there more to learn the systems of making sensory stuff work like eyes, whiskers, etc and to react to the environment?
If you go into one of the levels and press "H" a number of manuals will come up, which you can follow (they're kinda like Lego kit build instructions) to learn how sensory stuff works. Peahen and Zippy have whiskers and eyes, respectively.
After that, the game is mostly a sandbox. I'm working on more skill challenges like the current race mode but it's slow going!
alright, good to know. I will definitely check check out those saves then.
Is there any potential sample creature that can help you figure out if there is a way to make a creature react to cool and eat it based on "seeing" it in some way? Will the 2 samples you mentioned help me learn to do that?
This game is AWESOME! Just what I didn't know I needed! I've run through the tutorial, and flipped through the patterns (a genius idea, the pattern book), and I already see the massive potential for what else I can do.
But I'm having a problem: the Tab key doesn't cycle through the neuron connection types for me. Is there an alternate input that does the same thing? Like how you can move the camera with WASD or by using the left mouse button to pan around the environment?
It looks like all the creatures in the pattern book require connections of type Inhibit to keep the neurons from all firing at once, and I can't figure out how to do that. I'm not sure if this is just my computer or a problem with the game, but it's happening on the downloaded version and the online one.
Never mind, I figured out how to do it! You have to make a connection, then click on it, and while your mouse button is down, press Tab. Now I can explore the whole wealth of systems in this game!
Also, you can click on the little circle, the actual connection point, not the line. That brings up a menu for neuron connection types, and you can select the type you want.
I shared this with some people in a discord server for Creatures, which is another biology simulation-and-toy, and they are loving it... As someone with a passionate interest in virtual life I adore projects such as these
I'm kind of obsessed with this game. I have always wanted a game just like the Spore cell stage, and this goes way beyond my expectations! Love the voice over in the tutorial btw! I can't wait to see where this goes in the future!
My one request would be a big cave system full of enemy species to compete against. The competition and out performing other species is what makes this sort of thing super fun. Currently maps are small and have little amounts of other creatures
maybe you could could make the way to put multiple creatures in one ecosystem easier, and make them compete, like the race mode and the only ecosystem but combined!
another thing would be adding more maps and ready ecosystems!
as well as making the current non walled maps bigger/making it so there are more obstacles and decorations.
a fatal flaw i noticed is that a carnivore eating its offspring actually has some net gain, (i think), it should be more of a loss than a gain, also there should be a way of differentiating your species from others in the neuron system
other than that, i really enjoyed playing this game :)
I agree with everything you've said as important additions. I'm working on making my internal map editor polished enough so that it can be part of the game, which I think will address a lot of the lack of map variety.
Re: differentiating your own species... hm. Maybe some kind of "scent" input that activates when you're close to either offspring, other spiecies, or plankton (the blue snacks)? I'll make a to-do to look into making one.
Hey, I really like the game, super interesting and fun to experiment with. That said, whenever I try to run it on Chrome it works pretty well until anything tries to lay an egg, then it freezes up and can't be recovered. =(
This is the log that appears when it freezes up: Creature '' laying egg.
Anyways, hope you fix it and keep up the good work! It's inspirational!
EDIT: Have you considered adding scenarios? Like "you must consume X pieces of food before Y time/energy runs out and you can only use Z number of creature parts". Idk, I think the extra challenge would be great, just a thought!
Thanks for the bug report. I think I know what's going on and it should be fixed in the next update. I've experimented with some premade levels when I was trying to figure out how to do the tutorial, and found that limiting the number of creature parts was more frustrating than a fun challenge. Something open-ended could be fun though — I've been working on the level editor for the race mode in the next update (spoilers) so should be able to start thinking about challenges after that. :)
Could you make it so that you can toggle on a version like before all of those neuron gates were there and all the complicated neurobiology stuff? Maybe just a mode to set where you can put the complexity level down like to the version were all the gates and the yellow lines weren't there? Other than that I've been having fun with cannibalism, but in the end my babies got my fishie
Hi! Thanks for saying something, I can definitely get lost in adding the neuro stuff to the point of losing sight of the fun of just building creatures. I'm not sure what you mean by the "gates", though — the different kinds of neurons and connections between them have been there from day one. Have they just been getting more in your way recently?
aaaa this is so interesting! after following the instructions for the four basic creatures i made my own predatory creature and then it got Eaten Immediately, great stuff
this game is amazing!! i was playing the web version and i was blown away by the details! ive played a couple of 'brain making sims' before but they were janky and unreliable, so i was really impressed to see how well this works!!
at first i was pretty confused on how all the different things in the brain worked and was hesitant to try and make a creature from scratch because i honestly had no idea what most of those things meant, but after some trial and error i actually managed to figure out some bits and managed to make a controllable creature! so points to you for making it simple enough that even i could understand it :D
oh and once i figured it out i spent so long making a creature! i really love the variety of shapes you can make them out of (and how the different shapes have different functions too!) and i absolutely love the inclusion of bioluminescence (i definitely overused that feature,,,no regrets). unfortunately before i could upload it the game froze while i was taking it for one last spin so i had to reload and lost my little creature :c (farewell lil guy, you looked super cool before u were eaten by the void u_u). though of course this is in development so im not that upset!! i just figured it may be worth mentioning in case you're looking for bugs to squish c:
but yeah overall im absolutely loving this game! the visuals are lovely to look at as well and the internal mechanics are genuinely so impressive so good job!!!! i am completely broke but just know that if i had the money i would absolutely buy this game :D (wow this is a long comment O_O)
Yay! I'm glad you were able to figure things out by poking around! Yeah it's really important to me to have this be simple & fun enough to not scare people away with the word ~ neuroscience ~.
Thanks for the really positive comment. :) I've been having a rough time getting myself to work on this recently so it's much appreciated. Sorry you lost your little buddy!
I really appreciate you for making this game! I got this game in the racial justice bundle and honestly glad I've gotten to experience this even though my ecosystems aren't the best I still try (they are all loved : ) I wanted to use this since we have a upcoming project in zoology and I found the perfect chance to not only get better at this but to show my other classmates about this game as well!! I know some kids may not be interested and I understand that but this is such a neat little game it's hard for me not to show it off. I also talked to my teacher about it, I hope he remembers to check it out it could, he could teach so much more things with this program, and not only that it would be interactive with students, we wouldn't have to sit in a lecture about invertebrate because we could make them ourselves! I'm rambling right now but I just had to show my appreciation, thank you! : )
So I've recently been experimenting with making ecosystem chains, and sometimes the ecosystem does not interact the way I want to because of creatures of the same species gobbling each other up.(Though it still is fun to take control of my own creature and join in on the gobbling!) Also, could you implement a healing sort of mechanism where creatures that were injured from predators can grow back parts once they get enough nutrients?
Whoa, I'm surprised that you've managed to do almost any ecosystem interactions! I've done almost no work on those systems. In particular, I want the basic follow-hunt-eat loop for a creature to work, and it's still pretty far off using the out-of-the-box pieces. I like the healing idea. Work on that is going to be a ways off because I'm currently aimed more at use-in-neurobiology-classrooms than the fishtank aspect due to increased interest for remote neurobiology activities in the wake of the pandemic. But I'll get there someday! 🤞
Oh I also noticed on the front page that there are harpoons in the game now, is it part of a newer version? If so, is there a way to update my game without losing all of my saved creations?
Harpoons are still in development; I haven't been able to release an update with them yet since I injured my wrist and have had to take it easy re: computers. If you have CL installed using the Itch client, it should update the game & preserve your creatures seamlessly. Otherwise you'll have to transfer the saved creature files over manually to the new version you download; they're in internal\creatures
Hi! There's no discord for the game yet; this is the best place to comment. You can also send me emails at contact@wick.works.
The only way I've tested chromebooks is with the html5 version (the "demo" version), which sounds like you've already tried? Buying the game just gets you access to PC/Mac/Linux downloads, so it won't help with chromebooks.
I really do want to make sure the html5 version works on chromebooks... could you describe the lag a little more? Does it start fine and get slower? If you hold down the comma key, you can see the framerate in the lower-left. What rates are you getting?
Oh, also, I don't have an ipad so haven't been able to test it there at all. It really wants a mouse & keyboard though, so I wouldn't count on it working well.
i have a ipd and i played for a wile but i have a vary hard time placeing body parts and i cant dealet them. also it kiked me out of the game and was laggy. same thing as the cromebook
Cool, thanks for the report! I think I gotta say that I can't support fixing the iPad (it would require an overhaul of the UI to figure out how to make the controls work without a mouse) but the fact that it's not running well on chromebook is concerning.
I'm adding the slowdown to my to-do list for the next update. It's been a problem for years but has been getting worse..... definitely one of those maddingly-hard-to-track-down bugs. 😅
it starts out grate but soon gets worse and worse and if i speed up the time it gets worse even faster when i send it back to 100% speed
also ive reticently made several vary complex fish that have jaws and avoid obstetricals and are relatively fast. a small one who is still vary big compared to othere things. a larger one whos only slightly bigger and was more of a exparament. and today i whent complacently over bord and made a giant fish and its super fast and can kill everything that i put infront of it. but you see the problem is i cant save my fish and i really dont want to lose my latest monstrosity. can you help? when i try to save it just said name is unavailable no matter what i do. btw amma post my maga fish on the sub reddit
Congrats on the monstrosity! Hm. That's the first time I've heard of not being able to save because no names are available. You can't overwrite existing creatures on the server (because then you could delete other people's) — to confirm, you've tried a number of different names?
Anything pro-maga is not allowed and will be removed. You're welcome to name it something else though. :)
i gave it several uneape names that no one else had. i dident try to over right anything but it still said the same thing over and over agen. i tryed everything. mabey its a bug or something
Yeah sounds like it. OK, if you still have it up here's a last-ditch way to save a creature on HTML5: if you press F2 it'll print out the creature's save file in the text console below the game. If you grab that & then email it to me, I'll manually put it in the database.
I'm still not sure why the server was telling you that the name was taken — it happened for me too. I suspect that it has something to do with the sheer filesize of this sheila. I've added it to the buglist, but as per my last update it might take a while to get around to.
Just a quick question: I noticed that there don't seem to be any more muscle spots on the carnivorous jaws, just curious if it's a glitch or it's on purpose?
On purpose — there used to be & with the intention that you'd have to snap them closed with muscles to do damage, but in the interest of swinging the pendulum away from oversimulation and towards "things are functional & just work without additional setup" I removed the muscle and made them just generally dangerous to touch.
I'm open to suggestions for how to find a balances between complexity/usuable for it.
Just wanted to say I've had a lot of fun with this game, and I see how it could have HUGE potential as a learning tool besides that.
I can count few occasions where I felt as accomplished as when I finally made a little organism that could reliably navigate without constantly braining itself.
I have had some trouble, though. The version I downloaded for Windows (crescent-loom-windows-beta.zip) doesn't seem to want to connect? I can save and load creatures from disc but it won't go online. Is that normal, do I have to play the browser or another version to access the online functions/designs?
Thanks Andaeus! It's great to hear you made something that could navigate -- it's no mean feat.
The online functionality has always been pretty moody, but I thought it was working for this set of desktop builds. Hm. I'll take a look & fix it if I can for the next release (it's going to be a little while though -- I'm currently dealing with a wrist injury).
I'd love to see what you've made. More motivation to get it working again, I guess. ;)
Oh dear! Well, I hope your wrist feels better soon. Take your time, obviously, I know the game is still developing so I just thought I would point out the issue. With luck your right and it's just being moody for now.
I installed this game on my external drive on windows 10. I don't think it likes that very much...it keeps randomly closing on me! No error message or anything. I did make a little fish/worm thing and swam it around a bit though.
At first I thought maybe it was because I was spamming right click to get rid of muscles that I'd misplaced, and somehow accidentally exited the game that way, but then it closed on me abruptly again while I was trying to decide which mouth to put on my creature and I wasn't clicking anything.
Good to know, thanks for the report! It seems to be having trouble with crashing on a lot of people's machines, it's probably not anything you did. This is the worst kind of bug because it's random & nearly impossible for me to reproduce, especially because I'm not seeing on my computer. x_x
I'll keep trying to track it down. I've heard that it tends to be a little more stable in fullscreen & with shaders off (which is the default), if that helps?
Have you tried running the game off of an external drive, in case that makes the bug more likely? It's probably some...hardware dependent nightmare bug or something so trying shenanigans to get it to happen might be a good idea?
Hey Olive, I'm super excited with the direction you're taking this project. I sent you a dm on twitter (I'm not very active there myself but it seemed better than an email). I hope to talk more soon!
This is really really awesome, and I'm so excited to see where this goes! (I played with my 7 year old brother watching. He was disappointed when his attempt at a human typed creation failed, but is also very eager to see what future updates bring!)
Ya turns out you need more than like a dozen neurons to make a human brain, and our body type doesn't do great underwater. Good info to hear that that's a first instinct for people to try though. 🤔 Was there anything in particular he tried that really should have worked, do you think?
(one of my goals is to make things that people want to donaturally be things that end up beinginteresting, at the very least)
No, as far as I could tell, it all seemed to work fine. It wasn't a matter of bugs, and all of the other types of neurons and things are totally understandable based off the little bit of information given. It's really good. My questions and stuff fell more into "How many muscles can i attach to a neuron? If I have two limbs, should I have a neuron for each arm and the muscles there? Can I make something like a frog?" (I'm still working on that frog thing, but I might be overdoing the muscle system since this is obviously a lot more simplistic.) This is great and works well!
Thanks for the feedback, hmm... the smallest font size in the game is 14pt which makes me think we might be seeing different things. Do you have a particularly high-resolution display?
I absolutely love this, haven't been able to get too far, I don't think it agrees with my laptop. I've come to be a very amateur neurochemistry nerd through running the gamut of psychiatric medications, and this kind of practical logic gate problem solving feels super good, especially as someone who never got very far with science or academia. I like the idea of being able to figure things out and learn and feel like not-an-idiot! I have signed up to your newsletter and look forward to following your progress!
Crashing - I use a Surface with windows 10, and it's always seemed super janky and buggy. I think there is something super wrong with the install and maybe the machine to be honest so probably not worth you worrying about. I hate windows 10 and I hate this awful baby-computer attempt to splice a 'tablet' with a PC. I'm more motivated to get round to replacing it now so I can play this!
Hi, the update completely resolved my crashing issue! And I love the new manual-style tutorial, it's super cute and effective. Thank you!! I am clumsily and enjoyably figuring things out.
I really love this--this is what Spore should have been! Detailed creature creation that requires a lot of trial and error (and critical thinking).
I'll admit I haven't played long, but I have a few suggestions: More in-depth tutorial (to explain the advantages of certain bones, organs, etc), adding things to stimulate a sensor (like food or rocks), a way to 'pivot' pieces after you've placed them, keeping the point of contact the same, but adjusting the angle, and a more intuitive menu while in-game (for some reason, I can only seem to find the volume options from the main menu).
I love the direction this is going and I will definitely continue playing!
I've wrestled with the problem of how to teach the game a LOT. I've tried the voiced intro tutorial, a series of zachtronics-style levels, in-game contextual help menus, real-world manuals, and now the lego-style guides. Did you see those guides? They're very new, and I'd love to hear what does and doesn't work about them.
✔️ re: sensors that react to different objects. I also want to give people more control over tuning things like range and sensitivity.
You're the first to mention wanting to pivot pieces after placing them..... what do you think would be a good UI for that? People are already holding the mouse down when they're modifying a limb. Maybe if they drag an existing limb while holding down shift or something?
What if you do it like spore with a circle popping up around the limb to show the angle relative to the part it's joined to, and allow a "selected" limb to be rotated by clicking and dragging the circle?
A great idea and a very promising game! Though I have a question: so you can make multiple sections of the brain and drag neurons between them, but is there no way to connect neurons in different sections (or at least have the same neuron show up in multiple sections)? This, along with the inability to distinguish between stimuli (food/obstacle at least) seem like the biggest stumbling blocks to me.
Huh, I hadn't tried downloading any games from the bundle through the site yet either. This is the only path I could find that worked for me via the site (you should have also gotten an email with the link to it).
My Library > My Purchases > Bundles > Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality > Search by title
Have to go to the bundle: Go to Your Library, then in the left panel go to my purchases, bundles and then click the link of the bundle, there You can search by name or navigate through the 57 pages of content .
I noticed an issue trying to run Crescent Loom on Manjaro Linux. Crescent Loom asks for libcurl-nss specifically, and unfortunately, this seems to be something that only exists on the Ubuntu ecosystem. Any suggestions?
Goooood question. Libraries and dependencies aren't my strength. I'm currently compiling linux on a mint distro.
The Cerberus X forums imply there might've been an update to how curl is used in the most recent compiler — I'll try updating to see if that changes anything & let you know when I've uploaded that version, but I don't think I can commit to supporting all flavors of linux.
More than understandable, with how many of them there are. I'll check back later and let you know if it works, thank you.
I don't know if it would be possible under your current workflow or not since I've never used Cerberus X, but have you looked into bundling an appimage? It would be a little bigger, but should be capable of running just about anywhere.
Yep. Putting up the finishing touches on it now. Getting my ducks in a row for each platform takes a while though, so it won't be up until later tonight.
Build 0.7.1 is up. I double-checked the mac build by re-downloading from itch.io and it looked like it worked (though I had to drag it out of the downloads folder).
Bedtime for me. Let me know if you have any problems!
It works perfectly! The only issue I've noticed is that the icon for the game is non-existant. This may be because I don't have the itch launcher and am using the direct download. It doesn't make a difference to me because I know how to change the icon, but I just thought that you might want to know. I'll let you know if I run into any issues while playing!
This game looks fascinating, and I'm looking forward to poking around in it more! I just wanted to write this to note that I was having crash issues on Windows 10, but I turned off the shaders as widget77 noted and I haven't seen any problems since. Hopefully this helps you track down the issue!
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Crescent Loom 1.0 is a huge success in so many ways, Bravo in so many ways, keep up the excellent work your doing. The foundation is amazing and solid. i will certainly keep an eye open for your work coz' anything that follows will certainly be great , interesting , touching etc thanks
🌺 Thank you, that means a lot!
In the linux version the game sometimes crashes when an egg tries to hatch. I looked at the terminal output message and it says:
Cerberus Runtime Error : Memory access violation
I have the full logs if you need them. Also i tried the HTML version using firefox and it just gives me a black screen, the demo works fine though.
Sorry for the late reply! Thanks for the bug report. If you still have it installed, could you look in the logs/ folder next to the executable and send any crashlog.txt files to crescentloom@gmail.com?
As for the local HTML version: it's a little tricky to get working. Browsers sensibly have a security feature for local files that restricts access to other files on your hard drive. I should probably add steps to get it working to a readme or something. Your options are to either:
or
However, the local html5 version is identical to the one hosted at crescentloom.com — I've included it in the available files because a teacher requested it to get around a firewall issue at their institution.
The stand alone player consistently slows down and eventually crashes as I play between 30 minutes and an hour, but it saves what your last build was and replaces it on restart so I'm not even mad. Though if it stayed stable long term I would definitely just set up an aquarium of little custom critters and let it run.
I would love to get the physics efficient and stable enough for that! I've had a dream of making a twitch stream of that kind of aquarium full of the creatures people upload to the server.
I would definitely watch that, love these little guys. I guess while I have you here I have one note and one suggestion.
The note is I can't seem to see, on standalone or embedded, uploaded creations past page 56, entry 1000, which ends in the middle Gs.
The suggestion is, and I don't know how easy or possible it would even be, I would love to limit color vision on eyes so that a creature could potentially recognize and avoid predation or sharing space on its own kind, which also opens up mimicry through camouflage.
Hi, I am create a co-op bundle to celebrate World Environment Day, I want invited you to join, all content related with nature and environment can be join, if you are interested you have join in the follow link: https://itch.io/jam/world-environment-day-bundle-2022
I'm excited and I appreciate your interest and your participation, thank you very much and good luck!
Aw thanks for the invite! The bundle looks really cozy. I'm not currently looking to put CL in a bundle but good luck!
This is a really cool and well implemented idea.
To me, it's just missing a puzzle/problem game setup to drive players to explore the possibility space and discover their own solutions.
I think you're spot on.
Too bad this project seems to be abandoned. Here a dump of the console in case the developer decides to come back:
This is while running it from their website on FF with all blockers disabled.
Hi! Thanks for the detailed error report. CL is in no way abandoned, I'm pretty sure it's going to see me into the grave. 🙃 Recent development has just been been on other aspects of the game e.g. the connectome explorer & working on securing funding.
Odd, it's working OK for me on all browsers. Looks like it might be some kind of problem with hosting it through itch.io. I'll investigate when I get some time this weekend. Thanks again!
OK, I still haven't been able to replicate this, but I've added a locally-hosted mirror of the game here, also linked to in the troubleshooting steps. The first one is still preferable as the main because of bandwidth costs, but this should work as a fine backup.
Please let me know if you continue to see problems.
Hi Olive, Thanks for your reply! Oddly enough it is working for me now on all the links you provided here. If I remember correctly, there was some CORS error in the log, which I did not include in my first post. Maybe there was some config issue on the backend/3rd-party?
Anyways, thanks for replying to my post and sorry for calling the project abandoned - in my quick search I did not find too much recent activity and maybe I am a bit of a burnt child in that way :S
All good! Reasonable conclusion from how little I've been posting about it 😅
Glad it's working for you now!
im not really sure that 'scheming weasel' was the best choice for the trailer lol
also how do you run the demo? i cant run it on file or in the itch app.
nvm i figured it ou
I am new to the game. I did the tutorial to the point it tells me to press play and watch my creature move, but after that, i am not sure what to do next. is that the end of the tutorial or is there more to learn the systems of making sensory stuff work like eyes, whiskers, etc and to react to the environment?
If you go into one of the levels and press "H" a number of manuals will come up, which you can follow (they're kinda like Lego kit build instructions) to learn how sensory stuff works. Peahen and Zippy have whiskers and eyes, respectively.
After that, the game is mostly a sandbox. I'm working on more skill challenges like the current race mode but it's slow going!
alright, good to know. I will definitely check check out those saves then.
Is there any potential sample creature that can help you figure out if there is a way to make a creature react to cool and eat it based on "seeing" it in some way? Will the 2 samples you mentioned help me learn to do that?
The examples I mentioned use their senses to navigate and avoid terrain.
Hunting by sight turns out to be a really complicated problem so there aren't any manuals for it yet, but I hope to figure it out someday.
This game is AWESOME! Just what I didn't know I needed! I've run through the tutorial, and flipped through the patterns (a genius idea, the pattern book), and I already see the massive potential for what else I can do.
But I'm having a problem: the Tab key doesn't cycle through the neuron connection types for me. Is there an alternate input that does the same thing? Like how you can move the camera with WASD or by using the left mouse button to pan around the environment?
It looks like all the creatures in the pattern book require connections of type Inhibit to keep the neurons from all firing at once, and I can't figure out how to do that. I'm not sure if this is just my computer or a problem with the game, but it's happening on the downloaded version and the online one.
Also, I love the music. It's very chill.
Never mind, I figured out how to do it! You have to make a connection, then click on it, and while your mouse button is down, press Tab. Now I can explore the whole wealth of systems in this game!
I was trying to figure this one out myself. Thanks!
Also, you can click on the little circle, the actual connection point, not the line. That brings up a menu for neuron connection types, and you can select the type you want.
I shared this with some people in a discord server for Creatures, which is another biology simulation-and-toy, and they are loving it... As someone with a passionate interest in virtual life I adore projects such as these
I'm kind of obsessed with this game. I have always wanted a game just like the Spore cell stage, and this goes way beyond my expectations! Love the voice over in the tutorial btw! I can't wait to see where this goes in the future!
This is definitely going to be my favorite game for a while!! Great idea and swell execution so far :))
My one request would be a big cave system full of enemy species to compete against. The competition and out performing other species is what makes this sort of thing super fun. Currently maps are small and have little amounts of other creatures
It is fun, but the tutorial is too short. I am very confused on how to make a brain
I love this game!
maybe you could could make the way to put multiple creatures in one ecosystem easier, and make them compete, like the race mode and the only ecosystem but combined!
another thing would be adding more maps and ready ecosystems!
as well as making the current non walled maps bigger/making it so there are more obstacles and decorations.
a fatal flaw i noticed is that a carnivore eating its offspring actually has some net gain, (i think), it should be more of a loss than a gain, also there should be a way of differentiating your species from others in the neuron system
other than that, i really enjoyed playing this game :)
Aw thanks for the nice comment! ^_^
I agree with everything you've said as important additions. I'm working on making my internal map editor polished enough so that it can be part of the game, which I think will address a lot of the lack of map variety.
Re: differentiating your own species... hm. Maybe some kind of "scent" input that activates when you're close to either offspring, other spiecies, or plankton (the blue snacks)? I'll make a to-do to look into making one.
Cool!
Good luck for that, i'm really interested in seeing what this game will become :D
Hey, I really like the game, super interesting and fun to experiment with. That said, whenever I try to run it on Chrome it works pretty well until anything tries to lay an egg, then it freezes up and can't be recovered. =(
This is the log that appears when it freezes up: Creature '' laying egg.
Anyways, hope you fix it and keep up the good work! It's inspirational!
EDIT:
Have you considered adding scenarios? Like "you must consume X pieces of food before Y time/energy runs out and you can only use Z number of creature parts". Idk, I think the extra challenge would be great, just a thought!
Thanks for the bug report. I think I know what's going on and it should be fixed in the next update.
I've experimented with some premade levels when I was trying to figure out how to do the tutorial, and found that limiting the number of creature parts was more frustrating than a fun challenge. Something open-ended could be fun though — I've been working on the level editor for the race mode in the next update (spoilers) so should be able to start thinking about challenges after that. :)
That's awesome! Looking forward to the update. =)
Could you make it so that you can toggle on a version like before all of those neuron gates were there and all the complicated neurobiology stuff? Maybe just a mode to set where you can put the complexity level down like to the version were all the gates and the yellow lines weren't there? Other than that I've been having fun with cannibalism, but in the end my babies got my fishie
Hi! Thanks for saying something, I can definitely get lost in adding the neuro stuff to the point of losing sight of the fun of just building creatures. I'm not sure what you mean by the "gates", though — the different kinds of neurons and connections between them have been there from day one. Have they just been getting more in your way recently?
oh no i meant like the sodium stuff
Oh! Of course, those gates. :p
OK, I'll think about ways to hide the display for folks who don't want to mess with it.
aaaa this is so interesting! after following the instructions for the four basic creatures i made my own predatory creature and then it got Eaten Immediately, great stuff
i made a playthrough
this game is amazing!! i was playing the web version and i was blown away by the details! ive played a couple of 'brain making sims' before but they were janky and unreliable, so i was really impressed to see how well this works!!
at first i was pretty confused on how all the different things in the brain worked and was hesitant to try and make a creature from scratch because i honestly had no idea what most of those things meant, but after some trial and error i actually managed to figure out some bits and managed to make a controllable creature! so points to you for making it simple enough that even i could understand it :D
oh and once i figured it out i spent so long making a creature! i really love the variety of shapes you can make them out of (and how the different shapes have different functions too!) and i absolutely love the inclusion of bioluminescence (i definitely overused that feature,,,no regrets). unfortunately before i could upload it the game froze while i was taking it for one last spin so i had to reload and lost my little creature :c (farewell lil guy, you looked super cool before u were eaten by the void u_u). though of course this is in development so im not that upset!! i just figured it may be worth mentioning in case you're looking for bugs to squish c:
but yeah overall im absolutely loving this game! the visuals are lovely to look at as well and the internal mechanics are genuinely so impressive so good job!!!! i am completely broke but just know that if i had the money i would absolutely buy this game :D (wow this is a long comment O_O)
Yay! I'm glad you were able to figure things out by poking around! Yeah it's really important to me to have this be simple & fun enough to not scare people away with the word ~ neuroscience ~.
Thanks for the really positive comment. :) I've been having a rough time getting myself to work on this recently so it's much appreciated. Sorry you lost your little buddy!
I really appreciate you for making this game! I got this game in the racial justice bundle and honestly glad I've gotten to experience this even though my ecosystems aren't the best I still try (they are all loved : ) I wanted to use this since we have a upcoming project in zoology and I found the perfect chance to not only get better at this but to show my other classmates about this game as well!! I know some kids may not be interested and I understand that but this is such a neat little game it's hard for me not to show it off. I also talked to my teacher about it, I hope he remembers to check it out it could, he could teach so much more things with this program, and not only that it would be interactive with students, we wouldn't have to sit in a lecture about invertebrate because we could make them ourselves! I'm rambling right now but I just had to show my appreciation, thank you! : )
Hahaha I run on external validation so I appreciate it! You've made my morning. ^_^
THICC THIGH MAN 😍
So I've recently been experimenting with making ecosystem chains, and sometimes the ecosystem does not interact the way I want to because of creatures of the same species gobbling each other up.(Though it still is fun to take control of my own creature and join in on the gobbling!) Also, could you implement a healing sort of mechanism where creatures that were injured from predators can grow back parts once they get enough nutrients?
Whoa, I'm surprised that you've managed to do almost any ecosystem interactions! I've done almost no work on those systems. In particular, I want the basic follow-hunt-eat loop for a creature to work, and it's still pretty far off using the out-of-the-box pieces.
I like the healing idea. Work on that is going to be a ways off because I'm currently aimed more at use-in-neurobiology-classrooms than the fishtank aspect due to increased interest for remote neurobiology activities in the wake of the pandemic. But I'll get there someday! 🤞
Oh I also noticed on the front page that there are harpoons in the game now, is it part of a newer version? If so, is there a way to update my game without losing all of my saved creations?
Harpoons are still in development; I haven't been able to release an update with them yet since I injured my wrist and have had to take it easy re: computers. If you have CL installed using the Itch client, it should update the game & preserve your creatures seamlessly. Otherwise you'll have to transfer the saved creature files over manually to the new version you download; they're in internal\creatures
Ok. I hope that you feel better soon! Thank you!
hey do you have discord?
and if so can i friend you?
also the demo version is vary laggy and i want to by the game but dose it work on cromebooks and ipads?
Hi! There's no discord for the game yet; this is the best place to comment. You can also send me emails at contact@wick.works.
The only way I've tested chromebooks is with the html5 version (the "demo" version), which sounds like you've already tried? Buying the game just gets you access to PC/Mac/Linux downloads, so it won't help with chromebooks.
I really do want to make sure the html5 version works on chromebooks... could you describe the lag a little more? Does it start fine and get slower? If you hold down the comma key, you can see the framerate in the lower-left. What rates are you getting?
Oh, also, I don't have an ipad so haven't been able to test it there at all. It really wants a mouse & keyboard though, so I wouldn't count on it working well.
i have a ipd and i played for a wile but i have a vary hard time placeing body parts and i cant dealet them. also it kiked me out of the game and was laggy. same thing as the cromebook
Cool, thanks for the report! I think I gotta say that I can't support fixing the iPad (it would require an overhaul of the UI to figure out how to make the controls work without a mouse) but the fact that it's not running well on chromebook is concerning.
I'm adding the slowdown to my to-do list for the next update. It's been a problem for years but has been getting worse..... definitely one of those maddingly-hard-to-track-down bugs. 😅
glad to help
it starts out grate but soon gets worse and worse and if i speed up the time it gets worse even faster when i send it back to 100% speed
also ive reticently made several vary complex fish that have jaws and avoid obstetricals and are relatively fast. a small one who is still vary big compared to othere things. a larger one whos only slightly bigger and was more of a exparament. and today i whent complacently over bord and made a giant fish and its super fast and can kill everything that i put infront of it. but you see the problem is i cant save my fish and i really dont want to lose my latest monstrosity. can you help? when i try to save it just said name is unavailable no matter what i do. btw amma post my maga fish on the sub reddit
Congrats on the monstrosity! Hm. That's the first time I've heard of not being able to save because no names are available. You can't overwrite existing creatures on the server (because then you could delete other people's) — to confirm, you've tried a number of different names?
Anything pro-maga is not allowed and will be removed. You're welcome to name it something else though. :)
i gave it several uneape names that no one else had. i dident try to over right anything but it still said the same thing over and over agen. i tryed everything. mabey its a bug or something
Yeah sounds like it. OK, if you still have it up here's a last-ditch way to save a creature on HTML5: if you press F2 it'll print out the creature's save file in the text console below the game. If you grab that & then email it to me, I'll manually put it in the database.
Uploaded to the server as "LEVI". What an absolute beauty. 😍
It reminds me of the ghost leviathan from subnautica.
I'm still not sure why the server was telling you that the name was taken — it happened for me too. I suspect that it has something to do with the sheer filesize of this sheila. I've added it to the buglist, but as per my last update it might take a while to get around to.
Just a quick question: I noticed that there don't seem to be any more muscle spots on the carnivorous jaws, just curious if it's a glitch or it's on purpose?
On purpose — there used to be & with the intention that you'd have to snap them closed with muscles to do damage, but in the interest of swinging the pendulum away from oversimulation and towards "things are functional & just work without additional setup" I removed the muscle and made them just generally dangerous to touch.
I'm open to suggestions for how to find a balances between complexity/usuable for it.
Just wanted to say I've had a lot of fun with this game, and I see how it could have HUGE potential as a learning tool besides that.
I can count few occasions where I felt as accomplished as when I finally made a little organism that could reliably navigate without constantly braining itself.
I have had some trouble, though. The version I downloaded for Windows (crescent-loom-windows-beta.zip) doesn't seem to want to connect? I can save and load creatures from disc but it won't go online. Is that normal, do I have to play the browser or another version to access the online functions/designs?
Thanks Andaeus! It's great to hear you made something that could navigate -- it's no mean feat.
The online functionality has always been pretty moody, but I thought it was working for this set of desktop builds. Hm. I'll take a look & fix it if I can for the next release (it's going to be a little while though -- I'm currently dealing with a wrist injury).
I'd love to see what you've made. More motivation to get it working again, I guess. ;)
Oh dear! Well, I hope your wrist feels better soon. Take your time, obviously, I know the game is still developing so I just thought I would point out the issue. With luck your right and it's just being moody for now.
Concept is absolutely fascinating, I was reading your devlog and I'm excited for the features you're working on, can't wait for new updates.
I installed this game on my external drive on windows 10. I don't think it likes that very much...it keeps randomly closing on me! No error message or anything. I did make a little fish/worm thing and swam it around a bit though.
At first I thought maybe it was because I was spamming right click to get rid of muscles that I'd misplaced, and somehow accidentally exited the game that way, but then it closed on me abruptly again while I was trying to decide which mouth to put on my creature and I wasn't clicking anything.
Good to know, thanks for the report! It seems to be having trouble with crashing on a lot of people's machines, it's probably not anything you did. This is the worst kind of bug because it's random & nearly impossible for me to reproduce, especially because I'm not seeing on my computer. x_x
I'll keep trying to track it down. I've heard that it tends to be a little more stable in fullscreen & with shaders off (which is the default), if that helps?
Have you tried running the game off of an external drive, in case that makes the bug more likely? It's probably some...hardware dependent nightmare bug or something so trying shenanigans to get it to happen might be a good idea?
Ah, that's a good idea! I'll try it.
Oh! I remember seeing and trying this a long time ago now. Looking forward to seeing what's happened since then, it's such a neat concept :)
^_^
Hey Olive, I'm super excited with the direction you're taking this project. I sent you a dm on twitter (I'm not very active there myself but it seemed better than an email). I hope to talk more soon!
Replied! Let's chat. ;)
This is really really awesome, and I'm so excited to see where this goes! (I played with my 7 year old brother watching. He was disappointed when his attempt at a human typed creation failed, but is also very eager to see what future updates bring!)
Aww, that's a nice comment. ^_^
Ya turns out you need more than like a dozen neurons to make a human brain, and our body type doesn't do great underwater. Good info to hear that that's a first instinct for people to try though. 🤔 Was there anything in particular he tried that really should have worked, do you think?
(one of my goals is to make things that people want to do naturally be things that end up being interesting, at the very least)
No, as far as I could tell, it all seemed to work fine. It wasn't a matter of bugs, and all of the other types of neurons and things are totally understandable based off the little bit of information given. It's really good. My questions and stuff fell more into "How many muscles can i attach to a neuron? If I have two limbs, should I have a neuron for each arm and the muscles there? Can I make something like a frog?" (I'm still working on that frog thing, but I might be overdoing the muscle system since this is obviously a lot more simplistic.) This is great and works well!
This is great, but it desperately needs UI scaling. I need a magnifier to read anything.
Thanks for the feedback, hmm... the smallest font size in the game is 14pt which makes me think we might be seeing different things. Do you have a particularly high-resolution display?
UI scaling added to the to-do list.
It's a 13in 4k screen.
I absolutely love this, haven't been able to get too far, I don't think it agrees with my laptop. I've come to be a very amateur neurochemistry nerd through running the gamut of psychiatric medications, and this kind of practical logic gate problem solving feels super good, especially as someone who never got very far with science or academia. I like the idea of being able to figure things out and learn and feel like not-an-idiot! I have signed up to your newsletter and look forward to following your progress!
Hey, thanks! It's good to hear that. 🌺 I really really love the logic-gate-esque aspects of neurobiology and am glad I get to share it like this.
Re: not agreeing with your laptop, how so exactly? I'm still ironing out a lot of technical problems. Crashes or running slow or...?
Crashing - I use a Surface with windows 10, and it's always seemed super janky and buggy. I think there is something super wrong with the install and maybe the machine to be honest so probably not worth you worrying about. I hate windows 10 and I hate this awful baby-computer attempt to splice a 'tablet' with a PC. I'm more motivated to get round to replacing it now so I can play this!
Hi, the update completely resolved my crashing issue! And I love the new manual-style tutorial, it's super cute and effective. Thank you!! I am clumsily and enjoyably figuring things out.
Yesss, I am very glad to hear that. Now to figure out, y'know, why windowed/shaders were making it crash. 😅
+1 for the feedback on the manuals. Like I said in the newsletter, I'm pretty optimistic about this approach. Yay field testing!
I really love this--this is what Spore should have been! Detailed creature creation that requires a lot of trial and error (and critical thinking).
I'll admit I haven't played long, but I have a few suggestions: More in-depth tutorial (to explain the advantages of certain bones, organs, etc), adding things to stimulate a sensor (like food or rocks), a way to 'pivot' pieces after you've placed them, keeping the point of contact the same, but adjusting the angle, and a more intuitive menu while in-game (for some reason, I can only seem to find the volume options from the main menu).
I love the direction this is going and I will definitely continue playing!
Cool, thanks for the suggestions!
I've wrestled with the problem of how to teach the game a LOT. I've tried the voiced intro tutorial, a series of zachtronics-style levels, in-game contextual help menus, real-world manuals, and now the lego-style guides. Did you see those guides? They're very new, and I'd love to hear what does and doesn't work about them.
✔️ re: sensors that react to different objects. I also want to give people more control over tuning things like range and sensitivity.
You're the first to mention wanting to pivot pieces after placing them..... what do you think would be a good UI for that? People are already holding the mouse down when they're modifying a limb. Maybe if they drag an existing limb while holding down shift or something?
What if you do it like spore with a circle popping up around the limb to show the angle relative to the part it's joined to, and allow a "selected" limb to be rotated by clicking and dragging the circle?
A great idea and a very promising game! Though I have a question: so you can make multiple sections of the brain and drag neurons between them, but is there no way to connect neurons in different sections (or at least have the same neuron show up in multiple sections)? This, along with the inability to distinguish between stimuli (food/obstacle at least) seem like the biggest stumbling blocks to me.
Thanks, and agree! Both those things are on my list. I talked about the design for connecting different brain sections in the last wicklog.
I purchased this game in the social justice bundle, how do I download it? itch doesn't seem to realize that I did...
Huh, I hadn't tried downloading any games from the bundle through the site yet either. This is the only path I could find that worked for me via the site (you should have also gotten an email with the link to it).
My Library > My Purchases > Bundles > Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality > Search by title
Have to go to the bundle: Go to Your Library, then in the left panel go to my purchases, bundles and then click the link of the bundle, there You can search by name or navigate through the 57 pages of content .
I noticed an issue trying to run Crescent Loom on Manjaro Linux. Crescent Loom asks for libcurl-nss specifically, and unfortunately, this seems to be something that only exists on the Ubuntu ecosystem. Any suggestions?
Goooood question. Libraries and dependencies aren't my strength. I'm currently compiling linux on a mint distro.
The Cerberus X forums imply there might've been an update to how curl is used in the most recent compiler — I'll try updating to see if that changes anything & let you know when I've uploaded that version, but I don't think I can commit to supporting all flavors of linux.
More than understandable, with how many of them there are. I'll check back later and let you know if it works, thank you.
I don't know if it would be possible under your current workflow or not since I've never used Cerberus X, but have you looked into bundling an appimage? It would be a little bigger, but should be capable of running just about anywhere.
Is the patch for OSX coming out today?
Yep. Putting up the finishing touches on it now. Getting my ducks in a row for each platform takes a while though, so it won't be up until later tonight.
Can't wait!
Build 0.7.1 is up. I double-checked the mac build by re-downloading from itch.io and it looked like it worked (though I had to drag it out of the downloads folder).
Bedtime for me. Let me know if you have any problems!
It works perfectly! The only issue I've noticed is that the icon for the game is non-existant. This may be because I don't have the itch launcher and am using the direct download. It doesn't make a difference to me because I know how to change the icon, but I just thought that you might want to know. I'll let you know if I run into any issues while playing!
Glad to hear it! Ya, changing the icon was the thing that made the first build not work. I'll figure out how to get it back... someday.
I am so excited to dive headfirst into this game as soon as I am able to download the itch.io launcher
You don't need the launcher to download games. Scroll to the top of the page and press download.
This game looks fascinating, and I'm looking forward to poking around in it more! I just wanted to write this to note that I was having crash issues on Windows 10, but I turned off the shaders as widget77 noted and I haven't seen any problems since. Hopefully this helps you track down the issue!