I would also like to see more interactions between stuff, like what happens if you could pick up the Cocktail & feed that to the "biological entity"? (read my previus comment). What if you feed coal to the fire instead of water?
What if you mixed coal & water to make ??? (wet coal?) and feed that to the furnace?
What if you could throw coal at the blue area?
What if you could pick up cogs & do something with them?
...& more.
Sensino
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A member registered Apr 03, 2020
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(Edit: AHA, I found "The Path").
I'm not sure if I'm stuck or not, I'm at the point where there is "green" all over the place & I have seen the "blue area", and the "biological entity" is "refueled" every day & appear to be at max level. But I can't interact with either the Biological entity or the Blue area more than a short text prompt.
I have a hard time to determine if there is more to this game but I'm just failing to fulfill some criteria to unlock that, or if this is the actual end?
It feels like there could be more, but I'm not sure.
A Game About Creating The Universe comments · Replied to Sensino in A Game About Creating The Universe comments
After playing it again, I think the lag is what's destroys the game.
at the beginning things are slowly & controlled'ly attracted towards the ship, but after the first rock, everything goes crazy & everything that previously was attracted towards the ship just gets max-speed & flies past the ship so it's basically impossible to play this game, and without knowing what I know now, the pattern is impossible to see.
Are you sure you calculate ALL the forces against a "delta time" (= end_time -start_time), instead of assuming the game will have a consistent tick-speed (which it does not have) and calculates the speed based on that?
First impression:
I have no idea what to do.
Things are still, I move the mouse, things move, ok?
Now I have +1 rock, ok? how? why?
I try to click, right/ left, no change, ok?
I exit the game to go here to read the description about what the hell I'm supposed to do, there is no description.
This "non information" sucks & I did not enjoy it.
Try in different web browsers.
I use Firefox, but also test it in Chrome, and maybe Brave, Edge & Opera too?
Also, you can add debug code, that you can see with:
(Firefox) Right click -> inspect, then change tab to the "Console" tab in the debugger.
Similar in Chrome & most browsers, just different names for stuff.
BEAUTIFUL CONTROLS! :D
But it NEEDS a mouse-sensitivity slider.
I have a gaming mouse where I can reduce the sensitivity with a button, but without this it would be very hard to play, with eg. an basic "office mouse".
I would also recommend making some kind of "sensitivity testing & tuning" level.
Eg. ask the player to click & drag the mouse for whatever distance they feel would be 180 degree turn, and calculate what to set the sensitivity to for that to be 180 degrees.
Still keep the slider as an option for additional fine-tuning.
It would also be fun with some "racetrack levels" where you just focus on going fast, there are no walls & fuel to worry about.
There is a green line to follow, on each sides of that line it fades into orange & then red, each of those zones give less (or more? like golf score?) points per time & speed spent there.
Also, a map would be nice, to find where the pick-up stations are.
Or maybe a color-coordinated (each active (discovered) destination has a colored underscore line?) pointer arrow towards each active pickup station, just like what the cargo crate has.
Has a LOT of potential, but is currently just a clicker game.
(but it IS also version 0.0.1 so that's expected).
I assume in the future, we can buy a trashed car, then either refurbish the trashed parts, or buy new replacement parts?
To transform a "Rough" car into a "Mint" car & sell it for more profit & such?
I would appreciate a bit more control about HOW the tool is upgraded (AOE-range, damage amount, durability, homing amount, bounciness/stiffness, etc.), since that's about the only thing we can control in this game.
Both in the stats of the tools & in the relics.
Maybe the "pinko mechanic" can be used somehow for upgrading too, but we have some control in some way about what happens in there?
I would also want an upgrade that can move the "unmovable" sectors, instead of just reducing their existence, that's boring.
It can definitely defrags slower there, or preferably shows some kind of extra animation there.
Maybe the animation is something about how the program goes into the registers & re-binds "pointers" (address locations) to the new file location or whatever?
Maybe it doesn't "solve" those "unmovable" blocks directly when encountered during the normal scan, but probably does an "initial scan" and solves them to the beginning of the file system, OR solves them at the end of the defrag, but that must probably need a re-defrag again, so it seems very inefficient, compared to solving them first.
I feel like this could be more fun with a less linear progression, that you could bounce around in the level until you feel like you're strong enough to defeat the end guardian.
This would let us pursue different non-optimal upgrade paths, instead of ALWAYS have to consider exactly one question: "Which upgrade will make me most likely to survive the boss encounter at 5, 4, 3, 2, ... jumps?"
Instead we could CHOOSE to explore this <?>-nebula, because there are NOT just 1 jump left & the other option is the Trade Nexus & I have 500 coins... Instead I can go to both.
It would be nice if the POI was also detected by ACTUAL distance, so if you drive back to where you came from, you can find the same POI again, BUT this can cause the same problem as increasing the detection duration = saturate the area with POIs of no interest, like only lvl1 POIs when you're lvl 20.
I have 5 fuel & the nearest POI requires 6 fuel, It feels like I should be able to deploy a beacon now, if I want?
Apparently I DO have that tech available at the ship, because I will be able to deploy it in mid-space when I'm eventually guaranteed to be stranded.
Does it matter? probably not much, but it feels strange as it is now.
Reminds me of the "Shift" series (1 - 4+ ) of Flash games :D
(still available at Armor Games[1], BUT you need the "Ruffle"[2] browser plugin to emulate the games)
[1]
https://armorgames.com/play/751/shift
[2] - (preferably use YOUR browsers plugin-store, this site shows what browsers are supported)
https://ruffle.rs/downloads
The "requirement" to gain the "Homing" upgrade is ridiculous!
Without it my ship feels like the Imperial Destroyer in this video.
The enemy back away to the edge & drifts slightly to the left & is impossible to hit.
(for future reference if the link breaks: YouTube: "Family Guy Ship Maneuvers" by channel: "silex tan")
"I think it would be better if the upgrades in the tree were more expensive but independently priced"
------
I have been thinking of some kind of game, where EVERY upgrade starts at maybe 1 cost, BUT each time you buy something, that item becomes more expensive (+1?) in the next run, so over multiple runs the pricing sorts itself out (NOW, apply this to a networked game & compare EVERYONE purchases).
There also NEEDS some form of "price decay" too, or EVERYTHING will become too expensive. Maybe at some kind of "prestige"(?) everything becomes -1 cost, so the most bought things are still expensive, but the less bought things becomes cheaper.
Now, imagine what happens when this system is networked to ALL players, because people have different play-styles, they might keep the prices low for other play-styles.
What this system fails to model, (for networked: is the individual play-styles, maybe a good thing?) is the change in a players priories from low level to high level.
One way to model this could be either a price increase or decrease (not sure which) the more you have progressed.
Another problem with this system, is that at its worst implementation, it would eventually force players to play with only their least favorite (trash) builds, just to "grind down" the cost of the actually fun upgrades (it's NOT what I want).
At its BEST implementation, it would fairly price each upgrade, AND encourage (without forcing) the player to experiment with new build combinations, because the best upgrades are a BIT expensive (not ridiculously expensive).
Kind of, but the player can somehow set the limits for what they think is acceptable threat levels.
In the beginning, 1x lvl 3 enemy might be too hard & = red, but at late game like 10x lvl 15 might even be preferable (because of increased XP rewards), and with maxed out POI-researches it would be nice if it was possible to make a "filter" to highlight the interesting POI-locations.
I love the ALT overview :D
Maybe SHIFT + ALT (or CTRL) could be used to display the FULL (available) information about the system.
Alternatively, we can "mark" some stats to be displayed when pressing that button, for example "Threat level" and/or "enemy amount", the priorities change over the game, so it would be nice to let the display change too.
This is overkill, but it is the ultimate system I can think of:
Maybe even be able to set some limits, and have that reflect on the icon border-color? like:
"(Enemy_amount > 5) = red"
Or go full math on it, like:
Boolean version:
"(enemy_amount >= 5) && (enemy_level > 3) = red, else: green"
Integer version:
"[from: (0="green") to: (max="red")] = (enemy_amount + enemy_level)"
This one was really hard to find a way to define in some form of code formula, the problem is that I do not know how high the number can go, so while the lowest state (zero) can easily be defined as green, it is an unknown number "max" that will be defined as red, maybe that's just a variable that stores whatever the highest calculated number has been?
The integer version is a bit strange, but could be useful.
I think this problem is caused by the long "detection time", it takes 6+ jumps for me to loose detection of some POIs, and because I always want to go to the (new) one with highest thereat, then the low stuff gets accumulated, and I can only visit 1 system per jump, that means I can't jump to all of them just to clear out the POI from the detection, so they expire just before (or after) I must leave the zone.
Apparently it needs some way to increase the detection range (see more POI) without increasing the detection duration (amount of jumps before expiring.
Maybe some kind of "gauntlet" with increasingly more & harder enemies, could be used to select a suitable threat level?
So after entering a sector, or respawning, there is a POI like Elite enemies, and after defeating that you can proceed to a higher Elites, but defeat does not equals death, just a return to normal levels.
Alternatively some kind of "background- / Idle- -fighting", where the ship is matched up against enemies to find it's limit?
Something is strange with the sector level & threat scaling.
I'm at sector 13 jump 3, with max gear, I can probably survive a wave of 20x lvl 20 enemies, but all I find is like 1x lvl 2, or if I'm lucky, an elite with: 8x lvl 8.
Sector 13 jump 7, max enemies: 5x lvl 2... pathetic.
jump 9, max: 8x lvl 5, still 1 volley is enough to destroy all of them, zero danger.
Jump 10, the end-boss was defeated before first reinforcement.
I have a Tier 5 Sensor array & 10/10 "POI Range" upgrade.
Also, buying weapons is SUPER RARE, in 13 sectors I have found it 2 times.
AHA! NOT a Bug?
The new modules does not "upgrade", they "replace".
So THAT is why you are allowed to buy multiple of the same thing, because it COULD be better than your current one.
IMPROVEMENT:
Some kind of color or other marking on eg. the item border, to show that it is better or worse than your current one, and if you do buy it, maybe add a pop-up warning, just to confirm that the player indeed intends to buy a worse item.
I found a bug (2.5 bugs),
* some "respawn event" let me choose a starting module, I choose "Homing", then when I visited the POI system, then I got a choice to select "Homing" again (I GOT to see what that would do), and the result was that nothing happened, I didn't get any upgrade that time (as expected).
* Same with "Ricochet" upgrade, but this time it was both times selected from the POI selection. It also shows up in the "Trade station" as a selectable option.