Awww that was super cute. Beautiful art.

Did you see that there's a free in-browser version? It's as identical as I can make it given the tech constraints — just runs a little slower and you can't save locally.

Aaaa this is looking so dope. It's exciting to see it grow visually. Great work!

HONK HONK

Hi Mabelmabel,

Glad to hear you're enjoying it! Alas, the tutorial does end after you press play; the greyed-out levels are works-in-progress that aren't in-game yet. I could definitely do a better job making that clear.

I'm currently trying to get more funding to keep working on the game and add more levels. Following the game here or joining the mailing list will letcha know when I update it.

I'd love to hear any other feedback you have about the game, so don't hesitate to give me a shout. :)

A+, will do! Doing devlogs was a great habit to get into for me, I think it's awesome that you're encouraging them.

Yeah! I've been meaning to switch over to the itch devlog system, but formatting the same post for Kickstarter, my own site, and here was too much (though now, in retrospect, I could have just posted links...). Now that Kickstarter is off my plate, I'll be updating this one instead.

Heya! I've been working on a creature-creation game called Crescent Loom that is based on my neuroscience research.

You stitch together a creature's bones, muscles, and senses, and then weave biologically-realistic neurons into a functional brain:

The blue hexagon on the right is the creature's brain; you need to figure out how to connect neurons in order to get your creature's muscles to fire in the right order. It's sorta like programming the computer to play QWOP, but with real neural circuits.

Creatures can eat each other (of course):

And there's a racing mode where creatures are saved online and will show up in other player's games, depending on how successful they are:

The game is still far from being done; yesterday, after finishing up fulfilling all my Kickstarter obligations, I have officially entered open development and am working on it as time and funding allow.

Itch page (PC/Mac/Linux) :: https://wick.itch.io/crescent-loom

In-browser demo :: http://wick.works/crescent-loom-demo/ (it's mostly identical to the paid version, but is a bit slower + jankier just due to being in-browser, e.g. it can't save creatures locally)

More information :: http://wick.works/crescentloom/

Would love to hear what you think! :)

Wick

:facepalm: I never know whether to be upset or very amused when somebody somewhere had way too much fun naming something.

Whoa, I've never heard of safe member/elvis operators. Cool!

I'm consistently impressed with how cool your updates are. This was already my favorite city generator, and you just keep making it better!

+1 on the injection of games into the sciences.

Sent you an email!

I have an issue that I think is related. My game uses http requests to save/load games to a server of mine, but such requests sent by builds hosted on itch.io always fail.

To make sure this wasn't a problem with my scripts, I made a tiny test app that sends a POST to http://httpbin.org/post. This is what it returns when I run it locally (and I get something similar when it's hosted on my own site, whether or not it's embedded in an iframe):

sending request...
sending to : http://httpbin.org/post
with fields hash=1337&name=test&version=404
Http POST complete!
Status=200
ResponseText={
    "args": {},
    "data": "",
    "files": {},
    "form": {
    "hash": "1337",
    "name": "test",
    "version": "404"
},
"headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate",
    "Accept-Language": "en-US,en;q=0.5",
    "Connection": "close",
    "Content-Length": "61",
    "Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "Origin": "http://localhost:56116",
    "Referer": "http://localhost:56116/MonkeyGame.html",
    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0"
},
"json": null,
"origin": "24.21.224.8",
"url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

But when I host & run the exact same thing on itch.io, I get:

sending request...
sending to : http://httpbin.org/post
with fields hash=1337&name=test&version=404
Http POST complete!
Status=0
ResponseText=

So maybe y'all aren't changing our uploaded files at all, but are you somehow blocking outgoing links/http requests? A security thing, maybe?

Ah, didn't realize it would be on that timescale! Thanks. I'll keep playing with it! I love seeing things learn to move. :)

I'm having a hard time getting functional walking...? I turned up the speed a lot, but it never seemed to improve.

Ooooh! I'm also working on a creature/construction AI game, and was delighted to come across this. Here’s some unsolicited feedback. (I hope that’s OK!)

Things I particularly liked:

• Your UI is beautiful! Very clean, simple, and cohesive with your aesthetic. Also, I think your logo is super cute.
• Comprehensive help file. It is a lot of text, but easy to find what you’re looking for. A+ note at the end about setting expectations.
• Super simple to pick up, play with, see immediate effects. That’s something I’m still struggling with, so it’s good to see it done well.
• It’s fun to let run in the background and then check up on how it’s doing every now and again. That’s not a gameplay loop I see often.
• Watching a creature slowly develop a rhythm of walking is magical! Definitely an “it’s.... ALIIIIVE” sort of feeling.

Feedback:

• Some camera control during the evolve phase would be nice! I'd like to be able to zoom out/pan instead of it just snapping to random (?) creatures.
• Would it be possible to only show a subset of the creatures during the evolve phase? They're mostly a tangle of limbs, would be nice to only see 3-5 while it still calculates the generation using more.
• I would love to be able to see a visualization of the creature’s networks (maybe only the best one from the previous generation?) as they evolve. If only boxes and lines for weights.
• Sound effects?
• Ability to move joints after placing them?
• Bit of a tangent/stretch: I saw a museum exhibit where people constructed mars rovers on a number of tablets in front of a big screen, and then could “send them to mars” where they’d show up on that screen and be continuously racing against each other. Could be cool to see different creatures racing against each other, or something else to "do" with a creature after you think you've made a good one. (I know, that's likely out of scope...)

Hi Snout Flower,

Thanks a bunch for the excellent feedback!

> It is possible to just hit tab (when you're not mousing over anything) to switch between move/connect. But nobody seems to like that solution but me. Hm. OK, I'll play around with locking the two tools to left/right mouse buttons again and see if I can come up with something better.

> Have also added a fullscreen toggle to my to-do list & to track down that ctd. I haven't seen that unremovable neuron bug before, thanks for the heads up.

> I'll also try to add an "undo" so you don't have to re-connect lots of stuff on a mistake. I'd been planning one for a while but hadn't thought about it as an accessibility issue before. That bumps it up high on my priority list.