Yooo your trailer rules. Is the game's soundtrack available anywhere?

:) thanks bb

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.

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!

Having this in the background is making my morning zoom meetings so much more atmospheric & calming. Thank you!

Yo this game rules. It's already become the primary mainstay in my house for couch co-op wackiness. Incredible work.

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.

https://wick.itch.io/crescent-loom

The CreateDir fix and handling bundling the dlls is much appreciated, thanks for putting this together! :)

Oh, that's a good idea! Yeah, I'll add giving more back-room to the todo list.

Mysteries ^_^

Cuuute, really nice vibes to be sending out into the world. I played this with a friend laying next to an open window breathing the morning air and it was just really really nice.

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. :)

I eventually just uploaded under a new build name and started embedding that. So feel free to disregard if you think this was a weird hiccup or something.

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.

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?

Hello — I'm developing a game that is both downloadable (paid) and can be played in-browser (free). The embedded in-browser build has stopped updating; on both my demo site and in the itch.io embed preview, it is stuck on v0.7.9 even though if I download itch's copy and run it locally it's on v0.7.10.

Any thoughts as to how I can get the current upload to start being the one that gets embedded again? It's been about six hours & previously it's shown up as soon as the build goes live.

Thank you! — Olive

Game: Crescent Loom ID: 75594

Upload: crescent-loom-html5-embed.zip

Upload Version, current: 13

Upload Version in the embed: 11 (I think)

Thanks. :) Working on quality of life improvements in the code feels like a re-commitment to the project.

Oh man! Excited to see this here! I've played it on steam, and it's great! Unapologetically equal parts science and apocalypse.

Thanks for the report, I think I know what's going on that causes the lock & am working on it. The crackling noises are new, though. 🤔

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!

Hahaha I run on external validation so I appreciate it! You've made my morning. ^_^

Ah! Excellent, I think I know what's happening — I changed the way that things attach to rocks, and there must be a creature loaded in seewee bay that uses the old way. Thanks for the report.

Haha no it's not you it's me ;) I've made progress, at least. I'd be interested to hear if it helps in your case.

THICC THIGH MAN 😍

I made a BOO

Cuuuuute, I love it. <3

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

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! 🤞

I love voronoi diagrams! Toggling it on seems to also make the buildings smaller / more dense, especially on the larger maps. But they look great!

Ah, I see, more of an AI evolution-assistant... not a bad idea, but I think it's outside of my ability to pull off. 😅

Amazing art! Mind if I share this on CL's twitter?

I'm glad you like the game! Thanks for spending so much time playing & putting it through its paces.

I try very hard to not have to clear out the creature servers (it's only happened twice over the last four years) but sometimes there's no avoiding it. Best I can do is to post a warning to the wicklog before it happens

Adding computer-led evolution has been suggested before but is definitely out-of-scope. I'm more interested in seeing what humans build than what computers build, and the game is already dangerously close to being a fancy fishbowl screensaver. Removing the creature-building wouldn't leave people with much to do, would it? :p

I agree that having a more zoomed-out view of seeing creatures interact (maybe in some kind of map editor?) would be a lot of fun. Same for race & battle modes. Someday, someday...

🌺

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.

https://beebom.com/how-enable-function-keys-chromebook/

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.

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. :)

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. 😅

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.

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?

Aww, that was a lot of fun! I don't usually get drawn into games like this, but it hit a great balance of simplicity and challenge. Good work!

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.