How is the development going? The release date on steam is close, will it be postponed again?
wyp020610
54
Posts
1
Topics
A member registered May 17, 2022 · View creator page →
Recent community posts
I think 4) is the lack of QoL. In my playthrough, the game become quite repetitive after 5 holdings. I reached 10 holdings and unlocked multi-holding, but it didn't help towards grinding projects.
I think this game needs some milestone to keep more finance on holding reset.
IMO keeping the HR/IT buymax and keep will be enough. The holding reset should still reset everything in these 2 layers, but the milestones should be kept. Keeping everything in these 2 layers is too OP though.
I played the game for a while (1d ingame), and reached 14k dps. I had quite some fun, and I also noticed some problems.
1. The storage limit mechanism doesn't interact with the rest of the game in a meaningful way.
I suggest simply removing it. Even without storage limits, there are still many places to spend the money.
2. The pacing is way too slow. It's so slow, that it breaks a major part of game balance.
At my current stage, it takes multiple hours to get anywhere, and it seems things will slow down even more as I progress.
3. Manual mining is fun, but the game strongly discourages manual mining. This is mainly caused by the slow pacing. With things taking multiple hours to get anywhere, manual mining is simply irrelevant.
The game has quite some original designs, but they all depend on manual mining.
4. The weapons mechanism is interesting, but it's also affected by the balancing problem.
From what I see in the game, manual mining overrides fire rate by a constant (about 3/s), and by fast tapping space it can fire even faster. This makes slow firing weapons suitable for manual mining, and machine guns actually fire slower with manual.
For T2, Shotgun is good for manual mining, and still deals some dps for auto. Machine gun is optimal for auto but deals little damage in manual.
Puncher is even more powerful on the paper. With green ammo, it has higher auto damage than machine gun. However, it costs a lot of power, which severely limits its use. Also, its AOE is hard to utilize in manual mining. Imagine a puncher bombing hard at a dense ore block, and all blocks below it is already empty. It's also more expensive than other T2 weapons, which means it's pretty impractical.
T3 introduces another choice: Charged shot. It has decent dmg for both auto and manual, and is the cheapest T3 weapon, but requires a pool of excess power to work properly. The same pool of excess power could be reused by multiple Chargers, so it's really powerful.
I really like the weapons balance of this game. However the slow pacing makes manual mining irrelevant, and most of this weapons balance goes out of the window.
5. Coolant seems useless. They are not worth their equipment slot.
T1 coolant only reduces heat by 10%, and I could simply just add another plating. T2 is 20% and faces the same problem. Maybe higher tier coolant could be useful.
I have 2 suggestions for this:
a. Make all tiers of coolant more powerful, and nerf plating to compensate.
b. Add a power cost to them. This will make coolant upgrade a more impactful choice.
6. Charged shot description says it depends on excess power in the rig.
However, the effect of excess power isn't continous. Increasing power is only useful if it crosses a certain threshold. These thresholds are currently hidden. I suggest the game should show these thresholds.
It took me a while to find out how this works. I was confused at first and only figured this out after jumping into a chasm and crashed to death.
You don't return to your base safely. Instead, you return your base when you die, either by running out of hp or fuel. This is the normal way to return, and has no negative consequences.
After dying and returning to base, you can craft there.
No jumping, but there is ladder for climbing. They cost resources so you shouldn't use them too much.
That's making things even worse. My post complained about things limiting idle play, and you said about things require idle play. Both type of games exist, but when these two things are in the same game, it makes the game really torn. If the game is designed to be played neither idle or active, then how do I play the game?
Is the game really designed to be played idle?
The game description says yes, but the game mechanisms say no.
I'm at level 132, and from what I see, this game strongly penalizes long idle periods by having storage limits. And even worse, in the horde, I have to constantly buy upgrade to be able to make any progress. The farm also requires very frequent planting.
This problem is especially significant in the horde. After ~Z36, I basically run out of bone upgrades to buy. The infinite upgrades alone are not enough to keep me going. So I can't get any further, and the only option is to prestige. This means a long run isn't much better than a short run.
In a short run, I can reach Z38 in 40 minutes, earning ~120 soul. If I keep pushing, I can get to Z41 in half a day, but the reward is only ~180 soul. This is nowhere near enough to make long runs viable, and the new unlocked upgrade is also unaffordable.
From what I see, the only way out of this game design disaster is automation. However the only automation are mining autoprogress and auto horde boss. Not even autobuy upgrades. And many mechanisms are designed in a way that is very difficult to implement automation.
I suggest the game should show the price increment for each upgrade. This allows for better planning of prestige upgrades and gem upgrades.
For the gem mechanism, I think it should be immediately useful when unlocked. The game can give player some gems on unlocking it, and also give gems as achievement rewards. These should only give red and purple (and maybe green) but never blue gems.
I think 150 red gems at start should be enough, it allows the player to choose one of the upgrades.
I downloaded it manually, and played for a while. I encountered another bug.
After buying 3 funny upgrades, the Thing button is broken. It says 'you get <null> things per click', and if I click it my things are broken. I had to reload because of this.
The 1000 cyyan upgrade is broken because it is based on manually clicking.
I still managed to get to the end, it seems gain from clicking is irrelevant anyways.
Yes, I pressed that reset button after I found out I wasted too much fuel with the combustion engine.
If you decide to keep those obsolete techs in the tech tree, I think you can add the ability to hide certain techs. This prevents too many obsolete techs from cluttering.
If the combustion engine is kept, I think it needs a redesign: Since the fuel efficiency is all what matters, you can increase its base efficiency a lot, but make it not scale proportionally to number of engines. This makes it useful at start, and fusion is still a big improvement.
Alternatively, the real time research speed could be based on proper velocity, so increasing velocity early is still helpful, allowing an early engine to exist.
Another note: When fusion is unlocked, it's relatively easy to research the efficiency curve to high levels. This basically makes that efficiency irrelevant because it's near 100% all the time. This is even more true for antimatter engines. So I think the whole efficiency mechanism should be removed for the fusion and antimatter, and leave it exclusively to combustion engines.
I have reached current endgame, with 600k lorentz factor and lvl 93 antimatter engine mass & auto research. I have ~600k antimatter engines.
I have 103684m2 of fuel net, and L41 antimatter engine consumption. Fuel gain scales really fast with speed, and with any more net I will start gaining fuel faster than I can use them. I will eventually get too much fuel that weigh my ship down.
Looks like fuel net has 'air resistance', so the terminal speed depends on how effcient you use the fuel. Strangely, the fuel effciency is boosted by the number of engines.
3 suggestions:
1. Combustion engines are useless. I would better skip them, because they can't gain any meaningful speed to get lorentz factor significantly above 1. The game only starts when I get to fusion.
From lore perspective, combustion engines are useless if you want to get anywhere near c.
I think you should directly remove combustion engine tech, and start the player with fusion, and maybe add 'exotic' after antimatter.
2. I think fuel should have a limit, so fuel doesn't weigh the ship down.
3. I think it would be interesting to add some way to gain more building materials.
THE REST OF THE WORLD (gamejam) comments · Replied to bogusbishop in THE REST OF THE WORLD (gamejam) comments
Upcoming Steam release and name change comments · Posted in Upcoming Steam release and name change comments
Very interesting game. I've reached my first prestige, and it seems to become much more grindy from this point.
I have encountered one problem:
Prestige resets offline time. I have played many games with offline time mechanisms, and none of them reset offline time on a prestige.
I think offline time is a savefile layer thing, so only hard reset should reset it.
Interesting concept, but I don't see the relation between collatz conjecture and incremental mechanisms.
Currently, the only incremental mechanism in the game that makes use of the conjecture, is how many steps each number will take to go back to 1. This determines how many producer ticks can be made per verifier tick. This is just 'idle clockwork', not 'collatz clockwork'.
I have some ideas for improvement:
1. Concept:
This is just a game, and players' computers are nowhere near enough to find nontrivial results to collatz conjecture.
Even if a number diverges, the player's computer has no way to determine it's actually a counterexample. This process can't prove the conjecture either.
Limiting the money gain by the player's computer power will also severely limit the incremental growth of the game, and therefore limiting game design.
So you can forget about proving the lower bound, and instead make use of the sequence produced from the numbers. This will allow for more interesting incremental mechanisms, and stays close to the conjecture.
2. 'Level' skips:
Instead of trying to check every number to 1, you can instead skip some numbers that will trivially reduce to some previously checked numbers, like even numbers.
3. Sequence based mechanisms:
It's very simple to design, like 'multiply money gained based on current sequence length', or even 'multiply money by log of highest number reached in the current sequence'. These are much more interesting and also more connected to the conjecture.
These upgrades will benefit from finding a longer sequence that oscillates wildly before eventually converges (or maybe doesn't converge within the available steps). The level skip could completely discard the current verification scheme, and instead focus on searching numbers that leads to such interesting sequences.
I've played a new save to have a look at the lumberjack quest and the church shop, which I have missed before.
The lumberjack quest unlocks a new buff potion, and it seems that this potion can also be sold for money. 5 gold each.
I think this potion itself has some limited use, as an early game replacement of rift potion (for escaping) and time freeze potion (for other actions).
This potion accelerates player action, which is useful for dangerous situations. However it costs HP, so it can also cause problems. I think in early game this can be used to solve some farm dungeons that are otherwise difficult. It won't have much use in late game.
Selling this for money is only viable in mid-game, when you have a steady supply of blood from the scarlet flask, and you still go to tier 1 forest for mandrake.
In early game I don't have much spare sanguine essence for this. In late game I don't often go to tier 1 zones, and tier 2 zones don't provide enough something fey for crafting this. There is also no need for so much money in late game either.
About the church shop, it sells ingredients for something holy, but I don't need much of it either. It is indeed an early-mid game shop, just like the dev log said.
I've played this game again in v2.1. It's so addicting, I've been playing it for 3 days. I've reached 2 years, solved all the areas, and unlocked all the potions except the lumberjack one. It seems I have missed the lumberjack quest, and now I can only buy wood from him.
It seems I have also missed the shop of the lonely church.
As of now I have 3k something dead and 6k fuel, and ~900 money. I wonder whether there will be a late game Richardo shop upgrade, as I have nowhere to spend this money now.
I have encountered a bug. It caused a crash. Reloading the game and repeating the steps caused the game to crash again.
I was exploring the fort area, in depth 2. I was trying to kill the wyrm. My tactic is, first use rot potion, then retreat and wait until it has only 1 hp, then go back and use a fireball.
The wyrm is usually in a special room with only 1 exit. This crash happens when the only exit is blocked by pits. I threw a rot potion from the other side of the pit, and retreated. About 4 turns later the game froze, and I have to kill the process by the taskmanager.
This tactic would work perfectly without the pit. Eventually I killed the wyrm with a different tactic, and moved on. I guess there is some problem with the wyrm's pathfinding logic.
I have some thoughts about the new items and changes:
1. The skeleton key is super powerful. It trivializes the traps in the dungeon, as they can now be lockpicked for no cost.
2. The bestiary is also very powerful. It allows the player to make effective tactics without trial and error of death.
3. The weather system caused something luminiscent to be less abundant, but there's still enough for me. This is mainly because the rains cause the fireflies to hide.
The weather visual effect is a bit too heavy, and it causes some difficulty for me to see the path. But I don't want to turn it off completely, maybe there should be an option to reduce weather visual effect.
4. I can't find a use for the black fire. It deals only 15~20 dmg, and is not enough for the stronger enemies. It is also too expensive for killing weak enemies. I tried it in a forest and it didn't spread well. It also has severe issue of potential backfire.
I think this potion is designed against swarm enemies but there is no such enemies in the game for now.
5. The scarlet flask makes something sanguine quite abundant. It's now a little too abundant, as this component is only used in healing and curing potions.
6. The leatherskin potion seems powerful, but isn't actually that powerful, since not many enemies deal physical damage.
7. The eelskin potion seems to be designed against crimson ivy. It could probably be helpful in later combats like crystal mansion, and it's quite cheap. I didn't use it though, because I could already kill the enemies quickly enough, and I prefer to avoid the damage completely.
8. The salamander boots make burning down forests easier. Instead of finding somewhere safe from fire, I'm now immune to flames.
9. The sparkling gloves are quite powerful, it can kill enemies easily in wet environments, and it's quite powerful in crystal mansion, saving a lot of shockwave potions. I think both of this is by design.
10. The efficient burner seems helpful, it saves a lot of fuel in distilling, and saves a little fuel in brewing.
Strangely, it halves the fuel cost of ember potion, but some of the fuel is supposed to be a part of the potion, instead of used in brewing. Maybe the effcient burner makes fuel in the potion also burn more efficiently?
Some previous problems:
1. The snake problem is solved. The snakes are a lot less aggressive now. The bestiary also explains why they are sometimes aggressive.
2. Umbral essence seems to be not that scarce now. I think the coffee thing is added in this version, and it provides some umbral essence. This allows me to use some frost potions, though it's still not very useful. I think frost potion can solve crimson ivy, but we have eelskin now.
3. The loot overlay now has its own UI component, together with a new creature overlay. Nice job done.
This update has also caused a new problem: Frequent switching of equipments.
In the previous version, I only have 2 equipments, and I use the sinister gloves most of time. There isn't much switching between them. In this version, I have 3 equipments, and I often need to switch between the sinister glove and the sparkling glove.
I think some equipment effects should be merged. As I can switch to the basic gloves at anytime with no time cost, its effect should be merged into all of the more advanced gloves. The same with boots, though verdant boots might have some adverse effects, so making it permanent is not good.
I think this could be solved be adding a new mechanism: Equipment enchantment. When you unlock more advanced equipments, some lower tier equipments can be turned into enchantment. Enchantment can be equipped with other equipments at the same time, but doesn't stack with its original equipment.
Finally the game is out!
Now we have a free and paid version. Unfortunately, I don't have access to itch's payment tools, so I can't get the paid version now. I have the money, it's just the payment tools.
So I decide to play the free version for a while, and buy this game later, and then transfer my save file to the paid version. Is the save file compatible between the two versions?
A high fixed cost for permanent stat increase might be difficult to balance. I have a better idea: not make the potion cost high, but as you drink more of the same potion, the effect of each additional potion will get lower.
I think a square root or cube root diminishing return is good enough. That means the total effect scales with the square (cube) root of the amount of potions drunk. For certain special stats that have a large influence, you can use logarithm.
For players that want to grind, they can get relatively high stats, but not too high that would break the game. (A mage with 100 melee attack is certainly broken.) And for players that don't want to grind, they can still benefit from the potion.
I've reincarnated twice, and I have some suggestions:
I'm playing v1.10 as the ingame menu shows.
1. Burger is broken, even when you have no raw naterials, you can drag raw material to the cooking tray, and make burgers out of thin air.
Ice city doesn't have this exploit.
This exploit allows you to get lots of cash very quickly, until late game.
In late game, burgers are irrelevant because they require constant attention, and they don't generate that much income compared to late game auto smelting. Even with this exploit.
I have unlocked ice city, but haven't used it, because its income generation is already irrevelant when I have access to it, and its level bonus is reset on reincarnation.
2. Reincarnation should do something to burger (and ice city) exp gain.
Currently reincarnation resets burger exp, and none of the reincarnation upgrades allows faster burger exp gain.
As burger is a side minigame, it's entirely reasonable for reincarnation to not reset its exp and level.
It's also possible to have reincarnation upgrades that allow you to get more burger exp, and maybe an upgrade for keeping burger level, or starting reincarnation with a few levels.
3. This game is tagged incremental. Reincarnation is a prestige mechanism, so it should help with incrementing. It should help towards digging deeper, and also benefit from digging deeper.
Currently, you can only earn at most 1 coin per dig, no matter how deep you go. With a specfic upgrade it becomes 2 coins per dig, but it still doesnt benefit much from going deep.
I think the drill coin gain should be revamped, like this:
Instead of having coins limited to a fixed amount per day, their spawn is limited by depth.
Initially they start spawning at 5km, and when you mine one, they move to 6 km. For every coin you mine, their spawn depth is 1km deeper. They are still in blocks like they currently are, just change their limit.
For example, the coin spawn is initially at 5km. In a day, you drill to 50km depth, and collected 20 coins on the way. After that, the coin spawn is at 25km, and you need to drill to at least 25km to collect more.
With this change in place, you actually need to go deeper to collect more coins, and when you can't go deeper, you need to reincarnate.
Considering there are multiple drilling locations, coins collected should be counted separately for each location, and the depth requirement is increased separately. Some locations are harder to dig, so they could have a lower 'depth increment per poin'.
This makes unlocking different locations truly powerful, and instead of unlocking all the locations at once, some more valuable locations should be locked behind upgrades.
The extra coin from earned money might also need some change. It favors short run too much.
4. Reincarnation should give some more useful boosts, not just fuel capacity.
High grade fuel tanks can recharge themselves over time, so fuel capacity won't help much. On the other hand, inventory space is scarce late game, because ores are really dense in deep areas. Even 3 fully upgraded virtual hull can't handle them.
5. Reincarnation should unlock new sets for late game, not just early-mid game.
Currently, reincarnation unlocks 4 sets, 2 for early game, and 2 for mid game. For late game, virtual set is better than gem set, in all aspects (except price).
It would be super cool to have a super late game set unlocked from reincarnation, maybe technomancer set?
It seems there are 3 sets unlockable from museum. Unfortunately, museum is reset on reincarnation, so they are useless. There should be an upgrade to keep museum intact on reincarnation.
It's strange there are no unlockable misc parts, there should be some, unlocked either by research or reincarnation.
6. Previews, mainly for 2 things:
6-1. Reincarnation tree, I really need to have a look at the reincarnation tree to know the cost of the next big upgrade, but without reincarnating. Currently this needs to be done with save exports and imports.
6-2. Drill parts stats, I need to know when I could upgrade and replace my drill parts.
How do I find water? I can't find any water in the game, and the water recipe tells me that I need water to make more.
Edit: I've generated another world and it has water. Seems it's the map generator being unfriendly and not giving me any water. I think this needs to be fixed by forcing mapgen to generate some water near the starting point.