[Original Game] Microbes!

[_wb_]

Oh I see now what you mean. You want me to make it so that as long as Y is held, every dpad move also changes the tile at the new position? Good idea, I'll implement that.

 

[b_o_b]

Oh I see now what you mean. You want me to make it so that as long as Y is held, every dpad move also changes the tile at the new position? Good idea, I'll implement that.

Exactly To make it even faster you could make it so that the tile changes and will be added automatically in direction -x or -y as long as you press the Y button and the d-pad. 

 

[b_o_b]

Creating new maps is quite easy and can be done fast. I created 10 maps today. 

The hard part is tweaking the maps so that they are enjoyable i.e not too easy and not impossible on 'normal'. 

The timing I requested for releasing the enemies is already built in so nothing stopping me from creating a full featured level pack. Not sure how good the pack will be and if it will ever be good enough to include in the release though. 

Nice gesture of you to want to share the price money, but I think you more than deserve all of it. I would rather like to see a pack contribution as a donation to the project (if you like the maps) 

How much time do I have to send the maps to you before the final release? 

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Hope to see a Lost Temple map ^^.

 

[_wb_]

Oh I see now what you mean. You want me to make it so that as long as Y is held, every dpad move also changes the tile at the new position? Good idea, I'll implement that.

Exactly To make it even faster you could make it so that the tile changes and will be added automatically in direction -x or -y as long as you press the Y button and the d-pad. 

Now I don't understand anymore.

Creating new maps is quite easy and can be done fast. I created 10 maps today. 

The hard part is tweaking the maps so that they are enjoyable i.e not too easy and not impossible on 'normal'. 

The timing I requested for releasing the enemies is already built in so nothing stopping me from creating a full featured level pack. Not sure how good the pack will be and if it will ever be good enough to include in the release though. 

Nice gesture of you to want to share the price money, but I think you more than deserve all of it. I would rather like to see a pack contribution as a donation to the project (if you like the maps) 

How much time do I have to send the maps to you before the final release? 

If you send me the maps by the end of the month it should be fine (I need some time to check them out and add them to the game, so earlier is better, but there's no rush). You can tweak them later, as long as I have the final version a few days before the compo deadline.

 

[b_o_b]

Oh I see now what you mean. You want me to make it so that as long as Y is held, every dpad move also changes the tile at the new position? Good idea, I'll implement that.

Exactly To make it even faster you could make it so that the tile changes and will be added automatically in direction -x or -y as long as you press the Y button and the d-pad. 

Now I don't understand anymore.

Press Button => add tile in direction X - add tile in direction X - add tile in direction X - Release button 

This result is having 3 tiles by pressing the build button.

The same would be helpful for regular movements in the editor too. I know the analog nub can also be used, but the dpad seems more convenient.  

Will try to send one pack of 10 maps by the end of this month. Will be build with the editor in the latest version and will have the default tile set. 

 

[_wb_]

I still don't understand.

This is how I'm going to make it:

- Press Y (and release it): change currently selected tile to the tile type you last selected (with )  -> this is already there


- Press and hold Y: currently selected tile changes, and if you move the cursor (using dpad or nub) before you release Y, any tile on your path also changes


 


Is this what you meant? With this new behavior, it becomes much easier to draw a line of similar tiles.


 


I'm looking forward to your maps!

 

[b_o_b]

It is now official: I completely suck at explaining.. 

The above behavior is great and will be very helpful, but it was not exactly what I meant (I think). I thought about making the movement also automatic. Like pacman, only he doesn't eat dots he adds tiles  

 

[dummi]

Today I realized that it is important to build the right type of cell for each type of invader . This gives the game a cool tactic touch, plus the cool upgrade options. Make it through the tutorial and now playing the Microbes-Levels.

What I like is the use of the "Button-Icons", which can be found in PNDManager. Makes it easy to learn controls.

What I don't like, is the background of the credits screen. The shacking Microbes-logo gives me headache.

But alltogether it is really fun.

 

[_wb_]

Haha, good to know someone actually checked the credits screen

I'll reduce the shaking

@ b_o_b: wouldn't pacman-style repeated building behavior be annoying? When would the auto-move stop? When you hit the border of the map, or when you encounter a different type of tile than the ones you have been overwriting before? Would the auto-move start as soon as you press the dpad button and keep going forever, or would it stop when you release the dpad button?

OK, I gave it some thought, and now my interpretation of what you might want (at least that's what makes most sense to me) would be auto-repeat dpad movement as long as you hold the dpad direction (this is basically how the left nub already behaves). I could implement that, actually Christophe.Krn also suggested this to me. Would it be necessary to make the repeat speed (and the time before auto-repeat kicks in) configurable or can I just pick values that seem sensible to me?

 

[b_o_b]

OK, I gave it some thought, and now my interpretation of what you might want (at least that's what makes most sense to me) would be auto-repeat dpad movement as long as you hold the dpad direction (this is basically how the left nub already behaves). I could implement that, actually Christophe.Krn also suggested this to me. Would it be necessary to make the repeat speed (and the time before auto-repeat kicks in) configurable or can I just pick values that seem sensible to me?

Yep that was my request. I am glad that made most sense and I am not the only one requesting this  

Repeat speed configurable doesn't seem necessary, but of course nice to have. 

I was just wondering, do you still like to have feature requests? I assume you need some time to finalize, balance and polish the game and at some time you will not like to add new stuff and because of that miss the 'deadline'. 

 

[_wb_]

Feature requests and other suggestions are always nice, but of course if I consider something too much work or too likely to break things, I'll probably postpone it until after the compo deadline (or even not implement it at all, I'm doing this for fun after all).

The dpad repeat has been added, with a fixed speed though (I don't feel like making the options menu any more complicated).

 

[b_o_b]

Feature requests and other suggestions are always nice, but of course if I consider something too much work or too likely to break things, I'll probably postpone it until after the compo deadline (or even not implement it at all, I'm doing this for fun after all).

The dpad repeat has been added, with a fixed speed though (I don't feel like making the options menu any more complicated).

Sure, that is why I asked. The game is tons of fun and if you would stop coding now I would gladly recommend it. So feel very free to ignore any suggestion. 

Map creating is pretty fun and I am also enjoying playing my own maps. I have created very basic maps. Not as fancy, symmetrical and customized as those already included but hopefully fun enough.   

First suggestion: 

A new alien intruder that is totally configurable in the editor and can be different in any map and has fixed settings. So all parameters strength, speed, attacking ability, can be tweaked. You will need to encounter the attack once to know what you are facing and need to adjust your strategy accordingly. 

Second  suggestion:

Be able to select what infected area the waves come from in the editor. So, if you have 4 waves, be able to select 1 wave coming from infected area 1 and the other 3 from infected area 2. This is now automatically being handled by the algorithm (as far as I know)

One comment on balance: Not sure, but it seems like the Basophils are too powerful currently and makes them a 'fix all' solution (at least on the maps I am now creating...). Maybe make them less powerful or damage the near microbes more?  

Dpad repeat is nice, thanks for including.  

 

[sswam]

So what will be new in the compo version?

• Highscores! no global highscores

• Replays
  

Sounds good, microbes is a great game.

I reckon replays is the way to make it hard to cheat - the program can submit a replay with the score.  Makes the high score table more interesting too!  The game could cache scores and replays for later upload if there's no internet connection.  Gotta make you work for your prize!!  Haha

 

[dummi]

what I also like is the "soundtrack". Okay it's only one track and it is very calm. But i like it. Dupdidu

 

[_wb_]

First suggestion: 

A new alien intruder that is totally configurable in the editor and can be different in any map and has fixed settings. So all parameters strength, speed, attacking ability, can be tweaked. You will need to encounter the attack once to know what you are facing and need to adjust your strategy accordingly. 

Second  suggestion:

Be able to select what infected area the waves come from in the editor. So, if you have 4 waves, be able to select 1 wave coming from infected area 1 and the other 3 from infected area 2. This is now automatically being handled by the algorithm (as far as I know)

One comment on balance: Not sure, but it seems like the Basophils are too powerful currently and makes them a 'fix all' solution (at least on the maps I am now creating...). Maybe make them less powerful or damage the near microbes more? 

I could make an enemy editor like that, but it's quite a lot of work. Each level has a pointer to a file containing enemy descriptions (data/enemies.dat), so if you want to, you can make a copy of that file (mount the PND without running it to extract the file), customize it, and use that one instead. The enemy description file contains all relevant parameters, and it's just a simple text file so it's easy enough to modify (well, not as easy as an in-game editor would be, but still). The only thing you cannot customize in this way is how the enemy is drawn (and its attacks) - but you can use custom 32x32 PNGs instead of the built-in drawing routines. See e.g. the Pandora level pack for an example.

Selecting where the waves come from wouldn't be that hard to add - e.g. for each wave you can select a subset of the infected areas that will be used for that wave, plus an option to make it predictable or not (e.g. if you select areas 1+2+3 as a source and set it to predictable, then the microbes of that wave appear at area 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,...; if you set it to unpredictable they could e.g. appear at area 3,1,3,2,2,1,3,2,3,1,1). The current algorithm makes wave 1 come from infected area 1 (they are numbered top to bottom, left to right, just like reading a text), wave 2 from area 2, ..., wave n from area n, wave n+1 from areas 1+2 (alternating predictably), wave n+2 from areas 1+2+3, ..., wave 2n from all areas (still alternating predictably), and from then on they come from all areas in an unpredictable semi-random way. I thought it would be easier to just hardcode that instead of having to come up with a manual mapping from enemies to infection areas for each level, but I can see why it could be useful to have more control over this.

So what will be new in the compo version?

• Highscores! no global highscores

• Replays
  

Sounds good, microbes is a great game.

I reckon replays is the way to make it hard to cheat - the program can submit a replay with the score.  Makes the high score table more interesting too!  The game could cache scores and replays for later upload if there's no internet connection.  Gotta make you work for your prize!!  Haha

Yes, this could be done in theory (although it would still be trivial to cheat by showing microbe paths and setting build-while-paused to true, and then later modify the replay file to make it look like those features were disabled. Or play at a lower FPS. etc.).

This will certainly not be feature in the compo release of microbes though

what I also like is the "soundtrack". Okay it's only one track and it is very calm. But i like it. Dupdidu

The menu has only one background music track, but while playing the game there are different tracks (16 or so at the moment). I'm glad somebody likes it - I played that music myself

 

[b_o_b]

I could make an enemy editor like that, but it's quite a lot of work. Each level has a pointer to a file containing enemy descriptions (data/enemies.dat), so if you want to, you can make a copy of that file (mount the PND without running it to extract the file), customize it, and use that one instead. The enemy description file contains all relevant parameters, and it's just a simple text file so it's easy enough to modify (well, not as easy as an in-game editor would be, but still). The only thing you cannot customize in this way is how the enemy is drawn (and its attacks) - but you can use custom 32x32 PNGs instead of the built-in drawing routines. See e.g. the Pandora level pack for an example.

Thanks for explaining and not a problem to not include it. Good to know it is possible, I will not use it for my current levels though. 

Selecting where the waves come from wouldn't be that hard to add - e.g. for each wave you can select a subset of the infected areas that will be used for that wave, plus an option to make it predictable or not (e.g. if you select areas 1+2+3 as a source and set it to predictable, then the microbes of that wave appear at area 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,...; if you set it to unpredictable they could e.g. appear at area 3,1,3,2,2,1,3,2,3,1,1). The current algorithm makes wave 1 come from infected area 1 (they are numbered top to bottom, left to right, just like reading a text), wave 2 from area 2, ..., wave n from area n, wave n+1 from areas 1+2 (alternating predictably), wave n+2 from areas 1+2+3, ..., wave 2n from all areas (still alternating predictably), and from then on they come from all areas in an unpredictable semi-random way. I thought it would be easier to just hardcode that instead of having to come up with a manual mapping from enemies to infection areas for each level, but I can see why it could be useful to have more control over this.

If it is not too much work I think that would be a nice addition to have and will make some other strategic approaches possible. I do like the current logic though and make it manual will indeed make creating a map a bit more work. Maybe having the option to select - predictable - unpredictable (totally random) and current logic?  

BTW did you already make enough progress to share a beta with more or less final balance? If balance deviates a lot from latest build that might impact the levels already created. 

 

[_wb_]

I'll probably upload another snapshot tomorrow.

 

[dummi]

I'll probably upload another snapshot tomorrow.

I'm excited

Something else: I had several "crashs" in Level 3 of the microbes level pack. But it seems not to be a real crash Because the games said "Bye bye" with a tray message, same as if you close it via exit. I play and suddenly the game closes to the desktop and the "bye, bye"-Message appears.

Bye the way, i like the "Bye, bye"-Message. The robotic voice is also very cool.

Is it possible to build tutorial levels with explanations? So that it is possible to introduce enemies and tower types with some text and suggest to build a specific tower for an upcoming enemies.

And then is there one tower, who only fires oine time and "eat" the microbe and stops to fire. I think the discription was "Short range microbe killer". It seems like the microbe stucks inside the tower. Can i reset it or how I use this tower correctly. I don't have the name of the tower in mind, but i hope you which I mean.

 

[_wb_]

The tray message appears even if the game crashed badly. Could you please send me the /tmp/pndrun_microbes.out if it crashes again? Is there a way to reliably reproduce the crash?

The tower you are talking about is a special kind of tower. It's a tower that specializes to one specific type of microbes. Initially it will fire at anything, but once it has killed something, it "eats" it and from then on only attacks that type of microbe. This behavior is inspired by the actual biology of our adaptive immune system. Another special thing about these towers is that they become better as they kill more microbes. So this is certainly not a general-purpose unit, but it can become more powerful than anything else (though only against one specific type of enemy) because of the learning bonus it gets from each kill. Obviously it is very important to watch out what its first kill is going to be, because after the first kill, it stays committed to that type of microbe, and there's no way to reset that except by destroying and rebuilding the unit.

Here is a new dev snapshot:

http://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~jon.sneyers/microbes1.0rc4.pnd

(the levels are now in directories with a different name than before (descriptive names instead of numbers), if you want your self-made levels back you have to move them from appdata/microbes/levels/3/* to appdata/microbes/levels/Self_made/)