[Original Game] Microbes!

[comradekingu]

Im on the default one, which is just too easy.

How to replicate, select default difficulty setting, place promegakarocyte, then place myelocyte, watch as the prome gets attacked. Then press shoulder button on the myelocyte to extend its range, it will now stop attacking your own units.  Happens on level 4 and anything later when you have those units.

 

[_wb_]

Ah, thanks for the report. This is because when extending the range, all damage and healing gets divided by two. Since the B. myelocyte only does 1 negative healing per frame, and 1/2 gets rounded down to 0, it does no more damage. I'll fix this. Thanks for finding out!

 

[mcobit]

I like this game and I think this version has some really good improvements over the one I played several months ago.


Found one additional bug though:


In the survival tutorial mission, I saved the replay and tried to play it back. It didn't play correctly though as the towers were all set differently from what I really did.

 

[_wb_]

Argh, I hate those replay bugs! Since they are based on recording input (not states), you kind of get a "butterfly effect" rather easily. Can you reproduce the bug? I mean, do you know what to do to make the replay go wrong?

 

[mcobit]

Not really, but have no time to try hard enough right now I guess

One thing I could Imagine though is, that I changed my controlconfig before and got a lot of "sorry" during that round. Maybe the sound output is a problem?

 

[_wb_]

I think I know what the problem is. You're using user-configured keyboard shortcuts, right? Those were added after I implemented the replays, and it introduced a bug in the replays: if you change the shortcuts, the replay is using the new ones instead of the ones that were configured when you actually started playing that level. And of course that means you're often using invalid shortcuts or trying to assign shortcuts that are already assigned etc. That's the "sorry" you keep hearing.

I'll fix this by including the original shortcut bindings in the replay file. There is no way to fix existing replay files, so those will be broken unless you manage to configure the shortcuts exactly like they were at the beginning of the replay. But at least new replay files will not have this issue any more. I'll also make sure that old replay files can still be loaded and will still work if they don't use the shortcuts.

Thanks for the bug report!

Im on the default one, which is just too easy.

The default difficulty is "Easy", which is indeed quite easy

Do you think I need to make "Easy" a bit harder, change the default difficulty to "Normal", or just keep it like it is?

 

[_wb_]

I've managed to break the game. I'm stuck in the briefing screen. I pressed Esc, in order to go back to the menu; and now I can't go anywhere. I can still thumb through all 9 pages, but pressing {B} won't take me into the game. Hitting Start or Select didn't do anything either


It's a good TD game, nice work

Can you reproduce this? Any idea how you got there? You can always press the Pandora button to minimize the game so you can kill it if it screws up like that. Shouldn't happen though, so I would very much like to fix this bug. Only I can't find any way to reproduce this behavior...

 

[b_o_b]

change the default difficulty to "Normal"

I always play games on settings normal. I guess people expect default to be normal and not easy. I have playtested all my levels on normal too. So maybe change the difficulty to "Normal" is the best option. On the other hand, what is the problem? If you think it is too easy just change the settings. Don't think there will be anyone complaining that difficulty "Insane" is too easy

 

[_wb_]

The "default" is only the setting you get if you didn't ever change it. As soon as you change it, it remembers the setting. My reasoning was to make "easy" the setting you get when you first start the game because if you're a new player who never played the game before, it may be better to start with "easy" before trying anything harder. Once you know how to play, you can switch to "Normal" or harder, depending on how big of a challenge you want.

My aim is to make sure that each level is guaranteed to be doable (maybe after a few tries) at "Hard" - I haven't been able to check this for each and every level yet, but that's the aim. In "Very hard" and "Insane" I hope that it is possible to complete all levels, but I'm certainly not at all sure that is actually the case. If you're an advanced player, I would very much appreciate it if you can tell me which levels can be done at those difficulty settings and which are (in your opinion) not possible.

The setting "Easy" is meant for newbie players, and the settings "Very Easy" and "Trivial" are meant for when you are stuck somewhere and want to "skip" a level, or for young children or elderly people for whom the normal difficulty settings would be too hard. For normal players, as soon as you know how to play, the difficulties "Normal" and "Hard" are supposed to be most relevant.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

One common default with many levels is that they are very easy until the last wave that destroys all.

 

[mcobit]

I did not use any custom keyboardshortcuts.


There has to be some different problem. With the controlstyle I meant that I switched to buildconfirmation.

 

[pmprog]

I've managed to break the game. I'm stuck in the briefing screen. I pressed Esc, in order to go back to the menu; and now I can't go anywhere. I can still thumb through all 9 pages, but pressing {B} won't take me into the game. Hitting Start or Select didn't do anything either


It's a good TD game, nice work

Can you reproduce this? Any idea how you got there? You can always press the Pandora button to minimize the game so you can kill it if it screws up like that. Shouldn't happen though, so I would very much like to fix this bug. Only I can't find any way to reproduce this behavior...

Not had chance to play this again since, next time I boot it up, I'll see if I can find out how I did it

 

[b_o_b]

One common default with many levels is that they are very easy until the last wave that destroys all.

Hmm.. not the way I remember the first few levels. There are quite some different kind of approaches possible. 

 

[sswam]

One common default with many levels is that they are very easy until the last wave that destroys all.

 If you like a challenge, try Sean's level 4 "Poison Eject" on difficulty Insane.  This was possible to beat, on a previous version of Microbes, and I guess it still is.  Work up to it from "Hard".  I found this level very, very challenging, and so it's one of my favourite levels. Ideally every level should be just barely possible to beat on Insane, and this one fits the bill.

You have to cause the Microbes to go through as much poison as possible, keep your units alive, keep building extra units so you can survive the final waves, etc.  It's not easy at the start, and not easy at the end.  Much strategy and experimenting was needed to beat it.

You might need to edit your microbes save file to allow access to that level, if it's not enabled for you yet. If you find that microbes crashes out when starting, that's another time to edit your microbes save file! Keep a backup of this file so you can see what might have gone wrong with it.

Also, if you try some of Sean's later levels, I shuffled the epidemics randomly, so these will be hard right away at the beginning! You won't have to wait until the end for some major trouble! These levels won't be beatable on Insane difficulty, yet; and I'm not sure if that shuffling was a good idea.... we'll see.

_wb_ I reckon it would be good if microbes will set the current level back to 1/1 if it notices it's crashing at startup.  Sometimes a broken user level can make the whole game unplayable, it tries to load the broken level at startup and crashes right away.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Well, for now i played only in easy mode ^^.

 

[sswam]

Well, for now i played only in easy mode ^^.

Plays in easy mode ... complains it's too easy ...

Seems legit.

 

[_wb_]

One common default with many levels is that they are very easy until the last wave that destroys all.

The waves do get increasingly hard, because the rate of microbe spawning goes up and the HP of the microbes too. So yes, usually the last few waves are the ones that are the hardest to survive. If you play at harder difficulty settings, you'll notice that surviving the earlier waves can be pretty hard too though.

I did not use any custom keyboardshortcuts.


There has to be some different problem. With the controlstyle I meant that I switched to buildconfirmation.

Aha! Yes, the build-confirm-mode and play-while-paused settings also cause problems if you change them in the middle of a game! I fixed this too now - the problem should be gone in the current version on the repo (but only for new replay files, the old replay files will still be buggy because they just don't contain enough information).

So the custom keyboard shortcuts replay bug was not actually discovered yet, but it's fixed too

Also the bug reported by comradekingu (B. Myelocytes not doing self-damage when their range is increased) is fixed now.

_wb_ I reckon it would be good if microbes will set the current level back to 1/1 if it notices it's crashing at startup.  Sometimes a broken user level can make the whole game unplayable, it tries to load the broken level at startup and crashes right away.

I could do something like that, but I'd rather make sure that no broken user levels can cause crashes at all. So if you have any broken levels that cause crashes, send them to me so I can make the level loader more robust. Especially if you manage to make broken levels with the built-in level editor - that should really not be possible.

I think the crash you are referring to was already fixed, right? Or are you talking about something new?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I don't complain it's too easy ^^. Just the very last waves are challenging.

 

[_wb_]

I don't complain it's too easy ^^. Just the very last waves are challenging.

If you have specific levels in mind where you think the last waves are disproportionally hard, let me know, it's not difficult to make them a bit easier

 

[b_o_b]

I don't think it really matters. My approach in playing is just play and try to beat it at the normal level. If you can't beat it change difficulty to easy and try again. If you can't beat it on easy, practice some more

Maybe we can create a list with all levels and people can add on which level they were able to beat it and if not add the wave they reached.

Then the difficulty of the levels can be compared. 

Btw. I thought Microbes 2 - level 3 was more difficult than other levels.