it would be a good idea to add some type of max upgrade button or a way to max an upgrade with like a shift click, the rebirth process and upgrading ack to where you where is just a lot or clicking upgrades.
Done, it is in demo-0.8. Shift+click on an upgrade takes as many levels as your stores allow, up to its cap, and the tooltip tells you how many before you click.
I counted before building it, because I wanted to know if it was comfort or a real problem: 454 purchase clicks in the first hour and 719 by the sixth run, with about seven clicks out of eight landing on a branch already chosen. So you were right.
I did not add a "buy everything" button: picking which branch to raise is the only real decision in the game, and one button would remove it. If rebuilding after a rebirth still feels long even with shift+click, say so and I will look at that on its own.
An in-game explanation of what the chambers does, would be nice. Also, how do I add more chambers to the colony? It would be kind of realistic if you could dedicate some percentage of the colony to foraging, ans some others to expanding the nest at home, and so on.
Done, it is live in demo-0.6. You can now split the colony between foraging and digging, and the tunnels stay after a rebirth, so the nest is the one thing that keeps growing. Thanks, this was a good call.
Fair, and that one is on me: I shipped the chambers this morning with nothing but their names on the buttons. Just pushed a build where each job says what it gives, in the same words the upgrade tree uses.
Brood is ANTS +10%, granary is RETURN +10% (loot from zones you already cleared), infirmary is HEALING +10%, fungus farm is HARVEST +10%. Each button also shows how many of your chambers already do that job, since that is what you actually want to know before adding another. Reload the page to get it.
Tried a few levels. Main critic: No Fullscreen. Playing on laptop is not a nice experience. Upgrades make the game ultra laggy and slow. Additionally, I dont really feel there is any progress.
Fullscreen is on now, there is a button in the bottom right corner of the frame. I had simply left the option off, thanks for pointing at it.
The lag on upgrades was a real bug: every purchase redrew the whole nest even when nothing about it had changed. Fixed in the build that just went up, along with saving, which did not exist at all before.
The lack of progress is the note I cannot fix in a day and the one I will be thinking about. If you have a minute, what were you expecting to see change that did not?
Played your newest version: Updates still seem to be a bit buggy/slow.
Full screen is working, but several popups block fields: In the colony "who digs" is above the first chamber (not a problem, but looks weird. Should be placed at bottom left maybe. Same in the upgrade tab. If you hover over the upgrades, the bottom right side of the pop up is blocked by the "wheel to zoom".
Stats: There is no way to see your current stats outside of forage, should be shown both in the colony and the upgrade window. Breakpoints seems to be important (e.g you get a new ant at a value greater/equal 1.5, but you cant see your current value and have to do the math on paper/in your head).
There is no explanation for what the stats do: "Trip" what does "next zone comes faster?" mean?, what is "return"? What is "conquest"? What is "instinct"? (if those things come in later, that is fine, but it feels weird to upgrade stuff you dont know about).
What does Rebirth do? It seems to affect stats, but there is no explanation in which way.
All of it is in demo-0.7, and thank you: this was the most useful message the game has had.
The two popups: "who digs" moved to the bottom left, and the tooltip now draws over the "wheel to zoom" line instead of under it, so the price is readable.
Stats: all nine are now on all three screens, ants shown to the hundredth so you can see the breakpoint coming instead of doing the math on paper. Hover any stat and it tells you what it does, including trip, return, conquest and instinct.
Rebirth has its own screen now: what you lose, what you keep, what you gain, with your own numbers. You had also said you felt no progression, and I think that was the same problem: rebirth is where the progression lives and nothing told you so.
Slowness: you were right that it was not fixed. I had blamed the wrong thing. The game was recomputing the price of all 541 upgrades by searching each one through the whole list, every frame. Measured at 58 ms per frame, now 3.
Got to sand and you don't actually get twigs currency anymore so you're kinda softlocked. There's a weird "coming back for it" state of game if you're completely out of twig for an upgrade but it can't be automated to farm.
also the upgrades are super slow, taking like 2 seconds per click and freezing the game.
No game save so lost hours of progress during 2 of the freezes.
I'd say the core gameplay is a bit boring, you should add something to the nest, but overall not bad work but the twig resource issue is super annoying.
The twigs: past zone 8 the loot switches to the next resource, but twigs stay the main part of every recipe, so you could get stuck exactly as you describe. There are now two buttons next to the zone name that send you back to any zone you have already reached, and the game picks the highest wave you can still win there.
The two second freeze: every purchase redrew the whole nest even when nothing about it had changed. It only changes one purchase in eight, so seven clicks out of eight are instant now. The eighth still costs a moment.
The save: there was none at all, and I am sorry about your hours. It saves after every purchase, foray and rebirth, and there is a SAVE button in the top right that also lights up when the game saves on its own.
And the nest: you were right that it did nothing. Chambers now have a job you choose, brood, granary, infirmary or fungus farm, and each is worth an upgrade level. That is a start rather than the whole answer. Thanks for writing all of it down.
Yep. If enemy strenght is bigger then you get "too strong" message and it does give the "colony spent" error, but if you have enough upgrades you can idle your dead ant for money. love it
Fixed in the build that just went up. The outcome of a fight was decided from strength alone, and health was only ever deducted alongside it, never checked. So at zero your ants stopped being drawn while the wave carried on resolving and paying. Health stops the fight now.
Thanks to both of you. "You can idle your dead ant for money" made it very easy to find.
Seems neat so far. Probably will play to the end of the demo.
But let me say.. I don't know how you made the game. If you used, or did not use, AI, I am totally indifferent.
BUT it leaves a bad smell when your game description brags "nothing produced by generative AI" when the description itself is 100% obviously AI-written - and using whichever llm it is that produces this maximally obnoxiously moronic writing style.
It's in the game, too. The same pattern of bizarre/confusing/nonsensical 'flavor' descriptions - like "every bite carries further" - so obviously generative AI was used for the in-game text as well (and no, not just as translation - it's the bad ai writing all the way down).
You're right. I use an AI assistant to write, including the page text, so "nothing produced by generative AI" was wrong. I've changed it. No AI-generated art or audio, everything is drawn and synthesised by code, and the code and text were written with AI help. Rewriting the description in my own words too.
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it would be a good idea to add some type of max upgrade button or a way to max an upgrade with like a shift click, the rebirth process and upgrading ack to where you where is just a lot or clicking upgrades.
Done, it is in demo-0.8. Shift+click on an upgrade takes as many levels as your stores allow, up to its cap, and the tooltip tells you how many before you click.
I counted before building it, because I wanted to know if it was comfort or a real problem: 454 purchase clicks in the first hour and 719 by the sixth run, with about seven clicks out of eight landing on a branch already chosen. So you were right.
I did not add a "buy everything" button: picking which branch to raise is the only real decision in the game, and one button would remove it. If rebuilding after a rebirth still feels long even with shift+click, say so and I will look at that on its own.
An in-game explanation of what the chambers does, would be nice.
Also, how do I add more chambers to the colony?
It would be kind of realistic if you could dedicate some percentage of the colony to foraging, ans some others to expanding the nest at home, and so on.
Done, it is live in demo-0.6. You can now split the colony between foraging and digging, and the tunnels stay after a rebirth, so the nest is the one thing that keeps growing. Thanks, this was a good call.
I have zero idea what any of the chamber's can do some kind of description would be helpful
Fair, and that one is on me: I shipped the chambers this morning with nothing but their names on the buttons. Just pushed a build where each job says what it gives, in the same words the upgrade tree uses.
Brood is ANTS +10%, granary is RETURN +10% (loot from zones you already cleared), infirmary is HEALING +10%, fungus farm is HARVEST +10%. Each button also shows how many of your chambers already do that job, since that is what you actually want to know before adding another. Reload the page to get it.
Tried a few levels. Main critic: No Fullscreen. Playing on laptop is not a nice experience. Upgrades make the game ultra laggy and slow. Additionally, I dont really feel there is any progress.
Fullscreen is on now, there is a button in the bottom right corner of the frame. I had simply left the option off, thanks for pointing at it.
The lag on upgrades was a real bug: every purchase redrew the whole nest even when nothing about it had changed. Fixed in the build that just went up, along with saving, which did not exist at all before.
The lack of progress is the note I cannot fix in a day and the one I will be thinking about. If you have a minute, what were you expecting to see change that did not?
Played your newest version:
Updates still seem to be a bit buggy/slow.
Full screen is working, but several popups block fields: In the colony "who digs" is above the first chamber (not a problem, but looks weird. Should be placed at bottom left maybe. Same in the upgrade tab. If you hover over the upgrades, the bottom right side of the pop up is blocked by the "wheel to zoom".
Stats: There is no way to see your current stats outside of forage, should be shown both in the colony and the upgrade window. Breakpoints seems to be important (e.g you get a new ant at a value greater/equal 1.5, but you cant see your current value and have to do the math on paper/in your head).
There is no explanation for what the stats do: "Trip" what does "next zone comes faster?" mean?, what is "return"? What is "conquest"? What is "instinct"? (if those things come in later, that is fine, but it feels weird to upgrade stuff you dont know about).
What does Rebirth do? It seems to affect stats, but there is no explanation in which way.
All of it is in demo-0.7, and thank you: this was the most useful message the game has had.
The two popups: "who digs" moved to the bottom left, and the tooltip now draws over the "wheel to zoom" line instead of under it, so the price is readable.
Stats: all nine are now on all three screens, ants shown to the hundredth so you can see the breakpoint coming instead of doing the math on paper. Hover any stat and it tells you what it does, including trip, return, conquest and instinct.
Rebirth has its own screen now: what you lose, what you keep, what you gain, with your own numbers. You had also said you felt no progression, and I think that was the same problem: rebirth is where the progression lives and nothing told you so.
Slowness: you were right that it was not fixed. I had blamed the wrong thing. The game was recomputing the price of all 541 upgrades by searching each one through the whole list, every frame. Measured at 58 ms per frame, now 3.
Got to sand and you don't actually get twigs currency anymore so you're kinda softlocked. There's a weird "coming back for it" state of game if you're completely out of twig for an upgrade but it can't be automated to farm.
also the upgrades are super slow, taking like 2 seconds per click and freezing the game.
No game save so lost hours of progress during 2 of the freezes.
I'd say the core gameplay is a bit boring, you should add something to the nest, but overall not bad work but the twig resource issue is super annoying.
All four are fixed and the build is up.
The twigs: past zone 8 the loot switches to the next resource, but twigs stay the main part of every recipe, so you could get stuck exactly as you describe. There are now two buttons next to the zone name that send you back to any zone you have already reached, and the game picks the highest wave you can still win there.
The two second freeze: every purchase redrew the whole nest even when nothing about it had changed. It only changes one purchase in eight, so seven clicks out of eight are instant now. The eighth still costs a moment.
The save: there was none at all, and I am sorry about your hours. It saves after every purchase, foray and rebirth, and there is a SAVE button in the top right that also lights up when the game saves on its own.
And the nest: you were right that it did nothing. Chambers now have a job you choose, brood, granary, infirmary or fungus farm, and each is worth an upgrade level. That is a start rather than the whole answer. Thanks for writing all of it down.
there is an error you might want to correct: At 0 Health my ant disappears but the enemy ants still die and give me stuff....
Yep. If enemy strenght is bigger then you get "too strong" message and it does give the "colony spent" error, but if you have enough upgrades you can idle your dead ant for money. love it
Fixed in the build that just went up. The outcome of a fight was decided from strength alone, and health was only ever deducted alongside it, never checked. So at zero your ants stopped being drawn while the wave carried on resolving and paying. Health stops the fight now.
Thanks to both of you. "You can idle your dead ant for money" made it very easy to find.
Seems neat so far. Probably will play to the end of the demo.
But let me say.. I don't know how you made the game. If you used, or did not use, AI, I am totally indifferent.
BUT it leaves a bad smell when your game description brags "nothing produced by generative AI" when the description itself is 100% obviously AI-written - and using whichever llm it is that produces this maximally obnoxiously moronic writing style.
It's in the game, too. The same pattern of bizarre/confusing/nonsensical 'flavor' descriptions - like "every bite carries further" - so obviously generative AI was used for the in-game text as well (and no, not just as translation - it's the bad ai writing all the way down).
You're right. I use an AI assistant to write, including the page text, so "nothing produced by generative AI" was wrong. I've changed it. No AI-generated art or audio, everything is drawn and synthesised by code, and the code and text were written with AI help. Rewriting the description in my own words too.