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[Schilcote]

So, I've actually had a thread in here before, like, last year or so. But just this morning I put out a re-vamped version of the game, with a butt-ton of engine improvements, so I'd like to try again to get some feedback. Developing in a vacuum sucks.

The game is called INJECTION, and it's a hacking/programming puzzle game inspired by the likes of Untrusted. Basically, the main screen shows a simple ASCII-art world where you control an @-sign trying to get to the teleporter at the end of the level. There's things in your way, of course, but you can hit the semicolon key to bring up a Python REPL that allows you to directly interact with the game objects that make up the level. You can directly change the code on a keypad door to allow you access, reprogram missile launchers to attack obstacles or even themselves instead of you, even just move the problem out of the way entirely.

It's got 13 levels at the moment and takes me about 30 minutes to complete.

Points I'd really like feedback on:

• Do the tutorials (there's one for non-programmers and one not) do a good job of enabling the player to actually play? It's awfully long at the moment...
• Is it actually fun? I've heard mixed results on that front. Are the levels to hard? Too easy?

Known bugs and issues in v0.6.0:

• None so far...

Changes since original release:

• 5 new levels!
• A handful of new puzzle elements!
• Fixed the "runaway cursor" bug!
• Fixed various issues with word wrap in injection console
• Added info(); a function that serves the same purpose the built-in help() did but better
• Telemetry and crash reporting - and it's completely transparent!
• AN ACTUAL TUTORIAL
• EVEN FEWER mysterious save errors!
• Probably some other enhancements that I've since forgotten!
• Paste functionality in injection console
• Saves are now placed in non-stupid places!
• Built-in hint system
• Better music system - levels have long looping "playlists" instead of single songs
• Massive graphical improvements

Future improvements:

• More levels!

Screenshots:


Video Tutorial:




Thanks in advance!

[Quicksand-S]

Maybe this is too much to ask for, but would it be possible to get a list of the bigger changes you've made?

I have good memories of the old version of this game, but is there any point to me testing this one's gameplay? Or is the gameplay basically the same, in which case I should focus on bugs when I play?

[Schilcote]

Maybe this is too much to ask for, but would it be possible to get a list of the bigger changes you've made?

Oh. I probably should've done that, yes. I'll do that right now.

I have good memories of the old version of this game, but is there any point to me testing this one's gameplay? Or is the gameplay basically the same, in which case I should focus on bugs when I play?

Well, in your specific case you might want to focus more on bugtesting, yeah, although critiques on the new levels are more than welcome as well.

EDIT:

Actually, speaking of too much to ask for, what'd be really cool is if you could make a replacement for that GIF I have up there, maybe a youtube video or something. I intend to do a video of the game too but it's not really as cool when I already know the answers.

[Quicksand-S]

I don't actually make videos for YouTube and don't think I'll be starting anytime soon. I could make a GIF, but I'm not sure I'm confident enough in my Python coding for that just yet. I'm pretty sure I haven't used Python since the last time I played your game.

I took forever to even finish the first puzzle again, because although I could see the objects I couldn't figure out how to affect their attributes. I ended up having to assign one to a variable using "varname = objs.pop()" because whenever I tried to access them directly, I couldn't.

Anyway, I think all your GIF needs is a recording of actual gameplay, rather than just a bunch of coding. Show the situation in the level before starting on the code and that will probably be enough.

I gave the game a brief try but I don't really have time to play a the moment. I did notice a long pause when I typed "modules" in the interactive help (same with one of the others..."symbols" I think). I had to wait probably around 5 seconds before anything happened, which seems pretty excessive. It was faster when I tried it again, but the first time it was long enough that I thought the game was broken.

Pressing Up or Down could really use a delay. As soon as I tap it, it scrolls through two or three of my past commands almost instantly, which makes that feature almost useless.

[Schilcote]

Just pushed out 0.5.2, fixing the music issue (I still have no idea what the hell happened), removing the help() function, adding some nice reminders of how to use certain data structures to info(), and a handful of behind-the-scenes improvements.

I'm not sure autoupdate is working, so pay attention to your version number at startup; if it doesn't say "INJECTION v0.5.2," download the new release from GameJolt instead.

[Quicksand-S]

It's too late for me to play more right now, but I did check if the auto-update worked. It's still on 0.5, so I guess not. I didn't get a firewall pop-up either (and I don't see it blocked in my settings), so it doesn't seem like it even tried to reach the server.

[Schilcote]

Assuming you're talking about the built-in Windows firewall, that only trips when a program tries to act as a server.

Arrite, I just put out patch 3. Biggest change is that you can now paste into the console with Ctrl-V. I've also fixed level 6 so you can't break the puzzle by teleporting that boulder around, and drone coloring works now.

[Quicksand-S]

that only trips when a program tries to act as a server.

Really? I've seen that pop-up for a lot of games that should never have been acting as servers. I wonder what they were doing that for.

Anyway, I went and checked my bandwidth use while opening the game. It did send and receive data, but the version number stayed at 0.5.

I manually downloaded 0.5.3 to try it out.

Might be a good idea to output an error log, because retyping error messages to post here would be a hassle. When I type "tutorial" it asks me if I know how to code and then I get a Traceback which contains: "File 'C:\Users\Schilcote\workspace\pyweek19\gameobjs.py', line 1008, in __call__   RuntimeError: input(): lost sys.stderr"  Obviously, I don't have that folder on my computer, so I'd guess that's what the error is from.

On the gameplay side, I'm curious what the intended solution to the first puzzle is, because I just set "pos" and then when I got to the second puzzle, I thought I'd be required to do something different.

[Schilcote]

Maybe they downloaded updates over torrent?

The intended solution to level 0 is to set objs[0]'s (the keypad) .code to an arbitrary string, then type that in to the keypad object by interacting with it in the game world. I actually designed that level before the ability to not have some objects available to the player was implemented so everything's just kinda sittin' there. I figured allowing such a wide range of multiple solutions would serve as a taste of what's to come in the later levels (the first few I consider still part of the "tutorial" and thus are much more limited so you have to do the thing I want you to learn to do). You can also use it to level-skip by setting the levelporter's ._targetlevel to a new string; "DroneSpiral" is level 7, "DroneMissile" is level 8 and the beginning of the new levels.

You don't actually need to type out the traceback, the game sends all that back to me.

I've replicated the error, Iunno how the heck that's happening considering sys.stderr is redirected to the injection console and what the heck does input() need it for anyway. The file-path thing is just the system I use to "freeze" the game into an executable preserving the original paths to where the files were, it doesn't actually expect that to be anywhere in your computer.

EDIT:

Oh good, it's one of those that only comes up in the EXE version and won't replicate in the IDE. Greeeeaaaaat.

[Quicksand-S]

Ah. I was pretty sure I tried that in the old version of level 1 and it didn't work, so I didn't bother trying it this time. I guess I should have.

Oh good, it's one of those that only comes up in the EXE version and won't replicate in the IDE. Greeeeaaaaat.

Ah, the joys of debugging. Well, coding might be boring if it wasn't for weird errors like that, so maybe we're lucky strange things happen once in a while.

[Schilcote]

I'm not dead!

I'm just trying to make 0.6 as complete and thorough an overhaul-slash-improvement as I can.

Here's a sneak preview:

[Schilcote]

0.6.0 is finished! I'm sure there's plenty of stuff wrong with it, but that's what the third number is for.

So, you've already seen the important parts of the graphics changes; they're really not all that awesome, but it's better than the monochrome mess we had before.

There's also a handful of new levels, which I think are pretty cool, but then I would 'cos if I didn't I wouldn't have made them.

And the music works better now; there's three "playlists" representing different "moods," so the actiony levels get actiony music and the more sedate puzzles get more low-key BGM. The game shuffles the music order and tries to mix the songs up as much as possible, and there's plenty of 'em, so I imagine you can get through the whole game without hearing the same song twice unless I've screwed something up.

It sticks saves in more appropriate places than just dumping them in the install directory now, on Windows your save goes in %appdata%\INJECTION\, it goes other places on other OSes but I've never once seen a user on anything but Windows in the telemetry logs so I doubt anyone really cares.

It's also smarter about overwriting your save; the save routine just fails instead of crashing and it doesn't overwrite your old save unless it knows the new save is okay, so there shouldn't be any more issues in that area. I'm not sure you can even get it to crash anymore, actually, but I'm probably wrong.

Updates are cryptographically signed now, so even if someone evil takes control of my domain name or something no-one will be able to do bad things to your computer by serving up hacked versions of the game.

The new later levels are much closer to my vision of the game than the early ones; past level eight or so you're out of the "tutorial" and the game opens up and starts allowing wider varieties of solutions.

I may actually have binary builds for other OSes in the near future.

OH! And the game has a legit file icon now. That's the most important thing.

That's all I can think of. You'll have to get the new build from itch.io 'cos GameJolt is kinda shit.