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[josh_s]

Thanks for the colourblind mode!

You're welcome. Feel free to post any feedback. B)

[josh_s]

tricone lab v0.09-alpha available.

Highlight: improved HUD!

Full changelog:

• At start of a puzzle level the 'objective' dialog is no longer shown.
• The target and current number of tricone units is shown constantly in the bottom right corner
• The puzzle level name is no longer displayed constantly, it's displayed once at the beginning of each level
• After a level has been completed, the time to click through has been shortened.
• On the map screen, the user can click once on any level which is about to unlock. This expedites the animation and immediately opens that level.
• While a catalyst node is selected, the HUD displays all potential resource nodes for that catalyst
• Potential carried resources for transporters are displayed using a hexagonal HUD element, both before and after linking them to the transporter catalyst. This helps distinguish for example whether a mobility resource will be carried or whether it will determine the mobility points of the transporter.
• Anticatalyst / catalyst / resource code hardened to prevent an exploit where you could race the anti catalyst.
• Added a custom mouse cursor, plus a setting to disable it.
• Added separate volume / enablement settings for music as opposed to SFX
• Removed 'renderer' and 'record input' settings
• Increased the snap distance for selecting various nodes, particularly resources
• Fixed a bug where volume jumped to 100% between levels

[josh_s]

It mostly felt like a very nice progression. At times I felt like the levels in the first three (four?) maps were a little too straightforward, but I think almost all of them had some twist that caused me to undo a few moves, so actually they are probably about right.

I felt like there was a big jump in difficulty at one point(somewhere in map 5, maybe?). In the earlier levels it was mostly fairly obvious (to me, anyway) roughly how to go about things, and it was a matter of working out exactly which elements when where. And then all of a sudden there was this level with bits and pieces scattered over several different cells, and lots of free mobility components. All of a sudden the chains of consequences seemed much too complex for me to work in my head, so I wound up just tinkering until I figured out the order.

But IIRC that was pretty obvious from the stats, so I imagine you're aware of that. I wonder if you might be able to come up with a level or two with similar breadth (pieces in different cells, several different mechanics at once) but fewer pieces? Or maybe it's just a tipping point for me, and it feels like a bigger jump than it actually is, I dunno.

Yes, the point of collecting the stats is to get some good data on level difficulty. Based on these stats I'll be doing a thorough revision of the level progression which will include:

• Reordering levels
• Making some levels optional
• Introducing 'bridging' levels as necessary.

I really wanted to be able to drag connections from components to catalysts as well as vice versa.

Another poster asked that. I'm ruling it out at the moment because of complications it causes with anticatalysts.

Oh, OK. It seemed like you immediately marked the components which the anti-catalysts were targeting, so I figured it wouldn't be a huge deal from that perspective. I did manage to get to a component a couple times before the anti-catalyst did and it seemed like it wouldn't let me connect to it...

They weren't marked but I changed that in v0.09-alpha after one extremely hardcore player  (@KyleDAudio that's you!) has actually been solving anti-catalyst levels by 'racing' against the anti catalyst! See my Twitter feed for details! One of the principles of the game is that it is not supposed to require timing / coordination skills so this exploit should not be possible. It's intended to be a pure logic game.

I will reconsider resource -> catalyst linking as quite a lot of people have mentioned it. However it may be less necessary with the new resource-highlighting HUD feature in v0.09-alpha. Plus if I add the auto-connect feature in a future release this may make players less likely to try / require resource -> catalyst linking.

Waiting for things to stop jittering when you balance positive/negative

Not strictly necessary. As soon as you've unified the positive and negative regions by breaking the border you can use the catalysts etc. The smooth tapering off of the jittering effect is more of a visual cue to indicate the effects of neutralization.

Ah, very cool. But the other charge mechanics are somewhat time/proximity based, yes? I know I've flooded a cell negative and then balanced it before the negative charges reached and broke things. And I got some of the tougher molecules stuck in a permanent jittering state when I balanced the charge before they had completely broken. So I didn't even think to try whether you could use the catalysts right away.

Believe it or not, the charge mechanics are not time / proximity based at all, as according to the 'Pure Logic Game' principle mentioned above. The negative charges are just a visual indicator of a cell which has already gone negative. A negative cell immediately affects any contained nodes. However as you noticed there is a time delay between the point in time when a compound node such as a breaker is enclosed in a negative cell and the point in time when it actually decomposes. Neutralizing the cell before decomposition will leave it in a jittering state, from which it will never recover, which was intentional. Your post made me realize that this could introduce potential exploits in levels which combine anti-catalyst and a negative charge, so I'll need to fix this in a future release. I'll probably make jittering compound nodes decompose eventually and have them decompose immediately should they end up sharing a cell with an anti-catalyst.

[josh_s]

Tricone Lab v0.10-alpha is available.

Highlight: preview feature on map screens.

Full changelog:

• Game saves thumbnail when you enter a level, this is used as a preview on the map screens (if you have visited the level before)
• Each level has been given a difficulty from 1 to 5. This shows up in the level info and in the map preview.
• Preview also states whether the level is locked, unlocked or complete.
• Bugfix: threads shut down properly when game is force-closed
• Bugfix: zip install classpath manifest is fixed.
• When dragging a line from a node, increased transition distance from start to mid state from 0.5 x edge length to 1.2 x to avoid mis-linking.

[josh_s]

version 0.10.1-alpha

• Fix to bug where previews would not get shown after a restart.

[josh_s]

version 0.10.2-alpha

• Bugfix: timezone string removed from the end of the runrecord directory name. In some locales the timezone contains a colon and therefore makes an invalid directory name on Windows!

[Rusk]

In some locales the timezone contains a colon

I suppose it symbolizes the end of time.

[josh_s]

I suppose it symbolizes the end of time.

Ha! 

[josh_s]

v0.10.3-alpha released

• Some twiddling around with server protocol version negotiations. In future people will be able to continue running old versions of the game until the server protocol changes. This will become important as new online features are added.

If you are running the zip install of 0.10.2-alpha you may see "null" and the game stopping when you try to connect online. This can be fixed by upgrading again to 0.10.3. You won't lose your saved progress.

If you are running any other older version you will get a message about the availability of the new version, and you can continue playing (offline).

[josh_s]

Tricone Lab is getting a level creator / editor. This is an in-game feature which allows anyone to create any possible puzzle in the game, with no coding, just point / click etc. Basically if you can play the game then you can make a new puzzle. You can then link your puzzles together in maps, just the same as the standard puzzle set which comes with the game.

So at the moment the editor code is finished and pretty well polished, I'm happy with that side of things. However although you can save your creations to a file locally, there's not yet any automated way of sharing puzzles between players, although you could do it manually by copying the files around. What I'm planning is to extend the current server / database to allow automated puzzle-sharing but I'm not sure whether to do a release of the editor before the puzzle-sharing feature is ready.

I've also added two major new mechanics -- exploders and replicators.

[josh_s]

Finally a new alpha version: v0.11-alpha released

It is DRM'd now, but the license keys aren't yet for sale, I'll be giving keys out to any interested gamers, you just need to email me.

Highlights:

• Full graphical editor: create your own puzzles with just point and click
• Tricone Lab Online: A database where you can upload/download puzzles, and track each puzzle's play statistics
• Exploders, which can be moved into a cell and then exploded to make it positive or negative
• Replicators, which can replicate resource nodes
• Standard set of puzzles increased from 47 to 71

Other changes:

• Lightweight DRM: demo version allows play of 20 levels, full version allows all 71 levels plus editor and online service. Please just email me if you want a key!
• Tricone Lab Online account management use cases: create user, email verification, change password, forgot user id, forgot password etc.
• Player settings for user ID, "remember password" and custom maps directory.
  
• Upload map, search for maps based on user id, map name, approval status, download map.
• Map approval system.
• Full graphical editor with edit mode for editing properties, draw mode for drawing levels, playtest button, pause button.
• New spot types to support exploder and replicator mechanics.
• Transporter catalyst is now renamed Carrier catalyst, because it can make both kinds of carrier: transporter and replicator. Similarly, transporter template is renamed carrier template.
• Progress keys are now gained via new map "key" nodes, which have a little star in them.
• On maps, single input or double input "gate" nodes can define level completion order logic.
• Button to show current set of progress keys.
• All maps and levels renamed to a consistent style with an appropriate amount of hinting in each level name.
• Rejigged the order and levels of several maps.
• Most standard maps have a "suggested next" map which is the default map to load when a map is complete.

[oyog]

The approval system and TCL Online in general sounds pretty awesome.

Have you experimented any with autonomic entities? I feel like it might make for interesting puzzles if the goal is to create a stable feedback loop or to set up a chain reaction for one purpose or another. I haven't really thought about the details but very once in a while I think about this while I'm doing something else (usually showering) and tell myself I'll go post and by the time I've started my computer I've forgotten completely.

[josh_s]

The approval system and TCL Online in general sounds pretty awesome.

Have you experimented any with autonomic entities? I feel like it might make for interesting puzzles if the goal is to create a stable feedback loop or to set up a chain reaction for one purpose or another. I haven't really thought about the details but very once in a while I think about this while I'm doing something else (usually showering) and tell myself I'll go post and by the time I've started my computer I've forgotten completely.

The only autonomic entities at the moment are anti-catalysts which are pretty simple.

I've thought about other more complicated mini-organisms that you have to interact with, but I haven't tried implementing any yet. For example, something which grabs certain resources if they are available, and this causes it to grow or cell-divide, which means it then has other behavior which you then need to exploit.

I think at the moment I need to just focus on getting people used to the current set of mechanics, and hopefully creating some some puzzles with that set.

[oyog]

I think at the moment I need to just focus on getting people used to the current set of mechanics, and hopefully creating some some puzzles with that set.

That makes a lot of sense. There's always the possibility for adding things in later on.

[josh_s]

So, in October I took Tricone Lab to the biggest videogames festival in the UK, which is GameCity (http://gamecity.org/). I demo'd the game on 6 days, had wee kids as young as 4 playing it, students, other devs, some bloggers, youtubers, journalists. Lots of fun. Got some very useful feedback from a lot of other gamedevs including:

Ben Parbury (Polyology)
Alan Hazelden (Sokobond)
Martin Hollis (GoldenEye N64)
Alan Zucconi (0rbitalis)
Henry Smith (Spaceteam)

Here are some of the pics from the festival:

[josh_s]

While at GameCity I met the organizers of an event in Paris called #igam4r2014 (http://igam4er.org/)... they invited me to bring Tricone Lab along. It's a "Games for Science / Education" thing -- I wasn't sure that Tricone Lab was 100% relevant but they insisted that it was.

In the competition Tricone Lab won the Best Game Design award. So now I can legitimately say it's "award winning".

Here are some pictures from the event:

[josh_s]

New release v0.12-alpha.

This release doesn't have any new levels. What I've done here is tried as hard as possible to make the user experience more enjoyable. I've done this by tweaking a lot of small things which I noticed were annoying people or confusing them when they were playing the game at GameCity and #igam4er2014.

Here's the full changelog:

• Tutorial HUD says "double click" where necessary
• Removed some pointless resource-connecting steps on some levels
• Better ordering / defaulting on the load-map dialog
• An action on the title screen to reset all progress (v. useful when demoing)
• Game aspect ratio is now fixed at 16:9 which matches most laptops / screens.
• Resolution range includes 720p Standard Def and 1080p Full HD
• Option to remove window decorations, giving pseudo full-screen mode
• Added update rate setting, allows the game to run faster on some machines
• Larger collide radius when linking to resources
• "Key Gained" no longer appears as a dialog, but a HUD element
• After completing a map, there's a single dialog, then the next map loads
• Level ordering change: BreakerBaffle now comes before Balance
• Play button on title screen immediately loads first map.
• Catalysts can only draw resource lines if they need more resources
• Icon flash duration shortened from 50 to 30 timesteps
• Clicking restart restarts immediately, no dialog
• Catalysts have small orbiting nodules indicating that resource lines can be drawn (except anti-catalyst)
• If a breaker is in motion, and its break action is fired, the results are immediate. This is necessary in order to prevent exploits
• Resource to catalyst linking is now allowed as well as catalyst to resource linking
• Anticatalyst search path no longer has jumps at the end
• Removed red herring negative cell from BreakerSurvival level
• Added a guide HUD on MakeBreak level
• Level name not displayed after restart
• During start of level, level name disappears automatically after about 4 seconds

As usual, can be downloaded here:

http://www.triconelab.com/index.php/download/

[JobLeonard]

It still lives! :D

[josh_s]

It still lives! :D

A bit slow, I know!

Next task is a promo video, which I'm working on today.

After that I've got to go back and do a lot of work on the content (level design).

[jgrams]

I haven't really been following this, but that feels so much more responsive than when I tried it back in March. Lovely.