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[increpare]

CAN'T BEAT LVL 18 I NEED TIPS

I managed to get the others down to 1, but can't figure out how to get them down to 0. I tried splitting up the 1 but it still stays as 1.

try spliting the original population into four (or whatever) equal parts near the start (this level does constitute a (possibly cheap) play on rounding-errors, I know).

if you wait until there's only one left, it's too late; try to get four groups of 4000 earlier-on (or whatever).

video driver crashing...hmmm...if it crashes again, check to see if there's anything left in stderr.txt or stdout.txt.  hopefully it won't, though.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Worked, thanks!

Suggestion: arrow keys to incrementally move left and right on the timeline?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Finished the game!

Another suggestion: perhaps blue and red particles moving along the lines so that the migration is a bit more animated?

Typo: in the final mission, one of the first paragraphs, it say something like "this brought achieved victory" -- having both words there sounds a bit redundant to me, either one alone would make sense but both together are odd.

In general I felt it was a great game but the minimalist graphics may keep people away. It felt close in tone and style to Uplink and Defcon.

[increpare]

Suggestion: arrow keys to incrementally move left and right on the timeline?

I had thought about that. I can see the utility of this, but it's not really necessary for any of the levels (even less so since I introduced a use for the right-mouse button).  I wanted to make the game as mouse-driven as possible.  Though if someone suggested some cool mouse idea now I'd probably be just as 'meh' about it...

Also, yes, it seems like you found a typo; thanks!

Particles moving along the lines might prove quite effective.  I had tried a couple of different approaches, and was never really happy with the static-ness of the interface.  But, it seems I finished everything else and the interface is still static, and...I'm going to move on to work on something else, and hope to do better next time.

It felt close in tone and style to Uplink and Defcon.

The game I was toying about with directly before I started making this was Immortal Defense, actually...it undoubtedly influenced several design choices (the decision to have a dialogue-driven narrative being the most personally important).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, that's interesting -- one resemblance I can see is that there are a series of levels, each beginning with some dialogue.

As an aside, anyone know why Firefox's and Chrome's spell-checking don't like the word "dialogue"? It always comes up as a misspelling for me, even though it's clearly a word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue -- is it that they prefer "dialog"? That doesn't give me a spelling error notice but it's the less common way to spell the word. I use the word enough that it's annoying that it thinks it's a misspelling, and I don't want to start using dialog instead.

EDIT: Ha, I wrote this before I saw your edit.

[increpare]

I had to wrestle with the chrome spell-checker when writing my last post as well, actually ... I have a funny feeling that setting the dictionary to British English would solve everything (as it usually does), but it seemed to always somehow reset itself to American English whenever I tried in the past.

[Bennett]

I don't mind the staticness of the interface - it helps it to feel sterile and divorced from reality (this was an idea they explored in 'Defcon' - shame that game wasn't much fun)

In fact, I was trying to think of ways you could make it seem even more sterile. I quite like the look you have, mind you. I guess if it was me, I'd add a pixel shader to make it look like it was running on an old TTY terminal. Like you're staring into a little vidcon in a small cubicle in a dark basement of a big grey building, blissfully unaware of what your research is being used for (many of my friends accuse me of this).

[Zaphos]

I think it's pretty confusing just to get in to this, but interesting all the same. I just started (got to episode 7, will finish it later), but the second level took me too long just to understand what it was asking for.  The wording was odd to me ... he says there was this horrible famine and then immediately says (apparently speaking about the famine) that everyone went to the city (... the way the sentences are structured it sounds like *during* the famine). Then he says they returned *after* the famine, which sounds like, they went there for the famine and then left when it ended?  Meanwhile there are interface things like, I wasn't sure when time 0 was, and where the direction of the migration arrows isn't 100% clear, which adds to confusion when putting arrows down in one direction has no effect.

In some later levels (like the migration routes one?) it seems like I can satisfy the time=0 constraints but still not be allowed to submit my thesis, until I match what he said accurately.

It would be nice to have a way to replay the conversation without clicking 'reset' ... (unless that's already there and I just missed it?)

[Noyb]

Finished it tonight. Again, awesome job. The writing did a great job of providing context to the gameplay, elevating this beyond a simple puzzle game.

Late-game spoilery comments

Possible Bug: In level 17 in the new version, your race seems to migrate faster than the others.

[Zaphos]

Playing it more, my confusion is gone ...

Typo in ep 12 dialog: "if they stayed int the east"
ep 17: "that's very interseting"

edit edit: finished it ... not sure how I feel about ep 18, but I guess it works with the plot.

[Synnah]

Works on XP64! Don't have time to play it now, as I'm late for work, but I'll check it out later.

[increpare]

Thanks for the typo-finding zaphos.

Possible Bug: In level 17 in the new version, your race seems to migrate faster than the others.

that's intentional.  migration speeds for each race change on a level-to-level basis.

Works on XP64! Don't have time to play it now, as I'm late for work, but I'll check it out later.

great!  will have mirror stage done later on today, then.

[pnx]

I just got round to trying and finishing the game, the ending feels a little cut short, and it seems like most of the time I can just arrange migration at the end and it will sort out in the beginning. e.g. I can just migrate everyone straight from an end city to a beginning city... Or is it the other way round?

Also a lot of the time the logic doesn't seem to add up to me, for example in the one where famine follows the migration of the others, the famine only happens after they leave and they can't have been exposed to it, so how exactly can there be famine for nobody? Although maybe that's intentional.

[increpare]

Also a lot of the time the logic doesn't seem to add up to me, for example in the one where famine follows the migration of the others, the famine only happens after they leave and they can't have been exposed to it, so how exactly can there be famine for nobody? Although maybe that's intentional.

there can still be droughts and the like, or famine-conditions (were people to move there, they'd starve).  maybe I should have spent some time looking for a more generic term.

it seems like most of the time I can just arrange migration at the end and it will sort out in the beginning

That is true.  It was intentional, but I can't quite say what the intent actually was behind it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I just did a review for this game on http://indiegames.com/blog in case anyone is interested. Hopefully everyone won't hate it over there.

[Al King]

Love it! It was a little crasheriffic when I played it, but it really is pitch-perfect in execution. Aside from the initial barrier caused by the slightly unintuitive mechanic, I didn't find the UI to be much of an issue. Particles could be a help, but I thought the gradient and directing lines from source to destination made things pretty clear.

The game I was toying about with directly before I started making this was Immortal Defense, actually...it undoubtedly influenced several design choices (the decision to have a dialogue-driven narrative being the most personally important).

It's nice to see an impression confirmed; by remaining abstract they both make the dialogue seem like the only link to reality, which makes its distortion all the more oppressive.
Thanks for posting it on IndieGames, rinku, I'm in self-imposed exile from TIGS until I get round to making something, so I wouldn't have heard about it otherwise!

[policedanceclub]

Love your games Stephen, and this one is in my opinion your best.

 

[increpare]

It was a little crasheriffic when I played it,

really?  could you give some more details? (in particular if, after a crash, there was anything left in the stderr.txt or stdout.txt files in the applicaiton directories (they reset after each launch)).

[Al King]

It exited cleanly last time :\ I've played around with it a little again and haven't managed to reproduce the crash, I'll let you know if/when I do. Both times it had hung, rather than strictly crashing to desktop. If it's helpful, I was alt-tabbing a little, had it running for a while and had made a habit of escaping to the episode menu rather than using the menu button when checking constraints or retrying.

[increpare]

I'll let you know if/when I do.

Cheers

Both times it had hung, rather than strictly crashing to desktop.

can you remember if there was anything you were doing that might have caused it? (making a route, selecting a level, &c.)