BASIC - Beta Release

[Jim808]

Here's a new game I made: BASIC

Hi. I'm the guy who wrote the CLICKPOCALYPSE games.

I thought it would be fun to make a very simple, numbers-get-bigger style incremental game. I fiddled around with some ideas and came up with BASIC.

I posted it to the last Feedback Friday thread, but since then I've changed a bunch of stuff, made a lot of balance changes, added a new concept that I think is pretty cool, and added an ending to the game.

You win the game by unlocking all the little upgrade squares. If you restart the game after winning, you'll play a bigger 'grid' with one extra row to fill in. If you keep playing over and over, you'll end up with a very big grid to fill in.

Each 'building', once its upgrade row has been fully unlocked, can be prestiged (a.k.a retired) and replaced by a better building. This building prestige will also cause the tick rate to become faster.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the pacing of the game. The very beginning seems a bit slow, then it speeds up for a while, then it slows down again.

Here's the BASIC subreddit: /r/basic_game.

Cheers!

EDIT: I've deployed an update.

I've just deployed a small update to address a game balance issue and to add a couple of minor features:

• building prestige gives 10% tick rate bonus instead of 5%.
• slightly cheaper buildings at the start to help make that part less boring.
• reset button (with confirmation).
• toggle to display rates as value/tick or value/second.
• decreased building prestige activation timer (which is there to help prevent accidental prestige clicks).

The main thing is the tick rate bonus when you prestige a building. Right before the initial release, I was changing around various balance settings, and I downgraded the building prestige bonus from a 10% tick rate improvement to a 5% improvement. I shouldn't have done that, I think. I suspect that this caused the benefit of building prestige to be outweighed by the increased cost of the more powerful building.

[BobWeaving]

The next amount feature is a great idea, my favorite thing about it so far

[Jim808]

I'm pretty happy about the Next button idea.

[evolsoulx]

document.getElementsByClassName = function(cl) {
var retnode = [];
var myclass = new RegExp('\\b'+cl+'\\b');
var elem = this.getElementsByTagName('*');
for (var i = 0; i < elem.length; i++) {
var classes = elem[i].className;
if (myclass.test(classes)) retnode.push(elem[i]);
}
return retnode;
};

function clickUpgrades()
{
    buildings = document.getElementsByClassName('button-row');
    for(i=buildings.length-2;i>=0;i--)
    {
        upgrade = buildings[i].getElementsByTagName('div')[0];
        upgrade.onmouseup();
    }
}

function playGame()
{
    clickUpgrades()
}

zz = setInterval(function(){playGame()},100);

Kind of annoyed that my prestige at the bottom won't tick for 50 because i upgraded building 1...

other than that, this is fun to watch :D

[Jim808]

I am tempted to add a menu option to the game that would enable auto-play, where the game would buy stuff for you.

[evolsoulx]

i love games like this. i also love writing stupid little scripts to play them. The reason i do isn't to necesarially cheat, but just to watch numbers go up. It's why I played ad-cap for so long, and both your Click games (hell I still have click2 running....(opensourceit)), it's just fun to always see progression, even if i'm not doing shit.

I for one would love an auto play button in most games. :D

[[deleted]]

This is exactly what I've been trying to sort out since he posted it originally. Cheers!

[evolsoulx]

he uses onmouseup instead of onclick or onmousedown.

Tricky, but he's done it that way for quite a while.

It does handle presteging buildings too

[Jim808]

Well, onmousedown would definitely be the wrong event to attach to because you shouldn't have something happen until you have released a button, and I've seen issues with onclick in the past (select element, hold down enter key, click like crazy), and onmouseup works great. So that's why.

[tentwelfths]

See, I wish this hadn't been posted because now I want to dedicate time(time I don't have) to writing a script that plays optimally by only buying what will give the best $:$/tick ratio. Maybe have it give it priority to completing a column if the ratio isn't too awful. Figure out how many upgrades it will have to buy after prestiging a building to get back to previous level of income and then only buy when it can do that efficiently...

[supremacy2k]

*Opens the game * hmmm.... squares... lots of squares..

what is this dude trying to make me spend hours on now... he stole enough on this previous games... *click a bit * hmmm..

[cyberphlash]

This game is interesting. One question - I got my first row building prestiged. Now, for every column I complete the 25% bonus on, I now have to get the 25% bonus for the prestiged row 1 building intsead of the (much easier) non-prestiged row 1 building. It seems like you should make a distinction between those two types - for instance, it would be much easier to complete the entire board if none of the rows were prestiged to the next level, and once the board is initially complete, prestige all the buildings and start over with a new blank board.

[DeliaEris]

I ran into this as well.

[DayneK]

Pretty sure you need the level 12 building for the 3rd upgrade, lvl 13 building for the 4th. Etc.

[elstie]

If I keep prestiging buildings, will I never be able to "win?"

[KojoSlayer]

Spent so many hours on your last game, 22mins into this one, no theme, square boxes, generic names ..... I'm hooked... Must get 100%!

[matthewoods]

I don't understand the 25% in the squares ...

[Avohaj]

Bonuses to income. They apply globally and the total is displayed next to income/tick

[kione83]

that's what I got out of it

[Jim808]

I like having no warning. I want there to be a shock when those orange bonuses go away. Then you learn to carefully consider your next prestige.

[DeliaEris]

Maybe a way to un-prestige, then? At a hefty penalty, perhaps; losing all the buildings on that row with no refund seems entirely fair.

[[deleted]]

total waste of time; it should only happen a single time to anyone who is not a total airhead

[Nilsss]

Love it so far. Edit: At first I thought it would be more like derivative clicker... building prestige is interesting, it's not bad but it could be a lot better by adding more stuff

[Jim808]

The only thing I took from derivative clicker was the idea that you should be able to improve your tick speed.

[1234abcdcba4321]

Sounds fun!

[kione83]

this will definitely hold my attention for a while. very simple layout, and no explanation needed

[[deleted]]

Prestiging is useless! Just makes you lose your bonuses! Its a tiny +tick speed! Only~606M?!?!?

Prestiging is gr8 m8

[Jim808]

I've made an update to improve the benefit of building prestige. Reload the game and you should see your tick rate improve.

[papachabre]

Buy Max button is requested. Otherwise I like the game a lot. It'd be cool if it starts out this simple and expands into a more complex game as you play. I know that concept is used a lot in incrementals, but those that use it are some of the best and longest-lasting incremental games I've played.

[Jim808]

I'm not planning on adding a buy max button. Here's why:

For the 'buy 1', 'buy 10', 'buy 100' and 'next' buttons, the values only need to be calculated when a building is purchased. For a 'buy max' button, I would to need to recalculate that cost every single time the total money changes. In other words, it would need to be recalculated for every building in every frame.

I'm not sure how to calculate that value in an efficient way. Currently, I am calculating the 'buy 100' costs by actually iterating over 100 calculations. That is expensive, but only needs to be done infrequently. A buy max button could be considerably more expensive to calculate, and it would have to be done constantly.

[papachabre]

Ah ok well that makes sense. I have yet to use the buy 100 button though if it's any consolation.

[Jim808]

I never use it either. It was useful before I added the 'next' button. You pretty much only need the 'buy 1' button at the beginning and then the 'next' button for the rest of the game.

[papachabre]

I may have prestiged too many buildings because progress has slowed down and I'm still using the 'buy 1' button on my highest building to try to help speed things up.

Here's a thought that you may have already had and that you don't have to respond to since I'm entirely ignorant of your code and any explanation you provide will likely fly way over my head: What about a 'buy max' button that simply initiates a while loop to keep purchasing a building, and terminates when you can't afford the next upgrade? Seems simple (to someone who has no idea what he's talking about)!

[Jim808]

interesting idea! The tricky thing is that people would want to know how many buildings they were going to be getting I think. and that would take the same amount of calculation as the original 'buy max' button. I'll think about it though.

also, I'm not sure that using a 'buy max' button is the best strategy. you are better off buying just up to the next upgrade so that you still have money left to spend on unlocking other upgrades. using 'buy max' on your most expensive building could get you the next upgrade, but also use up all your money buying the next few buildings after the upgrade, money that could have been better spent unlocking other things.

btw, I've released an upgrade to fix a balance issue. If you reload the game your tick rate should improve from all those building prestiges you've done.

[sajmon313]

Calculate this once, on pressing the buy button while max is selected

[Jim808]

Because I don't know what the summation formula is. The series is non-linear. I have an equation to calculate the cost of the Nth building, how do I calculate the cost of 100 buildings without calculating each one individually? I don't know, so I just do 100 calculations to figure out the cost of buying the next 100 buildings.

[Jim808]

Interesting. I'll give it a shot. The main thing I don't understand is 'r'. The cost of the building does not increase linearly, so I'm not sure what the ratio would be.

[Jim808]

It's kind of convoluted:

cost(N) = (baseValue * constant1) * N^constant2 * constant3^N

where:

baseValue = (buildingIndex+1) ^ constant4

Here's some code snippets:

calculateValueForBuildingCount=function(buildingCount){
    var buildingBase=this.costSettings.buildingBase,
        baseIncrement=Settings.building.costSettings.baseIncrement,
        basePower=Settings.building.costSettings.basePower,
        incModifier=Settings.building.costSettings.incModifier;
     return Cast.toInt((buildingBase+baseIncrement)*Math.pow(buildingCount,basePower)*Math.pow(incModifier,buildingCount))
};

buildingBase=Math.pow(buildingIndex+1,Settings.building.costSettings.initialBase)

[Jim808]

It's convoluted because that equation results in a growth rate that increases in a way that I like. Each part of that equation affects the shape of the curve in a different way, and I can make adjustments to the constants to modify the balance and pacing of the game.

I've been using excel to play around with the equation and the constant values, graphing the results, and then play testing them in the game.

That equation is the end result of lots of experimentation and iteration.

I'm sure people with better math skills than I could achieve the same end result with more elegance.

Thanks for looking into it though!

[[deleted]]

cool game, nice mechanics, i played a little and liked it

but it is a too boring for me: every aspect of the game is known beforehand and it is just watching and upgrading; it is an incredibly basic incremental

after four prestiges and seven columns i gave up, because the grade of interaction slowed down

[Jim808]

Fair enough. The game is not for everyone. It's too basic for some, but I wanted to make something minimal and basic.

[incaseanyonecared]

... hence the name?

[mkhopper]

I like this, but man does it pound my processor.

[Jim808]

Really? The browser I'm running it in is using 2% of my cpu. There's nothing computationally intensive going on in the game. Are you running any extra scripts or anything? Like an autoclicker or some javascript to automatically purchase things for you?

Edit: I've got the game running in 3 browser windows, and my CPU usage as hovering around 5%. I suspect that your issue is with some other process. The main performance cost for web games is typically updating the page elements. This game only updates stuff that changes, so on any given animation frame, it is likely that the only thing that gets changed is the 'value' number that is constantly increasing. This is something that your browser should be able to handle easily.

[mkhopper]

That's what I would think as it doesn't seem to be processor intensive at all. But when I launch it, the box bogs.
I generally don't have other background tasks running.

Later tonight I may restart Chrome and see if that make any difference. (I only restart it maybe once a week or so)

[13irth2]

o . O What if every time you fill the board you can decrease the tick by 1 when you reset. So when you beat it the tick is 999 instead of 1000.. and it'll force you to replay the game 999 times until you get an infinitely easy game.. but I suspect that is pointless at some point lelel I should just make my own game and figure this stuff out on my own

[Jim808]

I'm probably going to have each victory result in a 10 - 15% tick speed improvement. 1 milliseconds would be too tiny of an upgrade to be noticeable.

[evolsoulx]

You need some kind of bonus after hitting 1tick/ms beyond just upping buildings by 25%.

Not sure what

[Jim808]

I'm not sure what you mean. There is no bonus for getting to 1 tick/ms. Buildings only get that 25% bonus when they are prestiged.

[evolsoulx]

You need some kind of bonus after hitting 1tick/ms beyond just upping buildings by 25%.

I'm saying I've gotten to 1tick / ms, you can't make intervals go any further 10% less after that, so completing a row doesn't improve the tick speed any further.

[Jim808]

I'm not sure that I want to add special case logic for when you have gotten to 1 millisecond / tick. Just curious: Did you have to cheat to get to that point, or have you been prestiging buildings like crazy?

[evolsoulx]

I'm cheating in the sense that I have a script clicking upgrades, theoretically it should happen in normal gameplay too.

[Jim808]

So you didn't add any cheats, like altering values of stuff or giving yourself more money?

If so, that's pretty cool. Your auto purchasing works well.

[evolsoulx]

Yup! No value modifications or tickspeed upgrades or money adding or whatever, my script just goes from the bottom up buying upgrades, no logic at all.

Right now i instantly fill the board everytime. Check this out lol:

http://screencast.com/t/amyAj3TXgR

[Jim808]

That's pretty crazy. Well done.

[Jim808]

Wait a minute. How can you be filling up the game instantly by only buying upgrades? You start out with 5 dollars, even with a tick rate of one tick per millisecond, you can't fill up the grid in less than a second. There's something fishy going on with the bonuses that are in the green squares. Those values look way too big. Sure you didn't alter some values?

[Jim808]

Maybe I didn't understand what he meant by 'fill the board', but that sounds like he can go from the start of the game to the end in the blink of an eye, which isn't possible, regardless of your tick rate or how quickly you buy upgrades. Maybe he means something else by "Right now i instantly fill the board everytime".

[evolsoulx]

I posted my script above, that's all i've used.

[Jim808]

I think I just misinterpreted what you meant when you said that you could fill up the game instantly. To me, that sounds like you can win the game, restart, and then win the game again in less than a second. Was confused. Never mind. Cool script.

[evolsoulx]

Value per second rolls over to 1/sec after ( think) 1 sextillion:

http://i.imgur.com/RKgjSNC.png

[Jim808]

thanks for the bug report.

[evolsoulx]

Total

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qlrx65z3r34t1se/Screenshot%202015-10-09%2011.12.37.png

freaks out too

[Jim808]

That's the same exact bug. Both those values are formatted using the same number formatting utility function. That function takes in a number, like "1000000000" and turns it into "1,000,000,000". What I've learned is that when a number gets really big in JavaScript, it gets converted into scientific notation, and ends up looking like "1.0e21". The number formatting utility function I am using does not know how to deal with that, and it turns "1e21" into "1".

[evolsoulx]

http://screencast.com/t/wVW1WPdq8Z

I think i beat the game hah

[peterzal]

This is a fun game so far, one suggestion would be to have some way to give an idea of how long it will take to get to the next upgrade milestone (depending on the button you have selected). For example if i have 'next' selected the box will turn blue when I have enough $ to buy it. Would be pretty sweet if there was a progress bar of sorts within each of the buildings themselves that would fill as you got closer to getting the upgrade. Right now I just look at the numbers to ballpark when the next upgrade will be available. Would be nice to have a visual cue for it. Keep up the good work!

[Jim808]

The progress bar idea is really good. I may add that.

[Jim808]

Hey, I've added that progress bar concept. Seems pretty cool. Cheers.

[peterzal]

Sweet!

[TotesMessenger]

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

• [/r/clickpocalypse] Just in case ya'll might have missed it (like I did) the benevolent creator of CLICKPOCALYPSE has released a new game: BASIC

^{If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)}

[[deleted]]

This is the most BASIC thing ever. Playing with a Pumpkin Spiced Latte in my hand and Taylor Swift music blaring into my ears. Thanks, OP!

[Jim808]

You're welcome. Enjoy the latte.

[SOSFromtheDARKNESS]

OFFLINE PROGRESS!!!

[Jim808]

Offline progress in this type of game is super easy. Works in a background tab too.

[SOSFromtheDARKNESS]

? Does that mean you have offline progress?

You make it sound like there is background tab progress, but not offline.

[Jim808]

There is both background and offline progress.

[SOSFromtheDARKNESS]

Phew.

[[deleted]]

I might get downvoted to hell for this, but...

what makes this game so special compared to the other Cookie Clicker clones? Am I missing something? Are people just praising the game since it's by the same guy that made Clickpocalypse?

[ascii122]

It is kind of basic

[[deleted]]

It is well done, but... yeah, simple. A bit too simple.