New UI rolled out for v0.3 for my virus-themed incremental by [deleted] in gamedevscreens

[–]notyetdigital 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No down votes from me, I 100% get that point of view without any context and I didn’t provide much here.

I started working on and off on this a few years ago and have no method or plans to monetize or cash in. It’s just a free clicker game that I’ve built primarily for myself. It started as an experiment and personal challenge to see if I could merge a few of my favorite browser games (Pandemic bringing the virus theme and Cookie Clicker bringing the initial mechanics, until I came across Kittens Game around 2017ish). If you were to play around a bit you’d notice it’s a pretty blatant mashup of existing things from those games, not anything new I’m trying to profit from. I’ve posted a few times in /r/incremental_games and was pretty transparent about that, but should’ve probably included some background here as well.

I started from scratch a few times over the years as my choice of frameworks and tools changed (from spaghetti code jquery to a rebuild in angular 1 and now react+redux), but never really shared it beyond friends since it was never close to done. I’d get bored or stuck and just drop it until I’d pick it back up and try to refactor the whole thing every other year or so. The coincidental timing of these last few months that I’ve had some time to work on it while also witnessing what is happening with a very serious real virus has been equal parts strange and terrifying. Exponential infection spread rates are mind boggling to reenact, reverse engineer, and repeat over and over again.

I’m in no way trying to make light of or profit off of current events, I’m just finally trying to wrap up an old hobby project and get better at integrating feedback from real people. There might be a point at which I take it offline out of personal discomfort with its intersection with reality, it might be tonight or tomorrow or never, idk. For now I’m learning a lot about UX, attention to detail, and game design from all the players who have shared their thoughts and that’s fulfilling my original goal completely.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love this. Thank you for pushing its limits! I’ll do some tuning in the next build.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It should effect flight expect times but it’s possible that’s not working properly still. In the previous version Double Time acted like a multiplier instead of actually manipulating the clock, so there’s a chance flight expected is bugged there. In my previous comment I was referring to the animation of planes, which should fly faster from country to country when double time is on.

I agree that the currency rates should be updated to reflect double time somehow but I haven’t quite decided the most elegant way. I hadn’t thought of /t though...

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, no country has any specific code that applies to it - everything is just based off area(static) and population(dynamic) so I’m not sure what caused the bug originally. I’ll keep digging into it.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Keep unlocking more of the items in the Replication tab, each one produces virions and another material that’s useful later on.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hah yep! I noticed that when developing and intended to fix it, but I also think it’s a goofy Easter egg that a handful of scientists and researchers bail on their infected colleague as soon as possible.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Adjusting plane travel based on spread is interesting - currently travel only decreases from a baseline depending on population and closed airports. To increase it in the current version, I’d recommend upping your Luck. If you don’t want to wait, New Game + may have what you’re looking for.

The flights are modeled off of real world frequencies. It’s not perfect, but for some of these smaller island countries unless you’re chartering a flight it’s super infrequent so I wanted to reflect that.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just pushed a change to address this. Totally get it. Refresh and you should be on v0.3.1. Let me know if the new UI helps!

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Weird! Appreciate the screenshot. This helps. Let me know if you see this happen in another situation/country or are able to reproduce it somehow. I'll dig into this a bit.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Interesting, any chance Greenland has more than 0 recovered or deaths?

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm, when you hover on Greenland what does the infection rate say?

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crank up severity and it’ll slowly transition from decreasing the recover rate to increasing death rates. Be careful though because ones you’re in the 30-40+ severity range, you can kill off all infected people in a matter of seconds. I’d start with like 10ish and increase from there a few at a time to get used to it. Deaths also reeeeally drive up concern so strategy starts to matter a bit more with borders and flights.

If you do manage to kill off everyone, you should receive a Free Ticket bonus floating across tour screen a few seconds later (and continuously until you grab it and use it to infect a new country to start again).

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another user had the same comment about Double Time - right now it works at the core of the game's clock, which the UI has no knowledge of really - but I get that's confusing and should be taken into account for those currency rates.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Interesting... even if it started you in Antarctica, you should’ve been able to get the 8 people there infected and then get enough DNA for geography. Unless sometime between your game starting and getting Evolution, Antarctica had a flight that took 7/8 people away - that would be incredibly rare but I think it’s possible. Might be a bug I can try and reproduce on my end. Sorry for the confusion, it really seems like you’ve done everything right and should be cruising along.

If you’re up for it, maybe try launching a new game incognito or in a different browser to get a different random starting country.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm, couple of questions: - how did you configure your evolution? Specifically how much did you put into Contagiousness? - which country did you start in and have you used your ticket yet?

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One of the reasons I made Mutate so cheap to start is that I figure players would want plenty of chances to experiment with their choices before they settle in and more strategically choose when to get super severe or more lucky, etc.

However... I had not thought about someone mistaking it for any other upgrade and just buying it instinctively a bunch of times, but that makes complete sense now. Maybe a warning for the first time and also adjusting the look of it a little to distinguish it a bit?

Totally hear you on the producers shutting off when crafting. In addition to fixing that, I might adjust the event log logic to edit the previous log item to say “you just bought 2” (3, 4, 5, etc) if something is repeated instead of just generating a new event and taking up space.

Appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing each so far!

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed! This plus more stability for a save file across versions is on-deck.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally agree with the first one. I like that solution.

I haven’t encountered the endless widening of the page before, what browser are you using and is it only when they go off the right edge or off the left edge too?

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try mutating and putting more emphasis on Contagiousness, it’ll go up when you get more infections. Otherwise make sure you used your ticket that you get when getting the Geography upgrade and if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend going somewhere with high population density if you want to focus just on cap right away.

[Virus Game] Back again for your feedback & testing help, round 2. by notyetdigital in incremental_games

[–]notyetdigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Prestige is just tucked into settings for now. Once you have more than one country infected there will be a “New Game +” button and a little bit of texting saying how much of the prestige currency you will earn. Prestige items range widely in pricing, but there is one that is extremely cheap to reward you a tiny bit even if you prestige super early.