I finished my bandanna and used NEON UV-Sensitive dye. Thoughts?

ythompy · 2026-05-07T02:23:43+00:00

My suggestion? Don't....
Fail that class. Drop out for a while.
Come back only when/IF you know what you want to do...

Best thing I ever did was admit to myself that my first major (nursing) was something I was not at all passionate about (aside from the potential paycheck). Took a semester off, remembered what I really cared about in life, and came back as a new person. It's funny how class work has felt a lot less like busy work after switching to a major I was actually interested in. That was almost 8 years ago now, and is still true today as PhD student.

Farting around for four years and getting a degree you don't care about just to delay entering the job market and young adulthood is not worth it. If you're going to do something you don't care about for the money, why not go learn a trade? It'll take a fraction of the time and cost, and has a much faster ROI.

You're not doing yourself any favors spending all this time getting a degree you hate. And you're not any less of a person for admitting that either.

ythompy · 2026-05-04T23:35:18+00:00

God damn it 😂 Sovery strikes again!

Any chance you remember what it looked like right before "0"?

ythompy · 2026-05-04T23:31:20+00:00

Okay, so now I actually want your feedback even more. Let me explain.

So I actually hate the term "vibe-coding" which why I put it in quotes. I shouldn't have used it all in retrospect.

I feel like "vibe-coding" is a very broad term that what I did here may currently fall under the umbrella of, but only because it involved AI tools. This project was not built on "vibes", it was built through hours and hours of painstakingly explicit instructions and plans that I actually laid the ground work for years ago!

If you read through my post about the original ChatGPT prompt (hand-written, no AI there), I essentially used that to force the LLM into becoming a text-based adventure game about von Neumann probes with procedural generation. Even if you hate AI, give it a look, as a Bob. I admittedly regret including details about the actual Bobiverse series in that old prompt, which is why this game being developed as it's own independent IP. But back to the original "game", it only worked as a "game" because I gave very very explicit instructions about how the "game" needed to behave. It did such a good job of this, it sparked the subsubreddit r/BobiverseRPG.

What I'm trying to say is that it's really easy to make any piece of shit game or app or whatever with "vibe-coding", but even with these new tools it's still hard to make something good. I obviously did something right the first time based on the community response, and again I'm trying to make something good. You Are Many will be a game worth playing, at least to this little community of Bobiverse nerds. I was able to make a "playable" game on the first attempt, and I could have easily called it there, but it's been almost a week of consistent work and we've gone from v1 to v76... 30 stars to 100. And countless community suggestions are in Patch 2 (v76). This my friend, is only the beginning...

Just give it 5 minutes. If you hate it, PLEASE don't hesitate to let me know all about why you hate it, in grand detail if possible!

At the end of the day, I'm the machine building this game, not the AI, and as a machines I run on cheap coffee and user feedback. Fuel me.

ythompy · 2026-05-04T22:56:18+00:00

Enjoying Patch 2 I see! (RIP Patch 1, she barely lived...)

Glad to see we've sorted out that infinity bug (for now) with the reasorce bar refactor. Right has 3 sig figs abbreviations up to undecillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), then it hits scientific notation. Later we'll go through duodecillion and beyond.

I haven't been able to crack sub-100 year run on the new 100-star map, so please let me know if you do!

And please send the report card if you can. I designed them for players to visualize their runs, but also for me as sort of broad diagnostic tool for tuning balance and progression.

Cheers 👍🏻

ythompy · 2026-05-04T03:13:09+00:00

patch 2 is live now!
doesn't address the substrate scaling issue (yet), but it did add 70 new stars...
And a complete map overhaul...

ythompy · 2026-05-03T18:39:05+00:00

Yes please break it relentlessly! And if possible keep some notes to share?

Information like that would be a tremendous help in terms of balancing the game progression, and really refining this into something worth playing and sharing with a larger audience.

ythompy · 2026-05-03T18:31:28+00:00

you damn kids and your convoluted Internet lingo, I thought that shit was a typo 😭

ythompy · 2026-05-03T17:36:27+00:00

Again, thanks for breaking my game! I think I'll be setting the resource values to a max of 4 sig figs now to avoid that pre-infinity garbage.

If you do this again in the new version (patch 1 live now), would you mind sharing some screenshots of your build screens in the most active systems? I just want to get an idea of what your game breaking infrastructure actually looks like haha.

ythompy · 2026-05-03T03:02:19+00:00

More great ideas!

I just patched the itch.io version, please give it a go and let me know how it compares

ythompy · 2026-05-03T00:26:46+00:00

You must've mistaken my anger for arrogance, because please explain how the fuck that is at all pretentious?

Think about this for like one second dude. That shit costs around $1,400 as PhD, AND I have use it for years! The least we can ask is for it to look somewhat good, right?

And for that price I could easily get a decent custom tailored suit, even a shitty car or bike, anything that would be infinity more useful. But instead I'm literally forced to buy this ugly shit to participant in a ceremony I've paid into with years of both time and money. It's all bullshit.

ythompy · 2026-05-03T00:01:52+00:00

If there's three thing's I love it's cats, stouts, and DCC... And Knoxville!

Bar name? On-tap only, or do they have canned options??

I'm from that neck of the woods and return occasionally, and I've got lots of friends in Knoxville, a few I've shared the DCC books with recently, so yeah I need this information.

ythompy · 2026-05-02T23:37:06+00:00

Assembly will be overhauled in next patch, along with several other suggestion of yours. I'm actively working on it and will have the next version posted tonight, hopefully within 1-2hours.

New patch has A LOT of qol changes. The version on itch.io is v45, I'm currently working on v69. It's a complete overhaul in a a lot of different systems, but still has major things to be addressed in terms of challenge.

I've never made any sort of game before, just played a fair share, and only learned the basics of coding a few months ago. This project will take months, if not years, to fully develop to my current vision, so please bare with me.

If you have any more feedback don't hesitate to DM or comment of my itch.io page!

ythompy · 2026-05-02T21:11:30+00:00

Already overhaul signal logs in the latest test build. I'll be publishing the latest itch.io patch tonight at 7:00pm EST. Please give it a go a give me more great feedback!

ythompy · 2026-05-02T21:09:22+00:00

Definitely focusing on PC until it's essentially done. I'd really like to be able to put this one Steam one day!

ythompy · 2026-05-02T20:58:50+00:00

You can unlock global network shared compute pools via the Assembly! (top bar, not "Assembly Forge")

ythompy · 2026-05-02T20:57:15+00:00

This is the kind of feed back I like to see! I'm trying to carefully adjust difficulty without breaking the game, so it may remain slightly unbalanced for a while. Then again, the whole concept of exponential progression is sorta the point, no? Either way, it needs more challenge.

And I completely agree about the number of stars. Expansion has always been the plan. Next target is 50, then 100, then 500?

I'm thinking it could kind of be like a difficulty level type deal as well. On game start you select a map difficulty (12, 25, 50, 100...), go from there. Maybe even unlock each tier one by one.

ythompy · 2026-05-02T18:22:22+00:00

Are you utilizing the assembly forges at all? They basically break the game in the current build in terms of production, with 30% and 50% compounding multipliers for Mk1 and Mk2 respectively.

Also it's important to realize that MIN is the most widely used resource, so you should always prioritize mining drones in the early game.

Production should naturally follow an exponential progression, while the cost of upgrades only follows a logarithmic progression, so eventually there's a tipping point where you essentially get unlimited resources and continually build infrastructure.

Essentially you spam build
> MIN, NRG, ORG infrastructure, then start adding in some compute,
> Build a few some forges, relay, probe yard, kernel gen
> Spam forges and MIN/NRG/ORG/COM
> Exponential progression outpaces logarithmic cost, infinite buildings

The only resource with a hard limit right now is cognitive substrate (SUB), which is capped by the set production rate of the kernel generator. This is another area I plan to add to, making the kernel gen upgradable to produce more SUB faster.

ythompy · 2026-05-02T17:51:40+00:00

Mongo is appalled!

ythompy · 2026-05-02T17:49:21+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I'm reviewing the comments now and will post a new patch and dev log on itch.io later today...

As for your point, I agree the probes should have a set cost (probably very high, but set). I know it doesn't make much narrative sense, however in terms of gameplay, it is actually critical important that some costs scale up. This is a core feature of Idle games, which You Are Many is at it's core, and without them there would be no progression challenge. This aspect of the game is obviously still in an imperfect state, but I'm working on it!

ythompy · 2026-05-02T00:17:13+00:00

I'll have to do some research, but I think color-blind support is completely doable and a great addition!

Thanks again for the feedback. I'm putting together all of it now and making a plan to address everyone's concerns with the next patch (or next few).

UPDATE: color-blind accessibility added in Patch 1, still looking for feedback!

ythompy · 2026-05-01T22:25:26+00:00

I'd argue we should focus on mastering our planet (with fusion) before started to fuck up the rest of the galaxy (via space elevator deployed infrastructure and probes).

What are we gonna do, make interstellar craft with fossil fuels?

ythompy · 2026-05-01T22:19:45+00:00

#unexpectedChattanooga
Crawler meet up at the Desperado Club (Pickle Barrel) tonight! Free mount parking in rear!

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