Impulse

[Skasi]

I have tried what you wrote with the version I have released and have never been able to grow this way. Sounds strange though.

However, I have been working on the project since I last released it, which includes the absorption function. Maybe it works better now. I think I will release a new version as soon as I am happy with the games physics concerning fume generation as well as moving around and as soon as I've decided on how to do the GUI, maybe including a menu and if not, at least a bunch of options which I think will be applied to all the F-keys we have.

Right now I think I have to add a few more breeds so I don't get bored with testing too much, hehe.

[subrime]

The rate of growth is very small when reabsorbing, so if you only do it a bit, you will not notice.

I observed the effect by:

0) absorb everything on level
1) zoom around, emmitting lots of bubbles (down to half your size)
2) collect them all again
3) repeat quite a few times
...
until
.....
4) even zoomed all the way out (entire world visible), size is more than half the width of the world.

This took a long time, but given the lack of things to do in the game, (some) people will find their own ways to entertain themselves...

[Tenoch]

Well it might be a floating point precision thing. It seems to be quite a small error, so it might not be a problem. Otherwise, you can keep a global sum and reequilibrate the universe's total mass rregularly, if you really want to

[Skasi]

As has been said before, the game has been changed - yes, even including the absorb function, so I am pretty sure whatever caused this bug is no more. (Rest in peace )


I apologize for not bringing any news on Impulse until now. I've been working on it every once in a while since I started working on this little game exactly a month ago. The code has yet to reach a quality I am proud of, but the new release is coming closer day by day. What the game really needs is me not being too lazy to work on something like a menu. I want the player to be able to choose from different worlds, some of which I have already created and am still working on nearly every day, to unlock new ones and to be able to adjust different settings like resolution, etc. ingame.

Also I need some music/sounds. I might be able to find proper music and create sounds on my own (as I have also done for my old title Lords of Space), but if someone finds something.. pleasant.. cosmos styled.. yea you know.


Here's a little screenshot showing one of the new worlds in the new version. The bar to the right shows your entities current size based on the maximum size it can reach. Marked red is the size you have to reach to win. (right now it's the biggest entities size - in this level that should NOT be the big ball in the middle, but I have not created world-based-goals yet)

[kalle2990]

That looks epic!
I can't wait for the new version to be released. I agree that a menu would be nice, because it would be cool playing it in fullscreen. How about different types of 'absorbers' that you can be (unlockable), and they all have different special functions. Could be great, or messy

[qubodup]

I don't want to sapm (or smap even) but I just red that the Osmos devs are looking for Linux porters. I thought this might be relevant to our interest.

[Skasi]

Right uhm.. maybe I should port Impulse to 0.6 and like.. continue working on it?

[Skasi]

Aaaalright, I didn't port anything, but thought I really HAVE TO release the current version, even if it's extremely incomplete. I can't convince myself to put any more work into this project as I am very very very lazy, so I want everybody to have fun playing it and be it just for five minutes!

Check the first post for Impulse v2!

requires love 0.5.0

[osuf oboys]

Cool, it's like creating a solar system, with one very egotistical bully planet.

I like how you have to expend mass to move, that's nifty.

Perhaps you can start zoomed in on your planet and zoom out as your grow, as is standard in cell simulation games (e.g. the best part of Spore, the cell stage).

I think the game is a bit odd in that it's the hardest when you start a level and quickly gets easier as your grow in size. It might partially be because if you eat a guy your own size, you double in radius and move up real quick. If seen as 2d objects, the new area is four times the old, so perhaps sqrt(2 ) would be a better factor? As a 3d object, the radius would increase by a factor 2^(1/3) times. It would also cause you to move longer distances to find something to absorb of your own size rather than whatever is nearby.

By adjusting the necessary mass to grow and how much other planets bump into each other (some random noise to the starting velocities), you can add another problem for the player to deal with: there might a planet so large that all the smaller mass is not enough to catch up to him. The player then gets an incentive to move quickly and prevent large-planet collisions.

I really liked the star merry-go-round level.

You really have to port it though. Player base cut by 10 otherwise.

Your games are fun, keep at them, Skasi!

[Skasi]

Hey there,

sorry I didn't check on any answers earlier, so.

Currently the minimal zoom is based on your entities size, so you can just play all the way zoomed in - it will automatically zoom out, if needed. I didn't want to forbid zooming all the way out, because the world just looks great like that in my opinion.

I know the game is hard at start and levels tend to become easy too fast, but the current ones are meant to be easy. It is possible to add new types of entities, which fly around randomly, or even have some basic intelligence, competing with the player. Same applies to worlds - objectives can be added easily. One could theoretically add triggers too.

Entities size is based on surface (which is "mass"), not on radius, so there already is a square. I have tried volume - 3d - using a sphere instead of a circle, but there wasn't enough size difference for my taste. I tried to keep levels short, so I didn't want to use extreme mass difference either.

Some more information:
From now on this game shall be licensed under err.. GPL 2.0!
Feel free to add to it, port it and oh - fix all the bugs!