this game would be cool with a generic alife game mode, it would be interesting to see if any kind of ecosystem could form on its own with evolution and little plankton as the bottom of the foodchain
It's currently mostly on hiatus. I have some grant money coming down the pipe to work on it for a few months next year, but besides that all my dev time is currently on Lancer Tactics.
I fully intend to turn towards Crescent Loom 2 after that though, made in an engine that can handle more than a few creatures at a time.
I'm a really late arrival to this neurological sandbox. I discovered it purely by accident when looking for a sandbox game like Powdertoy (yes, those are two different genres). It's fantastic and I'm glad to hear it will still be around despite finalization at 1.0. I also am happy to hear a possible Version 2.0 is planned in the years to come. It's nice to get a peek behind the scenes at what makes me do the things I do without thought, like maintaining balance while walking, instantly pulling my hand back after touching a hot stove and so on.
What is the difference between the downloadable and the website in terms of functionality?
I hadn't heard of Powdertoy before, what a fascinating game 👀 love sandboxes like that.
Yay, I'm glad it's got you thinking about what might actually be going on to allow us to move through the world. That's spot-on for what my intention has been with this.
The downloadable version lets you save creatures locally instead of on the cloud, has likely better performance, access to moddable files like being able to program your own ion channels, and a few niche utilities like being able to record and save neuron activity to file.
Yeah, the reason why I like Powder Toy is the same reason why I like Crescent Loom: I can just tinker about like a mad scientist and do stuff, resulting in either progress or mayhem. 😄
the downloadabe version runs faster and looks better than the website version.
aslo ive found that the longer i play the website version the more lagy it gets, to the point where i have to refresh the page. too bad i cant get the paid version :{
The TAB button does not work to change connection types in the demo, so I can't actually get the cell to do anything at all. If this is intentional as part of the demo, then I'm not sure why you're presenting it at all, since it's functionally unusable to demonstrate the first thing it suggests you try to build.
Additionally, the downloadable demo version simply does nothing at all. I'm not even sure which file is supposed to launch the game. Index opens a blank page, favicon opens a picture of the icon, and main.js just crashes outright.
To use Tab to change connection types, you need to be mousing over the connection you want to change, like this:
The downloadable HTML5 demo was made available for some teachers who needed to self-host it to get around their school's firewall — you'll need to use a chrome extension like this one to get a localhost and point it at the files. So I'd obviously recommend using the provided in-browser version instead.
? that's a fair bit into the ways of tutorial. You've made a full body and swimming animal at that point. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what we're seeing here.
Loving this game as a tool for teaching introductory neuroscience at Oberlin College! Thank you for creating it! I'm so impressed.
I'm just starting to use it in teaching. I'm pairing it with readings from the late neuroanatomist Valentino Braitenberg's book, Vehicles. This game lets you implement some of the simple creatures, or vehicles, described in that wonderful book, and that really brings the ideas to life.
I hope you keep up development, because students love this! I bet you could get site license purchases from colleges and universities for this (if that was something you wanted).
Hey thanks! I'm glad you're getting use out of it! I've thought a lot about Braitenberg vehicles while making this. It's interesting to see the difference in locomotion types and requisite underlying circuity when you have muscles instead of motors. Without a motor that turns a steady signal into motion, animals have to use a lot more back-and-forth rhythm-based systems. But the principles are identical! In case you haven't seen it, the "Zippy" premade creature is a direct example of the "sensory crossover produces wall-avoidant-behavior" design.
The current development state of the game is on the backburner; I'm doing bugfixes as they come up and features whenever someone tosses me some funding for a specific project. But I'm married to the idea of neurobio games and have the full intention of coming back with a Crescent Loom 2 in a couple years — likely under that sort of license-based biz model that keeps it free for most and paid for orgs that can afford it.
Hi! I've finally picked this up after getting through a bundle pack, but it seems to crash after a while and I don;t know if im past the tutorial (not that it's hard, it just stops talking after i plug in the auto neurons).
Then I tried using the keyboard inputs so i have direct control of my creature, and then after a while of playing, I get the big blue orb presumably from eating enough food and I crash shortly after.
Ah, that blue orb is an egg. Sounds like it crashes on it hatching, which happens ~8 seconds after being laid. Would you mind saving to the server the creature that crashes the game when the baby hatches and let me know its name so I can try to replicate?
And yes, sounds like you finished the tutorial, it doesn't signpost the fact super well. The game is just a sandbox after that.
i love the game, but i'd suggest 2 things, 1º, sterile creatures and the ability to spawn creatures, 2º, deleting certain parts of organs/body parts withou needing to get them eaten, to create scars or something like that
I saw your biography at your itch.io page and was amazed to discover that you are a neuroscientist and also an indie game developer and I felt so identifed by your history because I am studying biology and I also likes pretty much neuroscience. I also likes to develope games and I usually make the music but I also have learnt some programming by myself. And when I played your game Aesthetic and learnt that you also were LGTBIQ+ as I am, I was very surprised by the resemblances. Well to the point, I wanted to say that I loved Aesthetic(but that game doesn't comments section and this game was the one you mentioned in your biography as your main project) and wanted to ask you how you can work as a neuroscientist and at the same time be an indie developer because I'm very interested in doing that too. PD: I find the idea of your thesis very interesting because I love zoology and neurobiology.
> how you can work as a neuroscientist and at the same time be an indie developer Lots of indie devs do the nights/weekends thing while working a day job — mine just happened to be in a lab. I'm not in any active research projects and now consider myself more of a science communicator aka making science-based games.
So I highly encourage you to lean into what you love about biology! If you keep honing your game-making skills on the side, I'm sure you'll find something cool and unique to say about biology in the language of games.
The downloadable HTML version needs to be hosted locally to work; it's mostly there for educators who want to set up games behind a school firewall but can't install the native version for some reason.
Instead, try the PC/Mac/Linux native builds that are included in the download. If you want to play in the web browser, you can do so at crescentloom.com/game
Yep, I haven't released an update since I decided to (organizationally) push it to 1.0, the number will get bumped up next time I fix or add something.
And yes, the tutorial ends there; I suppose a little notification or something would probably be good.
So I bought a bunch of schtuff on itch.io and I am going through it all and seeing if I like it or not. This got my attention. I am on Arch Linux. I am slowly learning and have resolved many issues. One I cannot get past, when trying to run this, I get: "./Crescent Loom: error while loading shared libraries: libcurl-nss.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"
What are the requirements for this? I have gone into the arch repository and installed:
I then went looking for 'libcurl-nss.so' and I cannot find it anywhere under /root. I have updated all installed packages and reboot and still nothing.
Hm, I don't recognize libcurl-nss.so and am not well-versed in linux packages, so to fix it I'd probably do the same thing that you've done and google it and wildly install any package I come across. I seelibcurl4-nss-dev or maybelibcurl3 or maybelibcurl4 as other possible packages.
I haven't completely given up, I am concentrating on something else. Unfortunately, most Google results take me to resources for more established Linux distros, like Ubuntu. I use Arch, which builds everything from the ground up; booting into an Arch USB drops you to a simple CLI. You have to turn on services and begin to download packages to build a GUI and window manager. This means you have great control over exactly what is installed, but has the con of not using the same software repositories that more user friendly distros use. No dulaboot to Windows as well; forces me to learn and use Linux proper. Doing rather well. ;) I'll keep a look out and post my results in case another user might have the same issue but never followed thru.
So.... Looks like I will be running the Windows version through WINE. I can only imagine what kind of memory errors I will get from a game like this... I have been working with someone on the Arch forums to see if there is a package or something I need to install, libcurl-nss-so.4 is the only thing missing. So far, nothing has worked and 5 hours of Google-ing hasn't revealed helpful results. Maybe for Ubuntu users, but Arch is a different beast altogether.
If you are allowed or able, what libraries were used to build Crescent Loom against? Either that or if I had the source I could find why it is calling libcurl-nss-so and redirect to another library that is actually used on Arch systems.
The game was built in Cerberus X, which automatically transpiles to various things, so I don't usually directly touch the libraries it uses to talk to the OS.... however, CSX is open source so we can just search it; this looks like it might be promising? I just searched Crescent Loom's repo to confirm that I don't mention libcurl anywhere else. I am using that httprequest.cxs file to talk to the creature server, so that might be a good list to pursue.
Sorry you've had to spend so long googling this! >_< I appreciate you posting the problems/potential solutions here. I'm also happy to keep assisting to the best of my ability, I'd love to see the game work on more versions of linux.
So, it involved building a package from scratch with some patches and i voila ! Crescent Loom now runs. I think, and I could be wrong, I am still waiting on emails and discussion, there is a push to get rid of Network Security Services (NSS) in favor of what is happening with OpenSSL??? or fold the functions into curl at a base level??? I am not clear on it with just a cursory glance at an article and the fix is for something quite niche for Linux users. The only reason why there is a large number of answers that worked for Ubuntu and other users is Ubuntu being more popular of a distrobution, but also fosters a "complete user friendly" system, while Arch caters to people that are trying to be like Windows power users and more. libcurl-nss.so would be included in some of the curl packages available to them as a "just throw the kitchen sink in" to ensure compatibility, not security.
Crescent Loom 1.0 is a huge success in so many ways, Bravo in so many ways, keep up the excellent work your doing. The foundation is amazing and solid. i will certainly keep an eye open for your work coz' anything that follows will certainly be great , interesting , touching etc thanks
Sorry for the late reply! Thanks for the bug report. If you still have it installed, could you look in the logs/ folder next to the executable and send any crashlog.txt files to crescentloom@gmail.com?
As for the local HTML version: it's a little tricky to get working. Browsers sensibly have a security feature for local files that restricts access to other files on your hard drive. I should probably add steps to get it working to a readme or something. Your options are to either:
Launch a browser with "--allow-file-access-from-files" mode enabled.
However, the local html5 version is identical to the one hosted at crescentloom.com — I've included it in the available files because a teacher requested it to get around a firewall issue at their institution.
The stand alone player consistently slows down and eventually crashes as I play between 30 minutes and an hour, but it saves what your last build was and replaces it on restart so I'm not even mad. Though if it stayed stable long term I would definitely just set up an aquarium of little custom critters and let it run.
I would love to get the physics efficient and stable enough for that! I've had a dream of making a twitch stream of that kind of aquarium full of the creatures people upload to the server.
I would definitely watch that, love these little guys. I guess while I have you here I have one note and one suggestion. The note is I can't seem to see, on standalone or embedded, uploaded creations past page 56, entry 1000, which ends in the middle Gs. The suggestion is, and I don't know how easy or possible it would even be, I would love to limit color vision on eyes so that a creature could potentially recognize and avoid predation or sharing space on its own kind, which also opens up mimicry through camouflage.
Hi, I am create a co-op bundle to celebrate World Environment Day, I want invited you to join, all content related with nature and environment can be join, if you are interested you have join in the follow link: https://itch.io/jam/world-environment-day-bundle-2022
I'm excited and I appreciate your interest and your participation, thank you very much and good luck!
Hi! Thanks for the detailed error report. CL is in no way abandoned, I'm pretty sure it's going to see me into the grave. 🙃 Recent development has just been been on other aspects of the game e.g. the connectome explorer & working on securing funding.
Odd, it's working OK for me on all browsers. Looks like it might be some kind of problem with hosting it through itch.io. I'll investigate when I get some time this weekend. Thanks again!
OK, I still haven't been able to replicate this, but I've added a locally-hosted mirror of the game here, also linked to in the troubleshooting steps. The first one is still preferable as the main because of bandwidth costs, but this should work as a fine backup.
Please let me know if you continue to see problems.
Hi Olive, Thanks for your reply! Oddly enough it is working for me now on all the links you provided here. If I remember correctly, there was some CORS error in the log, which I did not include in my first post. Maybe there was some config issue on the backend/3rd-party? Anyways, thanks for replying to my post and sorry for calling the project abandoned - in my quick search I did not find too much recent activity and maybe I am a bit of a burnt child in that way :S
I am new to the game. I did the tutorial to the point it tells me to press play and watch my creature move, but after that, i am not sure what to do next. is that the end of the tutorial or is there more to learn the systems of making sensory stuff work like eyes, whiskers, etc and to react to the environment?
If you go into one of the levels and press "H" a number of manuals will come up, which you can follow (they're kinda like Lego kit build instructions) to learn how sensory stuff works. Peahen and Zippy have whiskers and eyes, respectively.
After that, the game is mostly a sandbox. I'm working on more skill challenges like the current race mode but it's slow going!
alright, good to know. I will definitely check check out those saves then.
Is there any potential sample creature that can help you figure out if there is a way to make a creature react to cool and eat it based on "seeing" it in some way? Will the 2 samples you mentioned help me learn to do that?
This game is AWESOME! Just what I didn't know I needed! I've run through the tutorial, and flipped through the patterns (a genius idea, the pattern book), and I already see the massive potential for what else I can do.
But I'm having a problem: the Tab key doesn't cycle through the neuron connection types for me. Is there an alternate input that does the same thing? Like how you can move the camera with WASD or by using the left mouse button to pan around the environment?
It looks like all the creatures in the pattern book require connections of type Inhibit to keep the neurons from all firing at once, and I can't figure out how to do that. I'm not sure if this is just my computer or a problem with the game, but it's happening on the downloaded version and the online one.
Never mind, I figured out how to do it! You have to make a connection, then click on it, and while your mouse button is down, press Tab. Now I can explore the whole wealth of systems in this game!
Also, you can click on the little circle, the actual connection point, not the line. That brings up a menu for neuron connection types, and you can select the type you want.
I shared this with some people in a discord server for Creatures, which is another biology simulation-and-toy, and they are loving it... As someone with a passionate interest in virtual life I adore projects such as these
I'm kind of obsessed with this game. I have always wanted a game just like the Spore cell stage, and this goes way beyond my expectations! Love the voice over in the tutorial btw! I can't wait to see where this goes in the future!
My one request would be a big cave system full of enemy species to compete against. The competition and out performing other species is what makes this sort of thing super fun. Currently maps are small and have little amounts of other creatures
maybe you could could make the way to put multiple creatures in one ecosystem easier, and make them compete, like the race mode and the only ecosystem but combined!
another thing would be adding more maps and ready ecosystems!
as well as making the current non walled maps bigger/making it so there are more obstacles and decorations.
a fatal flaw i noticed is that a carnivore eating its offspring actually has some net gain, (i think), it should be more of a loss than a gain, also there should be a way of differentiating your species from others in the neuron system
other than that, i really enjoyed playing this game :)
I agree with everything you've said as important additions. I'm working on making my internal map editor polished enough so that it can be part of the game, which I think will address a lot of the lack of map variety.
Re: differentiating your own species... hm. Maybe some kind of "scent" input that activates when you're close to either offspring, other spiecies, or plankton (the blue snacks)? I'll make a to-do to look into making one.
Hey, I really like the game, super interesting and fun to experiment with. That said, whenever I try to run it on Chrome it works pretty well until anything tries to lay an egg, then it freezes up and can't be recovered. =(
This is the log that appears when it freezes up: Creature '' laying egg.
Anyways, hope you fix it and keep up the good work! It's inspirational!
EDIT: Have you considered adding scenarios? Like "you must consume X pieces of food before Y time/energy runs out and you can only use Z number of creature parts". Idk, I think the extra challenge would be great, just a thought!
Thanks for the bug report. I think I know what's going on and it should be fixed in the next update. I've experimented with some premade levels when I was trying to figure out how to do the tutorial, and found that limiting the number of creature parts was more frustrating than a fun challenge. Something open-ended could be fun though — I've been working on the level editor for the race mode in the next update (spoilers) so should be able to start thinking about challenges after that. :)
Could you make it so that you can toggle on a version like before all of those neuron gates were there and all the complicated neurobiology stuff? Maybe just a mode to set where you can put the complexity level down like to the version were all the gates and the yellow lines weren't there? Other than that I've been having fun with cannibalism, but in the end my babies got my fishie
Hi! Thanks for saying something, I can definitely get lost in adding the neuro stuff to the point of losing sight of the fun of just building creatures. I'm not sure what you mean by the "gates", though — the different kinds of neurons and connections between them have been there from day one. Have they just been getting more in your way recently?
aaaa this is so interesting! after following the instructions for the four basic creatures i made my own predatory creature and then it got Eaten Immediately, great stuff
this game is amazing!! i was playing the web version and i was blown away by the details! ive played a couple of 'brain making sims' before but they were janky and unreliable, so i was really impressed to see how well this works!!
at first i was pretty confused on how all the different things in the brain worked and was hesitant to try and make a creature from scratch because i honestly had no idea what most of those things meant, but after some trial and error i actually managed to figure out some bits and managed to make a controllable creature! so points to you for making it simple enough that even i could understand it :D
oh and once i figured it out i spent so long making a creature! i really love the variety of shapes you can make them out of (and how the different shapes have different functions too!) and i absolutely love the inclusion of bioluminescence (i definitely overused that feature,,,no regrets). unfortunately before i could upload it the game froze while i was taking it for one last spin so i had to reload and lost my little creature :c (farewell lil guy, you looked super cool before u were eaten by the void u_u). though of course this is in development so im not that upset!! i just figured it may be worth mentioning in case you're looking for bugs to squish c:
but yeah overall im absolutely loving this game! the visuals are lovely to look at as well and the internal mechanics are genuinely so impressive so good job!!!! i am completely broke but just know that if i had the money i would absolutely buy this game :D (wow this is a long comment O_O)
Yay! I'm glad you were able to figure things out by poking around! Yeah it's really important to me to have this be simple & fun enough to not scare people away with the word ~ neuroscience ~.
Thanks for the really positive comment. :) I've been having a rough time getting myself to work on this recently so it's much appreciated. Sorry you lost your little buddy!
I really appreciate you for making this game! I got this game in the racial justice bundle and honestly glad I've gotten to experience this even though my ecosystems aren't the best I still try (they are all loved : ) I wanted to use this since we have a upcoming project in zoology and I found the perfect chance to not only get better at this but to show my other classmates about this game as well!! I know some kids may not be interested and I understand that but this is such a neat little game it's hard for me not to show it off. I also talked to my teacher about it, I hope he remembers to check it out it could, he could teach so much more things with this program, and not only that it would be interactive with students, we wouldn't have to sit in a lecture about invertebrate because we could make them ourselves! I'm rambling right now but I just had to show my appreciation, thank you! : )
So I've recently been experimenting with making ecosystem chains, and sometimes the ecosystem does not interact the way I want to because of creatures of the same species gobbling each other up.(Though it still is fun to take control of my own creature and join in on the gobbling!) Also, could you implement a healing sort of mechanism where creatures that were injured from predators can grow back parts once they get enough nutrients?
Whoa, I'm surprised that you've managed to do almost any ecosystem interactions! I've done almost no work on those systems. In particular, I want the basic follow-hunt-eat loop for a creature to work, and it's still pretty far off using the out-of-the-box pieces. I like the healing idea. Work on that is going to be a ways off because I'm currently aimed more at use-in-neurobiology-classrooms than the fishtank aspect due to increased interest for remote neurobiology activities in the wake of the pandemic. But I'll get there someday! 🤞
Oh I also noticed on the front page that there are harpoons in the game now, is it part of a newer version? If so, is there a way to update my game without losing all of my saved creations?
Harpoons are still in development; I haven't been able to release an update with them yet since I injured my wrist and have had to take it easy re: computers. If you have CL installed using the Itch client, it should update the game & preserve your creatures seamlessly. Otherwise you'll have to transfer the saved creature files over manually to the new version you download; they're in internal\creatures
Hi! There's no discord for the game yet; this is the best place to comment. You can also send me emails at contact@wick.works.
The only way I've tested chromebooks is with the html5 version (the "demo" version), which sounds like you've already tried? Buying the game just gets you access to PC/Mac/Linux downloads, so it won't help with chromebooks.
I really do want to make sure the html5 version works on chromebooks... could you describe the lag a little more? Does it start fine and get slower? If you hold down the comma key, you can see the framerate in the lower-left. What rates are you getting?
Oh, also, I don't have an ipad so haven't been able to test it there at all. It really wants a mouse & keyboard though, so I wouldn't count on it working well.
i have a ipd and i played for a wile but i have a vary hard time placeing body parts and i cant dealet them. also it kiked me out of the game and was laggy. same thing as the cromebook
Cool, thanks for the report! I think I gotta say that I can't support fixing the iPad (it would require an overhaul of the UI to figure out how to make the controls work without a mouse) but the fact that it's not running well on chromebook is concerning.
I'm adding the slowdown to my to-do list for the next update. It's been a problem for years but has been getting worse..... definitely one of those maddingly-hard-to-track-down bugs. 😅
it starts out grate but soon gets worse and worse and if i speed up the time it gets worse even faster when i send it back to 100% speed
also ive reticently made several vary complex fish that have jaws and avoid obstetricals and are relatively fast. a small one who is still vary big compared to othere things. a larger one whos only slightly bigger and was more of a exparament. and today i whent complacently over bord and made a giant fish and its super fast and can kill everything that i put infront of it. but you see the problem is i cant save my fish and i really dont want to lose my latest monstrosity. can you help? when i try to save it just said name is unavailable no matter what i do. btw amma post my maga fish on the sub reddit
Congrats on the monstrosity! Hm. That's the first time I've heard of not being able to save because no names are available. You can't overwrite existing creatures on the server (because then you could delete other people's) — to confirm, you've tried a number of different names?
Anything pro-maga is not allowed and will be removed. You're welcome to name it something else though. :)
i gave it several uneape names that no one else had. i dident try to over right anything but it still said the same thing over and over agen. i tryed everything. mabey its a bug or something
Yeah sounds like it. OK, if you still have it up here's a last-ditch way to save a creature on HTML5: if you press F2 it'll print out the creature's save file in the text console below the game. If you grab that & then email it to me, I'll manually put it in the database.
I'm still not sure why the server was telling you that the name was taken — it happened for me too. I suspect that it has something to do with the sheer filesize of this sheila. I've added it to the buglist, but as per my last update it might take a while to get around to.
Just a quick question: I noticed that there don't seem to be any more muscle spots on the carnivorous jaws, just curious if it's a glitch or it's on purpose?
On purpose — there used to be & with the intention that you'd have to snap them closed with muscles to do damage, but in the interest of swinging the pendulum away from oversimulation and towards "things are functional & just work without additional setup" I removed the muscle and made them just generally dangerous to touch.
I'm open to suggestions for how to find a balances between complexity/usuable for it.
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this game would be cool with a generic alife game mode, it would be interesting to see if any kind of ecosystem could form on its own with evolution and little plankton as the bottom of the foodchain
Is this project still being worked on? i first saw it on youtube like 5 years ago and i still love it but im gonna be really sad if its dead :(
It's currently mostly on hiatus. I have some grant money coming down the pipe to work on it for a few months next year, but besides that all my dev time is currently on Lancer Tactics.
I fully intend to turn towards Crescent Loom 2 after that though, made in an engine that can handle more than a few creatures at a time.
I'm a really late arrival to this neurological sandbox. I discovered it purely by accident when looking for a sandbox game like Powdertoy (yes, those are two different genres). It's fantastic and I'm glad to hear it will still be around despite finalization at 1.0. I also am happy to hear a possible Version 2.0 is planned in the years to come. It's nice to get a peek behind the scenes at what makes me do the things I do without thought, like maintaining balance while walking, instantly pulling my hand back after touching a hot stove and so on.
What is the difference between the downloadable and the website in terms of functionality?
I hadn't heard of Powdertoy before, what a fascinating game 👀 love sandboxes like that.
Yay, I'm glad it's got you thinking about what might actually be going on to allow us to move through the world. That's spot-on for what my intention has been with this.
The downloadable version lets you save creatures locally instead of on the cloud, has likely better performance, access to moddable files like being able to program your own ion channels, and a few niche utilities like being able to record and save neuron activity to file.
Yeah, the reason why I like Powder Toy is the same reason why I like Crescent Loom: I can just tinker about like a mad scientist and do stuff, resulting in either progress or mayhem. 😄
the downloadabe version runs faster and looks better than the website version.
aslo ive found that the longer i play the website version the more lagy it gets, to the point where i have to refresh the page. too bad i cant get the paid version :{
The TAB button does not work to change connection types in the demo, so I can't actually get the cell to do anything at all. If this is intentional as part of the demo, then I'm not sure why you're presenting it at all, since it's functionally unusable to demonstrate the first thing it suggests you try to build.
Additionally, the downloadable demo version simply does nothing at all. I'm not even sure which file is supposed to launch the game. Index opens a blank page, favicon opens a picture of the icon, and main.js just crashes outright.
:/
To use Tab to change connection types, you need to be mousing over the connection you want to change, like this:
The downloadable HTML5 demo was made available for some teachers who needed to self-host it to get around their school's firewall — you'll need to use a chrome extension like this one to get a localhost and point it at the files. So I'd obviously recommend using the provided in-browser version instead.
tutorial is broken, it stops working after it assigns you to see how the pacemaker works with the muscles in the brain
It could definitely be better signposted, but that's the end of the tutorial.
That's... Not even really a tutorial at all though? That's like, at best, a test to see if your mouse works.
? that's a fair bit into the ways of tutorial. You've made a full body and swimming animal at that point. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what we're seeing here.
That's a relief. For a moment I thought I was too dumb to complete the tutorial. 😄
Thanks for clarifying!
Loving this game as a tool for teaching introductory neuroscience at Oberlin College! Thank you for creating it! I'm so impressed.
I'm just starting to use it in teaching. I'm pairing it with readings from the late neuroanatomist Valentino Braitenberg's book, Vehicles. This game lets you implement some of the simple creatures, or vehicles, described in that wonderful book, and that really brings the ideas to life.
I hope you keep up development, because students love this! I bet you could get site license purchases from colleges and universities for this (if that was something you wanted).
Hey thanks! I'm glad you're getting use out of it! I've thought a lot about Braitenberg vehicles while making this. It's interesting to see the difference in locomotion types and requisite underlying circuity when you have muscles instead of motors. Without a motor that turns a steady signal into motion, animals have to use a lot more back-and-forth rhythm-based systems. But the principles are identical! In case you haven't seen it, the "Zippy" premade creature is a direct example of the "sensory crossover produces wall-avoidant-behavior" design.
The current development state of the game is on the backburner; I'm doing bugfixes as they come up and features whenever someone tosses me some funding for a specific project. But I'm married to the idea of neurobio games and have the full intention of coming back with a Crescent Loom 2 in a couple years — likely under that sort of license-based biz model that keeps it free for most and paid for orgs that can afford it.
Hi! I've finally picked this up after getting through a bundle pack, but it seems to crash after a while and I don;t know if im past the tutorial (not that it's hard, it just stops talking after i plug in the auto neurons).
Then I tried using the keyboard inputs so i have direct control of my creature, and then after a while of playing, I get the big blue orb presumably from eating enough food and I crash shortly after.
Ah, that blue orb is an egg. Sounds like it crashes on it hatching, which happens ~8 seconds after being laid. Would you mind saving to the server the creature that crashes the game when the baby hatches and let me know its name so I can try to replicate?
And yes, sounds like you finished the tutorial, it doesn't signpost the fact super well. The game is just a sandbox after that.
I saved it online as "crashreport-eris"!
Thank you, I'll take a look!
bad tutorial can't even understand much of the fundamentals
tutorial issue
The stuff it shows you IS the fundamentals...
Oh wow! I remember seeing this game at SIX years ago! Very cool to see how much it and you have evolved since then!
i love the game, but i'd suggest 2 things, 1º, sterile creatures and the ability to spawn creatures, 2º, deleting certain parts of organs/body parts
withou needing to get them eaten, to create scars or something like that
I saw your biography at your itch.io page and was amazed to discover that you are a neuroscientist and also an indie game developer and I felt so identifed by your history because I am studying biology and I also likes pretty much neuroscience. I also likes to develope games and I usually make the music but I also have learnt some programming by myself. And when I played your game Aesthetic and learnt that you also were LGTBIQ+ as I am, I was very surprised by the resemblances. Well to the point, I wanted to say that I loved Aesthetic(but that game doesn't comments section and this game was the one you mentioned in your biography as your main project) and wanted to ask you how you can work as a neuroscientist and at the same time be an indie developer because I'm very interested in doing that too. PD: I find the idea of your thesis very interesting because I love zoology and neurobiology.
> how you can work as a neuroscientist and at the same time be an indie developer
Lots of indie devs do the nights/weekends thing while working a day job — mine just happened to be in a lab. I'm not in any active research projects and now consider myself more of a science communicator aka making science-based games.
So I highly encourage you to lean into what you love about biology! If you keep honing your game-making skills on the side, I'm sure you'll find something cool and unique to say about biology in the language of games.
Thanks for your kind words, I'll try to improve my game dev skills to make one day a game about biology and simultaneously become a biologist.
How do I actually play it? I payed but the version 1 html5 doesn't work.
Edit: I got the logs
The downloadable HTML version needs to be hosted locally to work; it's mostly there for educators who want to set up games behind a school firewall but can't install the native version for some reason.
Instead, try the PC/Mac/Linux native builds that are included in the download. If you want to play in the web browser, you can do so at crescentloom.com/game
Hello! Is there a community/ discord server somewhere for this game? Would love a place to share my creations. Thank you!
Hi! The reddit is probably your best bet.
I thought the game was on V.1.0 but I see 0.7.22 when I launch. Also is the tutorial supposed to end when she tells you to press play?
Yep, I haven't released an update since I decided to (organizationally) push it to 1.0, the number will get bumped up next time I fix or add something.
And yes, the tutorial ends there; I suppose a little notification or something would probably be good.
So I bought a bunch of schtuff on itch.io and I am going through it all and seeing if I like it or not. This got my attention. I am on Arch Linux. I am slowly learning and have resolved many issues. One I cannot get past, when trying to run this, I get:
"./Crescent Loom: error while loading shared libraries: libcurl-nss.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"
What are the requirements for this? I have gone into the arch repository and installed:
curl, curlftpfs, lib32-curl, lib32-libcurl-compat, lib32-libcurl-gnutls, libcurl-compat, libcurl-gnutls, nss, lib32-nss
I then went looking for 'libcurl-nss.so' and I cannot find it anywhere under /root. I have updated all installed packages and reboot and still nothing.
Hm, I don't recognize
libcurl-nss.soand am not well-versed in linux packages, so to fix it I'd probably do the same thing that you've done and google it and wildly install any package I come across. I seelibcurl4-nss-devor maybelibcurl3or maybelibcurl4as other possible packages.I haven't completely given up, I am concentrating on something else. Unfortunately, most Google results take me to resources for more established Linux distros, like Ubuntu. I use Arch, which builds everything from the ground up; booting into an Arch USB drops you to a simple CLI. You have to turn on services and begin to download packages to build a GUI and window manager. This means you have great control over exactly what is installed, but has the con of not using the same software repositories that more user friendly distros use. No dulaboot to Windows as well; forces me to learn and use Linux proper. Doing rather well. ;)
I'll keep a look out and post my results in case another user might have the same issue but never followed thru.
So.... Looks like I will be running the Windows version through WINE. I can only imagine what kind of memory errors I will get from a game like this...
I have been working with someone on the Arch forums to see if there is a package or something I need to install, libcurl-nss-so.4 is the only thing missing. So far, nothing has worked and 5 hours of Google-ing hasn't revealed helpful results. Maybe for Ubuntu users, but Arch is a different beast altogether.
If you are allowed or able, what libraries were used to build Crescent Loom against? Either that or if I had the source I could find why it is calling libcurl-nss-so and redirect to another library that is actually used on Arch systems.
The game was built in Cerberus X, which automatically transpiles to various things, so I don't usually directly touch the libraries it uses to talk to the OS.... however, CSX is open source so we can just search it; this looks like it might be promising? I just searched Crescent Loom's repo to confirm that I don't mention libcurl anywhere else. I am using that httprequest.cxs file to talk to the creature server, so that might be a good list to pursue.
Sorry you've had to spend so long googling this! >_< I appreciate you posting the problems/potential solutions here. I'm also happy to keep assisting to the best of my ability, I'd love to see the game work on more versions of linux.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2081108#p2081108
So, it involved building a package from scratch with some patches and i voila !
Crescent Loom now runs. I think, and I could be wrong, I am still waiting on emails and discussion, there is a push to get rid of Network Security Services (NSS) in favor of what is happening with OpenSSL??? or fold the functions into curl at a base level??? I am not clear on it with just a cursory glance at an article and the fix is for something quite niche for Linux users. The only reason why there is a large number of answers that worked for Ubuntu and other users is Ubuntu being more popular of a distrobution, but also fosters a "complete user friendly" system, while Arch caters to people that are trying to be like Windows power users and more. libcurl-nss.so would be included in some of the curl packages available to them as a "just throw the kitchen sink in" to ensure compatibility, not security.
Crescent Loom 1.0 is a huge success in so many ways, Bravo in so many ways, keep up the excellent work your doing. The foundation is amazing and solid. i will certainly keep an eye open for your work coz' anything that follows will certainly be great , interesting , touching etc thanks
🌺 Thank you, that means a lot!
In the linux version the game sometimes crashes when an egg tries to hatch. I looked at the terminal output message and it says:
Cerberus Runtime Error : Memory access violation
I have the full logs if you need them. Also i tried the HTML version using firefox and it just gives me a black screen, the demo works fine though.
Sorry for the late reply! Thanks for the bug report. If you still have it installed, could you look in the logs/ folder next to the executable and send any crashlog.txt files to crescentloom@gmail.com?
As for the local HTML version: it's a little tricky to get working. Browsers sensibly have a security feature for local files that restricts access to other files on your hard drive. I should probably add steps to get it working to a readme or something. Your options are to either:
or
However, the local html5 version is identical to the one hosted at crescentloom.com — I've included it in the available files because a teacher requested it to get around a firewall issue at their institution.
The stand alone player consistently slows down and eventually crashes as I play between 30 minutes and an hour, but it saves what your last build was and replaces it on restart so I'm not even mad. Though if it stayed stable long term I would definitely just set up an aquarium of little custom critters and let it run.
I would love to get the physics efficient and stable enough for that! I've had a dream of making a twitch stream of that kind of aquarium full of the creatures people upload to the server.
I would definitely watch that, love these little guys. I guess while I have you here I have one note and one suggestion.
The note is I can't seem to see, on standalone or embedded, uploaded creations past page 56, entry 1000, which ends in the middle Gs.
The suggestion is, and I don't know how easy or possible it would even be, I would love to limit color vision on eyes so that a creature could potentially recognize and avoid predation or sharing space on its own kind, which also opens up mimicry through camouflage.
Hi, I am create a co-op bundle to celebrate World Environment Day, I want invited you to join, all content related with nature and environment can be join, if you are interested you have join in the follow link: https://itch.io/jam/world-environment-day-bundle-2022
I'm excited and I appreciate your interest and your participation, thank you very much and good luck!
Aw thanks for the invite! The bundle looks really cozy. I'm not currently looking to put CL in a bundle but good luck!
This is a really cool and well implemented idea.
To me, it's just missing a puzzle/problem game setup to drive players to explore the possibility space and discover their own solutions.
I think you're spot on.
Too bad this project seems to be abandoned. Here a dump of the console in case the developer decides to come back:
This is while running it from their website on FF with all blockers disabled.
Hi! Thanks for the detailed error report. CL is in no way abandoned, I'm pretty sure it's going to see me into the grave. 🙃 Recent development has just been been on other aspects of the game e.g. the connectome explorer & working on securing funding.
Odd, it's working OK for me on all browsers. Looks like it might be some kind of problem with hosting it through itch.io. I'll investigate when I get some time this weekend. Thanks again!
OK, I still haven't been able to replicate this, but I've added a locally-hosted mirror of the game here, also linked to in the troubleshooting steps. The first one is still preferable as the main because of bandwidth costs, but this should work as a fine backup.
Please let me know if you continue to see problems.
Hi Olive, Thanks for your reply! Oddly enough it is working for me now on all the links you provided here. If I remember correctly, there was some CORS error in the log, which I did not include in my first post. Maybe there was some config issue on the backend/3rd-party?
Anyways, thanks for replying to my post and sorry for calling the project abandoned - in my quick search I did not find too much recent activity and maybe I am a bit of a burnt child in that way :S
All good! Reasonable conclusion from how little I've been posting about it 😅
Glad it's working for you now!
im not really sure that 'scheming weasel' was the best choice for the trailer lol
also how do you run the demo? i cant run it on file or in the itch app.
nvm i figured it ou
I am new to the game. I did the tutorial to the point it tells me to press play and watch my creature move, but after that, i am not sure what to do next. is that the end of the tutorial or is there more to learn the systems of making sensory stuff work like eyes, whiskers, etc and to react to the environment?
If you go into one of the levels and press "H" a number of manuals will come up, which you can follow (they're kinda like Lego kit build instructions) to learn how sensory stuff works. Peahen and Zippy have whiskers and eyes, respectively.
After that, the game is mostly a sandbox. I'm working on more skill challenges like the current race mode but it's slow going!
alright, good to know. I will definitely check check out those saves then.
Is there any potential sample creature that can help you figure out if there is a way to make a creature react to cool and eat it based on "seeing" it in some way? Will the 2 samples you mentioned help me learn to do that?
The examples I mentioned use their senses to navigate and avoid terrain.
Hunting by sight turns out to be a really complicated problem so there aren't any manuals for it yet, but I hope to figure it out someday.
This game is AWESOME! Just what I didn't know I needed! I've run through the tutorial, and flipped through the patterns (a genius idea, the pattern book), and I already see the massive potential for what else I can do.
But I'm having a problem: the Tab key doesn't cycle through the neuron connection types for me. Is there an alternate input that does the same thing? Like how you can move the camera with WASD or by using the left mouse button to pan around the environment?
It looks like all the creatures in the pattern book require connections of type Inhibit to keep the neurons from all firing at once, and I can't figure out how to do that. I'm not sure if this is just my computer or a problem with the game, but it's happening on the downloaded version and the online one.
Also, I love the music. It's very chill.
Never mind, I figured out how to do it! You have to make a connection, then click on it, and while your mouse button is down, press Tab. Now I can explore the whole wealth of systems in this game!
I was trying to figure this one out myself. Thanks!
Also, you can click on the little circle, the actual connection point, not the line. That brings up a menu for neuron connection types, and you can select the type you want.
I shared this with some people in a discord server for Creatures, which is another biology simulation-and-toy, and they are loving it... As someone with a passionate interest in virtual life I adore projects such as these
I'm kind of obsessed with this game. I have always wanted a game just like the Spore cell stage, and this goes way beyond my expectations! Love the voice over in the tutorial btw! I can't wait to see where this goes in the future!
This is definitely going to be my favorite game for a while!! Great idea and swell execution so far :))
My one request would be a big cave system full of enemy species to compete against. The competition and out performing other species is what makes this sort of thing super fun. Currently maps are small and have little amounts of other creatures
It is fun, but the tutorial is too short. I am very confused on how to make a brain
I love this game!
maybe you could could make the way to put multiple creatures in one ecosystem easier, and make them compete, like the race mode and the only ecosystem but combined!
another thing would be adding more maps and ready ecosystems!
as well as making the current non walled maps bigger/making it so there are more obstacles and decorations.
a fatal flaw i noticed is that a carnivore eating its offspring actually has some net gain, (i think), it should be more of a loss than a gain, also there should be a way of differentiating your species from others in the neuron system
other than that, i really enjoyed playing this game :)
Aw thanks for the nice comment! ^_^
I agree with everything you've said as important additions. I'm working on making my internal map editor polished enough so that it can be part of the game, which I think will address a lot of the lack of map variety.
Re: differentiating your own species... hm. Maybe some kind of "scent" input that activates when you're close to either offspring, other spiecies, or plankton (the blue snacks)? I'll make a to-do to look into making one.
Cool!
Good luck for that, i'm really interested in seeing what this game will become :D
Hey, I really like the game, super interesting and fun to experiment with. That said, whenever I try to run it on Chrome it works pretty well until anything tries to lay an egg, then it freezes up and can't be recovered. =(
This is the log that appears when it freezes up: Creature '' laying egg.
Anyways, hope you fix it and keep up the good work! It's inspirational!
EDIT:
Have you considered adding scenarios? Like "you must consume X pieces of food before Y time/energy runs out and you can only use Z number of creature parts". Idk, I think the extra challenge would be great, just a thought!
Thanks for the bug report. I think I know what's going on and it should be fixed in the next update.
I've experimented with some premade levels when I was trying to figure out how to do the tutorial, and found that limiting the number of creature parts was more frustrating than a fun challenge. Something open-ended could be fun though — I've been working on the level editor for the race mode in the next update (spoilers) so should be able to start thinking about challenges after that. :)
That's awesome! Looking forward to the update. =)
Could you make it so that you can toggle on a version like before all of those neuron gates were there and all the complicated neurobiology stuff? Maybe just a mode to set where you can put the complexity level down like to the version were all the gates and the yellow lines weren't there? Other than that I've been having fun with cannibalism, but in the end my babies got my fishie
Hi! Thanks for saying something, I can definitely get lost in adding the neuro stuff to the point of losing sight of the fun of just building creatures. I'm not sure what you mean by the "gates", though — the different kinds of neurons and connections between them have been there from day one. Have they just been getting more in your way recently?
oh no i meant like the sodium stuff
Oh! Of course, those gates. :p
OK, I'll think about ways to hide the display for folks who don't want to mess with it.
aaaa this is so interesting! after following the instructions for the four basic creatures i made my own predatory creature and then it got Eaten Immediately, great stuff
i made a playthrough
this game is amazing!! i was playing the web version and i was blown away by the details! ive played a couple of 'brain making sims' before but they were janky and unreliable, so i was really impressed to see how well this works!!
at first i was pretty confused on how all the different things in the brain worked and was hesitant to try and make a creature from scratch because i honestly had no idea what most of those things meant, but after some trial and error i actually managed to figure out some bits and managed to make a controllable creature! so points to you for making it simple enough that even i could understand it :D
oh and once i figured it out i spent so long making a creature! i really love the variety of shapes you can make them out of (and how the different shapes have different functions too!) and i absolutely love the inclusion of bioluminescence (i definitely overused that feature,,,no regrets). unfortunately before i could upload it the game froze while i was taking it for one last spin so i had to reload and lost my little creature :c (farewell lil guy, you looked super cool before u were eaten by the void u_u). though of course this is in development so im not that upset!! i just figured it may be worth mentioning in case you're looking for bugs to squish c:
but yeah overall im absolutely loving this game! the visuals are lovely to look at as well and the internal mechanics are genuinely so impressive so good job!!!! i am completely broke but just know that if i had the money i would absolutely buy this game :D (wow this is a long comment O_O)
Yay! I'm glad you were able to figure things out by poking around! Yeah it's really important to me to have this be simple & fun enough to not scare people away with the word ~ neuroscience ~.
Thanks for the really positive comment. :) I've been having a rough time getting myself to work on this recently so it's much appreciated. Sorry you lost your little buddy!
I really appreciate you for making this game! I got this game in the racial justice bundle and honestly glad I've gotten to experience this even though my ecosystems aren't the best I still try (they are all loved : ) I wanted to use this since we have a upcoming project in zoology and I found the perfect chance to not only get better at this but to show my other classmates about this game as well!! I know some kids may not be interested and I understand that but this is such a neat little game it's hard for me not to show it off. I also talked to my teacher about it, I hope he remembers to check it out it could, he could teach so much more things with this program, and not only that it would be interactive with students, we wouldn't have to sit in a lecture about invertebrate because we could make them ourselves! I'm rambling right now but I just had to show my appreciation, thank you! : )
Hahaha I run on external validation so I appreciate it! You've made my morning. ^_^
THICC THIGH MAN 😍
So I've recently been experimenting with making ecosystem chains, and sometimes the ecosystem does not interact the way I want to because of creatures of the same species gobbling each other up.(Though it still is fun to take control of my own creature and join in on the gobbling!) Also, could you implement a healing sort of mechanism where creatures that were injured from predators can grow back parts once they get enough nutrients?
Whoa, I'm surprised that you've managed to do almost any ecosystem interactions! I've done almost no work on those systems. In particular, I want the basic follow-hunt-eat loop for a creature to work, and it's still pretty far off using the out-of-the-box pieces.
I like the healing idea. Work on that is going to be a ways off because I'm currently aimed more at use-in-neurobiology-classrooms than the fishtank aspect due to increased interest for remote neurobiology activities in the wake of the pandemic. But I'll get there someday! 🤞
Oh I also noticed on the front page that there are harpoons in the game now, is it part of a newer version? If so, is there a way to update my game without losing all of my saved creations?
Harpoons are still in development; I haven't been able to release an update with them yet since I injured my wrist and have had to take it easy re: computers. If you have CL installed using the Itch client, it should update the game & preserve your creatures seamlessly. Otherwise you'll have to transfer the saved creature files over manually to the new version you download; they're in internal\creatures
Ok. I hope that you feel better soon! Thank you!
hey do you have discord?
and if so can i friend you?
also the demo version is vary laggy and i want to by the game but dose it work on cromebooks and ipads?
Hi! There's no discord for the game yet; this is the best place to comment. You can also send me emails at contact@wick.works.
The only way I've tested chromebooks is with the html5 version (the "demo" version), which sounds like you've already tried? Buying the game just gets you access to PC/Mac/Linux downloads, so it won't help with chromebooks.
I really do want to make sure the html5 version works on chromebooks... could you describe the lag a little more? Does it start fine and get slower? If you hold down the comma key, you can see the framerate in the lower-left. What rates are you getting?
Oh, also, I don't have an ipad so haven't been able to test it there at all. It really wants a mouse & keyboard though, so I wouldn't count on it working well.
i have a ipd and i played for a wile but i have a vary hard time placeing body parts and i cant dealet them. also it kiked me out of the game and was laggy. same thing as the cromebook
Cool, thanks for the report! I think I gotta say that I can't support fixing the iPad (it would require an overhaul of the UI to figure out how to make the controls work without a mouse) but the fact that it's not running well on chromebook is concerning.
I'm adding the slowdown to my to-do list for the next update. It's been a problem for years but has been getting worse..... definitely one of those maddingly-hard-to-track-down bugs. 😅
glad to help
it starts out grate but soon gets worse and worse and if i speed up the time it gets worse even faster when i send it back to 100% speed
also ive reticently made several vary complex fish that have jaws and avoid obstetricals and are relatively fast. a small one who is still vary big compared to othere things. a larger one whos only slightly bigger and was more of a exparament. and today i whent complacently over bord and made a giant fish and its super fast and can kill everything that i put infront of it. but you see the problem is i cant save my fish and i really dont want to lose my latest monstrosity. can you help? when i try to save it just said name is unavailable no matter what i do. btw amma post my maga fish on the sub reddit
Congrats on the monstrosity! Hm. That's the first time I've heard of not being able to save because no names are available. You can't overwrite existing creatures on the server (because then you could delete other people's) — to confirm, you've tried a number of different names?
Anything pro-maga is not allowed and will be removed. You're welcome to name it something else though. :)
i gave it several uneape names that no one else had. i dident try to over right anything but it still said the same thing over and over agen. i tryed everything. mabey its a bug or something
Yeah sounds like it. OK, if you still have it up here's a last-ditch way to save a creature on HTML5: if you press F2 it'll print out the creature's save file in the text console below the game. If you grab that & then email it to me, I'll manually put it in the database.
Uploaded to the server as "LEVI". What an absolute beauty. 😍
It reminds me of the ghost leviathan from subnautica.
I'm still not sure why the server was telling you that the name was taken — it happened for me too. I suspect that it has something to do with the sheer filesize of this sheila. I've added it to the buglist, but as per my last update it might take a while to get around to.
Just a quick question: I noticed that there don't seem to be any more muscle spots on the carnivorous jaws, just curious if it's a glitch or it's on purpose?
On purpose — there used to be & with the intention that you'd have to snap them closed with muscles to do damage, but in the interest of swinging the pendulum away from oversimulation and towards "things are functional & just work without additional setup" I removed the muscle and made them just generally dangerous to touch.
I'm open to suggestions for how to find a balances between complexity/usuable for it.