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
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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.
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
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!