User interface

GETTING STARTED

Note: Currently, as of v0.2.2, the creatures are genetically wired up to want to hunt the little green cubes (“throgs”). They can’t choose to do anything else. The throg huntng is just so that they’ll travel around a bit, because I’ve been testing their navigation learning. Freedom of choice comes later – right now I need them to do what they’re told! Also, bear in mind that you’re looking at my development environment, not the game. The user interface, creatures and the world itself exist purely for testing, and the final game may look very different.

1/ When you run the app, you’ll see a title screen with various options you can set.You probably want to set the screen resolution to fullscreen (the last setting in the list) and graphics quality to “fantastic.” I get 80-100fps on my machine like that. If it’s too slow, you can fall back to lower settings but you’ll start to lose shadows and other graphics features.

2/ When you hit PLAY to get to the main scene, you’re in the ‘sandbox’. Click on the Gloop button one or more times to create some creatures (turn around a little before creating each one, because they appear just in front of you and will get tangled up if you create them in the same place). Click on the Tweaks tab to find a few debug options, like the ability to jump to a different time of day or see how fast the framerate is.

3/ Look around by holding down the right mouse button (or the left Ctrl key if you’re on a laptop and don’t have a right mouse button). Walk around using the WASD keys (or arrow keys). For instance, W walks in the direction you’re looking, while SHIFT-W runs. Hitting SPACE will send you leaping way into the sky (I use it to locate lost gloops!).

4/ Holding down the Q key or the left Alt (Option) key opens up the Action GUI, where you can switch on your flashlight, see through the creature’s eyes, save screenshots, etc. More functions will be added soon. Screenshots are saved to the desktop, I think.

5/ If you have several gloops alive, you can either click on them to select them or TAB to cycle through them (the currently selected one has a marker arrow floating over its head). This is the creature whose eyes you see through, etc.

6/ If you’re close to a creature and click on its belly, you’ll pick it up and carry it. Click a second time to drop it.

7/ If you’re a masochist who likes to play around with my various gene editors (SHIFT-F2 to SHIFT-F5), you may well mess up the genome while experimenting. To go back to the original genes, there’s a button on the start screen. In the same masochistic vein, F1 opens the debug console, which allows you to see various things about organs and maps. F2 opens a little graph window, which only does anything when the debug console is set to “Map NAVI” or “Map OBST”. None of this complicated stuff is part of the game – what you’re looking at is really my development environment.