Also: any tips on getting to stage 2 on mountain? I've gotten that far a couple of times, but expanding just costs so much that it's really easy to get into a state where it's impossible to proceed.
I feel like if I make a couple of moves which aren't perfect then I get into a frustratingly impossible situation and have to start over, which I feel like isn't the intention of the developer: it feels a bit more like a puzzle game where there are a small number of correct solutions, but only being able to rewind one step means that restarting is the only option.
To expand on mountain costs like 475: calcifier, wind turbine, excavator, pump, and then having at least 75 left to put down a new scrubber and greenhouse to scrape together some more money from the new location. It feels really hard to build up a pot that big.
Yes, normal is much too hard I feel. I play on easy 80% building cost. But I tried this strategy on normal, and works there as well. But it's very tight, and almost no wiggle room. Quite stressful, I feel. :-(
- without any "extension" is possible to reach 50% coverage! Just use the mountain carefully as well.
- start from mountain top with a water pump. This fills more water that way.
- always postpone building greenhouse, until all toxic scrubbers are placed around that particular area
- I was building from mountain top to bottom. And placing carefully on mountain as well. The toxic scrubber and greenhouse also ignores the terrain - except the hill walls themselves. So you can plan them smarter this way. (Also, in 2th stage, all mountain coverage is very important.)
- On the plains section: don't worry, if you don't cover everything to the edge of the map. Just keep in mind the large scale, and maximalize the coverage around the rivers. It will suffice in the end. Trust me.
- Don't worry too much about greenhouse not having maximal profit. They are cheap, and the main goal is the maximal coverage. It's cheaper to have multiple greenhouses to cover all clean area, than cleaning more area - which means bigger power coverage as well! (This is also true about the Toxic Scubber. However, they are more expensive. But a little cutting back on the covered area is less "expensive", than "making more land" with power coverage.)
My main strategy is to take the highest point, and build a pump there, so that there's grass around the water for calcification. I usually then put scrubbers at the very boundary of the circle of influence of the turbines. As for greenhouses, I try to build up some clean soil, then I perfectly piece together some greenhouses. For rocks away from the river, I usually dig a riverbed to the main river, for more expansion. However, since digging is quite costly (160 currency on normal), I usually do this if I have $400 or more. It helps to plan ahead, so place rivers near machinery, for easy packaging in stage three.
During stage two, I first find the best place to place the beehive. In later levels, the beehive is extremely valuable because of the lack of trees, sometimes you might have to restart the level for a good spawn. I first place a beehive in an isolated area, with plenty of grass, so I can burn it later on. I usually like to surround the area to burn with riverbeds or polluted/unplanted soil. Then, I plant everything around the river separating the forest, and I pollinate for the maximum yield. I have many times been forced to restart at this point, since sometimes the burning goes out of control. Wetlands are also a partial priority, since they are key to restoring the weather system.
When I start off stage three, I usually try to raise my money up with pylons first, since I'm always financially exhausted from finding places to place beehives. I like to place my steam plants on wetlands, since placing them on water can cause blockages. Another thing to note when constructing deconstruction pylons is, try to not let them eat up the pumps, or a section of the river might dry out. This is why I try to get the weather system up and running first, so that the rivers automatically fill in. In addition, the rain usually supplies me with money, so the weather is important. After the weather system is complete, I do everything with a drone from there, using the tree launcher when required.
That's my two cents of playing this game. It's my strategy, and it works most of the time. Although is is a bit luck-based.
Some good tips! It sounds like forest-burning is a bit random for you, when it ideally shouldn't be.
In case you're not aware, you can set up toxin scrubbers on top of burnt buildings. With that, you can afford to burn down more land than is minimally necessary (since it's hard to start multiple fires), and once you have achieved the required amount of forest, turn the remaining ash back into greenery with toxin scrubbers. That also can get you some additional land for beehives, if you need it.
I had the same bug. In my case, the problem was, that I accidentally used a seed launcher to lunch a tree seed on it. After that, the drone cannot pick it up.
By the screenshot, it looks you might did the same.
That last level... wew, minmaxing doesnt usually get that tight, but still thoroughly enjoyable. 6 hours later, finally completed, and i'll probably go through it again, for those high scores.
I had to make an account just to be able to tell you how good this is. Without a doubt the best new release i have played in 2020. This literally could be the next undertale. Its that good. I am 100% paying for this if a full release comes. Keep up the good work man!
The only critizism i have is that the game is too short:P, and i would like some kind of planning tool. It would make tha harder levels more enjoyable i think:)
Absolutely! I should be thanking you once again for working on something like this. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do so, but I assure you - I'll support you financially when I eventually get a more stable source of income in these trying times. I wont forget since your game is the only one that has its own shortcut on my desktop from my collection of itch.io games. (I usually just keep all the itch.io games I have in one folder and access from there, but yours is an exemption :D )
Just wanted to echo what others have said already. This project is awesome! Despite the fact that you can already sink a couple of hours into it, I'd love to see it expanded into something more substantial!
Love the game, I wanted to report what seems like a bug: this screenshot was taken right after placing the toxin scrubber in the middle of the image. As you can see, some land near it didn't get cleaned up. Working as intended and I don't understand, or bug?
I've been trying to get this game running from a Linux box over either TightVNC or X forwarding to Cygwin without much luck. Has anyone had luck with that or seen similar messages to this?
I tend to see this over ssh:
:~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64 Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64 :~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64 -screen-fullscreen 0 PlayerPrefs - Creating folder: /home/thomas/.config/unity3d/unknown PlayerPrefs - Creating folder: /home/thomas/.config/unity3d/unknown/unknown Unable to load player prefs Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64 :~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64 -screen-fullscreen 0 -screen-width 800 -screen-height 600 Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
or from a terminal inside VNC I see:
Xlib: extention "RANDR" missing on display ":1.0" Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
I realise what I am doing is a little weird but I thought this would be a nice little game to play at lunchtimes, hence the attempts to run it remotely.
I know my Ubuntu box is in a bit of an odd way and that VNC doesn't always get along with the X server. I'll try on a more normal system later. Sometimes Software Devs make the worse users ;-)
Out of interest, is %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/unity3d/vfqd/TerraNil (~/.config/unity3d/vqfd/TerraNil if XDG_CONFIG_HOME isn't set) getting created, and if so, is there a Player.log in there (if so, does it have anything that you're not seeing in terminal output)?
Have you had any success running other games using the Unity engine like this? It's not something I've attempted and I don't have a second machine on hand at the moment to test with.
i did win this game few minutes ago and i already can say that its really beautifull, calm, but in same time pretty challenging {especially last level} game. the result of your hard work in restoring the terrain really make your soul happy with such artstyle and music. I really hope that more people gonna know about this beautifull work {also i apologize if my english sounds clumsy i just not that good at it}
This game is already fantastic, I'm sure it'll be even better in the future!
I ran into an bug in the peninsula level where when I tried to place the solar building and a solid beam of light showed up that wouldn't go away, but no building. It wouldn't activate my desiccator. I'd successfully activated that desiccator earlier and then undid the action, I don't know if that's related.
I tried exiting and re-entering, placed the building again, and had the same issue. This time I quit with the broken building still there, re-entered again and the game wouldn't load, couldn't get past the "generating buildings" screen.
The game did work when I re-generated the level, but it's pretty frustrating to lose progress to a bug like that.
I'd really love to have a manual checkpoint/save slot function to help avoid situations like that, as well as an indicator for what phase II areas I'll be expected to make in a level, so I can plan ahead.
Also, as-is the port system feels pretty useless to me, seeing as you ultimately have to destroy the port buildings with beacons. The port is more satisfying to use, but if I need beacons in the end anyways, it feels like a waste of resources, unless I'm missing something.
Still, what a beautiful, unique and satisfying game!
Love the idea, love the atmosphere, love the execution. It feels puzzley and fresh, something that I've been looking for recently.
Currently looking to get into game design as a hobby. Any suggestions on where to start? Perhaps this isn't the appropriate place to post this. If so I will delete if able. I have experience in many programming languages, but am a bit of a script kiddie. I'm just a former programmer with a ton of ideas.
If I can help you out with anything as well let me know and I will see if I can help.
Not really a game designer myself, but one thing I've heard is to make a bunch of really small game projects, rapidly trying out ideas without over-investing in them. You might stumble onto something interesting, and then you can expand it if you think it'll be worthwhile. I hear game jams are good for this, and IIRC, the first version of Terra Nil was created during one.
This is really great info!! Thanks a bunch for the reply. I have been looking to physical card and board games as a means to understand what it means to "find the fun" when it comes to game design, it's not as obvious as it is when I'm trying to learn a new programming language. I have been eyeing some game jams for a while and I need to make time to actually join one because I hear many people say how much great experience those are. Thanks again!!
I think if you're coming at it from a programming background, you might (based on my observations of others) have a tendency to be in love with how smart a system is, how clean a back-end, how "clever" a technical solution was, even though none of these might be things that a player actually experiences. If you're really interested in game design, it would likely be helpful to keep circling back to what has the largest effects on a player's experience. Sometimes a technical solution is very much needed, but often it's not (at least not to test out whether your game idea's any good). If you ever take a game further than a jam, it's likely you'll want to do it over, better, anyway, so spending more time on exploring an idea and less time on techie stuff is usually best bang-for-time-spent.
That said, if you're doing it as a hobby, then just do what you enjoy! I'd suggest still trying to make things with the intention of showing your friends and having them play them, and keeping your projects small, but if what you're doing and what you're learning brings you joy, then keep going! And if you're not enjoying it any more, then find something else that excites you. :)
This is more accurate than I would like to admit! I do find the transition from programming to "game design" to be a difficult one. Some things I can make, but I just don't find fun afterwards. I'm mostly doing this as a hobby and will continue to dabble in things. Thanks so much for the insightful response!!!
Wonderful game, I had no idea a city builder could be this.
It'd be cool to be able to undo back to the start of a phase.
Minor complaint is that the end can be really tough if you don't have enough to do the atmosphere from the get-go. Reclaiming things that create your river network takes away the rivers and makes it very difficult to cash in.
I'm not sure if this makes sense from a gameplay perspective but I want to be able to keep windmills/water pumps around to maintain river networks while deconstructing other things in phase III. I don't personally think finding places to place pylons that don't mess up your river network is a fun sort of challenge. If keeping my river network around were easier, I could see myself using more ports instead of trying to rush straight to the drone.
Rushing for fixing the weather system is currently optimal, for good or for ill, although the ports are fun to use. If you aren't worried financially, you can just rebuild the power and water pump if you accidentally recycle them.
I think it would be nice if there were a couple of percent wiggle room in the goals. It's really frustrating to come within 1% of the goal and then spend almost 1500 trying to achieve that 1% with no success. Just how do you get rid of wetlands once their created?
Sorry about this, not really sure how we'd detect wiggle room because then people would want wiggle room for the wiggle room. But I take your point, we'll think about it!
When zen mode is implemented, it should allow unlimited undos. The chain of dependency for getting certain buildings in certain areas means that if you messed up, it probably wasn't just one turn ago.
I feel like I must be missing something because Highlands is extraordinarily difficult... there's a tremendous number of things to balance when trying to plan ahead, not a lot of options for what you can actually do at any given time, and all it takes is one bad placement more than one turn ago to make the game unwinnable. I've gone at it about 10 times now and have only gotten to the third "phase" twice, compared to Floodplain, which I barely knew what I was doing on and still passed without a great struggle the first time I got to the second phase.
I had the exact same feeling with the final map, but not that one. Odd.
Out of curiosity, are you trying to plan ahead between the first and second stages, like putting greenhouses where it'll benefit the second stage? I personally can't do that, and I'm not sure it's necessary, but it vaguely sounds like you're trying to?
I'd be curious to see what your approach is, although it's hard to explain over text. Good luck, though! It's definitely doable!
I'm 20+ tries in and only seem to be doing worse the more effort I put in, I can't even get to phase 2 anymore. I'm placing scrubbers and greenhouses to minimize both gaps and overlap and attempting to expand the river network so I can get power to the lowest level, which costs 350 (excavator --> calcifier --> wind turbine) for what feels like every two inches of river. I reset the map to make sure there IS an initial river system (have seen a few maps where it seemingly fails to generate), that the river actually connects up, and that there's a decent distribution of stone across the top two levels, but there seems to be a hard limit of one stone patch on the lowest level, and because of that it's not possible to hold out for phase 2's cheaper buildings before building more than one or two excavators.
The part that drives me insane is that I don't see many different ways to proceed on any given map. The top two levels are basically the same every time and sometimes I finish it with more money than I started with, but because of how expensive it is to get power around the bottom that money just evaporates in fewer turns than I can make it back. It's hard to feel like the majority of maps Highlands generates are even winnable.
Ouch. Well, I'm not sure what we're doing differently, precisely... you shouldn't need more than one or two Excavators? It's fine to have to build some, and it's not worth wasting your total coverage to delay building Excavators; due to order of operations, you need to build them before Scrubbers, and you'll probably need one, so you might want to build one with the initial starting budget.
I personally delay building greenhouses as late as possible, waiting until the verge of bankruptcy, and only in places where I won't build more scrubbers. I feel like that helps with getting the most out of greenhouse placement. Fun fact, if you have a single wind turbine in the middle of nowhere, the best coverage is to place 4 scrubbers above, below, left and right of it, then 3 greenhouses (1 line and 2 L pieces).
Otherwise, well, the game's hard to put into words. I recorded a video if it'll help. Although, maybe it's a puzzle you'd rather solve yourself? Up to you if you want to watch it! (Still uploading at the moment of writing.)
Played the first two maps without realizing A) I could pan around to see the whole area, and B) I could change the shape of the greenhouses. So glad I read this comment. That's what happens when you don't read the controls, I guess!
This game is an absolute breath of fresh air. Once I finish it I'm going to go back and play the original jam version to see how it all started.
There is a bug on the 3rd "area" (it might be the 4th), I am to add biodiversity but I can only see buildings to make 3 biomes, the swamp biome building is missing and the third 'tab' doesn't show up which is where that building is located. I'm on my 9th run and I've ran into this bug multiple times rendering the level impassable
Hey there, really sorry about this, it seems to be a problem with the undo/saving system :( From what I understand if you can beat it without any saving and loading it should work. If you really want to just skip it, pop me a message on twitter or email and I'll tell you some dev hacks :P
Very cool game! Love it. Nice and peaceful playing at my own paste :) very nice! There was no tutorial or anything but i got the idea fast enough how it works and was partly the fun really! But maybe some tips here and there would have been helpful or to clear up why i can only build one windmill onto the “rock building” instead of more then one.
I would love to get feedback on my game so if you have time please look at my sim city like puzzle game: https://guldor.itch.io/citybuilder
No idea if you want feedback but here we are… The currency of the game was not very clear to me, i did not know when i would run out of gain anything and completly misted the currency to begin with. It feels a bit outside of the game. like there is mysterious money. Not sure if currency is needed at all just building and trying to get the best version(without making mistakes) could be enough. Also i had trouble placing buildings on the bottom since the UI was in the way. An other thing i would love to see is that after building you can build the same building again instead of having to click on the icon again.
Overall very cool! Love it and want to play it again!
I think I found a bug. Cleared all buildings on the peninsula but somehow stuck on 64%. I used the destruction pylon to hover over the entire map but it didn't seem like I missed anything.
this game is incredible good! It's totally different from a city building game, art is awesome and gameplay is so much interesting and relaxing! Loved it!
I had to dial it down to easy because I'm terrible, but what a relaxing time. Solving puzzles and making a beautiful landscape you leave behind on your way to parts unknown.
hell yeah! i remember the game from ludum dare, the progress is amazing :D i liked playing it then and love it right now :D cant wait what next updates will bring
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Also: any tips on getting to stage 2 on mountain? I've gotten that far a couple of times, but expanding just costs so much that it's really easy to get into a state where it's impossible to proceed.
I feel like if I make a couple of moves which aren't perfect then I get into a frustratingly impossible situation and have to start over, which I feel like isn't the intention of the developer: it feels a bit more like a puzzle game where there are a small number of correct solutions, but only being able to rewind one step means that restarting is the only option.
To expand on mountain costs like 475:
calcifier, wind turbine, excavator, pump, and then having at least 75 left to put down a new scrubber and greenhouse to scrape together some more money from the new location. It feels really hard to build up a pot that big.
Maybe I'm just missing something fundamental?
Hello,
Yes, normal is much too hard I feel. I play on easy 80% building cost. But I tried this strategy on normal, and works there as well. But it's very tight, and almost no wiggle room. Quite stressful, I feel. :-(
- without any "extension" is possible to reach 50% coverage! Just use the mountain carefully as well.
- start from mountain top with a water pump. This fills more water that way.
- always postpone building greenhouse, until all toxic scrubbers are placed around that particular area
- I was building from mountain top to bottom. And placing carefully on mountain as well. The toxic scrubber and greenhouse also ignores the terrain - except the hill walls themselves. So you can plan them smarter this way. (Also, in 2th stage, all mountain coverage is very important.)
- On the plains section: don't worry, if you don't cover everything to the edge of the map. Just keep in mind the large scale, and maximalize the coverage around the rivers. It will suffice in the end. Trust me.
- Don't worry too much about greenhouse not having maximal profit. They are cheap, and the main goal is the maximal coverage. It's cheaper to have multiple greenhouses to cover all clean area, than cleaning more area - which means bigger power coverage as well! (This is also true about the Toxic Scubber. However, they are more expensive. But a little cutting back on the covered area is less "expensive", than "making more land" with power coverage.)
Screenshot from normal:
Thanks for the tips akos
Good tips!
My main strategy is to take the highest point, and build a pump there, so that there's grass around the water for calcification. I usually then put scrubbers at the very boundary of the circle of influence of the turbines. As for greenhouses, I try to build up some clean soil, then I perfectly piece together some greenhouses. For rocks away from the river, I usually dig a riverbed to the main river, for more expansion. However, since digging is quite costly (160 currency on normal), I usually do this if I have $400 or more. It helps to plan ahead, so place rivers near machinery, for easy packaging in stage three.
During stage two, I first find the best place to place the beehive. In later levels, the beehive is extremely valuable because of the lack of trees, sometimes you might have to restart the level for a good spawn. I first place a beehive in an isolated area, with plenty of grass, so I can burn it later on. I usually like to surround the area to burn with riverbeds or polluted/unplanted soil. Then, I plant everything around the river separating the forest, and I pollinate for the maximum yield. I have many times been forced to restart at this point, since sometimes the burning goes out of control. Wetlands are also a partial priority, since they are key to restoring the weather system.
When I start off stage three, I usually try to raise my money up with pylons first, since I'm always financially exhausted from finding places to place beehives. I like to place my steam plants on wetlands, since placing them on water can cause blockages. Another thing to note when constructing deconstruction pylons is, try to not let them eat up the pumps, or a section of the river might dry out. This is why I try to get the weather system up and running first, so that the rivers automatically fill in. In addition, the rain usually supplies me with money, so the weather is important. After the weather system is complete, I do everything with a drone from there, using the tree launcher when required.
That's my two cents of playing this game. It's my strategy, and it works most of the time. Although is is a bit luck-based.
Some good tips! It sounds like forest-burning is a bit random for you, when it ideally shouldn't be.
In case you're not aware, you can set up toxin scrubbers on top of burnt buildings. With that, you can afford to burn down more land than is minimally necessary (since it's hard to start multiple fires), and once you have achieved the required amount of forest, turn the remaining ash back into greenery with toxin scrubbers. That also can get you some additional land for beehives, if you need it.
Really nice game. Small bug: Can't seem to remove the last pylon. Beacons ignore it.
I had the same bug. In my case, the problem was, that I accidentally used a seed launcher to lunch a tree seed on it. After that, the drone cannot pick it up.
By the screenshot, it looks you might did the same.
A truly great game. Relaxing, but also unexpectabily thinky.
<3
Utterly gorgeous and oozing with charm and polish.
I was disappointed at first that it leaned more towards puzzle than city-builder/strategy, but the more I played it the more it won me over.
I'm pleased!
verygood!
:)
That last level... wew, minmaxing doesnt usually get that tight, but still thoroughly enjoyable.
6 hours later, finally completed, and i'll probably go through it again, for those high scores.
Haha, glad you enjoyed it!
I had to make an account just to be able to tell you how good this is. Without a doubt the best new release i have played in 2020. This literally could be the next undertale. Its that good. I am 100% paying for this if a full release comes. Keep up the good work man!
The only critizism i have is that the game is too short:P, and i would like some kind of planning tool. It would make tha harder levels more enjoyable i think:)
Wow! High praise indeed :D thank you so much for the kind words <3
Thank you! :)
Such a good game. Love the whole vibe and the gameplay. Art is beautiful and music is a cherry on top!
Wonderful, thank you :D
Absolutely! I should be thanking you once again for working on something like this. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do so, but I assure you - I'll support you financially when I eventually get a more stable source of income in these trying times. I wont forget since your game is the only one that has its own shortcut on my desktop from my collection of itch.io games. (I usually just keep all the itch.io games I have in one folder and access from there, but yours is an exemption :D )
Haha! That's amazing. And please don't feel like you have to contribute. It's always appreciated but never expected <3
Just wanted to echo what others have said already. This project is awesome! Despite the fact that you can already sink a couple of hours into it, I'd love to see it expanded into something more substantial!
We are working on it every day!
Love the game, I wanted to report what seems like a bug: this screenshot was taken right after placing the toxin scrubber in the middle of the image. As you can see, some land near it didn't get cleaned up. Working as intended and I don't understand, or bug?
It's not powered
Sorry, referring to the one southeast of the mesa, which appears to have a white line connecting it to a windmill.
I love this game so much!
<3
Beautiful game! That's the kind of wasteland games I've been craving for :D Thank you! Definitely shared the link to some friends tonight <3
Brilliant! Thank you :)
Ah, thanks for the feedback :)
Just downloaded the game for Mac, and get the error "The application “Terra Nil.app” can’t be opened."
:(
Hey there, try moving it to your applications folder, or CMD clicking it and giving it permission
Still no luck :(
Running Catalina 10.15.6
Just tried the following command and got it to work!
sudo chmod a+x "Terra Nil.app"/Contents/MacOS/*
Thanks so much for the quick response!
Awesome!
Brilliant, I love it ! It's super cute, relaxing and I love the pixel art, keep up the good work.
<3
Bug: Bushes seems to be counted as machine traces too, which is almost impossible to remove in the end game
Hey there, I've just posted a new build addressing this issue
I've been trying to get this game running from a Linux box over either TightVNC or X forwarding to Cygwin without much luck. Has anyone had luck with that or seen similar messages to this?
I tend to see this over ssh:
:~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64
Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil
Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
:~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64 -screen-fullscreen 0
PlayerPrefs - Creating folder: /home/thomas/.config/unity3d/unknown
PlayerPrefs - Creating folder: /home/thomas/.config/unity3d/unknown/unknown
Unable to load player prefs
Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil
Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
:~/games/terra_nil$ ./Terra\ Nil.x86_64 -screen-fullscreen 0 -screen-width 800 -screen-height 600
Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil
Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
or from a terminal inside VNC I see:
Xlib: extention "RANDR" missing on display ":1.0"
Set current directory to /home/thomas/games/terra_nil
Found path: /home/thomas/games/terra_nil/Terra Nil.x86_64
I realise what I am doing is a little weird but I thought this would be a nice little game to play at lunchtimes, hence the attempts to run it remotely.
I don't really feel qualified to help with this haha
That cannot be a good sign for me :-p
I know my Ubuntu box is in a bit of an odd way and that VNC doesn't always get along with the X server. I'll try on a more normal system later. Sometimes Software Devs make the worse users ;-)
Out of interest, is %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%/unity3d/vfqd/TerraNil (~/.config/unity3d/vqfd/TerraNil if XDG_CONFIG_HOME isn't set) getting created, and if so, is there a Player.log in there (if so, does it have anything that you're not seeing in terminal output)?
Have you had any success running other games using the Unity engine like this? It's not something I've attempted and I don't have a second machine on hand at the moment to test with.
I had a really great time playing this, I wrote a little about it. I can't wait to see the finished game!
https://toomanymedia.com/2020/09/02/terra-nil/
Wow, thanks for the write up, it was really lovely to read. Glad you enjoyed your time with it :)
i did win this game few minutes ago and i already can say that its really beautifull, calm, but in same time pretty challenging {especially last level} game. the result of your hard work in restoring the terrain really make your soul happy with such artstyle and music. I really hope that more people gonna know about this beautifull work {also i apologize if my english sounds clumsy i just not that good at it}
Thank you so much <3
No thank YOU for such game
I never knew nature was so beautiful. Until I realize how barren earth is like when it's gone.
:D
This game is already fantastic, I'm sure it'll be even better in the future!
I ran into an bug in the peninsula level where when I tried to place the solar building and a solid beam of light showed up that wouldn't go away, but no building. It wouldn't activate my desiccator. I'd successfully activated that desiccator earlier and then undid the action, I don't know if that's related.
I tried exiting and re-entering, placed the building again, and had the same issue. This time I quit with the broken building still there, re-entered again and the game wouldn't load, couldn't get past the "generating buildings" screen.
The game did work when I re-generated the level, but it's pretty frustrating to lose progress to a bug like that.
I'd really love to have a manual checkpoint/save slot function to help avoid situations like that, as well as an indicator for what phase II areas I'll be expected to make in a level, so I can plan ahead.
Also, as-is the port system feels pretty useless to me, seeing as you ultimately have to destroy the port buildings with beacons. The port is more satisfying to use, but if I need beacons in the end anyways, it feels like a waste of resources, unless I'm missing something.
Still, what a beautiful, unique and satisfying game!
Thanks for the feedback! And I'm glad you enjoyed it :D
Never before have I experienced the same amount of satisfaction as rebuilding the weather system.
10/10
<3
This game is great and I can't wait for the 1.0 release. Recommending this to all of my friends!! OOC what engine are you using
It's Unity.
It has splash screen for it when you open the game.Thank you :D :D
Love the idea, love the atmosphere, love the execution. It feels puzzley and fresh, something that I've been looking for recently.
Currently looking to get into game design as a hobby. Any suggestions on where to start? Perhaps this isn't the appropriate place to post this. If so I will delete if able. I have experience in many programming languages, but am a bit of a script kiddie. I'm just a former programmer with a ton of ideas.
If I can help you out with anything as well let me know and I will see if I can help.
Not really a game designer myself, but one thing I've heard is to make a bunch of really small game projects, rapidly trying out ideas without over-investing in them. You might stumble onto something interesting, and then you can expand it if you think it'll be worthwhile. I hear game jams are good for this, and IIRC, the first version of Terra Nil was created during one.
This is really great info!! Thanks a bunch for the reply. I have been looking to physical card and board games as a means to understand what it means to "find the fun" when it comes to game design, it's not as obvious as it is when I'm trying to learn a new programming language. I have been eyeing some game jams for a while and I need to make time to actually join one because I hear many people say how much great experience those are. Thanks again!!
@ChaosFarseer's absolutely right! :)
I think if you're coming at it from a programming background, you might (based on my observations of others) have a tendency to be in love with how smart a system is, how clean a back-end, how "clever" a technical solution was, even though none of these might be things that a player actually experiences. If you're really interested in game design, it would likely be helpful to keep circling back to what has the largest effects on a player's experience. Sometimes a technical solution is very much needed, but often it's not (at least not to test out whether your game idea's any good). If you ever take a game further than a jam, it's likely you'll want to do it over, better, anyway, so spending more time on exploring an idea and less time on techie stuff is usually best bang-for-time-spent.
That said, if you're doing it as a hobby, then just do what you enjoy! I'd suggest still trying to make things with the intention of showing your friends and having them play them, and keeping your projects small, but if what you're doing and what you're learning brings you joy, then keep going! And if you're not enjoying it any more, then find something else that excites you. :)
This is more accurate than I would like to admit! I do find the transition from programming to "game design" to be a difficult one. Some things I can make, but I just don't find fun afterwards. I'm mostly doing this as a hobby and will continue to dabble in things. Thanks so much for the insightful response!!!
Yup, seconded :)
I love it! Much room for improvement but this is a great base. Are you planning on doing more with this game or leave it as is?
We're working on it every day!
Wonderful game, I had no idea a city builder could be this.
It'd be cool to be able to undo back to the start of a phase.
Minor complaint is that the end can be really tough if you don't have enough to do the atmosphere from the get-go. Reclaiming things that create your river network takes away the rivers and makes it very difficult to cash in.
I'm not sure if this makes sense from a gameplay perspective but I want to be able to keep windmills/water pumps around to maintain river networks while deconstructing other things in phase III. I don't personally think finding places to place pylons that don't mess up your river network is a fun sort of challenge. If keeping my river network around were easier, I could see myself using more ports instead of trying to rush straight to the drone.
Rushing for fixing the weather system is currently optimal, for good or for ill, although the ports are fun to use. If you aren't worried financially, you can just rebuild the power and water pump if you accidentally recycle them.
Thank you, and thanks for the feedback :)
I think it would be nice if there were a couple of percent wiggle room in the goals. It's really frustrating to come within 1% of the goal and then spend almost 1500 trying to achieve that 1% with no success. Just how do you get rid of wetlands once their created?
Huh... I guess you can't replace wetlands? Hmm. Out of curiosity, what were you doing when you wanted to replace some wetlands?
Sorry about this, not really sure how we'd detect wiggle room because then people would want wiggle room for the wiggle room. But I take your point, we'll think about it!
When zen mode is implemented, it should allow unlimited undos. The chain of dependency for getting certain buildings in certain areas means that if you messed up, it probably wasn't just one turn ago.
I feel like I must be missing something because Highlands is extraordinarily difficult... there's a tremendous number of things to balance when trying to plan ahead, not a lot of options for what you can actually do at any given time, and all it takes is one bad placement more than one turn ago to make the game unwinnable. I've gone at it about 10 times now and have only gotten to the third "phase" twice, compared to Floodplain, which I barely knew what I was doing on and still passed without a great struggle the first time I got to the second phase.
I had the exact same feeling with the final map, but not that one. Odd.
Out of curiosity, are you trying to plan ahead between the first and second stages, like putting greenhouses where it'll benefit the second stage? I personally can't do that, and I'm not sure it's necessary, but it vaguely sounds like you're trying to?
I'd be curious to see what your approach is, although it's hard to explain over text. Good luck, though! It's definitely doable!
I'm 20+ tries in and only seem to be doing worse the more effort I put in, I can't even get to phase 2 anymore. I'm placing scrubbers and greenhouses to minimize both gaps and overlap and attempting to expand the river network so I can get power to the lowest level, which costs 350 (excavator --> calcifier --> wind turbine) for what feels like every two inches of river. I reset the map to make sure there IS an initial river system (have seen a few maps where it seemingly fails to generate), that the river actually connects up, and that there's a decent distribution of stone across the top two levels, but there seems to be a hard limit of one stone patch on the lowest level, and because of that it's not possible to hold out for phase 2's cheaper buildings before building more than one or two excavators.
The part that drives me insane is that I don't see many different ways to proceed on any given map. The top two levels are basically the same every time and sometimes I finish it with more money than I started with, but because of how expensive it is to get power around the bottom that money just evaporates in fewer turns than I can make it back. It's hard to feel like the majority of maps Highlands generates are even winnable.
Ouch. Well, I'm not sure what we're doing differently, precisely... you shouldn't need more than one or two Excavators? It's fine to have to build some, and it's not worth wasting your total coverage to delay building Excavators; due to order of operations, you need to build them before Scrubbers, and you'll probably need one, so you might want to build one with the initial starting budget.
I personally delay building greenhouses as late as possible, waiting until the verge of bankruptcy, and only in places where I won't build more scrubbers. I feel like that helps with getting the most out of greenhouse placement. Fun fact, if you have a single wind turbine in the middle of nowhere, the best coverage is to place 4 scrubbers above, below, left and right of it, then 3 greenhouses (1 line and 2 L pieces).
Otherwise, well, the game's hard to put into words. I recorded a video if it'll help. Although, maybe it's a puzzle you'd rather solve yourself? Up to you if you want to watch it! (Still uploading at the moment of writing.)
Played the first two maps without realizing A) I could pan around to see the whole area, and B) I could change the shape of the greenhouses. So glad I read this comment. That's what happens when you don't read the controls, I guess!
This game is an absolute breath of fresh air. Once I finish it I'm going to go back and play the original jam version to see how it all started.
edit- the mac version was crashing constantly for me but i reinstalled and it seems to be fixed! again WHAT a beautiful game, i love it
<3
There is a bug on the 3rd "area" (it might be the 4th), I am to add biodiversity but I can only see buildings to make 3 biomes, the swamp biome building is missing and the third 'tab' doesn't show up which is where that building is located. I'm on my 9th run and I've ran into this bug multiple times rendering the level impassable
Hey there, really sorry about this, it seems to be a problem with the undo/saving system :( From what I understand if you can beat it without any saving and loading it should work. If you really want to just skip it, pop me a message on twitter or email and I'll tell you some dev hacks :P
Incredible game. I've been loving it! Super unique concept too. Keep it up!
Thank you :)
Very cool game! Love it. Nice and peaceful playing at my own paste :) very nice! There was no tutorial or anything but i got the idea fast enough how it works and was partly the fun really! But maybe some tips here and there would have been helpful or to clear up why i can only build one windmill onto the “rock building” instead of more then one.
I would love to get feedback on my game so if you have time please look at my sim city like puzzle game: https://guldor.itch.io/citybuilder
No idea if you want feedback but here we are…
The currency of the game was not very clear to me, i did not know when i would run out of gain anything and completly misted the currency to begin with. It feels a bit outside of the game. like there is mysterious money. Not sure if currency is needed at all just building and trying to get the best version(without making mistakes) could be enough.
Also i had trouble placing buildings on the bottom since the UI was in the way. An other thing i would love to see is that after building you can build the same building again instead of having to click on the icon again.
Overall very cool! Love it and want to play it again!
Thanks for the feedback :) I'll check out your game when I get some time
I think I found a bug. Cleared all buildings on the peninsula but somehow stuck on 64%. I used the destruction pylon to hover over the entire map but it didn't seem like I missed anything.
https://imgur.com/1Mg2MnM
Damn that's definitely a bug, really sorry about that :(
this game is incredible good! It's totally different from a city building game, art is awesome and gameplay is so much interesting and relaxing! Loved it!
Thank you :)
I had to dial it down to easy because I'm terrible, but what a relaxing time. Solving puzzles and making a beautiful landscape you leave behind on your way to parts unknown.
<3
hell yeah!
i remember the game from ludum dare, the progress is amazing :D i liked playing it then and love it right now :D cant wait what next updates will bring
Thank you!
i really like it especially as hobbyist unity dev i am really impressed with how far such a small team has come
Thank you :D
Really nice game, loving the art style and enjoying playing it so far.
Couple of things, the viewport can shake constantly when trying to move the camera to the middle when a level is complete.
Tier three isn't explained that well, you basically have build a network of pylons and ports so you can build the other buildings?
Ah thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoyed the game :)
What a great little game, I am hooked.
Rotation of buildings (particularly greenhouses) is very important, a fact that isn't made immediately obvious to you in-game.
Thank you! And thanks for the feedback