{"author_link":"\/author\/pknowles\/","author_name":"pknowles","author_uid":"16649","comments":[{"author_name":"midgard","author_uid":"11046","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 2:53am","epoch":1346035680,"text":"Doesn't working, there is a bug when you start the game (at least in chrome)."},{"author_name":"csanyk","author_uid":"10473","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 2:57am","epoch":1346035920,"text":"I also get an error when the game starts in Chrome.  Couldn't play it."},{"author_name":"chorinator","author_uid":"14524","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 2:58am","epoch":1346035980,"text":"Could't play. The game does nothing"},{"author_name":"sclark39","author_uid":"15443","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:05am","epoch":1346036400,"text":"Couldn't play :(\r<br\/>Error when it first starts, and then clouds."},{"author_name":"Geti","author_uid":"2001","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:07am","epoch":1346036520,"text":"Couldn't create GL context, must have too shitty a GPU. would've been nice to make a lofi version with simpler\/no shaders for us hardware-poor folk ;)\r<br\/>\r<br\/>screenshot looks A+ though."},{"author_name":"davidwparker","author_uid":"7737","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:22am","epoch":1346037420,"text":"Couldn't play.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>OSX 10.6.8: Chrome Version 21.0.1180.82: &quot;Could not create GL context.&quot;"},{"author_name":"DavidErosa","author_uid":"5049","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:23am","epoch":1346037480,"text":"OSX with Chrome Versi&oacute;n 21.0.1180.82. Intel HD3000 just in case :)\r<br\/>\r<br\/>&quot;GL Error 1286: &lt;unknown&gt; after draw &lt;no stack&gt;&quot;"},{"author_name":"pknowles","author_uid":"16649","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:29am","epoch":1346037840,"text":"Apologies for the bugs. I plan on fixing\/completing this during the week. There's some pretty weird WebGL quirks such as not being able to read a non-power of 2 floating point texture from a shader. It also seems if a shader has too many ops, it simply doesn't run without giving any error indication."},{"author_name":"Oreganik","author_uid":"12485","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 3:32am","epoch":1346038020,"text":"Couldn't run in Firefox or Chrome, sorry."},{"author_name":"mdkess","author_uid":"14701","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 4:03am","epoch":1346039880,"text":"On Chrome, on Ubuntu 12.04, the game just shows the black and white screen - no colored blobs as your screenshot suggests. I didn't leave a rating, but let me know if I can help you patch this."},{"author_name":"CataclysmicKnight","author_uid":"1082","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 4:04am","epoch":1346039940,"text":"Same thing, it said something about a stack issue... :("},{"author_name":"robcozzens","author_uid":"10944","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 5:09am","epoch":1346043840,"text":"In Safari it couldn't create the GL context or something."},{"author_name":"Sergey Mohov","author_uid":"9963","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 5:19pm","epoch":1346174040,"text":"Yeah, can't play it =\\"},{"author_name":"DevoreUK","author_uid":"16044","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 9:45pm","epoch":1346190000,"text":"Wouldn't work for me. Chrome, &quot;GL Error 1286: &lt;unknown&gt; after draw &lt;no stack&gt;&quot;"},{"author_name":"lurkingshadow","author_uid":"8145","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 4:11am","epoch":1346213160,"text":"same as everyone else."},{"author_name":"TobiasNL","author_uid":"10964","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 11:55am","epoch":1346241000,"text":"Nope, doesn't work here as well. Bummer!"},{"author_name":"Benjamin","author_uid":"2952","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 12:04pm","epoch":1346241540,"text":"I can't play either :-\/"},{"author_name":"ggiraldez","author_uid":"12224","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 6:01pm","epoch":1346349360,"text":"The game starts, but I can barely play. Depending on the starting configuration, blue reproduces too fast and eats all the food, or kills me in less than 1 second. Also, even if there's food and some of my blobs around, when blue reaches a certain level the game tells me I've lost. Alert popup for that is very annoying too btw. Anyway, the concept is interesting, but in its current state is no fun at all."},{"author_name":"pknowles","author_uid":"16649","time":"Aug 30, 2012 @ 6:42pm","epoch":1346351820,"text":"Thanks for the feedback :) I've only just updated it. I'll keep tweaking."},{"author_name":"lesterpig","author_uid":"8433","time":"Aug 31, 2012 @ 1:51pm","epoch":1346420760,"text":"Work with me ! A very nice game, but really hard ;)"},{"author_name":"echa","author_uid":"15601","time":"Aug 31, 2012 @ 3:32pm","epoch":1346426820,"text":"Very intresting artstyle!"},{"author_name":"SteelRaven7","author_uid":"7732","time":"Sep 1, 2012 @ 6:53am","epoch":1346482080,"text":"Really cool artstyle, but it felt like every single game was decided by if you could reach the green goo without dying first."},{"author_name":"MurrayL","author_uid":"7835","time":"Sep 1, 2012 @ 10:46pm","epoch":1346539260,"text":"It reminded me a great deal of the game 'liquidwar', which is no bad thing."},{"author_name":"Gareth Jenkins","author_uid":"7693","time":"Sep 13, 2012 @ 6:43pm","epoch":1347561480,"text":"Great stuff -- love the look and feel. Could do with some audio to compliment it."},{"author_name":"Frozen Fractal","author_uid":"7882","time":"Sep 17, 2012 @ 1:31pm","epoch":1347888360,"text":"I like the graphics, in particular the levels -- are they procedural? The gameplay could do with some tweaking; if you can reach the green it's straightforward, and otherwise you die quickly, and the blue &quot;AI&quot; doesn't seem to do very much. The concept is great though, and it would work really well on a touch screen too.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>I would really like to know more about how you did all this. Maybe you'd like to write a blog post?"},{"author_name":"pknowles","author_uid":"16649","time":"Sep 18, 2012 @ 7:40am","epoch":1347953700,"text":"Yes, I'm contemplating doing an android version, but it uses floating point textures for the particle system which makes porting it really ugly. I've only done a few tests so far.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>I haven't got round to implementing AI yet. At the moment blue movement is purely random, but the data for pathfinding and unit density is available.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>The first thing I want to fix is the blob interactions (so the evolution part of the game actually works). I really want min\/max blending for this but like so many GL features it's missing in WebGL.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>I'll definitely continue to work on the game. I'll put a link on the same page with some more in-depth tech details when I get time.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Thanks all for the feedback :)"}],"images":["ld24\/16649-918556fafb48fbac0da885e5ed273e91.jpg","ld24\/16649-6f9b179aa5a6fe1a239a6feba159ce6c.jpg","ld24\/16649-12e3ce678b47acd94065332e493a578c.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au\/~pknowles\/blob\/","text":"Web"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"29355","g_author":"16649","g_event":"LD24","g_eventkey":"12","g_subevent":"COMPO","g_urlkey":"29385","g_title":"blob","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"663","g_commentcount":"26","g_site2_node_id":"0","g_hide":"N","g_has_icon":"Y","g_rqueue":"0","g_random":"0"},"nds":[],"node":null,"orig_images":["http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/16649-shot0.jpg-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/16649-shot1.jpg-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/16649-shot2.jpg-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"Requires WebGL. Tested with firefox and chrome with HD5850, GTX670, GTX560 and Quadro4000.\r\n\r\nThe submission (goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au\/~pknowles\/blob-submit\/) had some bugs, which didn't appear on my 660, so I've put together a \"post-compo version\" which should give an idea of what the game was meant to be.\r\n\r\n== The Game ==\r\nYou are red. Only red blobs can be moved by you.\r\nThe aim: to eat food (green), reproduce and attack blue, becoming the dominant blobs!\r\nLarger red\/blue blobs will destroy smaller red\/blue blobs.\r\nEating a green blob will duplicate the eater, with size deviation - evolution :)\r\nYou must balance eating and attacking (to cull your smaller blobs), encouraging evolution of larger red blobs.\r\nThe game ends when you lose too many blobs or destroy a significant portion of blue blobs.\r\n\r\nSorry to those of you without the hardware to run this. I built the game around my interest in GL shaders. The game itself runs almost entirely on the GPU and can happily handle blobs on the order of one million.\r\n\r\n== Controls ==\r\nLeft drag to move red blobs. You \"draw\" force.\r\nScroll to zoom (not entirely necessary).\r\nRight drag to pan.\r\n\r\n== Tech Details ==\r\nEach level is randomized at launch with perlin noise. I compute a signed distance field for collision detection with the level. Blobs move with a fragment shader, writing to a double buffered a floating point texture. Interaction is achieved by additively drawing density, velocity etc on to a texture which other blobs can read (These can be viewed by pressing tilde \"~\"). I count the number of remaining blobs similarly to mipmapping before reading a very small texture back to the CPU. The blobs are rendered by raycasting a density texture, similarly to parallax mapping, applying transmittance and environment mapping.\r\n\r\n<\/p>","title":"blob"}