I like the idea and it's definitely fun to play around with. I feel there could've been additional features, like being able to change the background, or customize each dot in size, color, etc. Sound effects are missing, and the "witness" feature seems to work kind of weirdly at least to me. The visuals in general are perfectly fine and the UI's great but again the customizability would've benifitted them a lot in my opinion. I think you could create some really beautiful things with this program if there was more customizability. Either way, very good idea and well executed. The music is gorgeous, and the presets are also a nice touch for sure.
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ABIOGENESIS's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Execution | #1 | 4.562 | 4.562 |
| Visuals | #3 | 4.234 | 4.234 |
| Overall | #4 | 3.969 | 3.969 |
| Audio | #6 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Game Design | #28 | 3.328 | 3.328 |
Ranked from 64 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
1 year ago(+1)
Hey Median, thanks for the review. I agree that more customisation would better. I did have plans to allow customisation of the colour pallet, but as I'm sure you're aware, Bevy UI is very much not batteries included and to implement colour customisation would require the development of a colour picking component which felt too daunting to implement well as a solo developer within the timeframe of the jam. Implementing the dropdown, slider, and tooltip components was already a daunting task.
The witness feature makes the camera follow the clicked on particle. It allows you to follow organisms as they move around, but toggling the follow state is a bit hard to communicate. Panning the camera at any point disables the following mechanic, clicking the tool also toggles it off.
I'm currently in the process post Jam of moving the simulation to the GPU which gives me a lot more control on how the particles are rendered instead of just being sprites and I'm excited to juice up their effects a little bit.
Hey wilsk, can I ask what platform you were playing on? There's definitely supposed to be audio. I have noticed some issues with Safari on iOS where if you don't tap the screen during loading the audio triggers can fail to fire correctly. There's some weird code workarounds you need to start audio on the web to stop annoying spam audio in the background of webpages https://github.com/DylanRJohnston/abiogenesis/blob/main/site/index.html#L72-L132
The entire console looks like this:
abiogenesis:10 GET https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=id net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT (anonymous) @
lib.min.js?1749538225:2 Unrecognized feature: 'monetization'.
lib.min.js?1749538225:2 Unrecognized feature: 'xr'.
lib.min.js?1749538225:2 Allow attribute will take precedence over 'allowfullscreen'.
Vivaldi: Prohibitted blocking overflowing/scrolling of the document.
index.js:1186 WARN /Users/dylanj/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bevy_core_pipeline-0.16.1/src/oit/resolve/mod.rs:83 OrderIndependentTransparencyPlugin not loaded. GPU lacks support: DownlevelFlags::FRAGMENT_WRITABLE_STORAGE.
index.js:1186 WARN /Users/dylanj/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bevy_pbr-0.16.1/src/ssao/mod.rs:92 ScreenSpaceAmbientOcclusionPlugin not loaded. GPU lacks support: TextureFormat::R16Float does not support TextureUsages::STORAGE_BINDING.
index.js:1186 WARN /Users/dylanj/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/bevy_pbr-0.16.1/src/atmosphere/mod.rs:170 AtmospherePlugin not loaded. GPU lacks support for compute shaders.
index.js:1186 WARN abiogenesis/src/ui/title_screen.rs:35 width = 1280.0;ui_scale = Res(UiScale(1.0));
The only thing I can think is different is how it immediately goes to full screen? Maybe there is some Vivaldi-specific quirk where it doesn’t then do the audio handlers? I’m stretching here though :shrug:
Thanks for the kind review Jan. It definitely is a lot all at once, there's a tension in a sandbox with giving players control over all parameters in the model vs being understandable. The original plan was to introduce the players to all the mechanics through a series of challenges but as a solo dev, and with the jam drawing to a close, I had to scrap those plans in favour of polishing the sandbox mode as much as possible.
Been watching the progress on this and it turned out really nice. The UI is beautiful and feels great to interact with, and it’s really fun and engaging adjusting the parameters and seeing what emerges from the noise. The background music really sets it all in a tranquil and ethereal mood, could definitely lose a lot of time playing around with this. Only thing I feel is missing would be some time options, it would be nice to be able to pause for awakening life, or speed up to see the most stable resolution. I’m assuming the “Receive” and “Bestow” are for sharing configurations, but it doesn’t seem to be working on the web version. My best creation so far is this “flower”:
1 year ago (+1)
Thanks for the kind review SoysCodingCafe. Great idea with the time options! I had planned on them for the challenges mode which would see you design organisms to complete goals, but as a solo dev, and the time remaining in the jam drawing to a close, I abandoned those plans in favour of polishing the sandbox as much as possible.
Receive and Bestow are the sharing options, apparently though they don't work given the iframe permissions in Chrome. I can confirm they work on Firefox and iOS however.
I did try originally to have the configuration state live in the URL search parameters, but because itch serves the game as a cross domain iframe you don't have permission to modify the URL.
That's an awesome flower though, mind if I steal it to put in the game as a preset after the jam is over?
It makes sense you focused on polish, I feel like it really paid off. Very impressive work for a solo dev!
Feel free to take the flower parameters as a preset, I’d be honored to have it be part of the game! Though I will mention it’s not the most stable configuration, it can take a bit of finessing to have it maintain its shape. I find it easiest to draw some green as a base, then draw the red “petals” encircling the green, and build it up from there. Can also help to add the orange, set up the parameters, and then remove and add it again to get the layers balanced.
1 year ago (+1)
I did add spawning shapes to the game at the last minute, but I didn't have enough time to link them into the UI. It would make it much easier to build more complex shapes if you could pause and use things like donut shapes and concentric circles.
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for the kind review Nilay. The shipped version of the game is just a sandbox and so there is no explicit goal beyond curiosity and explore the possibility space of the model. I did sketch out about a dozen or so challenges / puzzles in my notebook, but as a solo dev and the time remaining in the jam running out, I decided to abandon those plans and invest the remaining time in polishing the sandbox experience as much as possible. I'm keen to explore those puzzles designs after the jam voting is over and I can continue to work on the game again.
Thanks for the kind review Nico! I totally agree about the need for challenges and in fact sketched out about a dozen or so of them in my notebook. But as a solo dev, with the time remaining in the jam running short, I decided to invest in polishing the sandbox experience as much as possible rather than deliver a half baked version of both.
You can find remnants of the code for a scene manager and a challenges mode in the code still as I started working on it before switching back to polishing the sandbox.
1 year ago(+1)
No stress, I didn't take it as such, my comment was meant as agreeing with you haha. Tone over text is hard 😅
Thanks for the kind review DeVelox, I really wanted to add some challenges / puzzles where you have a limited space to construct an organism and send it off to complete a challenge. I sketched out about a dozen ideas for puzzles in my notebook, but around day 6/9 I had to decide if I wanted to keep working on polishing the sandbox or start working on the challenges and deliver them both half baked. The challenges of solo game dev. I'm keen to join a team for the next jam so I'm not so starved for time in what I can accomplish.
1 year ago(+1)
Thanks for the kind review, I did plan on adding some puzzles / challenges. I sketched out about a dozen challenge idea in my notebook but as a solo dev I ultimately ran short on time and decided to invest the remaining time in polishing the sandbox experience as much as I could.
1 year ago(+1)
I totally agree. I was originally planning on simulating the particles in a compute shader and that would have given me more flexibility with rendering the particles performantly, but I spent so long on the CPU implementation I didn't have enough time to try out the compute shader version which would have also locked the game to only working with WebGPU.
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