Hi folks! I've been very busy with my real job lately, but I really appreciate the feedback that has been coming in on the Community mailing list.

It's been great to read all the recent descriptions of what people are experiencing while being the heroic pioneer players of this strange Tetragotchi game! While developing it I was always trying to imagine what people would think and what they would say, but it was very difficult to picture.

Thanks as well to the people who have recently been playing with the kind of experimental changes I've been making, like speeding up the clock. As I think I mentioned, there wasn't really the time to think through all the consequences of the speedup so I just thought what-the-heck and tried it.

I'm learning a lot from what you folks are saying, and it is most certainly filling my to-do list, because (no big surprise) people are finding bugs and idiosyncrasies that deserve some attention.

Al Tabor has been giving us some ideas about some logic associated with the way the game structure could be described in objectives, but I'm not sure if I can quite make enough sense of the "use case" approach yet. It could be my lack of experience in this area.

Our most intense player is probably Rudolf Penninkhof, who has been playing so enthusiastically that he has encountered and described a good number of problems, but at the same time presenting delightfully interesting stories about his experiences with his tetragotchi. It's these stories that make me think that there is some real potential for future versions of this game. Thanks Rudolf!

It was very encouraging to hear from Bernard (and his tetragotchi "Winona"!) "I want to thank Gerald for creating a unique and very engrossing strategy game. It will be amazing when there are hundreds of gotchis running around on, perhaps, a slightly larger planet." For years I have wanted to create a truly spherical universe and part of the reason indeed is that in theory it can grow to accommodate more players. I wonder if anyone else agrees with Bernard that the offspring should also inherit movement genes, because I intentionally erase them. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. It's at least worth an experiment.

Bernard also had suggestions about "team play" where gotchis could gang up. That would be very interesting to try if I could figure out a way to make it work, but I don't seem to be able to come up with many ideas on this front.

I'm really happy to entertain descriptions of how you think the game should work, because I'm sure there will be a number of fairly easy changes that could improve the game play significantly. I just have to be able to understand the directions people think it should go and try to figure out how to make changes that are the least effort and have the most impact. (This is all free time work, unless somebody has funding ideas, but that's another thread:)

Some improvements I think should have high priority are the following:

  1. There should be a distinction between selecting a destination and selecting a target gotchi, so that when you're in select-gotchi mode, there is always the nearby one "lit up". Right now it's too confusing because it depends on how close your goal is to the target gotchi. Would click and shift-click be a good idea for this distinction?
  2. The setting of goal is now something that you can see verified, because when you change the goal you create a new grey arrow which only turns red when the server verifies that the goal has indeed changed. There's a bug still, though, because the frozen world that you received when you started the session still has the old goal. I will have to invalidate the world when the goal comes back.
  3. I think that the new speed is not really working out very well, and although it could be that a number of other changes make it good to play this way, I'm not yet clear enough on how to do it all. I'll put the speed back to its original value which is one physics-sweep per second. Interestingly, Rudolf prefers the new speed, and Bernard prefers the old speed.
  4. The progeny system does not seem to be working properly so I will have to review it again to make sure it works as it should. Even the way I'm thinking it "should" work might be a little confusing, because when somebody else assimilates one of your progeny you lose it. It surprises people to have progeny and then later have none. Same thing happens when they die, the number goes down.
  5. I will take away the erasing of movement genes upon rebirth, which means that progeny will be born with the same ability to run as their makers. Maybe this could really improve general running proficiency and make the running ability more easy to come by.
  6. I think it's the case that you can totally reboot your genes during rebirth (being reborn with your assimilator's genes) which shouldn't be possible. I will make this impossible.
  7. It might be a good idea to reveal each and every goal arrow for all the tetragotchis (now you only see yours), because then you could better see what everybody is up to.
  8. Oh and it should not be sending you an email every time you re-boot your body during the birthing process. I have to make it send you an email only when your tetragotchi is born for real on planet Slomo.