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Orvin
Sep 9, 2006




Sindai posted:

NGU: It's so painful to go from an energy set to a magic set. Stupid clock set is going to cost me 2/3rds of my energy power :smith:

You don’t have to wear the full set of something. In fact as you get into the game, you will be picking and choosing specific pieces of armor and accessories to wear based on what you are doing. If you are just idling in the ITOPOD, you don’t need to max out your adventure stats if it hurts your energy and or magic stats (or other bonuses equipment will start having.

I found the following website tool that will help you optimize your gear based on what you want to be doing.

https://gmiclotte.github.io/gear-optimizer

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DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

Magres posted:

You say that, but Guild Wars 2 just launched on Steam recently and someone gave it a "Do Not Recommend" review that started with:

:allbuttons:

Rynoto
Apr 27, 2009
It doesn't help that I'm fat as fuck, so my face shouldn't be shown off in the first place.
Evolve:

So the custom planet thing is a bit underwhelming but I'm pretty sure this is the only way to squeeze the last little bit of mastery out for Eden planets in non-Evil universes.

Arbetor
Mar 28, 2010

Gonna play tasty.

explosivo posted:

Oh hey the WAMI dev's new game Farmers Against Potato Idle (?) (lol FAPI) just came out in EA on Steam

Edit: I like the clicking-to-charge mechanic a la Idle Apocalypse as opposed to clicks themselves dealing damage.

I played this for a while last night, and there might be something here, but Christ if I never play whack-a-mole ever again in a video game, I would be so happy. A 5 minute timer? With the rewards being a mix of temporary buffs, and a currency that mostly goes into making whack-a-mole give you more currency. There are also upgrades to make the temporary buffs better, and permanent upgrades like inventory slots and such. The best part is one upgrade makes the game of whack-a-mole last longer. It starts at 30 seconds, so if you play it on cooldown, you will actually be spending 9% of your time in this stupid minigame. The upgrade extends the duration of the game up to 2 minutes, at which point you will be playing whack-a-mole for more than a quarter of your actual active time in FAPI.

I am pretty sure there is a way to automate the whole mess above, not that it makes this initial grind much better. Right this moment, I would really just like the rewards multiplied by 6, and put the game on a 30 minute cooldown.

Outside whack-a-mole, its a NGU like - the main gameplay loop is killing potatoes in various areas to unlock new areas and upgrade systems. So far I have unlocked basic upgrades (that use potatoes as currency), meta upgrades (that use the skulls of potatoes as currency), equipment, a FFX/PoE style skill tree, and the "use a currency to fill bars passively that give upgrades" system like Basic Training in NGU. Daily quests, leaderboards, at least one prestige with a second either in or planned shortly. Also, whack-a-mole.

Jhet
Jun 3, 2013

Arbetor posted:

I played this for a while last night, and there might be something here, but Christ if I never play whack-a-mole ever again in a video game, I would be so happy. A 5 minute timer? With the rewards being a mix of temporary buffs, and a currency that mostly goes into making whack-a-mole give you more currency. There are also upgrades to make the temporary buffs better, and permanent upgrades like inventory slots and such. The best part is one upgrade makes the game of whack-a-mole last longer. It starts at 30 seconds, so if you play it on cooldown, you will actually be spending 9% of your time in this stupid minigame. The upgrade extends the duration of the game up to 2 minutes, at which point you will be playing whack-a-mole for more than a quarter of your actual active time in FAPI.

I am pretty sure there is a way to automate the whole mess above, not that it makes this initial grind much better. Right this moment, I would really just like the rewards multiplied by 6, and put the game on a 30 minute cooldown.

Outside whack-a-mole, its a NGU like - the main gameplay loop is killing potatoes in various areas to unlock new areas and upgrade systems. So far I have unlocked basic upgrades (that use potatoes as currency), meta upgrades (that use the skulls of potatoes as currency), equipment, a FFX/PoE style skill tree, and the "use a currency to fill bars passively that give upgrades" system like Basic Training in NGU. Daily quests, leaderboards, at least one prestige with a second either in or planned shortly. Also, whack-a-mole.

There's a QoL upgrade that turns whack a mole into an auto-resolve where you only play it to increase your max score when you want to. You could buy it after your first resurrection. So I'd agree with you about it being annoying, but it definitely becomes a choice. It's a lot more polished than WAMI and the only thing that makes me sad is the tiny backpack that you start with.

Penguin Patrol
Mar 3, 2005

by Fluffdaddy
Idle Research
PSA: When you're assigning shards to your skills, you can scroll down for an option to assign evenly to all skills or just to all skills of one color. On my screen, it was laid out so perfectly that I didn't even notice you could scroll down and I was manually distributing them.

Ineptitude posted:

Idle Research

Are potions in the tube section not auto crafted when the game is not active?

it appears not :(

explosivo
May 23, 2004

Fueled by Satan

Arbetor posted:

Also, whack-a-mole.

Lol I was also going to post a similar rant just before noticing the QOL upgrade that auto resolves it based on your highest streak. It's still a lovely mechanic to be asked to do potentially every 5 minutes and had a hearty laugh at the upgrade for it being a longer timer.

Besides that though I am thoroughly enjoying the game so far.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
No promises, but if I figure out how to use openCV to automate moles, I'll share my code.

gently caress whackamole.

Abisteen
Sep 30, 2005

Oh my God what the fuck am I?
Replace whack a mole with a tower of hanoi puzzle where each upgrade adds a disk.

Jhet
Jun 3, 2013

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

No promises, but if I figure out how to use openCV to automate moles, I'll share my code.

gently caress whackamole.

There's also a soul shop item that will auto auto-whack the moles. It's just whack-a-mole. It's not an unusual amount of clicking in the genre.

New Yorp New Yorp
Jul 18, 2003

Only in Kenya.
Pillbug

Rynoto posted:

Pillars are good but not essential for hell resets and if you're at pillaring already then a demonic infusion is just extra time. You should definitely do a few though as a few of the upgrades are very worth like the four unbounds which lets you play any species on any planet with a small (5% at tier4) malus.

You always want to do the spire and hell resets at 4* because of how blood stones work.

If you really want to power through pillars then 0* on micro are even faster and still count for the production bonus and -%cost for the spire gates.

Really though you're at the point where Truepath and the harder challenges are all possible.

This was solid advice. DI took about 4 days but wasn't really that bad. I'm going to do a few more DIs before I get back to pillaring.

I already did truepath, but haven't touched sludge or inflation challenges yet. I'm not keen to push for them, either, since the perks don't seem good enough to make myself suffer. Improved DE? I'm playing almost exclusively in heavy gravity, the fuel cost increase is completely irrelevant at this point. Although knocking out all of the remaining pillars in Micro does seem appealing... I was thinking that I wanted to pick up the Enlightened achievement, but that's mostly a completionist thing since the mastery bonus from adding another 4* achievement to the pile isn't going to make much of a difference.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

Abisteen posted:

Replace whack a mole with a tower of hanoi puzzle where each upgrade adds a disk.

Maybe let me import my sandcastle builder save to skip it since I already did it once.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

Abisteen posted:

Replace whack a mole with a tower of hanoi puzzle where each upgrade adds a disk.

:hmmyes:

Lottery of Babylon
Apr 25, 2012

STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

Maybe let me import my sandcastle builder save to skip it since I already did it once.

I was going to say, that's just the locking/unlocking Glass Ceilings section of the game.

ErIog
Jul 11, 2001

:nsacloud:

Penguin Patrol posted:

Idle Research
PSA: When you're assigning shards to your skills, you can scroll down for an option to assign evenly to all skills or just to all skills of one color. On my screen, it was laid out so perfectly that I didn't even notice you could scroll down and I was manually distributing them.

it appears not :(

Yeah, potions don't get crafted offline in Idle Research. A lot of things in tubes don't really work properly offline. However, the game is balanced for it. I've played exclusively on my phone, and I was worried about hitting walls due to it. I have not hit a wall yet and I have finished that section.

The key to potions is that you eventually get enough potion count and speed upgrades that it will become quick enough to get 5 and then 100 for full automation without any trouble.

I'm actually surprised at how smooth the progression is and how shallow some of the content sections are. It's very different coming from NGU or Synergism where you hit real walls that require waiting to progress. In Idle Research if you're waiting more than an hour for something then it's usually because you've automated that section entirely and there isn't much to do there anymore.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

Jhet posted:

There's also a soul shop item that will auto auto-whack the moles. It's just whack-a-mole. It's not an unusual amount of clicking in the genre.

Python code:
import cv2
import numpy
import win32gui, win32ui, win32con
import time
import PIL
import pyautogui

class WindowCapture:

    # properties
    w = 0
    h = 0
    hwnd = None
    cropped_x = 0
    cropped_y = 0
    offset_x = 0
    offset_y = 0

    # constructor
    def __init__(self, window_name):
        # find the handle for the window we want to capture
        self.hwnd = win32gui.FindWindow(None, window_name)
        if not self.hwnd:
            raise Exception('Window not found: {}'.format(window_name))

        # get the window size
        window_rect = win32gui.GetWindowRect(self.hwnd)
        self.w = window_rect[2] - window_rect[0]
        self.h = window_rect[3] - window_rect[1]

        # account for the window border and titlebar and cut them off
        border_pixels = 8
        titlebar_pixels = 30
        self.w = self.w - (border_pixels * 2)
        self.h = self.h - titlebar_pixels - border_pixels
        self.cropped_x = border_pixels
        self.cropped_y = titlebar_pixels

        # set the cropped coordinates offset so we can translate screenshot
        # images into actual screen positions
        self.offset_x = window_rect[0] + self.cropped_x
        self.offset_y = window_rect[1] + self.cropped_y

    def get_screenshot(self):
        bbox = win32gui.GetWindowRect(self.hwnd)
        pil_img = PIL.ImageGrab.grab(bbox)
        open_cv_image = numpy.array(pil_img)
        open_cv_image = open_cv_image[:, :, ::-1].copy() 
        return open_cv_image

wincap = WindowCapture('Farmer Against Potatoes Idle')
needle_img = cv2.imread('./potato-face-2.png', cv2.IMREAD_UNCHANGED)

start_time = time.time()
while(True):
    
    loop_time = time.time()
    duration_time = loop_time - start_time
#     print(f"duration: {duration_time}")
    haystack_img = wincap.get_screenshot()
    result = cv2.matchTemplate(haystack_img, needle_img, cv2.TM_CCOEFF_NORMED)
    threshold = 0.5
    min_val, max_val, min_loc, max_loc = cv2.minMaxLoc(result)
    if max_val >= threshold:
        needle_w = needle_img.shape[1]
        needle_h = needle_img.shape[0]
        top_left = max_loc
        bottom_right = (top_left[0] + needle_w, top_left[1] + needle_h)
        cv2.rectangle(haystack_img, top_left, bottom_right, color=(0, 255, 0), thickness=2, lineType=cv2.LINE_4)
        my_font = cv2.FONT_HERSHEY_SIMPLEX
        if max_val > 0.7:
            my_color = (255, 0, 0)
        else:
            my_color = (0, 255, 0)
        center_point = (top_left[0] + needle_w//2, top_left[1] + needle_h//2)
#         print(f"hit: {center_point} {max_val}")
        my_text = str(max_val)
        cv2.putText(haystack_img, my_text, center_point , my_font, 2, my_color)
        if max_val > 0.7:
            pyautogui.moveTo(center_point)
            pyautogui.click()
            
    cv2.imshow('Result', haystack_img)
#     if (duration_time > 45) or (cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q')):
    if (cv2.waitKey(1) == ord('q')):
        cv2.destroyAllWindows()
        break
I've got two 1920x1080 monitors, and potatotes needs to go on the left and be maximized, but not full screen. (The pyautogui thing doesn't go based off the window, it goes off the screen, because I'm lazy)
You'll probably want to move the monitoring window out of the way or it'll start reading itself and go nuts.

But the dang thing actually works!

Whack A Mole actually isn't that bad, but it was really fun scripting it!

Reference image:

Dr. Arbitrary fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Aug 28, 2022

Jhet
Jun 3, 2013
I applaud you and your ability to spend a lot of time doing something to avoid doing something.

I didn’t sit down today at all, but my max score is over 6k after the one day. And I imagine it’ll be a lot higher after I go and spend all the points and run it once. Yours will be higher in a short while I’m sure.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

Jhet posted:

I applaud you and your ability to spend a lot of time doing something to avoid doing something.

I didn’t sit down today at all, but my max score is over 6k after the one day. And I imagine it’ll be a lot higher after I go and spend all the points and run it once. Yours will be higher in a short while I’m sure.

I probably could speed it up by shrinking the screen down, but I don't want to mess with it. It's pure luck that it gets the gold potatoes but not the green ones.
I'm only getting about 10k, with:
Potato value = +30 / +150 for gold
39s timer
max combo 4

Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying
NGU: I realize it's optimal to do challenges after they become trivial, but how early is it feasible to do No Augs, No Equipment, and 100 Level challenges? I'm at boss 100 and the prospect of being able to convert power and toughness boosts into special boosts is making me salivate. I need so many special boosts.

Oenis
Mar 15, 2012

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

{script snip}

But the dang thing actually works!

Whack A Mole actually isn't that bad, but it was really fun scripting it!

Reference image:


That was really educational, thanks! I want to learn scripting/programming some day, but I keep putting it off.

For a less fun way to circumvent the stupid minigame, you can use cheat engine to just give you however many tokens you want, which is exactly what I did.

The game isn't all that great so far, but it's decent for checking in once or twice a day and buying a bunch of stuff.

Oenis fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Aug 28, 2022

Ineptitude
Mar 2, 2010

Heed my words and become a master of the Heart (of Thorns).
Idle Reseach, Tubes

The Arena stats doesn’t feel balanced.

I have 20 orders of magnitude more protection and HP than attack, and all progress is gated by attack.

Ho and prot might as well not exist because enemies have never done any damage.

There are more sources of HP/prot and they also increase faster than sources of attack, eg my attack skill does 10x attack while protection skill does 34000x prot.

Theswarms
Dec 20, 2005

Ineptitude posted:

Idle Reseach, Tubes

The Arena stats doesn’t feel balanced.

I have 20 orders of magnitude more protection and HP than attack, and all progress is gated by attack.

Ho and prot might as well not exist because enemies have never done any damage.

There are more sources of HP/prot and they also increase faster than sources of attack, eg my attack skill does 10x attack while protection skill does 34000x prot.

I'm not deep into the tubes yet, but it seems like the real gating is the spawn time and attack time, cos i'm one shotting everything a million times over and just... waiting for the kill count.

Ineptitude
Mar 2, 2010

Heed my words and become a master of the Heart (of Thorns).
Later on you get multiple avenues to increase kill count, in a short while you go from 1 kill count per kill to multiple millions.

uPen
Jan 25, 2010

Zu Rodina!

Sindai posted:

NGU: I realize it's optimal to do challenges after they become trivial, but how early is it feasible to do No Augs, No Equipment, and 100 Level challenges? I'm at boss 100 and the prospect of being able to convert power and toughness boosts into special boosts is making me salivate. I need so many special boosts.

Save your game and try. If it's taking too long just load the save. No equipment in particular can be pretty rough but no augs and 100 level are usually fairly easy.

RoboCicero
Oct 22, 2009

Ineptitude posted:

Idle Reseach, Tubes

The Arena stats doesn’t feel balanced.

I have 20 orders of magnitude more protection and HP than attack, and all progress is gated by attack.

Ho and prot might as well not exist because enemies have never done any damage.

There are more sources of HP/prot and they also increase faster than sources of attack, eg my attack skill does 10x attack while protection skill does 34000x prot.

Yeah, I also found the game slowed down around then, but it's picked up again, thankfully. I think the biggest blockers there was that stage progress doesn't advance while offline which makes waiting 90 kills per stage just so, so painful. I found that making sure all my free generators were unlocked with fire tubes was important, as well as unlocking Simulators by reaching stage 50 of each of the areas when I could to unlock the next stage of multiplicative gains, while also advancing stages when possible to unlock new skills. It's one of those lulls where you have to make sure your Mastery is being set properly, generators are active, auto deploy is active, unlocking potion crafting, prestiging every so often to push fire tubes.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

Oenis posted:

That was really educational, thanks! I want to learn scripting/programming some day, but I keep putting it off.

For a less fun way to circumvent the stupid minigame, you can use cheat engine to just give you however many tokens you want, which is exactly what I did.

The game isn't all that great so far, but it's decent for checking in once or twice a day and buying a bunch of stuff.

If you're interested, I can sorta go through the steps I took to make that.
I didn't write all of it, a good chunk is cobbled from other sources.

But, I guess to toot my own horn, I know how to read it well enough to know how to make all the pieces fit together.

kaaj
Jun 23, 2013

don't stop, carry on.
I've got a Trimps question.

I pushed to zone 110, I have 475k helium and all challenges done till now. What would you say I should try next - Mapocalypse or Life? I'm kind of leaning towards Mapocalypse as the reward seems to be useful to speed up future runs. Not sure if it's worth farming more helium with Life first?

pyrofreak421
Nov 25, 2010
Life is a manual grindy mess and I would avoid it if possible. You have to avoid fighting on cells with a debuff and the debuff changes which cells it's effecting based on Conway's game of life.

GrossMurpel
Apr 8, 2011

pyrofreak421 posted:

Life is a manual grindy mess and I would avoid it if possible.

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


After playing the first two years then stopping I picked trimps back up like 2-3 months ago. Been pretty straight forward constant progress just cleared spire II which is new content spire I and magma was the hot poo poo at the time.
Challenges just do the one times and for repeats you want lead then corrupted as soon as you can finish them.

Dailies should be done but not drained, they multiply mastery and token gain as well It's recommended to keep 4+ until you can finish 290. It should out do a repeatable. You just don't want to burn a ton of tokens since progress is can be very jumpy here as things start lining up.

I unlocked every perk way too soon I don't think the auto assign put any points into anything fancy for dozens of new High Zone Reached. Planning perks is honestly not a fun part and one of the only things I automate. If you don't manually portal what's the point?! (have fun how you have fun)

pixaal fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Aug 29, 2022

Agent355
Jul 26, 2011


Dailies aren't worth doing until you get to the point where you've outleveled the repeatables.

They unlock around zone 100 but I don't think it was worth it to run a single one until well past 200. Sure you're 'losing' out on a daily if you don't run it before it refreshes, but they will give you less resources than just doing life or watch or toxicity or w/e until you get to the point in the game where you're going to zone 250, and the highest repeatable only gives you bonus helium up to 220.

Until that point just let em stack up.

Also life is bad but you can also 100% just ignore the gimmick and plow through it anyway. Though you'll hit another helium challenge so quickly you can also just skip life entirely without losing much, that phase of the game is relatively quick.

Xand_Man
Mar 2, 2004

If what you say is true
Wutang might be dangerous


pyrofreak421 posted:

Life is a manual grindy mess and I would avoid it if possible.

Thread title

tinstaach
Aug 3, 2010

MAGNetic AttITUDE


More offline progress is sorely needed, I turn it off for 8 hours, come back, and all that's changed is I'm hungrier and I have to piss

kaaj
Jun 23, 2013

don't stop, carry on.

pyrofreak421 posted:

Life is a manual grindy mess and I would avoid it if possible.

In that case I'll maybe leave it until I'll have a bit more free time for active play. Thanks for that.

Also, thread title.

ErIog
Jul 11, 2001

:nsacloud:
The dailies in Trimps are really case by case after you unlock them. Sometimes they're definitely less hard than Electricity while providing more benefit. When that happens they're worth it. You can also cash out and end them at any point so they're less annoying than when you unlock some of the other helium challenges where it's a slog to finish them to get your payout until you trivialize them.

Ineptitude
Mar 2, 2010

Heed my words and become a master of the Heart (of Thorns).
TUBE Research: The "All skills automatically gain 1% of current skill shards per second" seems to only work for the first page of skills?

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!
It works for the ones you've gotten to the areas for and naturally unlocked. It is weird since you'll get the upgrade that lets you keep all of the shard pages long before then, though, so it does look like it doesn't work properly.

ErIog
Jul 11, 2001

:nsacloud:
I found Idle Research strangely balanced. I have basically finished most of the available content except for a few fire upgrades in normal mode, and I only have 24 hours of active play time. The only thing special I did was make sure to do solitaire every day for like 5 days to get enough of the premium currency to get all the cheap upgrades there.

Some mechanics became trivial much more quickly than I would have expected to the point that I never needed to understand them. Like I don't get what the point of mystical flasks is in juice. I feel like with whatever I've done I will never run out of them so there's no reason to ever mess with allocation.

I enjoyed playing the game quite a lot, but I didn't expect to just burn through it like I did.

Anyone know what the ETA on cylinders is?

Klungar
Feb 12, 2008

Klungo make bessst ever video game, 'Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh World.'

ErIog posted:

I found Idle Research strangely balanced. I have basically finished most of the available content except for a few fire upgrades in normal mode, and I only have 24 hours of active play time. The only thing special I did was make sure to do solitaire every day for like 5 days to get enough of the premium currency to get all the cheap upgrades there.

Some mechanics became trivial much more quickly than I would have expected to the point that I never needed to understand them. Like I don't get what the point of mystical flasks is in juice. I feel like with whatever I've done I will never run out of them so there's no reason to ever mess with allocation.

I enjoyed playing the game quite a lot, but I didn't expect to just burn through it like I did.

Anyone know what the ETA on cylinders is?

Mystical flasks come from Mastery, so spending them on Juice can impact your Research speeds if you spend too many, but yeah, it stops being something you have to have any concern about very quickly.

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FrickenMoron
May 6, 2009

Good game!
I'm pretty much done with Idle Research, I feel like Tubes are just worse Flasks somehow and not sure where it will go from here now.
Eagerly waiting for an Orb of Creation update tbh.

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