TheByteIdle
TheByteIdle is an incremental game focused on file downloading and uploading. Start with limited bandwidth and processing power, manually managing file transfers to earn money. Reinvest your profits into better hardware, faster networks, and increased storage to handle larger volumes of data.
WARNING: Game is still in development state, main features almost have been worked out and tested, trying to find time to play and test the game in order to balance economy and upgrade prices meanwhile wanted to still release what I got so far. If you get stuck you can open developer tools from settings general tab by spamming game info.
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Yes this is mechanic I kind of want to keep so player wouldn't be able to win all the time. This situation can only occur at very beginning of game when wrong strategy is used, for now only way out is to reset whole game from settings but I might add popup/window that would offer such option when trapped.
wait, so game breaking soft lock is a feature not a bug? With no option to restart besides nuking the save file?
Not to be mean about it, but tell me you don't want people to keep playing by trying new things to keep it interesting, without telling me you don't want people to keep playing by trying new things to keep it interesting.
It is simply state that happens when illogical/wrong decisions are made.
But I see your point, I didn't consider if someone makes these illogical/wrong decision on purpose just to see what would happen and have lots of bytes collected. So nuking save file would be too harsh of punishment for such action, especially when made on purpose.
I was thinking about it from perspective to be like 1 state that player should always avoid and if get there by accident then would make sure to remember and understand why it happened and never repeat it again suggesting player to use strategy and caution and less random button pressing.
Restart seemed too easy, so player doesn't have anything to be afraid of and can just repeat same mistake and simply restart.
Will give more thought to this, if you have any suggestions let me know.
For now it seems 1 time warning (like congratulations you broke the logic/game, don't do it again or will lose all progress) and offer restart and if such state occurs again then full reset.
How about a restart at the cost of a byte, and you're moved down the progress ladder to the beginning of the byte lost? ie, so if you have 3 and are 40% of the way to 4, and you pay 1 to restart, the progress meter is now at 0% at the beginning of the 3rd byte. This way, it is impactful but not punitive.
Yep this and 1 time warning with just restart and next time take 1 byte and progress reset and if no bytes then reset/restart is same. Warning will be 1 time free restart this i think would work best because later if rushing this state can be achieved accidentally by simply forgetting to increase storage or focusing only on network when using upgrades at beginning on new game. Thank you for your feedback.
The text is super hard to read with the black bolding. My eyes keep tearing up trying to read it - i have my screen set to max brightness hoping it would help.
It is because of pixel compression that can make artifacts/pixel merging and appear harder to read.
When playing from phone or full screen should be better results, will check what I can do about that.
On the main tab, the files list should scroll, not the whole tab
Will consider this but most likely will not add yet.
Mainly because if I make file list to scroll, by default depending of player screen it could show 5-6 file at the same time, to see rest you would need to scroll.
When later in game and you have 15-20 processes going I find it to be more beneficial and better to scroll whole page just once and see 10-12 files and how they are doing instead of seeing 5-6.
I constantly need to scroll up to use the top bar and scroll down to use the bottom bar.
Will add toggle button so can switch between showing full or limited to screen.
would be nice to see the $/s on the main tab for each file
1. there is no really space for such thing
2. this is strategy mechanic player needs to understand/figure out
I was considering showing total $/s since that could give some help, but I dont want to modify main tab because want to try keep it as clean as possible. So this feature is yet undecided and if I make total stats in game tab to be accessed like settings then I would add $/s but not for each file.
Hmm, how about only in full screen mode then? because it is wide open spaces when i do have full screen on.
I can't earn income when the tab is not active, it makes me sad(
because of how the prestige system works, you have to play 2 basic games before getting a single bonus, and its slow :(
It's intended mechanic, you can cheat it by prestige right before 2nd or any byte amount, first 100%= you get 1 byte, without performing prestige go for next run and prestige at 90-99% area, then you will have 1 usable byte and will be able to earn another one pretty soon by reaching last % to prestige.
I wanted to make prestige system like that to try support all kinds of variations of gameplays. You could get multiple bytes per single run next prestige requirement is higher than if you had performed prestige at first it might not seem so,be noticeable at first but when have more than 16 bytes things start to take effects. These values are not final and is what I am working on.
This is how I tried to balance this kind of prestige system adding proportional negative to positive of earning multiple bytes in single run.
There are couple of mechanics I haven't explained yet, will try to do so in following days/next update, some things are just intented for player to find.
I see potential here for a good short game :D
I hope you will build on it :D
some proper instructions would be nice
It took some time to figure out, but it was pretty straight forward. You get money everytime someone fully downloads a file from you. So at the start you want a small file size with your terrible internet speed. As your speed gets better you can seed larger file sizes and get more money per seed. That's the basics of it.
They will be added to next version, thank you for reminding.