World of Goo

[Bad Neighbor]

I bought this yesterday for Wii, and can confirm that it works very well with the controller (more than other games I have tried) and it is worth more than $15. Fantastic game. I will update with how well co-op works once my amazon order arrives.

[mono]

I bought the PC and Wii versions of World of Goo. Both play great, although the PC does make it slightly easier to fast-build goo bridges to end-points before they collapse.

[nabeel]

What's great is how nice the cursor itself is, with the little goo trail, and then the sounds of the goo when you roll over them.

[Pogo]

Co-op on the Wii is pretty fun, although since the view of the game is so small compared to the levels, it can get annoying for the 2nd player as the 1st player moves around the goo balls and, consequently, the camera.

[Rock8man]

I started playing World of Goo for the first time today through Steam, and the game looks unbearably ugly on my stupid LCD monitor. I'm not blaming the game. If this had been my old CRT monitor, it would look fine, but anything but 1280x1024 looks terrible on my LCD.

I searched for a solution on the net, and I found that under properties/config.txt they specify a resolution, which I changed from 800 and 600 to 1280 and 1024. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to do anything. My google search only revealed that this seems to work for people, but they have to go into windowed mode by pressing Alt+Enter.

So I did that, but even in Windowed mode, it stays a 800x600 window. What could I be doing wrong?

Worst case scenario, I'll just play in a small window, but it would be nice if the window could take up the whole screen.

Help.

[Pogo]

Nothing you can really do. 2DBoy made a great game but they seem to have built it without the ability to "zoom out" or increase the playing field.

[Hanacker]

How bad is unbearably ugly? It looks fine on my 1280x1024 LCD.

[Rock8man]

How bad is unbearably ugly? It looks fine on my 1280x1024 LCD.

It's really bad. Specifically the text looks horrible. Not as bad as Supreme Commander on non-native resolution, but almost as bad. (In Supreme Commander, the text is almost unreadable on anything except 1280x1024 on my LCD screen).

[Gendal]

That's weird, on my 24" 1920x1200 monitor it looks fantastic, not a jaggy in site. I still can't believe it's only 800x600.

[Rock8man]

Aha, I played around with it some more. 1280x1024 must not be a supported resolution. 1024x768 and 1280x960 worked. Unfortunately, 1280x960 seems to only display part of the screen, and you don't get to see everything that you do at the other resolutions. For example, in the chapter select screen, it says Chapter 1, and then most of the text that makes up the name of Chapter 1 is cutoff. So I think I'll settle for 1024x768 in windowed mode. In full screen that resolution looks even worse on my LCD than 800x600, but in windowed mode it looks fine and it is a pretty decent sized window.

[rei]

1920x1080 works.

[sluggo]

I checked the leaderboard on the 2dboy site and I couldn't believe it, and now I just saw it. I was on the right track with having a wide stable support base, I think it would be easier to connect all 300 blobs first and then start construction as you won't have to worry about them moving around messing with the physics.

Having extra goo roaming around is an easy path to disaster at anything over 20m, so the strategy I came up with was to build a little dummy structure for my 300 goo to roam around, and then detach a few goo to create a second structure completely free of roamers. It's a lot easier to build that way; my high was somewhere around 32m.

[Jab]

That's what I eventually did, so far my best is about 30m. From experience, you need to set up a very stable base for at least 6-8m high to have any chance of it supporting your stack once it hits 20+.

[Mr_PeaCH]

This game owns me! I have it for the Wii and have no issues with the controls. And check this out; my son (9) had a couple of friends over and between this, Rockband (which the other two kids don't have) and Star Wars Light Saber Duel (which my son doesn't have) all they wanted to do for almost 3 hours was play Co-op Goo. Man, it was awesome just checking in on them and watching them work it.

Great tip on the sub-structure while working on the Corporate tower; accidentally plucking the structural balls is a buzz-killer.

[Nengjanggo]

This game... so good. So good. I just finished and I loved it (except for some of world 4, where the mechanics occasionally seemed sort of crap-shooty).

I got my tower to about 23ish meters, was trying to shore it up on the sides for a push to thirty, it started wobbling uncontrollably so I threw a bunch of balls on top to hit 25 or 27 or something and then quit before it could crash.

[Hanacker]

Do the goo balls wandering around a structure actually affect the weight distribution? It never seemed that way to me but you guys seem to be saying it does.

[Damien Neil]

Yes, unattached goo balls definitely have weight. There's at least one level that requires understanding this to solve.

[Pogo]

Do the goo balls wandering around a structure actually affect the weight distribution? It never seemed that way to me but you guys seem to be saying it does.

Really? That should be something you realize after you get the whistle. On some levels it's very hard to build the right structure if you don't call all your goo down to the base to stop the highest structures from wobbling.

[Hanacker]

Yes, unattached goo balls definitely have weight. There's at least one level that requires understanding this to solve.

It must not because I never understood that. At some point I tried adding and taking off goo balls and it never seemed to change the weight of the structure. And I built my big tower to 28m or so without noticing it making any difference. I'm sure you guys are right, but it's weird I beat the game without seeing that.

[Pentadact]

I think the level that absolutely hinges on it is an optional branch-off one, but I might be wrong. I completed it instinctively then just a few days later was on here saying I didn't think they had any weight, so it's also possible to do it and utterly forget how.

-

[nabeel]

I don't think it's very mathematically accurate in how their weight affects the structure. There is a puzzle that shows you that more blobs make the structure heavier in places, but in other puzzles, it doesn't matter exactly where the blobs are, they won't make it wobble in the way you expect. I was having quite a bit of difficulty on the last few levels when I experimented with this.

[Pogo]

Whether or not every single gooball is considered in the calculation, the goo definitely has weight and definitely introduces a wobble effect.

[Dave Long]

I got this for the Wii last night. Really cool. I dig the bonus Goo metagame as much if not more than the levels themselves.

[Roy Ziegler]

I beat the game last night. The most charming and fun game I've played in a long time.

I love how the developers said they cut most of the levels because they wanted every level to be unique, which is apparent in the quality of each. But at the same time, I wish they would've added those samey levels as side missions or something.

[Cyranix]

Yeah, the whistle intro level definitely clues you in to the weight effect of unattached goo balls.

I guess that the links themselves must also have mass, since (small spoiler ahead) the lefthand platform on the red carpet level won't depress if you just add all the white goo balls to the initial structure unattached -- you have to build up in order to reach the requisite weight.

[forgeforsaken]

Yeah there are some slightly weird physics in the game with regards to what things weigh.

[Dave Long]

I don't think anything's weird. Everything has mass. You always have to compensate for that and build links to support your stuff.

[Pogo]

I don't think it's weird either. Creating links creates more weight than just the single gooball you used. Nothing wrong with that.

[forgeforsaken]

The weirdness is that a goo balls mass is different if it's in link mode v. travel mode.

[BobJustBob]

Because you're also creating connections between nodes that weren't there before. Extra material means extra mass.

[forgeforsaken]

Because you're also creating connections between nodes that weren't there before. Extra material means extra mass.

It's a perception thing compounded by the way different Goos behave and even how their connections behave. It's not clear whether when making a connection you are adding material or are just using the goo in the gooball. The clear goos are a good example here as they can be used for single connections whereas other goos require two connections and their connectors seem extra elastic.

[Wholly Schmidt]

Because you're also creating connections between nodes that weren't there before. Extra material means extra mass.

Right, that makes sense, but that doesn't actually make any sense. Where's the extra mass coming from?

[Wade42]

Because you're also creating connections between nodes that weren't there before. Extra material means extra mass.
The point is that the Law of Conservation of Matter has me wondering where that extra material/mass came from. I pick up a goo ball, and put down a goo ball plus linking material... wha?

Fiddly physics aside, I'm loving this game so far (2 chapters in)... just sad to see that I'll be completing it all too soon.

[Pogo]

You're talking about the fucking conservation of matter here? Really?

God damn guys. The extra matter used to make the links COMES FROM MAGIC.

[Wholly Schmidt]

You're talking about the fucking conservation of matter here? Really?

God damn guys. The extra matter used to make the links COMES FROM MAGIC.

I don't want to blow this all out of proportion (probably too late) because this one little point isn't worth ruining a discussion about the overall goodness of the game, but it is a fair point of discussion. The whole game involves balancing structures, so the behavior of the weight is reasonable to discuss.

[Pogo]

MAGIC

[Dave Perkins]

definitely magic

[Horrible Oscar]

Free soundtrack! (http://kylegabler.com/WorldOfGooSoundtrack/)

[Rob_Merritt]

Saw this on RPS: World of Goo...for real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgsSfV1qjUQ