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Immune Attack is a research and development project that is exploring what works and why in learning with games and simulations. It was developed to be playable on the largest number of school and home computers. With additional funding, we hope to make the game available and playable for a broader audience. The game has been successfully tested on a variety of platforms and configurations (including Macs with Intel processors running Windows OS), but we welcome the community’s comments to help us improve our game.
Please use this blog to share comments, suggestions for use in the classroom, gameplay tips, etc.
For answers to commonly asked questions, please view our FAQ section.
Thanks & enjoy!
I love the website redesign! Can’t wait to play the newest version of Immune Attack.
This game is the coolest looking game in the world. i havent yet played it but i watched the video thing and it looks COOL!!!!!!!!! i want it.
I am waiting to download the evaluation copy of this new game - IMMUNE ATTACK . Something new and interesting !
I am currently attending an international medical school and have requested that my professor apply for evaluation - the whole concept sounds fantastic.
mE wAnT dOwNlOaD nOw, It’S 2008 aLrEaDy!
Hello my friends
this is agood idea of learning in general.i want to send me about any new
I wish we had had games like this when I was flunking advanced biology in 1969!
Why on earth isn’t this written in a platform independent language??
Where is the Mac version?
I am not convinced - as an educator, this looks like it’s robbing students of needed skills in college: actually reading a book, for instance, will be required of them.
Are there any plans to have a OS X version for Apple? Please….
Oh come on and join the 21st century. Many of our young kids are using Macs as are many of us veteran immunologists.
It’s not that hard to develop multi-platform applications, especially if you have a Mac since Apple gives you all the computer development tools for free.
.EXE only is just a copout.
I have been working with students to create Scratch biosimulations.
http://scratch.mit.edu/users/GeneMachine
Could students create Scratch cartoons using Immune Attack graphics?
Could Fold.it and and nanoengineer be integrated with Immune Attack? Kids could build env.?
Fold.it computer game solves medical puzzles and helps research by folding proteins.
http://fold.it/portal/video_intro
http://fold.it/
Nanoengineer allows students to build DNA.
http://www.nanoengineer-1.com/content/
http://nanoengineer-1.com/dev1/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=67
Could other 3D tools allow kids to add their own graphics?
3D tools
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7639525
http://www.blender.org/
http://sketchup.google.com
I have found students retain information when they integrate it themselves.
Wow, this may be slowest dowload ever!
Hi, this game is amazing. I’m from Brazil and i’m also a systems analysts, and a developer. I was wondering if you guys don’t plan to have this game on other languages. We, here in Brazil, could use on our projects of digital inclusion to poor kids on computer centers avalable by government on public schools. If i can help in some way, just tell me.
hi.
this game will have how to traslator?
this game its exelent to i learning im my school.
bye bye
Jorge campos sou do brasil tbm.
tem + alguam informaçao, sobre traduçao, ou até codigo fonte sobre o Imuneattack?
abraços
Why am I getting a file initialization error when I try to install the saved download? I have unblocked it from my firewall, and tried in in XP sp2 compatibility mode and Vista?
thanks
Hi! My name is Giulio, I am 10 years old and I am from São Paulo, Brazil. I tried to save the game, but this option is not avaliable, make a strange sound (TAM!) and nothing happens. The game looks like normal. The load option is not avaliable too. Someone know what is happen? These options works normally for someone? Please, help me.
Hello Giulio,
Currently the game cannot be saved, however you can jump to any level/key concept or in-game cinematic by going to the main menu > instructor menu > and entering the password: abc
Enjoy,
The Immune Attack Team
The concept of this game is outstanding. The graphics are simply amazing. The game play, I’m sorry to say, is awful! You begin the game on a spinning red blood cell. The cell spins and spins and spins without stopping. The camera is spinning along with it, so you soon become nauseous… gaining control of the bot proves impossible… even for experienced gamers. I spent about a half an hour trying to stop the bot from spinning so I could see what was going on… to no avail. I read and re-read the online how-to-maneuver-the-bot guide, but it didn’t help.
Because controlling the bot is so difficult to achieve, playing the rest of the game becomes impossible. The bot spins so out of control that you cannot scan other cells. Other cells just fly on and off the screen so fast you can’t click on them. This needs to be addressed in future versions of the game. I recommend fixing the camera to the bot (such as in first-person flight simulators) so all you see what’s out of the front window of the bot (or at least have this as an option). Make the bot-control super simplistic, so anyone can do it. In fact… the first “level” of the game should be a tutorial on how to fly the bot (the online guide is simply insufficient).
I love the idea of this game… and my students and I have been waiting for it to come out for almost an entire year! We were seriously let down by this first version. No one could stop the bot from spinning. We hope for a more playable version in the future.
Don’t give up yet!
I love the graphics and dislike the game. diapedesis is very nicely presented but the game portion was impossible to accomplish. Too few monocytes going through and difficult to activate a connection to promote the diapedesis. Maybe too much game and not enough concept. A high school student was bored/frustrated with the unresponsivity of this section, so I cannot suggest to my medical students.
Demo of diapedesis was very good. Are there others? Would like to show the demo portions.
Thanks,
Ken
Hi Austin,
Thanks for writing. Usually, the nanobot does not spin out of control and the cells move at reasonable rates. As we discussed by email, the problem seems to be specific your PC. Please keep in touch, we may find the problem.
The Immune Attack Team.
Dear Everyone,
Please keep your comments coming. Especially if you experience similar technical difficulties. We may be able to track down the source of the problems.
Your Friendly Immune Attack Team
Hey!
What level is everyone at? Is anyone all the way through yet? What did you like the best?
Tell us!
The Immune Attack Team
Sad that they have chosen to exclude thousands of kids and school districts by only making it for Windows. We have mostly all Macs in our 20 districts.
Why can some developers seem to come out with software for both platforms and others cannot? I think the tools are there and I know that even Mathematica, a quite sophisticated program was ported to Mac in a matter of hours. Yea, of course the schools could all purchase Windows software and run that on their Macs, but that just is not cost expedient.
Please consider adding the Macintosh platform and thus increasing your distribution significantly. TIA
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Spinning out of control is most likely a timing issue… Try choosing a power profile that does not dynamically change the clock rate of the processor. (Control Panel / Power Options / Power Schemes) You can confirm with cpuz http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
I’m excited to try this out, but I’m having the same problems as Austin.
My son in Grade 11 was very excited to get the game going after reading about it. Unfortunately, we too have a spinning bot at start-up and nothing seems to stop it.
To be more precise, I beleive the camera is what is spinning as both the nano bot and the blood vessel appear to spin in sync. The controls function but no way to stop the camera spinning.
I’m having the same problem as Austin.
It’s not the ship that’s spinning, just the camera. It’s looking down from the top at the bot, which reponds properly to controls, but is also spinning at a constant speed so you can never see down the blood vessel or click things without randomly stabbing at the mouse button.
Hey,
I’ve got the same problem as Austin. Here’s some specs on my machine:
Windows XP Professional SP2
Intel E6600 Core 2
4 Gb RAM
nVidia 7600GT running dual-view (1440×900 on both)
Both keyboard and mouse are USB.
If anything I’d guess that some control is permanantly activated, probably camera roll. Or mouse default position is set to some faulty value. I’ve tried changing the resolution, running it in compatibility mode, and also setting processor affinity to 1 or 2 cores. Any ideas on what could be happening?
Thanks
Yikes! You really need to find a better download site. Make a deal with Akamai? Put it on CNET’s Download.com? How about using BitTorrent to allow peer-to-peer downloading for this 500MB+ file? Something this big needs some form of download manager…’cause downloads right now just crap out mid-stream, wasting bandwidth (and patience) for everyone concerned.
Hello, The Immune Attack Team, here are my thoughts of your (soon to be) product:
Firstly, I couldn’t ever beat the 1st mission/level/whatever… those swift monocytes always made it out before I could mark the last selectin, which cunningly danced around its monocyte dodging my 1-µmPH markers (I swear I heard the things say something about my mother). I did learn many things, a few such as: I didn’t know monocytes changed, I never knew that neutrophil was the main ingredient of puss, I didn’t know exactly how immune cells found their way to bacteria/other immune cells, other than the inflammation part; and I was unaware of most of the cell/protein names before they were presented. Originally, I thought this game was about being the pathogen. And, lastly, what I enjoyed the most was the skin environment- an unusual aesthetic not seen often.
Overall: interesting, and now I’m more interested in learning about the immune system; but, short and boring. Boring only because of my troubles with the first level. You might also want to proofread some more, I spotted a few spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes. An example from “Where are neutrophils created?”: “…Special cells in the marrow called stem cells are produce all types of blood cells…”. Every time I’ve gone to my supermarket, there was never a trace of this seemingly delicious, special produce dubbed: ’stem cells’.
Also, the game was surprising large for being that short. (I hope there is more to come!)
Also, also, good luck on the project. I hope it turns out to help many kids who need to find interest in learning, I can see Immune Attack has potential as a useful education tool.
I will check back in a few days or so to respond to any responses or see if my comment passed moderation.
When there will be a version for GNU/Linux?
(Don’t bother unless you GPL it.)
I also have the spinning problem which does make the game impossible to play. I really want to play this game but i can’t as it is spinning out of control.
Congratulations for the project! E-learning games are one good way to introduce some concepts to the students that have attention difficulties.
On the other way, have you ever thought about designing e-learning games done in Flash? The tool is easy to learn, it’s really fast to begin to produce new contents and worldwide accepted, so students around the world would have an easy way to participate in their own small productions that would be easily seen by a lot of people around the world. In my case, I have been working in the porting of some simulations of the platform (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/) to Flash for educational purposes for secondary school.
Keep up the good work!
The Immune Attack Team:
Hi, my name is Mauricio Rodríguez, a few weeks ago i had an idea similar to your Immune Atack sw and then
i created a sourceforge project for it (https://sourceforge.net/projects/anatomy-sim/). Yesterday, when I was reading an article ar sladshot.com I saw that
you had made something similar from what I want to develop so I thought about porting your sw so it might be
multiplatform and multi-language so it can be accessible to more people.
I would like to ask you if you might be interested in my proposal.
i´ll wait for your answer, thank you, Mauricio
Hello,
I have just played Mission 1 — am looking forward to playing more tomorrow!
My first thought is… great! But… not enough action/shooting yet. One thing that is really bugging me, though, is that there is no invert mouse y-axis. I’m a ‘veteran’ space-flight sim player — Descent Freespace X-Wing Alliance, Wing Commander Secret Ops, Freelancer. Thus, I am ‘trained’ that down-goes-up and up-goes-down. Please add this option to the next version of the game! But well done on the Freelancer-like controls!
Secondly, I mainly use not Windows, nor even Mac OS X, but Linux (personal choice, really). I agree with the above comments — please make this cross platform (e.g. use OpenGL); this game has potential, and as an educational tool should not be constrained to just one platform.
After I finish the game, I’ll add more comments. But keep up the good work!
I have download immuneattack and found that it is not compatible with windows xp 64bit, (windows server 2003). Wonder if i just missed it on the system requirements, or what. any hoo. will be checking back continuously.
I am also having a problem with the nanobot spinning out of control right from the beginning. Did Austin find a solution to this problem?
I have to echo austins problem. The camera just keeps spinning around the bot. I like the concept, but it is impossible to play when there is no way to get a heading or watch the surroundings
Cool game! I’m using version Spring 2008. There are three issue I’ve had so far. First is that I installed the software on a seperate partition and the shortcut on the desktop did not reflect that. I had to fix the shortcut. Also, the software had an error when maximized, and it could not be minimised to see the error or to find the issue. I couldn’t even Ctrl + Shift + Esc to force quit the program. The error might of had to do with the shortcut being wrong. It runs great in minimized mode. The last thing I noticed was that in Mission 2: Follow the Chemical Trail (of C3a) if the game is paused, the timer still counts down.
As scientists you should be ashamed for issuing this on proprietary software only. What about the rest of the world where Microsoft Wiindows is not the be-all and end-all of computing? What about digital freedom? What about the OLPC initiative which is using Linux? WIndows-centric software should be anathema for the scientific community.
You fellows ought to think seriously about getting this on XBox Live. Imagine if a whole generation of gamers could suddenly become informed on immunology.
Dear Immune Attack Players,
We have been looking over the many types of problems playing Immune Attack. Here is some information.
1. Nanobot spinning out of control: Your processor could be TOO FAST. We need a mechanism for making a processor act slower. Does anyone know how to do that?
2. Macintosh: There are only 2 ways to play Immune Attack on a Macintosh computer, and both ways require you to run Windows on your Mac. The Macintosh computer must be a newer, Intel based Macintosh. (MacBook, not iBook).
First way: Use Bootcamp to divide your hard drive and purchase WindowsXP or WindowsVista.
Second way: Fusion appears to be the ONLY PC emulator program that will run Immune Attack. It costs about $80. Install the Fusion program on your Macintosh like any other Mac program (do not divide your hard drive.) After installing Fusion, then open Fusion and install Windows, which you’ll have to buy, too.
We apologize to the Mac users out there. There are more PCs, even in grade school and high schools, believe it or not. We want our game to accessible to as many people as possible. We would make two versions, if we had twice the funding.
Thank you all for your patience. Please keep us up to date with your experiences playing the game. We are working on the updated version, so send in your suggestions!
Sincerely,
Melanie Stegman,
Team Immune Attack
Hi i have a simple sugestion to fix the problem people are having with the spinning bot. All you would have to do is add camera control keys or add a option to disable camera movment. The bot moves fine it is just the camera that is spinning.
Hi Jacob,
Thanks for your suggestion!
We don’t have a camera, we just have the view you would see from the nanobot. If anyone has an idea about why the nanobot, or the view we are getting from the nanobot would spin too fast, please let us know!
Thank you for your continued collaboration, Jacob!
Melanie