A "Miner" Adventure

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ID:99256
 
Jul 26 2010, 3:23 pm (Edited on Jul 30 2010, 8:12 am)
Mining games seem to be rather popular here. I always liked them too, but I think the last one I played was VGA Miner. Recently I've been thinking more about game design and what it is that I like in games, and I've renewed my interest in mining.

My favorite concepts in games are building and exploration. SimCity has building but not exploration. RPGs have exploration, but very little building. I like both types of games, but I want both! Mining is a clever way to have both: You explore the area by building your own series of tunnels.

Combining these concepts makes them both better. You can explore how you want by building tunnels where you want. In RPGs you have to explore, but the layout of the cave is set. You can't explore it how you want to, you can only explore how you've been allowed to. The exploration also gives more purpose to the building. You don't have "sim-citizens" using what you've built, you're the one using what you've built!

I added a few things to my pixel movement demo and came up with a small demo of a mining game: A "Miner" Adventure. This is your warning: It's not your typical mining game (gather ore, return to surface, sell ore, repeat).

Here are some screenshots:

The start of the game


Clearing a tunnel


Playing with bombs


A cave in!
Jul 26 2010, 3:38 pm (Edited on Jul 26 2010, 4:26 pm)
The average CPU usage stood around 13%.

The movement somewhat annoyed me as I would press a directional key and continued that direction for some time. This made it difficult to dig in a precise area.

After 5 minutes or so of playing, I also noticed that the keys stopped being responsive and I could barely move. Though, the average CPU usage was the same. I will try to diagnose this problem and provide a more detailed report as to what causes this.

By the way, the game looks neat.
Jul 26 2010, 3:44 pm (Edited on Jul 26 2010, 4:02 pm)
Epic. It stayed around 10 CPU for me.
Jul 26 2010, 3:45 pm (Edited on Jul 26 2010, 3:51 pm)
If you can make anything even remotely as cool as Miner League I'll have your babies.

[Edit]

Tried it, ran kind of clunky at sat idle at 50% CPU and spiked to 100% when moving around. This computer isn't that great though.
Jul 26 2010, 4:23 pm
I'm impressed, I found it quite interesting. I especially like the water, and how I got to flood those monsters till they drowned.
Jul 26 2010, 4:26 pm
Very awesome, stayed at around 12% for me. I never had any problems with it. When NPC's die though they respawn at the beginning.
Jul 26 2010, 4:29 pm
Nadrew wrote:
If you can make anything even remotely as cool as Miner League I'll have your babies.

Care to elaborate about Miner League? I've heard of it, but it doesn't seem to be available.

Calus CoRPS wrote:
The movement somewhat annoyed me as I would press a directional key and continued that direction for some time

When you hold an arrow key (left or right) you accelerate by 1 up to a max speed of 4. When you're not holding left/right you decelerate by 1 per tick. With the tick_lag set to 0.25 you should slow to a stop in 1/10th of a second.

Is it possible that you've defined a macro that conflicts with the game's controls?

It could also be a bug with the keyboard handling: somehow the game thinks you're still holding a key when you, in fact, aren't.
Jul 26 2010, 4:30 pm
Ulterior Motives wrote:
Very awesome, stayed at around 12% for me. I never had any problems with it. When NPC's die though they respawn at the beginning.

D'oh! The beginning was the one place I never bothered to go back to. Good catch!
Jul 26 2010, 4:55 pm
Holy shit. This little game made me jump on TWO occasions when those little monsters jumped out of the shadows. I'd say you've got the atmospheric part of this game down, but CPU usage does seem to spike when I uncover water.
Jul 26 2010, 5:11 pm
highest it went was 42% beacuase of the water when i died
Jul 26 2010, 7:23 pm
I applaud you for pulling off the lighting. Well done, Forum_account
Jul 26 2010, 8:30 pm
In the first version I had an average CPU usage of about 15: 5-10 when idle and 20-30 when moving (w/ water flowing, etc.). I just posted a new version where I average 0-3 CPU when idle and 3-15 when moving/doing things.

Duelmaster409 wrote:
This little game made me jump on TWO occasions when those little monsters jumped out of the shadows.

The blood smeared on the wall is there as a warning =)

D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
I applaud you for pulling off the lighting. Well done, Forum_account

Thanks! Maybe I'll put together a demo of just the lighting (with occlusion) to see how our methods compare.
Jul 26 2010, 8:35 pm
Average CPU for me was right at 7% for awhile and I was moving the whole time in my attempt to flood the blue room. After I saw that the NPC wouldn't drown to death, I took all the water on the map and made a swimming pool at the bottom. My average CPU then was 10.5 something percent. So whatever you did was definitely an improvement. I don't think it ever got over 22%.

The water gets stuck in a corner a lot though. After I flooded the blue room then took all the water to the bottom, half the room was still full of water. Same when I was trying to get all the water to the blue room.
Jul 27 2010, 3:42 am
Ulterior Motives wrote:
The water gets stuck in a corner a lot though. After I flooded the blue room then took all the water to the bottom, half the room was still full of water. Same when I was trying to get all the water to the blue room.

The way water flows, it won't spread quickly across a wide room. Sometimes it seems like it just takes a long time for the water to become level, other times it seems to not be getting level at all. Hopefully these are all side-effects of limiting the flow of water to save CPU time. Now that I've done some things to lower CPU usage I can fix this problem, add a few more things, and make a CPU-hog out of it again!
Jul 27 2010, 8:48 am
Stayed only around 5-10 CPU for me.
Jul 27 2010, 8:18 pm
Forum_account wrote:
... Maybe I'll put together a demo of just the lighting ...


Please do. :)
Jul 28 2010, 5:56 pm
I just posted another update which adds some more content, more hazards, and hopefully a nicer looking interface. CPU usage shouldn't be much of an issue anymore either.
Jul 28 2010, 6:47 pm (Edited on Jul 28 2010, 6:53 pm)
Strangely, moving left is slower than moving right for me. When I hold West, it moves, pauses, moves, pauses, etc. When I hold East, it moves smoothly.

Edit: why are bombs not affected by gravity?
Jul 28 2010, 6:53 pm
Kaiochao wrote:
Strangely, moving left is slower than moving right for me. When I hold West, it moves, pauses, moves, pauses, etc. When I hold East, it moves smoothly.

Hmm, I'm not sure how I ever missed that. I guess I jump too much when I play.

I fixed this, but didn't increment the version number so you won't be prompted to download the update. If you delete the game from your local hub it'll download the new version.
Aug 1 2010, 4:25 pm
I'm wondering how you got the lighting to work, very interesting, I'd love to see a library including that; a perfect compliment to the pixel_movement demos
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