Public Release

Details at http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22847

This is my first public release of the game.  I'm pretty nervous but I'm looking forward to all the feedback.  Changelog can be found here:  http://www.astrominer.net/f/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19&p=69

This release adds pumps, pipes and elevators.  Big and fun update :]

Anyone for a space elevator?

Off

On

I'm still tweaking the crafting formula.  I'd like to use water somehow.

If the player is in the tractor beam, it will drag them up towards the top.  It drops down really far (about 100 blocks, but I'm thinking of raising it to 500).  The purpose is to give the player the ability to dig very deep down into the belt.  It's a lot more dense down there, so they can get more minerals than if they were to stay on top.

Eventual plan is to also let it be used to communicate.  By building a dispenser at the bottom of it and connecting it to a chest, the player will be able to transport blocks back up to their base without having to go back up.

I think I'm going to force the player to keep water near it.  Since it uses a lot of energy to create the beam, the equipment heats up.  The water can help it stop from overheating.

Not sure if I'm going to force them to attach a pipe or just submerge the elevator.  Oh, one thing I forgot - the elevator can be between 1 and 5 blocks wide.  The tractor beam will always take the center block though.

Here's a 1080p video I just created showing everything off:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNF9_FVXlgc

So that's it for now.  More updates later this week :]

Copper, Pipes and Pumps

The sprite for the pipes isn't the best, but it works for now :]  Turn the pump on and water flows from the left side to the right.  Pipes are created in the forge with the new Copper block.

Game Chapters

Spent a good portion of the weekend working on the game.

First off, the AI manager has been completely rewritten.  The way I had it before was not object oriented at all, so changing things around was a huge pain in the butt.  This new way is much, much simpler and lets me give more complex actions to the creatures (and it's also OO proper).  My first action with that was to give Matterholes the ability to jump.  'Jumping' didn't really seem like it'd fit their character much, so they actually kinda float up.  It's cute to see.

The player now has a consequence for dieing.  First off, they lose their whole inventory.  They have plenty of time to get it back (around 5 minutes) though.  They're then teleported back to where their beacon is.  If no beacon is set, the spawn point is used.

Those are the biggest additions to the game.  There are lots of minor ones and you can see them in the changelogs at http://www.astrominer.net/f/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17.

I'm going to have the major versions of the game be released in chapters.

Chapter 1
This is the beginning of the game.  Chapter 1 is where you gather resources and build your base.  You learn how to control your ship, how to defend yourself from the enemy and how to survive in the asteroid belt.  What's the point of building your base and learning all this though?

Chapter 2
Chapter 2 is where you terraform the asteroid you've taken.  Your ship is nice and all, but you can't spend eternity inside of it.  Once you build a secure base that can successfully withstand assaults by Spies and explosions by Matterholes, you need to create a secure room in which to terraform.  The room has to be sealed so that no air can escape, but you still need to be able to get in.  Do you do this using laser doors?  Water?  Speaking of water, what's the point of gathering it all?  You'll also need to weigh your options.  It seems that ever since you've started terraforming, you've attracted a new type of enemy.  One that looks a little more mechanical and less biological.  You need to find ways of hiding what you've built so the new enemy can't find you.  You need to build some new defenses that can withstand this type of enemy.

So now the base is terraformed.  You have oxygen, plant life .. you can get out and walk around.  It almost feels like home.  Almost..  now what?

Chapter 3
Time to figure out how to leave this chunk of rocks.  You start building a device that lets you find other bases and possibly your home.  Once the device is built, you'll be able to travel to other worlds inhabited by other players.  You can exchange resources, building ideas and maybe even helpers that you've built along the way. You'll also have the option of going home here.  Maybe you like your new base and you don't want to go home.  The choice is yours to make.

That's the global picture of the game and all the chapters.  Chapter 1 is going to be the free version.  Gather resources, fight enemy and build a base.  Chapter 2 I haven't decided yet but Chapter 3 will definitely be pay (since that'll require me to run directory servers).  You will only have to pay for the game once and you'll get all updates and chapters released.

I do have some ideas for a possible Chapter 4, but I'm thinking way ahead of myself for that.  I also sketched some ideas for a new game idea I have, but I most definitely want to finish this one first.

Anyway, back to programming.  I'd like to add a new enemy and structure this week.  Testers have given me lots of good ideas which I've implemented.  I was going to release the public version of the game this weekend, but with Skyrim and MW3 being released, I thought I'd hold off until next weekend so I actually have some people that might be interested in playing.

I will leave you with a screenshot of my Matterhole farm.  They're really cute.

3000x4000 Alpha II Base

New Lights Video

I love this song.

New Background and Sun Graphic

I think the combination of new Sun and stars background make the game feel a lot brighter.

Alpha II Base, New Lighting

I got several comments about the lighting being too harsh, so I revamped the lighting algorithm.  I also used the opportunity to build a second Alpha Site to replace the old one.  Here is the Alpha II Base.

Click for a huge version.

Lastly, the game now has a Google+ page.

Busy but fun coding night :]

The Alpha Base has been lost :[

I jinxed myself.

Earlier today when I was testing some stuff, I accidentally corrupted my world file.  The Alpha Base has been lost :[  All hope is not lost though.  I have started working on Alpha II and I hope to complete it by the end of the week.  That being said, here is the last known shot of Alpha Base.  This was taken right after I updated the lighting in the game.

I released a new build to the testers tonight.  If nothing major comes up, I'm going to be releasing a build on the tigsource forums later this week.

1080p Gathering Water Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epXefh76s8U for the full version :]

2659x3000 Image of My Alpha Base

This thing is almost 4 megs large, so here's a link to it.  Down below is a smaller thumbnail.

I need to stop playing and keep working.

Steel

I need to make it so steel + water = rust, too.

Here's the forging formula:

It's the strongest object in the game currently.

Also, here's the forging formula for glass.  It's pretty straight forward.

Forge and Glass

I spent tonight working on the Forge.  The Forge will let you 'cook' items.  It is pretty much the same thing that the furnace in Minecraft is.

The graphic for the Forge isn't completely finished.

You interact with the Forge the same way that you do with the Chest.  When you land on top and open your inventory, a Forge window will pop up.

I had just finished making some glass and there was left-over fire.

For the first forging recipe, I created Glass.  Glass is easy to make.  It takes 1 Sand block to get 4 Glass block.  Glass is placed 'behind' objects.  This means the player and other creatures can move in front of it.  It's a decorative piece and nothing more.

Adding those two things swayed me way off my roadmap.  A lot of my next updates involve sound, so I'm going to focus on that for now.  I've been adding a lot of placeholder sound until I can find/afford a sound person.  I figure that as long as I get the code done, I can consider it done on my end and move forward.

Testers can expect a build with the forge and glass sometime late Sunday.

If you're interested in testing, go sign up at http://www.astrominer.net/f and post in this thread.  I'll send you a link to the latest build.  I could use more eyes looking at the game and giving me their opinion.

MonoGame -vs- XNA Comparison

I was toying around with switching to MonoGame earlier tonight.

First off, the transition was very simple.  I downloaded MonoDevelop, OpenTK and the MonoGame source.  I compiled MonoGame using MonoDevelop and got a dll out of it.  I then deleted all of my XNA references from AstroMiner and added a reference to the MonoGame .dll.

After trying an AstroMiner build, I noticed a couple of differences.  Texture2d.FromStream is now Texture2d.FromFile.  render.SaveAsPng (for taking screenshots) is no longer available.  Out of everything I do, that's it.  Can't really complain.

After running the game, I noticed that the first thing that was off was the window size - it was smaller.  It also didn't have the proper title or icon.  No problem.  The game wasn't using a FixedTimeStep anymore, but that's also probably a small fix.  When I went to fullscreen, I noticed that the drawing dimensions didn't adjust.  First thing that problem tells me is that the Window functionalities are different enough to throw my code off.  Things like Window.Width, .Height and others.  I then noticed that the mouse wasn't working in the game.

Next was trying to play the game.  Keyboard controls worked for the most part.  Shift, Ctrl and Alt didn't work but all the others did.  Mouse still wasn't working.

I would say that 90% of my code worked fine.  All the game logic was normal (as was expected since that was vanilla C#).  The drawing functions, for the most part, worked.  Certain sprites were flying all over the screen, but they were at least displaying in the right spot at some point.  It was pretty hectic overall.  The crazy thing is whenever I would try and take a screenshot, all would look normal.

The game ran at 59fps average.  Using the XNA framework, the same world runs at 350fps average.

So for not having to make any changes to the code (besides replacing FromStream with FromFile), I think it's a really viable solution.  I'm going to keep researching to see if I can figure out how to fix the minor issues I had.  It'd be nice to not require the XNA libraries and be able to publish to multiple platforms.

New Launcher, Updates on the Future of the Game and Binder Pictures

I've been working on some maintenance stuff in AstroMiner.  One of the things that I wanted to do was leave ClickOnce.  When I did that, I switched my installer over to WiX.  It took a while to learn but I think I got the basics figured out and I have an installer that checks pre-requisites, installs them if needed and installs the game when done.

The nice thing is I have a lot of control over the install now.  The one thing I lost, though, was auto-update functionality.  I was going to implement this functionality in the game itself until I thought about how the 360 users don't need this at all.  All updating will be handled by the 360.  In my normal brainstorming technique, I loaded up another game to zone out and that game happened to be Minecraft.  I realized that I really like how their launcher is set up.  It would let me deliver news to my userbase and give me an easy place to handle updates from.

So I bring to you the new AstroMiner Launcher:

One thing you'll notice about it is that it requires a username and password to launch.  That's one thing I haven't talked about much on here:  how much the game will cost.

When the game first launches, it will be free.  It will still be in Alpha and that will allow me to get a good wide userbase for testing.  That free version will have everything that you've seen up to this point and a bunch more features/in-game creatures/structures.  Once that's been tested well, I'll release the first version for what I'm thinking is going to be $5.99 USD.  The money I get from that will go towards contracting a graphic designer and sound person, as well as maybe another programmer to look at my code and make it better.

It will stay that price until the end of Alpha.  That should hopefully only last a few months.  In those few months, my goal is to completely finish Terraforming an asteroid.  A lot of content will be added to the game and while the free version will have bug fix updates, it will not have content updates anymore.  That will be saved for the pay.

Once Terraforming is done, I will consider the game in Beta.  At that point the price will go up.  Beta will be focused on multiplayer.  I have some awesome plans for multiplayer that I don't want to reveal just yet because, primarily, they're not entirely done.  Multiplayer + lots of content updates is what beta will be all about.  I'm hoping to get to Beta by early next year.  I have a huge binder full of notes that I've taken that detail how I want the game to go forward.  If I want you to pay for the game, I want you to be sure that you're getting your money's worth.  On top of a full roadmap going forward, I also do nightly backups both on-site and off-site to 2 different sites.

One of my backup sites, Dropbox.

In a nutshell, I don't want people to put their faith in me only to have me mess up due to some stupid error.  Hopefully by documenting this whole process, you can also see that I'm serious about getting this game done and out to you to play.

So that's what I'll be focusing on this week.  Functional and important updates :]

So until next time... ~

Bombs Away!

I've been hard at work on another build.  First off, I have some new testers which are giving me some awesome information.  I released v.04 to a bunch of them and am already working on .04.1.  The changelog for it can be found here.

I mentioned before that I had added bombs to the game.  Here is some footage of them in action:

Bombs need ~2 blocks worth of space to materialize.  If they don't have that, they don't detonate and you waste the bomb.

So the changelog for v.04 is available on my forums.  v.04.1 will be released sometime soon.  It's primarily a bug-fix build.  I won't be adding any structures or creatures in it.

Water Glow, changes and a website

This new glow provides a nice light to the otherwise dark world.  I also made a couple more changes.

First off, the controls.  U now changes the lighting.  It does what 4 used to do.  A friend of mine also gave me an idea for an alternate control setup.  If you hold down Shift while pressing IJKL, the game now places an item.  If you hold down Control, the game will drill.  Not holding down anything will shoot.  You can still switch modes manually.  I'm thinking I will make this something you can turn on and off.  The other change I'm going to make is have Q and E switch the active weapons.

The next thing I added is recoil from shooting.  It doesn't move the ship too much, but it's enough to notice.
Next was an auto-save right after you load the world and everytime you pause your game.

Lastly, I created a website yesterday.  It can be found at http://www.astrominer.net.  I posted a bunch of screenshots and a link to the forums.  I will still keep this as my dev blog, but I'm going to post releases on the site.

I'm going to use this as my official changelog for this release:  http://www.astrominer.net/f/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4

Anyway, busy night and I still have a lot to do.  I also got Battlefield 3, so if I disappear for a few weeks it's not my fault.

Installer this week, new forums, list of changes and a screenshot.

Upon today's completion of v.04Alpha, I've decided to post the installer to let more people test the game and installer itself.  I was using ClickOnce for testing before when it was only a couple of people helping me out, but I'd like to reach for a larger crowd.  Since I can't have ClickOnce constantly pinging my server for updates (I'd quickly run out of bandwidth), I decided to switch to WiX.

Sometime this week (probably tomorrow night) I'm going to post a link to the installer.  I'm actually going to post it on my new forums at http://www.astrominer.net/f/.  This will still be my dev blog (especially since it's a lot more reliable being that it's hosted by Google and all), but those forums will be a better place to actually discuss things about the game itself.  It also gives me an idea of who is playing my game and will let me limit the link instead of exposing it to the whole world (I'm not ready for that yet :/).

Anyway, register at http://www.astrominer.net/f/ when you can and expect a new installer soon.  Here's a list of what was done in this version:

- Biomes (this had the basics completed, but will be an ongoing effort as the game progresses)
- Liquids (water was added.  I need to add Mercury but I want to think about how I want it to appear/act first.)
- Terraforming Concept Brainstorm (I have 3 pages of notes about terraforming.  It's going to be awesome and probably my favorite part of the game.)
- Add 2 enemy (Parasite and Spy)
- Add 2 structures (Bucket and Laser Door
- Loading/Saving Progress Screen (this is good for now.  Will be made prettier in the future.)
- Time Cycle (planet/sun)
- Player Spawn Bug (this was due to the map moving in the title screen.  It's been fixed.)
- Sprite Draw Error (this was a rounding error when I was drawing the sprites.  Fixed.)
- Bullets randomly dieing for no apparent reason. (this was due to the bullet collision algorithm not correctly compensating for the global world position and instead only using local.  Fixed.)
- When only drilling with the left drill bit on the bottom drill, the drilling animation was not shown.  (Fixed.)
- Added ability to hide UI using F4 key.
- Deleting worlds on the 360 was throwing an error. (Fixed)

And finally, a screenshot that I really liked.

I like the feeling of aloneness that this conveys.

Introducing the Parasite

Formed parasite below me.  Unformed flying to my left.

The Parasite is a friend of spies.  It is attracted to the player and will cause damage when touched.  If the player isn't around, it looks for a Spy.  When it finds a formed Spy (one that has taken over a block), it will use it to stage its own forming and any block touching that Spy is available for the Parasite.  Once the Parasite has infected a block, the block can be destroyed but it will not drop anything useful.  The player will also receive damage to their drill bit.

I'm thinking that to remove a parasite or spy from a block, you're going to have to drop some water onto it to "clean" it.  That thought just came to me though.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to tonight.  Next on the list is a loading/saving progress bar.

Time Lapse

How do you have a day/night cycle in an asteroid belt?

After much brainstorming, I decided that the star that the belt orbits would be constantly in view.  This would be considered 'day'.  Every 10 minutes or so, a large planet would eclipse the sun and be considered the 'night' cycle.  If you look at older screenshots of mine, you'll notice that any area that isn't lit is dark black.  That is still the case for the night cycle.  During the day cycle, though, blocks are a little illuminated.  The following screenshots show the transition.

"Night" - All darks are black.

Notice that during the day, you can somewhat see the blocks around you.  This will make it a little easier to find the blocks that you need to craft things.

On top of getting this done, I've also got a page full of notes on the terraforming aspect of the game.  I can't wait to get to work on that part since I think it's going to be one of the more 'colorful' things to do.

For now, I'm going to consider the time cycle complete.  It takes about an hour to go from start to end.  In total, the player gets ~33 minutes of usable light.  14.5 minutes are spent in a transitionary stage between dark<->light.  ~10 minutes is spent in nighttime darkness.

Next on the list is biomes.  This code is actually done (I think).  I just need to double check on it.  After that, I need to add 1 more enemy and a loading/saving progress bar.  Finishing those two things will complete .04A.