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AstroMiner

Started by dangerz Oct 26, 2011 at 2:12 PM 35 replies 8.1k views

Original Post

dangerz

Oct 26, 2011 at 2:12 PM

Download: [url="http://www.mediafire.com/?gtix7klq417p7j3"]Download[/url], Mirror 1

Requirements: .NET Framework 4 Client Profile and XNA Framework Redistributable 4.0.

Latest Version: .1Alpha.2

Game Website (http://www.astrominer.net)
Wiki
Getting Started Guide and Controls
Dev Blog

This is my game, AstroMiner. The game is set in an asteroid belt. You were originally on your way to a planet to do some reconnaissance work when you lose control of your main transport ship. You make an emergency evacuation using R-01, your recon ship, and land inside of the belt.

Inside the belt you have to build a base, defend yourself from enemy, terraform the base and eventually get back home.

I'm currently on Chapter 1: building the base. I have about 12 different structures you can build so far, 4 different types of enemies and 17 different block types. This is still an alpha release so it might be buggy. They should only be very minor bugs, though. I also have modding support built in.

Chapter 2 will be terraforming. Once you terraform, you'll be able to get out of your ship and walk around. You'll also start attracting a different type of enemy - one that's a little more mechanical. You'll be able to harvest this enemy to build helper bots.

Chapter 3 will be going home. You'll be able to transport yourself to other player maps and trade resources and items with them. You'll also be able to send yourself back home, completing the game.

The game is written in XNA, but my eventual goal is to port it to MonoGame.

Latest Updates (.1a.2 11/27/11)

All items and blocks now have their own floating graphic.
Memory leak in floatingItemsManager has been fixed.
Fixed bug where breaking glass could destroy tractor beam.
Fluid engine has been completely redone from scratch.
structuresManager draw() method has been optimized.
The higher the player goes, the less thick the asteroids become.
Pipes can now be placed inside of blocks.
When a player is on the ground and they place an item, it gets placed 2 blocks below. This has been fixed so the item is placed directly below.

DarklyDreaming

Oct 26, 2011 at 2:28 PM

Your trailer is corny but OK

It was a bit 'long' though - not as in the length of video was too long but rather it was too long for what was being shown. It took quite a while to go from the VO to the gameplay; I'd personally cut that in half so as to avoid it feeling dreary. I understand that just threw this out there but it's something to think about next time!
Also, the voices were OK but could have used a bit more distortion to them - we're in space after all and radio is gonna sound mightily distorted out there.

Other than that, the game looks fun! Keep it up!

dangerz

Oct 26, 2011 at 2:41 PM

Your trailer is corny but OK

It was a bit 'long' though - not as in the length of video was too long but rather it was too long for what was being shown. It took quite a while to go from the VO to the gameplay; I'd personally cut that in half so as to avoid it feeling dreary. I understand that just threw this out there but it's something to think about next time!
Also, the voices were OK but could have used a bit more distortion to them - we're in space after all and radio is gonna sound mightily distorted out there.

Other than that, the game looks fun! Keep it up!

Haha I completely agree with all your points. It was something I threw together in a weekend. For the next "trailer", I have other voices lined up and it will show a lot more gameplay. Especially now that I have liquids in the game, I want to show how you can use them to your advantage.

Servant of the Lord

Oct 26, 2011 at 3:13 PM

Looks very fun; congrats!

Another suggestion about the trailer: Get someone else to do one of the voices. Since you did both the voices for "Houston" and "RZ1", I couldn't tell who was speaking at what time.

dangerz

Oct 27, 2011 at 1:06 AM

Looks very fun; congrats!

Another suggestion about the trailer: Get someone else to do one of the voices. Since you did both the voices for "Houston" and "RZ1", I couldn't tell who was speaking at what time.

Yaa I was short on voices for the original, haha.

I added a new section to the website for modding the game. I'm hoping I can put a release build out soon.

dangerz

Oct 28, 2011 at 2:44 PM

I added a new video of the new bombs that I created.

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YouTube keeps making my videos very dark for some reason. I'll have to artificially brighten them somehow.
edit: I used YouTube's editor to brighten it. It washed out a lot of detail, but at least it's not too dark.

dangerz

Nov 2, 2011 at 2:15 PM

http://dangerz.blogs...re-of-game.html

New post about the future direction of my game. I also created a launcher that will let me have auto-updates. It's been a lot of functional updates and not as much content lately. I'm also going to be looking for more testers soon. If you're interested, sign up at http://www.astrominer.net/f and I'll send out a link to the latest build soon.

theweem

Nov 2, 2011 at 4:12 PM

It looks great so far Dangerz, good stuff!

dangerz

Nov 5, 2011 at 7:48 AM

I've spent the night working on a forge. Full details and more screenshots are at my dev blog, http://dangerz.blogspot.com. It was fun to make and it adds another crafting element to the game.

dangerz

Nov 6, 2011 at 3:06 AM

Huge image of the base I built in the game. I use this to test any new features that I roll out. Luckily I haven't put out any updates that had any drastic map changes lately, so I've been able to keep it for a while.

Servant of the Lord

Nov 6, 2011 at 6:32 PM

Very cool.

dangerz

Nov 10, 2011 at 3:03 AM

New image showing the new lighting and new background. You can kinda see the new sun too.

(click for big)

Current list of changes for this build are at http://www.astromine...ic.php?f=2&t=13. I'm going to release it to the testers tonight. As long as nothing major comes up, I'm hoping for a bigger test release soon.

dangerz

Nov 10, 2011 at 12:58 PM

[media]

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Made a quick video showing the lighting/power setup.

dangerz

Nov 11, 2011 at 4:27 AM

3000x4000 image of my new Alpha base.

Alpha II

I lost the original Alpha base when I was updating the code to save maps. The code update went successfully, but I stopped the application using the Debugger's Stop button in the middle of a save :[

Anyway, I took more screenshots of the surrounding area this time. This also shows the new lighting that I have in the game.

dangerz

Nov 16, 2011 at 5:45 AM

New video showing the latest pump and tractor beam additions:

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dangerz

Nov 19, 2011 at 2:35 AM

First public release at http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22847.0

Please let me know what you think.

ryan20fun

Nov 19, 2011 at 6:44 AM

i'm stuck on starting a new game.

the part where it says "Saving World State.. 0% complete."
it stays like that for some time, with no progress being made.

is this a bug, or does saving the world state take a long time ?

dangerz

Nov 19, 2011 at 3:49 PM

i'm stuck on starting a new game.

the part where it says "Saving World State.. 0% complete."
it stays like that for some time, with no progress being made.

is this a bug, or does saving the world state take a long time ?

Hmm, it shouldn't take very long. 5-10 seconds at the very most.

Does it ever leave that screen? I'll look into why it'd do that.

ryan20fun

Nov 19, 2011 at 4:01 PM

[quote name='ryan20fun' timestamp='1321685071' post='4885536']
i'm stuck on starting a new game.

the part where it says "Saving World State.. 0% complete."
it stays like that for some time, with no progress being made.

is this a bug, or does saving the world state take a long time ?

dangerz

Nov 19, 2011 at 4:14 PM

[quote name='dangerz' timestamp='1321717754' post='4885623']
[quote name='ryan20fun' timestamp='1321685071' post='4885536']
i'm stuck on starting a new game.

the part where it says "Saving World State.. 0% complete."
it stays like that for some time, with no progress being made.

is this a bug, or does saving the world state take a long time ?

Hmm, it shouldn't take very long. 5-10 seconds at the very most.

Does it ever leave that screen? I'll look into why it'd do that.
[/quote]

it does not move on from that screen.
also from startup it uses 100% CPU cycles( if that is any use )
[/quote]
What OS are you on? 64 or 32bit?

edit: Any chance you can replace the .exe in your folder with this one: http://www.astrominer.net/astrominer.exe

That'll create a log file in the same folder called file.log when it runs. It'll trap any errors in it that you can then post here so I can see exactly what's crashing it.

Thank you very much for your help.

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