Tile Miner
Tile Miner Live Stream
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Launch Date Announcement!
I am finally ready to announce the version 1.0 release date! Tile Miner will officially be released on:
Nov. 11th
It’s been a long road! A project that was supposed to take one year ended up taking 7. A lot of hard work has gone into this and I’m proud of the final product. I hope everyone who’s been a part of the process from the beginning will have a great experience playing the game!
The final release will include the 4th and final dungeon: the fire dungeon! The last boss is tough. He is a wizard who has mastered all 4 of the elements. Here’s a screenshot:
Update Version 0.9
I’ve decided to postpone dungeon sharing until after 1.0 is available. There are many reasons, but the primary one is that I want to get 1.0 out sooner. The development of Tile Miner has taken far too long. It’s time for a final release. The dungeon sharing is a cool addition but it really makes no difference to the core game.
This morning I opened up version 0.8 and was reminded just how much has changed since that update. I’m not going to do a change log because it would just take far too long. Here are a few of the big changes:
1. Graphics: We worked with Tom Filhol (our graphics guy) to see where we could improve graphically. He redid probably more than half of the tiles in the world to make it look more varied and interesting.
2. House Size: This one is hard to explain but building a house was more complex than it needed to be in previous versions. It’s now much simpler to build a house because it doesn’t take up quite so much space!
3. Hidden Treasures: Throughout the world there are treasures hidden under rocks. Find a red x under a rock and break it to reveal all kinds of great loot!
4. Tutorial: There’s so much to Tile Miner that it would be easy to play the game for hours and have no idea that there are dungeons to conquer and villages to explore (along with many other features). I’ve added tutorial quests to give the player some direction in case they get lost. Since I find forced tutorials annoying, I’ve designed it so you can completely ignore these quests if you want.
5. Dungeon puzzles: Every dungeon now has it’s own unique puzzle mechanic. I designed them to be challenging but not frustrating.
The next step is going to be getting the word out and pulling the trigger on the final release. Stay tuned for a release date!
Corona Virus Update
Another Big Change
My brother made a big suggestion: make dungeons better, and allow users to upload and share them. My first reaction was to completely dismiss him. Then I realized it was a great idea. Since then I’ve been working on adding this new feature that I think will make the game a whole lot better! What’s the hook? It’s a sandbox adventure game where you can build and share your own dungeons! Here’s what will change:
1. The dungeon walls. My last piece of news on here explained how the wall graphics were going to be changed. This will also be true in dungeons. There are pros and cons to this approach but I think it will make designing your own dungeons a lot simpler (and look better as well).
2. Dungeons will now have puzzles. This was important to me if I was going to encourage users to create their own dungeons. We will have blocks that you can push onto buttons, lasers that can activate triggers, blocked walls and more. Each dungeon will introduce an entirely new puzzle mechanic. In the end, you’ll be able to create huge puzzle rooms that share multiple puzzle elements.
3. In game dungeons will now be hand crafted. I loved randomly generated dungeons as far as replay value but to me the dungeons were somewhat boring. Sometimes rng would give you a dungeon that was too easy. Sometimes it was too hard. It was never great. Never clever. Rather than tweak the rng, and get only slightly better results, I’m handcrafting the dungeons in part to teach the mechanics that users can use to create their own. When you can play other peoples dungeons it’ll make the game even more replayable than random generation. Plus, the dungeon’s you’ll be replaying will have the potential to be excellent.
4. No more wiring. Currently all dungeon mechanics require wiring. It was easy to code, but complex to build your own dungeon from scratch. I’m getting rid of it. Instead when you walk into a room any objects that need processing will just trigger when you enter it. Here’s an example: You enter a room… All the doors in the room immediately get blocked behind you. Mob spawners are also triggered. Once you’ve defeated the mobs, the doors unblock. No wiring required to create. Just place the mob spawners and blocked doors and the game will do the legwork. Want a room with 50 bats? Go for it! A chest reward when you solve a puzzle? Simple.
5. You will start the game in a short tutorial dungeon. Right from the beginning of the game you can defeat the first dungeon and start creating your own dungeons to share. You can only create dungeon types that you’ve already beaten in game.(stone, air, earth, ice, fire). When you complete that introductory dungeon you will spawn with a Portal that allows you to enter dungeon creation mode or to play other peoples dungeons.
Shareable dungeons is a feature we’re extremely excited about. One feature we cut years ago was multiplayer. In some ways, this is a form of multiplayer. You can’t play with your friends directly, but you can share back and forth with your friends.
Before I close I want to address the speed of development. It blows my mind that I started developing Tile Miner in 2013! That was about 7 years ago! There have been ups and downs and I’ve learned a ton. I’m committed to making the best game I’m capable of making. I could have patched it up and released it years ago. But as much as I want to complete the game, I even more want to make it great! I’ve still got a ways to go and I’m not ready to talk dates. I’m working on this mostly alone and I have a lot of other responsibilities in my life besides development of the game. Although I can’t give dates, I can promise you that I’m committed to making the best game that I can. Keep making your suggestions and sharing the bugs you run into. It all helps! Thanks!
Walls and Polish Phase
One of the big things I’ve been doing over the past few months is overhauling the way that walls work. In the current release, the walls take up a 3x3 tile area. The reason for this is because when you’re inside it looks like the top down indoors style of Zelda a link to the past. It’s nice as far as dungeon’s are concerned. But there are two problems:
1. Buildings look silly on the outside.
2. Small homes take up a LOT of space.
You can see what they look like in this screenshot:
I’ve now changed walls so that they take up an individual tile space. Here’s the new look of wooden walls:
Recently I did a thorough play test of the game. The goal was to find bugs and gameplay holes. Here’s a list of just a few things I came up with after playing:
1. Player speed needs to be increased.
2. AI needs tweaking across the board.
3. Damage values need to be balanced better.
4. There are too many occupations. I’m bringing it from 12 to 9 and combining some of them.
5. The game needs more farmable animals. You should also be able to breed them. In the end you will only be able to get them by purchasing them from a rancher. Adding Pigs and Sheep.
6. The game needs more crops. I’ll be adding a couple to the game.
7. The game needs more potions. I’ll be adding some of those to the game as well.
8. I'm adding more meals to the game (like beef stew). I’m going to add a Lamb Chop Dinner and Pancake breakfast. These food items will not only restore energy, but they will apply a buff that will prevent energy from decreasing for a period of time. It will always be best too make complete dinners with your food items.
9. Health regeneration should happen at a slow rate all the time. Forcing the player to use health potions just isn’t fun. I found myself intentionally dying just so I could get full health. No more of that.
10. Add a lot more sound effects.
This list is actually a LOT longer. These are just some of the things that come to mind. I’ve been very productive lately and there’s no reason to believe I’m gonna slow down. There’s still quite a bit of work to be done but the plan right now is simple: Finish up this list, then do another play test. If it doesn’t seem like there’s any gaping holes in the game after my play test, then I’ll be 100% focused on bug fixing and finishing touches.
Keep me posted if you have ideas or changes that you think need to be made to the game. I’m in the homestretch!
Moving Towards the Final Early Access Release
Over the past month I’ve been working on two things primarily: Villagers and Graphics.
Graphics:
Since releasing the graphical overhaul, our graphics guy has had a chance to play the game and he made quite a few suggestions on how things can improve. Simpler mountains and grass. More tree variation. These are just a few of the many small changes. Here’s a screenshot of what he’s done so far.
Villagers:
-Added new occupations. There are now 12 to choose from:
-Miner - Mines and sells various crops.
-Builder/Lumberjack - Chops trees. Builds houses.
-Farmer - Farms and sells various crops.
-Adventurer - Hunts monsters and sells weapons.
-Hunter - Hunts and sells meat.
-Mage - Casts and sells spells.
-Apothecary - Brews and sells potions.
-Armorer - Forges and sells armor.
-Jeweler - Buys and sells accessories.
-Barber - Cuts and styles hair.
-Electrician - Buys and sells electrical parts.
-Banker - Stores your money.
The greatest addition is probably the builder. If you don’t feel like building your town all by yourself you can purchase blueprints and let the builder build it for you. If you don’t feel like waiting for him to build it you can pay extra and buy prefabs from the builder so you can place it instantly. Don’t like his designs? No problem! Just create some new designs from scratch and turn them into blueprints.
The future:
I’m currently rolling all future releases (including what I’ve been working on) into one more early access build. There are somewhat major changes that will impact quite a bit so it just makes sense to wait and roll everything out all at once. Here’s what you can expect from the next release:
Version 0.9
-Wall overhaul - This is a big one. You may notice that walls in Tile Miner look a bit odd. I’ve changed them quite a few times actually. Right now when you place a wall it essentially places 9 tiles. A single wall tile surrounded by a bunch of interior walls. The reason behind this was to make the dungeons look a bit more like the original Zelda. This is great for dungeons but not so great for housing. It also makes things a bit more confusing when the player is building. We want to simplify and make things look better.
-Music - We already have the music completed. We just need it implemented into the game.
-Dungeon rooms - Right now there are about 30-50 dungeon rooms. I’d like to have 100+ in order to give the dungeons more variety.
-Dungeon traps - These will be magic traps that shoot spells at you once they charge up.
-Polish - This is the one that will be the most time consuming. We’re nearing a final release and we really want the game balanced and feeling almost 100% complete before the next update. The only thing that will be missing from 0.9 will be the final dungeon. With this polish phase many of the speed, damage, and crafting recipes will be adjusted. This will take a while and at some point we may ask for play testers to help figure out balance issues.
The big question: When will this release come out?
All I can do is estimate. Polishing the game throws out many unknowns. We could find that we really need more enemies, potions or plants. These things could turn into creating new features entirely. We won’t know until we start diving in. I’d like to think that overhauling the walls, adding the music and doing all of the dungeon stuff would be complete by the end of June. So I’d hope this would be out in September. But right now this is a rough estimate. I’ll keep you posted on my progress as I go.
0.8 is available today!
The major change is obviously the graphics. There’s a new trailer and new screenshots to go along with the update. Our branding will look completely different. This is a much needed change! I’d say the graphics are about 95% complete. There are a few placeholder graphics in there now, and our artist is currently working on a few changes as well. (Most notably, there is a trap in the air dungeon that I had hoped to replace before this release. It’s supposed to be an electrified floor. You’ll have to imagine until I get the new graphics in).
I’m really happy with the graphics currently but I’d love to hear your input on things you’d like to see changed or improved!
There are quite a few changes aside from the graphics. I’m not going to try to create a formal change log. It’s been so long since the last update that I am not 100% sure about everything that’s been changed. Here’s a list of everything I can think of.
-There is an all new first dungeon called the “air dungeon”. It’s above ground and you can access it right away if you dare. However, I’d recommend full tin armor and weapons. You’ll find flying imps, air elementals and bats inside.
-You can no longer go straight to the underground with a tin staircase. You need a copper staircase that is found by defeating the first dungeon.
-Level 1 magic is now available before you ever go underground. This means there is a new gem you can find.
-Added the air spell. This spell fires a slow moving cloud that fires lightning bolts at every mob in range.
-Added the earth spell. This spell fires an earth spike at a specific point on the screen.
-No more stone tools and weapons. Believe it or not this is not a graphics issue. It simply felt redundant. When my wife and I were play testing we almost always skipped right over stone tools and went straight for tin. It just became clutter in your inventory.
-Portals are now found at the entrance of each dungeon. When play testing we found that traveling back and forth between dungeons was highly annoying. Portals allow you to get to and from the dungeon. If you’d rather, you can break the portal and place it anywhere you’d like!
-Dungeons spawn closer to the main spawn point.
-Night time spawning has been reworked. This is a first step in moving towards the games story. When you start the game air slimes (yellow) will spawn. Once you defeat the air dungeon, earth slimes (green) will spawn as well. When you defeat the earth dungeon, ice slimes (blue) will spawn. Night time will get progressively harder as you move through the game.
-Hidden chests in the overworld. Break stones (not to be confused with stone mountains) to reveal an x marks the spot. Dig here to reveal hidden treasure.
-Villager types are selected instead of randomly generated. I liked the random generation but it became frustrating. You’d take all the time it took to build a house and then you’d get the wrong villager. Give me your feedback on this. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I’m not 100% sure there will be new updates leading up to the final release but there might be. Stay tuned here to keep up to date!
New Logo and an Update in January
Above is the new logo for Tile Miner!
And here's an update on where development is at the moment...
About 90% of the artwork is done. That's the good news. The bad news is that there's still quite a bit of development left. My wife has some contract work to pay the bills which means we can't get quite as much done as we were getting done earlier this year. It's hard to predict how much is left before the final release because I want to make sure the game is heavily polished before 1.0. I'd guess we're looking at early to mid 2019.
With that in mind, it's been too long since the last update! I'm going to release an update by the end of January that will be rather large! It will include all the graphics updates that I have so far. There will also be a new dungeon above ground, portals, and possibly even a few NPC's.
I did a lengthy play test recently and I have to say: The graphics make this game feel like an entirely different game.
Keep in mind, there are still a few big things that won't be in the next update that will be in the final release.
More NPC occupations.
The main story.
The final dungeon and underground layer.
Every single one of these things has been started but is incomplete. I wish I could release it all at once but there's just not quite enough time. I may release these things in smaller updates leading up to the final release.
I can't wait to have everyone experience the massive changes in this next update!
New Mob Graphics
The Kraken Boss:
The Snowman:
The Cow:
A New Mob - The Imp:
I'll continue to post updates as the graphics come in!