Hoping to finish up controller support tomorrow so I can move on to enemy AI! Let me know any thoughts or concerns based on the screenshot above.
Tile Miner
Developer Update #8 - More Controller Support
Hoping to finish up controller support tomorrow so I can move on to enemy AI! Let me know any thoughts or concerns based on the screenshot above.
Developer Update #7 - Controller Support
Today I spent most of my time adding controller support. It’s not complete yet but the core of the functionality is there. I find that when building and mining I prefer the mouse. But when exploring a dungeon I prefer the controller. I think it will make the entire experience of playing Tile Miner a lot better!
Tile Miner 0.2 Now Available!
If you’d like to play multiplayer here is the step by step guide:
Set up port forwarding on your router. You need two ports open. 1 for TCP and one for UDP. The UDP port should be one higher than the TCP.
Open Tile Miner and create a new game
Once loaded, press escape and click options.
Click on “Setup a Server”. This will make your current game a server people can connect to.
Have player 2 Open Tile Miner and click on Multiplayer.
Click the “New” button in the select host menu.
Type in the ip address, the TCP port number. (Along with a name for the connection and the Hero logging in).
Click Create Host and then connect and you’re off and running!
We’d love to hear feedback about any part of the game. The best way to reach us is by e-mail. And again please let us know if there are any bugs and we’ll squash them ASAP. chris@tileminer.org. Thanks for all of you’re patience in this version of the game. In a week or two we will announce the plans for version 0.3. We’re super excited about the future of the game. Thanks! Here's the change log:
-Coop multiplayer added (PVP to be added in a future release)
-Added chatting system (press T to chat)
-Complete graphics overhaul.
-Added better full screen support with NO stretching. Supports up to 1080p.
-Added Giant Bat
-Added Giant Worm
-Added Worm Nest
-Added Bat Nest
-Beehives are no longer craftable. You find them as a rare spawn in the world.
-Beehives added to the world generation.
-Beehives now spawn little bees when not yet broken.
-Added Potatoes (Boil em Mash em Stick em in a stew… Well actually just cook them in a furnace…)
-Added Tin and Copper heart containers (add some ore to make the heart container more effective)
-Removed sticks (Anything that used sticks we felt really should just be planks)
-Removed artichoke
-Miscellaneous balancing tweaks
-Miscellaneous bugs fixed
-Miscellaneous bugs introduced
Developer Update #6 - 0.2 Release Date!
In a little over two weeks Tile Miner will finally release the multiplayer and graphics overhaul update! We thought leap year would be a fun date to release simply because we believe this is a huge leap for the game. It’s not a huge leap in terms of added features. It’s a huge leap in terms of building a multiplayer and graphical foundation that is easy to build on. At the bottom I’ll post a change log. First I want to remind you (or for some of you share for the first time) why this took so long.
"You started the multiplayer update in late 2014. Why did it take so long to finish?”
1. First and foremost, multiplayer wasn’t an add on, it was an overhaul. In 2014 when we started, we tried implementing multiplayer in the current build. We quickly discovered how dependent the game was on single player. A great example is the assumption everywhere that there would always be one “hero” in the game. But that’s just one example. So we started from scratch. We used a lot of the same algorithms. In some cases even the same exact code. But we also changed some of the core logic of the entire game. For the programmers out there, we are now using an entity component system. It would have probably taken us about 9 months to simply redo 0.1. But add in multiplayer and a graphics overhaul and here we are over a year later. Remember as you try to figure out how long future updates will take that future updates will be just that: updates. This wasn’t an update but a complete overhaul. The most requested features were multiplayer and original graphics. We decided it would be worth the time and effort to do both of these things right.
2. Multiplayer kicked our butts. I’m sure brilliant programmers with years of experience would laugh at the difficulty we had with this. But in my opinion, single player is far easier than multiplayer. Dealing with things in the future will primarily be just about remembering to send messages to other players whenever something happens that they need to know about. What made this initial release so difficult is dealing with an ever changing world, and what to do about lag. We think we’ve come up with some great solutions! But for us, it was difficult!
3. We decided to overhaul our graphics overhaul. As soon as we started 0.2 we looked all over the place for people interested in getting paid to do our graphics. We ended up working with two different guys. One of them was consistently late and way underestimated his bids. He also had sloppy work. The other one was always close to on time, and sometimes overestimated his bids. His work was always clean. Some of the art we loved. Some we did not. I hated the fact that we were dependent on people who didn’t love our game to produce great content. I also realized that simply the size of our artwork was very expensive to make. So I personally resized most of the artwork we had, and completely redid a lot of it to be 16x16 tiles instead of 32x32. This will allow for a lot more content in future updates because I will be doing 90% of the graphics myself. But it also took extra time that was not originally anticipated.
4. I built a house. Not in Tile Miner. A legit house. I became a highly unqualified general contractor in August of 2015. When I started I was part time working on the game. A couple of months in and I couldn’t keep up with the house, my family, and do any work on the game. I had no idea how difficult this process would be. On December 19th 2015 me, my wife, and two kids moved into my new home. We love it! It’s our dream home. I have no regrets. During this time my brother was able to continue work on the game. We probably could have made a release by the end of 2015 had I not done this but I have to be honest: I’d do it again. My family comes first and this was the best thing for us at the time. It’s not what I wanted to be doing. I’m very excited about Tile Miner and also committed to it. It’s just that my commitment to my family is stronger:)
Now that you have way more information than you ever wanted to know, here’s the change log from what I can remember:
-Coop multiplayer added (PVP to be added in a future release)
-Added chatting system (press T to chat)
-Complete graphics overhaul.
-Added better full screen support with NO stretching. Supports up to 1080p.
-Added Giant Bat
-Added Giant Worm
-Added Worm Nest
-Added Bat Nest
-Beehives are no longer craftable. You find them as a rare spawn in the world.
-Beehives added to the world generation.
-Beehives now spawn little bees when not yet broken.
-Added Potatoes (Boil em Mash em Stick em in a stew… Well actually just cook them in a furnace…)
-Added Tin and Copper heart containers (add some ore to make the heart container more effective)
-Removed sticks (Anything that used sticks we felt really should just be planks)
-Removed artichoke
-Miscellaneous balancing tweaks
-Miscellaneous bugs fixed
-Miscellaneous bugs introduced (let us know and we’ll do our best to squash them ASAP)
Developer Update #5 - How's 0.2 coming along?
Both multiplayer and original graphics had always been considerations for us but we originally opted to go single player only and use open source graphics because of the amount of time and/or money it would take to do both of those things. After receiving the feedback, we realized how important those two aspects were so we dove back in. And it has taken a lot of time and money. (this sounds like a “we are cancelling the game" speech. Rest assured, we’re not!:))
We spent a couple weeks trying to add multiplayer to the existing code. We had very little luck. The foundation of our code was built on single player. We decided to start the game from scratch and bring large portions of code over once we got the core of multiplayer implemented. I think it was the best possible decision for getting multiplayer working as best and as quickly as possible.
Graphics was the next big question and recently there have been developments:
Originally we payed two graphics guys to design all of the artwork. That part has been completed for months and I’ve shown some screenshots. All in all it took every penny and a little bit more than what we’ve currently made on the game to pay the two guys to overhaul the artwork. That financial reality forced me to take a hard look at our desire to add loads more content in the future. I have no problem investing in the game but unfortunately if we pay for graphics we will ultimately be more limited in the content we can produce. I think content is critical to Tile Miner in the long run. More outfits. More weapons. More tools. More underground layers. More dungeons. More enemies. More NPC’s. More magic. More more more. The more quality content we have the better the game. Another thing that came to my attention recently is that since I’ve been doing so much touching up and in some cases outright creating the art myself, I’ve gotten better and better at drawing pixel art myself. I took a few days and started dabbling in the idea to make the graphics more of a 16 bit style. In many cases I used some of what we already paid for, but in other cases I designed from scratch. I was happy with the results and so was my brother so we decided to move in that direction. Which means most of the artwork needs to be redone or resized in some way. The reason we are excited about this is simple: This will give us the freedom to add a lot more content in future updates!
So how is 0.2 coming along? I believe we will release by the end of the year. I’d be surprised if we didn’t, but I’ve been wrong before. What’s left is finishing Player vs. Enemy multiplayer, attempting PvP and a whole load of bug fixing and final polishes. Beyond that there is redoing the artwork.
Trust me on this: I can’t wait to get this release completed so that I can get busy on adding more content!
Developer Update #3 - Continuing to Progress
1. Currently most of the code overhaul (major changes to get ready for multiplayer) has been completed. The challenge is that most aspects of the game need to address the needs of multiplayer scenarios. Every issue is dealt with a little differently. There’s no one size fits all approach. It’s so hard to tell right now how long this is going to take but I can say at least this much: Multiplayer will be the most difficult update we will have in the game.
2. Recently I sold my home and moved into a rental. I’m also in the process of purchasing a new property. Between packing, moving, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork it’s been a lot harder to make significant dents in finishing up the next release. It’s also the reason I haven’t been posting as many updates. When I’m not coding I’m working on house stuff. It appears that the bulk of the work is completed and things are already starting to settle down. I’m hoping the pace picks up significantly.
To sum up, things have been moving a lot slower than we’d like. My brother works part time, and I’ve been busy with the entire moving process. I am sorry for the delay. Our goal is to get this release out as soon as we possibly can. Feel free to ask questions and let us know your thoughts and suggestions. Can’t wait to show you everything we have in store for the future!
Developer Update #4 - The Vision: What to Expect from 0.2
http://www.tileminer.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1431365571_full.png
From now on I’ve decided that I’m going to post all my game updates to the website AS WELL as Steam. If you’d like to take a look at the past couple of months progress you can check out the website for those details. (Not much, just a couple of screenshots and ramblings).
Over the next few updates I’m hoping to take the time to explain what we are hoping our future updates might look like. I will begin all of these with this:
Disclaimer: All of these updates are subject to change as development progresses.
With that being said, this update I have the most confidence in as far as not making changes. This update will add multiplayer and overhaul the graphics. It’s really not that complicated:) Besides these big changes there will be loads and loads of minor tweaks. We watch all of the english let’s plays and read all the reviews. We have taken notes and many of the minor things people have mentioned we’ve tweaked. If you have any minor adjustments you’d like us to implement, feel free to comment and we’ll see what we can do. Stay tuned for more details on our future updates!:)
Developer Update #2 - Working Hard!
We’re working hard because we really want to finish multiplayer and begin work on future updates. One of the things that we think will set us apart a bit more from games like Minecraft and Terraria will be our NPC’s. They will have schedules, personalities and will have a massive impact on gameplay. We’ll be talking about that more as time goes on.
FYI, we read every single comment on our website and Steam. We have gotten tons of great ideas that we plan on implementing into the game. The sooner you share your thoughts and hopes with us, the more likely you’ll see it! Please let us know what you’re thinking!:)
Developer Update #1 - Still in the Grind
We’ve had a lot of inquiries lately about how things have been progressing with the game. We haven’t said much because we don’t have much we can show yet. Our next update is going to be a major update because it will add multiplayer and overhaul the artwork. We never intended to do either of these things so it’s also a very complicated and time consuming process. It’s still too soon to even predict when this will be completed but what I can say right now is: 2-6 months. What I can show you is some of the artwork our artists have created. You can check it out here:
http://www.tileminer.org/still-in-the-grind/
Thoughts? Let us know! We’re looking forward to completing multiplayer and getting back to adding features. Thanks!
-Chris
Bug Fix Update Five (Version 0.1.5.5)
-Left clicking a cactus sapling no longer causes a crash.
-Trying to place a roof tile on Furnaces and Cauldron no longer causes a crash.