This is a difficult time for everyone. But the good news is that for Tile Miner, this might be a positive thing. My wife’s software development job has scaled back so she has more time to help on the game which will drastically increase the speed of development. We’re hoping to have a new early access build within the next couple of months. This new release will include shareable dungeons and a…
I was in the process of polishing the game. I wasn’t in the final stages of polish, but the game had pretty much all the content I was planning on having in the final release. Then I got frustrated. Parts of the game I loved, but building was practically useless. And, building was one of the elements I thought would be great! You could build your own base and make a town for NPC’s but building…
It’s been a couple of months since my last update so I thought I’d chime in and let you know what I’ve been working on and what I’ll be working on in the future. 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 d…
Today I want to talk about what I’ve been working on and what you can expect in the future. 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. Thes…
Our last update was in July. My hope was to have the game completed by now but there’s still a few months left of development before everything is finished. I wanted to get at least one update out before the final release because changing the graphics has made a big impact on the game. The major change is obviously the graphics. There’s a new trailer and new screenshots to go along with the upd…
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…
It’s been a while since I posted an update. A lot of work has been done but the most interesting bits are probably just getting more graphics in from the pixel artist. Here’s some of the 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!
If you’ve been watching Tile Miner from the beginning you know that the graphics have gone through a few revisions. If you’re interested in hearing the story you can read this entire post. If not, just know this: We are updating all of the graphics to a higher resolution! Here’s a screenshot to give you just a peak at what we’ve been working on for the final release: THE HISTORY OF TILE MINER P…
The bad news is, we’re not releasing any more monthly updates. There is a very good development reason for this that I will announce shortly. We are making a pretty big change and that change will mean we can’t be putting out regular updates for at least a few months. The good news is, we’re close enough to 1.0 that our next update (hopefully this year) will be the final release! We’re incredib…
Back in February we decided to start delivering 1 update a month. Back then we were on version 0.2. Here’s the basics of each update: 0.3 Dungeon Update - Added the first procedural dungeon to the game. 0.4 Magic Update - Added fire and ice magic to the game. 0.5 Ice Dungeon Update - Added the second underground layer along with the ice dungeon to the game. 0.6 Villager Update - Added villagers…
Over the past month we’ve been hard at work trying to bring NPC’s to the game. We wanted you to feel like you’re part of a living world. Claim some land with a land plot, build a house and then put it up for sale. Soon after, an NPC will spawn. When you right click on him you can trade with him or help him become better at his craft by giving him certain items. If he does become better he will…
Over the past month we’ve had a ton of fun adding a brand new dungeon. This new dungeon is found by defeating the first boss. He’ll drop a staircase that is capable of going deeper into the underground. Once there you can find new ores, new spells, new potions, new enemies and all sorts of other fun things! On top of this we added some new snow biomes and some new creatures to the overworld. Th…
This update was a fun one! The focus was on adding magic and accessories to the game. We also took some time to adjust a few balance related issues. We need as much feedback as we can get so as always let us know about bugs and all of your ideas in the forums. Change Log 0.4.0 New Features: * Beds * Magic * Accessories * watch - displays the time as a status effect. * sticky inventory pendant -…
I just wanted to chime in and share some of the things we’ve been working on in 0.4. We are calling this “the magic update”. The original plan was to add a bunch of small pieces of content we feel the game is really lacking. But then when we calculated how long it would take to add magic, we just tacked that on! The hope is to have the release out in about 3 weeks. Here’s a list of new content.…
Three bits of great news: 1. Tile Miner Early Access version 0.3 is available now! 2. A second developer has been added to the team. Believe it or not, this is the most exciting part of this update. 3. Our plan is to dramatically increase the frequency of releases. To start, let’s talk about 0.3. The focus of 0.3 was to add a dungeon to the underground. The dungeon is randomly generated when a…
I’ve decided it’s time to remove Tile Miner from early access. Here are the reasons why: 1. I’m nowhere near the final release. When I released Tile Miner back in 2014 I had fully expected to release the game within a year to a year and a half. Development always takes longer than I think it will. At this point my estimation for a final release is 2-4 years from now. That blows my mind. When I…
I’ve mostly completed wiring. Wiring will transport 3 different types of signals: On, Off, Toggle. There are 3 different types of trigger tiles as well. When going through a dungeon, every doorway has an on trigger tile. When you touch it a charge will be sent to any connected wire. Those charges will trigger whatever triggerable tiles are connected. Currently there are only a few types of trig…
Lately I’ve been working on a wiring system for the dungeon. I’ll give more details when it’s closer to being completed but it’s basically a way to turn on lights, spawn enemies, and trigger traps. The next few updates I’d like to address some of the AI adjustments. I am finally finished with the AI so I wanted to share how some of it works. When you start going through a dungeon the easiest en…
There are 3 pieces of bad news I need to deliver today. 1. Multiplayer is no longer a planned feature of 1.0 2. My brother is no longer working on the game. 3. I took about 6 months off (July-January 1st) MULTIPLAYER IS NO LONGER A PLANNED FEATURE FOR 1.0 The biggest piece of bad news is multiplayer. It was probably our most requested feature. We started from scratch in order to build multiplay…
Today I’ll introduce to you a new mob for 0.3. It’s the creature you’ll most likely run into first in the dungeon. It’s AI is very basic. It will make quick short movements in a random direction and then stand still. All of the mobs in the dungeon will get stronger as you progress in the dungeon. Here’s a zoomed in image of it:
The slime AI is pretty standard. The slime will cycle between subtle bouncing and lunging randomly. It will keep doing this until it is within a certain range of the hero. Once in range the slime will begin chasing the hero. Finally, when within striking distance, the slime will charge up and then lunge quickly at the hero. Tomorrow? A new Mob types AI.
Hoping to make these updates a bit more “daily”. Yesterday I completed the bat AI. To start, the bat has a new graphic where he is sleeping. He will not move unless you get closer to him. Once you’re within a certain radius, he’ll open his eyes indicating he can see you. Get a little closer and he’ll start flying around randomly. I’ve also made the bats a little bit faster so they are slightly…
The worm AI has taken a lot longer than expected because I took a bunch of time to work on particle effects. Here’s the worm AI in a nutshell. 1. He will randomly move around for a random period of time (unless you get close enough to him, then he’ll charge you). 2. Once that period of time is up he will dig and hide underground. (There is a new dig animation along with particle effects). 3. Wh…
The cow AI in most ways is similar to the bee. The cow will randomly walk around and try to find tall grass to eat. Once it finds the grass it will eat it and the tall grass will be gone. If there’s a lot of cows there will likely not be a lot of tall grass after a while.:) In contrast the the bee a cow is never agressive. If you attack the cow it will try to run away from you. For now the AI i…
I’m changing the AI for all mobs in the game for the dungeon update. I want to make sure that each mob has it’s own unique behavior. I’m starting that process with the Bee. Currently in Tile Miner the Bee is most likely the first “enemy” you’ll encounter in the game. As more releases come out I want the Bee to feel less like an “enemy” and more like a friendly mob. So for starters, the bee will…
Today I continued with pathfinding and had plenty of success! I still need to make some optimizations but everything appears to be working quite well. Here is a screenshot with some debugging turned on to show a few important things: 1. The very thin green line is the path the bee would have attempted to take in the current code. 2. The thick white path is where the bee will go now that pathfin…
I’ve completed controller support for the 0.3 update and am now moving on to AI. Specifically I’m working on pathfinding. Currently every mob just moves in straight directions. If you place a tile between you and your enemy they’ll just keep running into the wall. A great strategy for escaping an enemy! Until now… It may take me a few days to fine tune the pathfinding algorithms and make them c…
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