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 new game is created. In order to find it, build a copper compass and follow the direction the compass points to. The compass will lead you to the dungeon entrance. It may be best to find it in the above ground and then build a staircase near the entrance. Inside you’ll find new mobs, new drops, and a boss at the end. We hope you enjoy your experience.
Besides adding a dungeon we wanted to put a strong focus on stability. The original version of tile miner (0.1) was pretty stable. 0.2 brought a lot of instability because we released it too soon. Our goal was to make 0.3 as stable as we possibly could. We’ve put in quite a bit of time just in testing. Even with all that testing, there are only two of us. I’m sure you guys will find plenty of little bugs that need fixing. We’ve added a page on discussions for bugs here:
Bug Report Forum If you find any, please let us know and we’ll get on it ASAP.
There are many other small additions in 0.3. For now I’m not going to list a change log. It’ll be a surprise. Consider this a fresh start for Tile Miner. Which leads me to update #2:
My wife, who is a professional software developer with over 10 years experience joined the team a couple of months ago. She has more than doubled productivity. Partly because she brings a whole lot of experience, but also because I don’t work well by myself. The most productive seasons of Tile Miner have always been when my brother was on board. I find myself far more motivated when I have a partner I am working with.
Having that extra person helping on the game leads me to update #3. The goal of releasing in early access was to give lots of incremental updates. But managing that by myself was unrealistic. With a development partner we plan to do releases once a month on average. After each release we will be making a plan for the next release based on what we think we can accomplish in about a month. Then when it’s ready, we’ll release.
In the next few days we’ll share some details about what we’re hoping our next incremental release will include… If you have ideas for future features, let us know here: Feature Request Forum Stay tuned!