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[PenguinHat]

I made something in about 2 days spare using Construct. Still in alpha but might be fun.



PLAUSIBLE DRILL ACTION is a game about drilling that appears to be vaguely plausible. The player must (or at least it is their implied goal to) use 9 silos equipped with drilling mechs to find gold and oil. Filling up a silo with oil increases your multipiler, and gold increases your score.

Use space to select a silo, then use the arrow keys to steer. Hit gold to increase your score! Dig tunnels for oil! Try not to hit rocks!

Still need to:
* Add (steal?) music
* Improve graphics in general
* Ensure balanced scoring
* Work out how to get an online hiscore going
* Think of better name (this one pretty much came from a random word selector)

LINK HERE! NEW VERSION!

Please tell me if you find any bugs or have any feedback. I'd like to hear anything you have to say. Be brutal!

[Skirvir]

Not bad for TWO days! :D

I thought it was pretty neat, some strategy is involved to make sure you don't totally screw yourself with your first few silos by cutting acrros the entire playing field (like I did my first time hehe).

My only gripe is, how do I exit the game? I had to kill the process, Escape didn't do anything I thought that would have done the trick.

Keep going with it man, if you can do that in TWO days, what can you do with it, in a week?

Yes, please add a hi-score (locally at least) and what about different levels, or new things to collect or obstacles to avoid or whatever, the rocks don't move, how about earthquakes that break your previous pipes (allowing you to maybe squeeze a new pipe through the break?) and add new rocks or shift existing ones, while your drilling? That'd be neat I think, or at least something to think about.

I'm impressed, I really need to look into these game making tools and stop trying to code it all myself hehe.

[muku]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

[Grif]

Hiscore 31436. Chaining massive numbers of pipes together along with epic oil combos is the way to go.

Nicely designed, easily grasped by anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of snake, and a pretty good concept.

Definitely want to pretty it up some; emphasize the combo system and maybe add a tiny score boost just for drilling? Or maybe a time bonus; a minute and a half of drilling at one well should give me some reward.

[William Broom]

This was awesomely addictive. Got a high score of 57278. The only thing I would complain about is that the oil goes very slowly when you've built a gigantic reservoir for it to flow through. If this is just because Construct or my computer is too slow, then oh well, it's not a big problem. If on the other hand you're actually choosing to slow down the progress of the oil for effect, then maybe you could allow it to travel faster through open spaces, somehow?

[increpare]

ah, that's really smart

[PenguinHat]

I have a new version! LINK HERE

Things added:
* New player graphic
* More sounds (dig sound)
* You now earn points while digging. The longer you keep going, the more points you earn.
* You now speed up while digging.
* Fixed a minor bug

I still need to make it clearer about the multiplier you get for having full silos, and then I need to work out how to make an online hiscore system.

This was awesomely addictive. Got a high score of 57278. The only thing I would complain about is that the oil goes very slowly when you've built a gigantic reservoir for it to flow through. If this is just because Construct or my computer is too slow, then oh well, it's not a big problem. If on the other hand you're actually choosing to slow down the progress of the oil for effect, then maybe you could allow it to travel faster through open spaces, somehow?

I think it' slowing down because of the large number of objects that are created and destroyed during the oil pipe calculation bit. I doubt I've done it a very efficient way.

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

I have no idea what's causing that. I googled it, but I can't find anyone else with that problem. Sorry. 

[AuthenticKaizen]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

i get the same error...   

seems to be inspired by oils well, right? 

[bicilotti]

I'm an avid DigDug player; I found this very addictive, thumbs up!

[Alec S.]

I thought this game was very fun.

I do have a couple of issues, though.  For one, it seems rather unpredictable the silo selection bit.  It seems like the selected silo keeps switching not only randomly, but at random times.  I think putting it a bit out of player control is a good idea, but give the player at least a consistent rhythm so that they can time their selection.
I agree that you need to have a button (like esc) to quit the game.  I had to use Alt-f4.

Also, more levels could be cool.

Otherwise, I though it was quite a fun game.  

Also, "Plausible Drill Action" is possibly one of the greatest game titles I've ever heard.  Please keep it as the title. 

[deadeye]

Nice game, good twist on the Snake theme.

I think it' slowing down because of the large number of objects that are created and destroyed during the oil pipe calculation bit. I doubt I've done it a very efficient way.

The main causes of slowdown in Construct are:

* Lots of large sprites/tiles, say higher than 1024x1024 (GPU intesive)
* Lots of shaders (GPU intensive)
* Lots of physics collisions (CPU intensive)
* Lots of nested loops in conjunction with collision/overlap checking (CPU intensive)

And since it's apparently not the first three, I would venture to guess the fourth.

Construct can destroy/create several hundred objects in a single tick without any loss of performance, especially if they're the same, small object (the GPU doesn't have to swap textures).  I'm guessing that the pathfinding (or path-filling) events you've made require the use of a lot of nested loops for checking the placement of the next oil sprite, in conjunction with overlap checks of all four sides of each oil-spawning object to determine the next step in the path.

As far as optimization goes, I would check to make sure whatever spawner object you're using for the oil is set to Bounding Box collisions, as it's much faster than Per-Pixel (Per-Pixel actually does collision twice... checking the bounding box first to see if a per-pixel check needs to be run, then iterating through each pixel to ensure that a collision at the pixel level has occured).

Also, if that's a Canvas you're using for the diggable field, that might cause a bit of slowdown as you're looping through collisions with a what is essentially a very large per-pixel texture.  This might seem strange, but you would likely get better performance out of using individual sprite objects for dirt tiles.  It looks like the size on a tile would be 8x8, which would give you a 60x66 grid of tiles, or 3960 objects, which shouldn't be a problem.  I have a crappy computer, and I've filled gigantic levels with 10,000 64x64 sprites and had no performance hit from it.  Just be sure to set those to Bounding Box as well.

Anyway, sorry if I derailed your thread

[Mipe]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

May have to do with permissions thing on user's system. Try extracting elsewhere (onto desktop or non-system partition). Make sure the files are properly extracted, too.

[deadeye]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

I asked about this at the Construct forum and this is the response from the lead developer:

Do they have Data Execution Prevention (DEP) turned on? That causes some plugins to fail to load in 0.98.9 - it's fixed in 0.99 though.

[PenguinHat]

NEW VERSION!

New things include:
* Oil pipe sound no longer overlaps itselfs. This speeds it up a bit.
* Text display after drilling up oil stays up for longer.
* Silo selection change speed is now constant.
* Can now use Esc to exit. Really should have done that earlier. 

The main causes of slowdown in Construct are:

* Lots of large sprites/tiles, say higher than 1024x1024 (GPU intesive)
* Lots of shaders (GPU intensive)
* Lots of physics collisions (CPU intensive)
* Lots of nested loops in conjunction with collision/overlap checking (CPU intensive)

And since it's apparently not the first three, I would venture to guess the fourth.

Construct can destroy/create several hundred objects in a single tick without any loss of performance, especially if they're the same, small object (the GPU doesn't have to swap textures).  I'm guessing that the pathfinding (or path-filling) events you've made require the use of a lot of nested loops for checking the placement of the next oil sprite, in conjunction with overlap checks of all four sides of each oil-spawning object to determine the next step in the path.

As far as optimization goes, I would check to make sure whatever spawner object you're using for the oil is set to Bounding Box collisions, as it's much faster than Per-Pixel (Per-Pixel actually does collision twice... checking the bounding box first to see if a per-pixel check needs to be run, then iterating through each pixel to ensure that a collision at the pixel level has occured).

Also, if that's a Canvas you're using for the diggable field, that might cause a bit of slowdown as you're looping through collisions with a what is essentially a very large per-pixel texture.  This might seem strange, but you would likely get better performance out of using individual sprite objects for dirt tiles.  It looks like the size on a tile would be 8x8, which would give you a 60x66 grid of tiles, or 3960 objects, which shouldn't be a problem.  I have a crappy computer, and I've filled gigantic levels with 10,000 64x64 sprites and had no performance hit from it.  Just be sure to set those to Bounding Box as well.

Anyway, sorry if I derailed your thread

It's fine. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

What I have now is 2 objects, a DrillPipe sprite that is an 8x8 grey square and an OilPipe that is a 10x10 black square. Both are set to bounding box. Just before the player moves, a DrillPipe object is placed in the drills position. When the drill collides with oil, the OilPickup group is activated, the player is destroyed and an OilPipe object is placed in the players position.

On collision between DrillPipe and OilPipe, an OilPipe is spawned by the DrillPipe and the DrillPipe is destroyed, and a Timer is reset to 1 second. When the oil pickup is finished, the Timer will run out. When it does all of the OilPipe objects are destroyed and replaced by DrillPipe objects. This means that there isn't anything nested in there. How bad is the slow down? I've noticed some when about 4+ DrillPipe's are being converted each tick.

I thought this game was very fun.

I do have a couple of issues, though.  For one, it seems rather unpredictable the silo selection bit.  It seems like the selected silo keeps switching not only randomly, but at random times.  I think putting it a bit out of player control is a good idea, but give the player at least a consistent rhythm so that they can time their selection.
I agree that you need to have a button (like esc) to quit the game.  I had to use Alt-f4.

Also, more levels could be cool.

Otherwise, I though it was quite a fun game.  

Also, "Plausible Drill Action" is possibly one of the greatest game titles I've ever heard.  Please keep it as the title. 

I was thinking of things like the Wheel of Fortune when I did that. You know, someone spins the wheel and it slows down? With that click-clack sound it makes. In this new version, it changes every 0.35 of a second. And makes a noise.

[deadeye]

How bad is the slow down? I've noticed some when about 4+ DrillPipe's are being converted each tick.

It wasn't too bad on my crummy machine, but it was noticeable.  It seems to run a lot smoother now, so maybe it was just the fact that you were trying to play several instances of the oil-filling sound at once.

[AuthenticKaizen]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

May have to do with permissions thing on user's system. Try extracting elsewhere (onto desktop or non-system partition). Make sure the files are properly extracted, too.

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

I asked about this at the Construct forum and this is the response from the lead developer:

Do they have Data Execution Prevention (DEP) turned on? That causes some plugins to fail to load in 0.98.9 - it's fixed in 0.99 though.

thanks for the tips but both tips didnt helped...
i just think that game isnt compatible with my system but it looks like a worthwhile "snake / dig dug / oils well" mix...

[PenguinHat]

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

May have to do with permissions thing on user's system. Try extracting elsewhere (onto desktop or non-system partition). Make sure the files are properly extracted, too.

I get "Failed to load plugin 7.csx (126)", and then it crashes

I asked about this at the Construct forum and this is the response from the lead developer:

Do they have Data Execution Prevention (DEP) turned on? That causes some plugins to fail to load in 0.98.9 - it's fixed in 0.99 though.

thanks for the tips but both tips didnt helped...
i just think that game isnt compatible with my system but it looks like a worthwhile "snake / dig dug / oils well" mix...

Sorry I can't help. 

[AuthenticKaizen]

Sorry I can't help. 

no problem... maybe i will give it a try on my old pc on the weekend.