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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsMINE TO THE SKY [ proc-generated exploration platformer]
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Author Topic: MINE TO THE SKY [ proc-generated exploration platformer]  (Read 9229 times)
Codestar
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« on: September 12, 2014, 05:33:04 PM »

Mine to the sky

Genre: Platformer
Developed with: HTML5 using ImpactJS

So I've been posting a few gifs of my current progress with this game in the gifs topic on here, thought it was about time I made a devlog post.

So mine to the sky starts out with an astronaut who sets out to study the largest planet ever found in his solar system. Once getting close to the planet, the planet's high force of gravity sucks his ship down into the planet so fast that his ship burrows itself miles underground. With his ship damaged and his life support being the only systems working, he builds small robots to go out and look for resources and missing parts of his ship, so that he may repair his ship and make it off of the planet.

The game is a reverse miner game. Your goal is to gather resources, items, and face other challenges to advance your ship upwards. The further up you go, the more ecosystems and environments you come across.

No game is the same either. The game implements and random generation level structure much like rogue legacy. Most blocks are destructible and allow for interesting ways of solving challenges and shaping your experience.

Every room in the game is designed much like any normal platformer, but with this destructible block aspect, each room becomes and opportunity for resource gathering for crafting new abilities and items.

As the design becomes more an more fleshed out I will post updates on here and on my twitter. http://www.twitter.com/codestargames

Here's a few of the gifs I've posted, as well as some concept art.

Later gif showing wall jumping and terrain generation.



**older images**

gif showing off lava physics


gif showing off block damage animation



Early concept art for the robot.


There will also be many other different kinds of robots to choose from after getting upgrades.


Super early screenshot showing a few resources buried in the dirt


Early screenshot of random level generator


« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 05:23:12 AM by Codestar » Logged



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« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2014, 07:15:46 PM »

YESSSSSSSSSSSS I love the destructible terrain and the robot's design is a lot of fun!
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« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2014, 09:56:23 AM »

Small update*

Recently got some code working in ImpactJS for re-drawing the background. Basically, now whenever a block is destroyed, this function will find that particular chunk of the background and redraw it, instead of updating all of the background tile chunks. This has increased the performance quite a bit and I'm really happy about my nice 60fps in chrome.



Currently I'm working on implementing some new game mechanics and enemies.
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« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2014, 09:58:15 AM »

that squash&stretch jump is a delight.
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« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2014, 11:02:14 AM »



Another gif screenshot showing the drill tool that I'm working on, as well as some falling stalactite obstacles.
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« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2014, 12:08:35 PM »

I like the concept of the "levels" of the game being partitioned by supplying different requirements to your ship. Moving the ship upward is a nice, clear way to give a sense of progress and objective in an otherwise open terraria-style game.

Will be interested to see your progress!
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« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2015, 11:20:25 AM »

So a bit of an update on what I've been doing. I recently got my random map generator working, trying to decide on whether to cap off how many rooms get generated or generate the rooms on the fly.

I've also recently (last night) got my room generator working for the most part. It uses a room generation algorithm similar to spelunky(uses sectioned off room section templates and combines them), but also allows me to design specific rooms. This allows me to create both randomized layouts as well as designed rooms that I have full control over.

Here's a recent screenshot of my map generator in action.


With all of my recent progress, things are really starting to come together. So, I'm going to try to keep this devlog more up to date so people can see the fruits of my labor.
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« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2015, 04:55:37 PM »

Sounds pretty interesting, images not loading for me though. Beg
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« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2015, 05:44:33 PM »

Yeah, I had the previous gifs hosted on twit pic, but their site got shut down a few months ago.
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« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2015, 11:51:16 AM »

Here's dump of some of the missing gifs from this devblog as well as a new one showing off the random room generation.







This new gif showcases the room generator. It takes in template files I that I design and patches them together. Afterwards it randomizes sections of the level and places different obstacles and enemies. In this gif, it just shows the same template repeated over and over again 3 times, but it gives you a glimpse of how it will work.




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« Reply #10 on: February 09, 2015, 07:49:57 AM »

Another update shot:

This is a screenshot of an entire room layout that has been generated by my level builder. As I stated before, there are a number of base templates that levels are constructed out of. The shape, number of exits, and pattern are all determined randomly and are based off of the map that is generated for the levels. (the previous screenshot showing the randomly generated map). It's using an algorithm similar to the way spelunky builds levels, but with a larger surface area. Since the template layouts are so big, I am able to actually apply a lot of level design principles to them and control how much of a challenge they are.

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« Reply #11 on: February 13, 2015, 06:46:10 AM »

Alright, well now I finally have my level generator rendering some randomized levels. I've added more templates and now I'm going to get started on scanning my randomized levels and applying some traps, obstacles, enemies, etc., to the generated level files. You'll probably notice some patterns in the screenshot, that is because I've only got 3 templates for far for each path direction. Once I have more templates, I'm going to implement some code to make sure the same template is never used twice in a level. I also am working on implimenting mini templates in my code so I can randomize the cells even further.

Proc-generation is so interesting and I'm having a blast doing it. Smiley

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« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2015, 07:15:18 AM »

DEVLOG UPDATE:

Currently I'm working on implementing obstacle blocks in my game. An obstacle block is a small portion of the level that can hold randomized obstacle templates. This is one technique that spelunky used for it's level generation to give much more randomized results when it generated levels.

Currently my level generator will also spit out levels that when all it's templates are put together, there are sometimes large chunks of dirt blocks that cluster together, I'm thinking that I'm going to use this as a place that I can put small obstacle templates or put clusters of ores and resources, so that players can come across small troves of resources and challenges to encourage exploration and excavation.

I've also started implementing some basic sound effects into the game as well, and it makes testing the game feel a lot more polished, than just having no sound at all. I'm also on the look out for some musicians to take on the task of making music for the game.

Things are really starting to shape up on the game and hopefully once I get all of the level randomization factors done, I can start implementing some interesting enemies and have more gameplay gifs to show off.  Beer!
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« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2015, 05:26:02 PM »

I posted an update earlier, but I just had to show this. I applied some things I learned earlier today and did this. Procedurally generated parallax backgrounds! (Yes, those are Yoshi's island tiles in the background.)



It came out better than I expected, now I just need to do some nice auto-tiling on it to make it less ugly. All in all, I think it's going to be a nice solution to the problem of having repeating background tiles.
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« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2015, 06:38:55 PM »

...aaaand autotiling on procedurally generated mid-background tiles done!

**Note, these are temporary tiles until I can break away from coding and get back to work on sprites.**
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« Reply #15 on: March 03, 2015, 12:07:35 PM »

UPDATE:

So now after a long uphill battle I am able to use obstacle templates in my level generation. These are smaller templates that I can place in level generation templates to present an obstacle to the player as well as change up the terrain a bit. Decorative entities are also being generated now as well, these are small background objects like vines, mushrooms, etc. that change up the landscape a bit. (right now they are blue crystals.)



I also came across this gem of random level generation today while doing some testing. Giggle
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« Reply #16 on: March 03, 2015, 01:49:15 PM »

Are you kidding me? I am working on the exact same game: http://www.elcoino.de/mc2dev.swf
We should talk about the ideas to see whether we will have more ideas in common.
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« Reply #17 on: March 03, 2015, 04:11:18 PM »

There's actually quite a few similar games out there, this game is loosely based upon a lot of the fun I had playing games like spelunky, pikmin, and rogue legacy.

With my game I'm trying to build upon that same random exploration while also giving you a goal to achieve. Much like the way that moonman is giving you a goal to find all the pieces of the moon, my game's goal is to help your creator escape the planet by finding pieces of his/her crashed ship and also collecting resources to help move their ship closer to the surface.

I'm really trying to make it a more of an action/exploration based game instead of a mining/resource grinding game. Breaking blocks to get resources will be relatively fast, the challenge is getting back to your ship with all that you have found.
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« Reply #18 on: March 04, 2015, 04:09:09 AM »

Funny, my inspiration list for the game is Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, 1001 Spikes, La Mulana and Binding of Isaac, so apparently if you take some of those games as inspiration you end up where we did.

Thanks for explaining the main goal for your game, as I am going the opposite direction of the possibilities, I want to encounter proper random levels and goals that make the game seem endless.
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« Reply #19 on: March 04, 2015, 08:52:31 AM »

Yeah, a lot of those games you named really laid the groundwork for a lot of newer games implementing rogue-like elements. Good luck on your procedurally generated endeavors!
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