GreenSlimeGames

Ok, I’ve just finished building the new webplayer, time for some more testing 🙂  I’ve got the new web based stats screen totally working with the new database version – and there are some major changes built into the database for future versions 😉  The new stats screen look just as ugly as the old stats screen – but that will give me something to work on later 🙂

I’ve shrunk a lot of textures from Mr Smive, but I couldn’t downsize the play-field textures without them looking majorly ugly – All of his models are using lower res textures to keep the webplayer size down ( with everything in it and looking shiny, it was weighing in at around 30 meg ).  If anyone notices anything that looks really ugly, let me know.  I could always release two webplayers, a low and high res one … just a thought 🙂

The game feels very different now with the real models in it.  I’m very happy with how things are coming along.  Still a long long road to go though 🙂

This initial release of 2.0 will probably have problems I haven’t encountered – if you find one, please feel free  to let me know, every bug sorted now is worth less stress down the line.  The balance of the game has changed greatly, esp with all the new ores and the focus crystals.  The balance will very much be addressed in future updates.  Extended server side stats should ( hopefully ) make this easier.

Players now get a profile on the website – Aside from player name, and when the accounted was created – there really arn’t any personal things on them – just a breakdown of stats.  I have got a privacy method all ready written – so if you really don’t want your stats viewable, please just let me know, and I can opt you out of displaying them.

My gf is leaving for New Zealand on Thursday to spend Christmas with her family, so expect blogging rate and actually development to pause till then, as I wanna get some quality time in with her before she leaves.  However, I will still be checking on things and keeping an eye on things – so hopefully can sort out anything before any major problems develop.  Best way to contact me will be either by email ( see about page ) or leave a comment here.

I’ll write out some patch notes tonight, just to wet appetites 🙂  Then at 2pm GMT, I will be uploading the new version of SpaceOreMiner, and changing the stats system over to the new one 🙂  Players who are already registered and have a score over 1 will automatically get a title on their profile to say that they played the first version of the game – The top three players will be getting special titles to indicate the rank they ended at.  I’m working on some in-game rewards for the top three and all version 1.0 players – but that will have to wait until after Thursday 🙂

Time to get a’mining 🙂

Well, I was playing 1.13 earlier to relax and had a quite good game ( 200k ) go vanishing on me.  So I’ve spent quite a while tracing why the data wasn’t saving.  I’ve had a few bug reports, each of which could have been explained away by strange client conditions … However, this game submission failed completely – which was useful, it meant I had a live case to look into.

Turns out the data wasn’t saving because at the time the data was being sent to my server, the database itself was actually down.  I’m using shared hosting, and therefore shared databases at the moment – but had NO idea at how strained mysql actually was.  I haven’t actually seen the database stay up for longer than an hour at the moment.  Looks like someone else using the server is hitting it hard.

Ofcourse I sent a ticket in, and they suggested ( very rapid response about 5 mins or so ) creating a new database on a new database server and copying the data across.  So I did that 🙂  Think I have lucked out and found a database with an uptime of 19 days – not really major ( for work I normally measure db uptime in months/years ) – but a vast improvement on a database which gets rebooted every hour 🙂

So hopefully the case of the lost games has been sorted – I am currently in the process of moving all the 1.13 stuff to the new database server – then tommorrow when I get some time I’ll change the script to reflect that – and that should be the end of that 🙂

Ofcourse, if after this change you have a missing game, please let me know, I think I might start running some sort of monitoring on this new database to check to see if things are up and running.

Ahhh, the dangers of shared hosting 🙂

EDIT: Update, I’ve decided to move it across right now, so if you get a dropped game after this, please let me know!

I started cleaning up the backend data structure, primarily because what worked fine for 15 ores, doesn’t work as nicely for 30 ( and potentially more ) ores.  There is a new stat screen with the new ores, and been playing around with creating player profiles.  Would be pretty sweet to get that working as a webpage, as well allowing you to customise stuff on it from in game.

With this database update there will be a change to the stats, and I will bold this – When version 2.0 is released, your score and ore mined will be in a new table, effectively nulling your account.  However, all the old data I will still be keeping and displaying, and once version 2.0 is out it will be read only – so if you want to make your mark on the SpaceOreMiner universe forever, then try and get a high score as possible now :).  A version 1.0 winners list will be announced, and your names etched somewhere permanent.  And hell, the top three players might get some unique prize added to their account 😉  Everyone who has participated in this round ( i.e. if they have a score above zero by release of version 2.0 ) will get a special mark on their account which indicates they participated in version 1.0, I like this feature as it rewards people who have helped me get the game to where it is.  Without people playing, getting in contact and providing feedback, then there would be no real game at the moment 🙂

The other thing I have been doing is plugging numbers into a spread sheet to try and balance this initial release.   I want all roids to have the same total worth and all have the same number of spawns.  Pretty dang interesting tweaking numbers and seeing their overall effects on the game.  I don’t want to spend to long on this, because I am sure player behaviours will be very different from how I imagine, which will effect the balance.

Interesting facts I’ve found out on version 1.13 :

1. Though I only approximated the balance, all three roid types when mined fully have pretty smiliar profit amounts.
2. The most profitable roid to mine is active roids – however the most popular type to mine ( by far ) are crystal roids.
3. Dense yeanite is the only common ore which spawns on all three asteroid types ( heh, bug but a cool but of info! )
4. Crystal roids have the highest average ore worth, active roids the worse.
5. Talpanite can’t decide if it’s a metal or crystal ( though to be honest, I haven’t decided yet heh).
6. The average roid when fully mined is worth 1,285,666.6667 solaris – spooky and evil!
7. The most common ore in the universe is Dense Yeanite – even though only 430 tonnes have been mined, compared to 1745 tonnes of copper and 1208 of tyronic crystal.
8. For some unknown reason – Kor is mined a lot more compared to averages for the other minerals.
9. Looking at the worth of an ore and number spawned, it is most profitable to mine Dense Yeanite on metal roids, Omnicronite on crystal roids and platinium on active roids.
10. Active roids are the least picked roid type – maybe the bright yellow model put people off? 🙂
11. Diamond has the largest worth to model size than any other ore 🙂

Well, I found it intresting 😛

Now let me just repeat what I bolded above, just so everyone knows 🙂  When version 2.0 comes, your score and ores will be moved to different tables which will mean as far as the new stats are concerned, you have zero of everything.  However, I will not be wiping the current data – it will be archieved for bragging rights for years to come.  The top three players will get a special something for being at the top – All players who have a score above zero will also get a special something 🙂

Heh, I should patent my amusing blog titles 🙂  Failing that, today has been a loooong dev session.  Won’t write much as I need to go and give some hugs to my kitten ( he has just been fixed and is a bit confused as to why with a large cone on his head he can’t get through small gaps ).  However, if you haven’t guessed from the title – today’s dev time has been spent making ores.  One or two extra ores,  well maybe three or four more.  Maybe even five.  Hmmm, now I come to think about it, six extra ores.

Well, actually, too be completely honest, I’ve doubled the number of named ores in the game 🙂

So the version 2.0 release will have 30 different ores to mine 😀  should make going deeper than 1000M much more interesting 😉  They are currently spawning in the same area as copper on active roids ( just for debugging ) – which means two minutes of playing netted me almost 2 million solaris.  Hehe.  Don’t worry folks, I’ll spread them around a bit more 😉 ( oh and I didn’t let the score save 😛 )

Also tweaked the mole movement a bit more, but thats boring compared to filling my lust for space ore! 🙂