GreenSlimeGames

Quite a bit of coding on the next evolution of the game, including something which I think is pretty dang cool – storing your mine on the server 🙂  Nothing except proof of concept yet, but here is a little teaser :

Check out the link ( i.e. right click it 🙂 ) – yup it is a php file, pulling the data from the database and using gdlib to display it 🙂  This is the state of my current test mine.  Thought the green and black gave quite a nice retro feel to the image 🙂  Will be very intresting once it is in game to generate heatmaps – always loved the heatmaps in halo 3 seeing where and how people play levels.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a guy called Eduardo Vaisman.  He told me he would like to add a soundscape to SpaceOreMiner.  Having a look at the stuff he has done ( and his imdb profile ),  I was pretty blown away with his stuff, and his level of experience.  We exchanged emails, and he explained how he would create the sounds, and I told him about the extended SpaceOreMiner universe and how I want it to feel.

Yesterday, he sent me a link to an archive , which contained 8 files.  Opening them up, I listened to the shortest ones firsts.  A GUI beep, sounds like a beep.  Then the noise for refuel and returning ore.  Wow.  Then the upgrade pad.  Awesome wow.  He had captured exactly the sounds I had imaged.  Listening to the longer loops for background feeling pretty much blew my mind.  These sounds have exactly the sort of feeling I wanted – even down to the background hum of engines in your cabin.

I’d always thought of soundscapes as a bit of a buzz word – with no real definition.  Now I have first hand experience of soundscapes applied to my own invented environment – I know that really isn’t the case.  It changes the entire feeling of the game.  Even adding the interface beeps when you click on a button has made a big difference, the interfaces seem so much more ‘solid’ now.  I really can’t wait to see what he produces for the other sounds 🙂

For those who have played 2.6 – you might notice that there are still a lot of events that do not have sounds.  Hopefully over the following weeks, more and more of these events will have mega awesome sounds 🙂

Oh, and in unrelated news : no new name found yet 🙁

As I have been hinting at since I started this blog – SpaceOreMiner is a component of a much larger game.  And I am getting to the point where I need to think about starting to implement this much larger game.  The database back end is in place, I have a story, and a wiki with details about the SpaceOreMiner universe.  I have another chunk of models from Mr Smive to start implementing the features of the next step of SpaceOreMiner.  I have an extensive list of features and components, sectioned off into different versions.  I’ve found developing in this modular form, getting feedback and bug reports at each step has been amazing successful for me.

Now, with this giant collection of resources I have – I have run into a problem.  A problem I can’t seem to get past.

I can’t think of a name for the damn thing.

Which is why I am blogging now.  I need a name.  Once I have a name, I can buy a domain name, and start transferring stuff across to it.  I’ve tried many different names, but for various reasons ( either already trademarked, something with a huge google presence or unavailable domain name ) I have not come across anything.  SpaceOreMiner really doesn’t sound right for the bigger project.  Which is why I need suggestions.

I’ve played with some markov chain generators, trying to come up with unique words, but mostly this has been unsuccessful.  Recently, someone suggested combining a couple of latin words, to get something cool sounding.  I’ve created a Random Latin Generator – it simply pulls two words from a word list I found on google, and sticks them together.  It has come out with some quite cool sounding ones so far :

absquelux – without light
lucrumacerbus – profit dark
novitasmatris – new(strange) mother
adsumletum – assist destroy
leussidus – plague star
acerbusfilia – dark daughter
niteonihilum  – glow nothing
precoraetus – beg era
sileometus – silent dread

Note, this prolly isn’t real latin, I have no clue about latin other than I like the look of the words.  The generator sometimes comes up with really long words, what I am needing is something that is appropriate for a domain name.  Of course, it doesn’t need to come from generator – I am open to all suggestions.

There are three main things I would like in a name  :

1. A domain ( .com ) that is free so I can purchase it.  Hopefully short and easy to remember.
2. A name which has little to no google presence.
3. A name which I can use to help evoke the correct feeling of the game.

Now, a little bit of back story of the bigger picture to help inspire you.  The game, of course, is set in space.  It is set a very bleak future, many light years away from Earth.  Mankind has no real connection with Earth any more.  All that is known about the Earth are second hand stories, something about a great enemy that caused Mankind to spend it’s last resources in the construction of four huge colony ships.  The Earth sent out these four ships in different directions, hoping that some day they would reach their destinations.  This is the story of a colony started by one of these ships.  Hundreds of years have past since the ship settled – the colony is thriving and expanding to other systems around it.  The player is a member of this colony, and has decided to start a business.

The setting is very bleak and industrial.   No shiny spaceships, or multicoloured aliens.  No amazing teleporters or fantastical replicators.  No deus ex machina.  The only thing that really matters is money and the power it can give the player.

Functionality wise ( and don’t want to spoil to much at the moment ) it is very much to become a browser based MMO.  The current SpaceOreMiner game will be a large component of it in it.  But there will be additional elements; Base building, crafting, refining, economy.  I don’t want to create a huge list of features, because it will turn most people off – every feature has been created with a modular mindset – future versions have these features grouped together in functional units.  So feel free to suggest some names, have a play with the generator, maybe it will inspire you 🙂  Either email me ( see about page ) or tweet me or simply just leave a comment here.