GreenSlimeGames

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! 🙂

Someone commented yesterday that they want me to be more focused on game play than pretty graphics.  So I thought I would take a few to explain whats happening with the next version of SpaceOreMiner ( tentatively labelled version 2.0 ).

Obvously, there is quite a large graphical overhaul going on.  Current build weighs in at about 15 meg, which personally I find a bit too large for a webplayer, so it is a case of tweaking texture sizes and model settings in order to get a smaller webplayer – I don’t want people closing the game because it takes to long to load 🙂

On top of the overhaul, there quite a few gameplay changes coming.  The first on is that asteroid positioning system is now a buyable from the shop, rather than just an instant helper item.  Don’t worry – it is nice and cheap 🙂

Another minor change is that when the ores are spawned, their rotation is randomised, though this is just a very small change, it makes the game look much more realistic – no sea of Lavarite pointing all in the same direction.

Also debating combing ore drop off and the shop into one point.  You land on the Limar, sell everything and the shop screen comes up.  The two different locations seem to be confusing some people alas.  I’ll change it and have a play and see how it feels.

A big gameplay change which I’m just finishing at the moment is implementing focus crystals.  These are used by your mining lasers.  So what do they do?  well, they make the mining laser more powerful.  There are now four stratas of rock on the roid, and in order to mine through these different stratas you will need to purchase increasingly powerful focus crystals.    Adds a new level of thought to the game, do you just buy capacitor upgrades so you can mine for longer, or do you buy a focus crystal to get further down, and hence mine more profitable crystals.  Will be interesting to see how that pans out 🙂

I’ve got a few more gameplay tweaks that I have in mind before I do a big version 2.0 release.  Also the back story itself is slowly appearing in a secret wiki 🙂

Once again, feel free to comment/feedback.

Oh and it looks like the the scanilty clad babes of twitter spam like the new updates to the graphics of SpaceOreMiner :

Honestly, I am sure these are real women ...

Crazy, crazy spam.  Oh well, atleast the keywords are getting out there, even if the links arn’t 🙂

Very keen to get thoughts and views on the models.  Vast improvement on what I had before methinks 🙂  Hopefully will get a release with the new graphics out this week.  There is a lot of tweaking that I need to do in game to make the models look their best 🙂  But alas, rl is hitting dev time quite hard at the moment  – but do not fear! your lust for asteroid mining with sparkly graphics will be fulfilled! 🙂