Multiverse Miner

Multiverse Miner

Postby antlong » 20 Jul 2014, 21:21

Multiverse Miner is a space/sci-fi/rpg-ish, open-source, 4x game, written in JS, CSS and HTML. The game has been in development for about a month and a half, and now I am seeking feedback specifically around the UI and how to improve it from you the players; Any design ideas, tips, or inspiration would be GREATLY appreciated.

Some things I'm looking to solve with the help of your feedback would be how do we relay the finer points of the game across to the player. Things that are not important to gameplay so much like modelling all of our data on real life data and other more useful points (or tips in this case); such-as you need to left click on an actual item in your inventory to see the context menu.

Between the project, IRC and the documentation available we are a nice small community and always welcome to help in any shape or form. So if you think you would like to help out join us on on irc and introduce yourself.

If you're interested the code is located here: http://github.com/antlong/multiverseminer and our IRC channel is #MultiverseMiner on irc.freenode.net, or just click Chat in the game.

Thanks a lot!

Website: http://multiverseminer.com
Repo: http://github.com/antlong/multiverseminer
Docs: http://goo.gl/5lC9Yc
Tracker: https://github.com/antlong/multiverseminer/issues
Todo list: https://github.com/antlong/multiversemi ... /Code_Todo
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby c_xong » 21 Jul 2014, 00:23

What's the license on the source code?
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby antlong » 21 Jul 2014, 02:28

Non-commercial attribution, I feel fits. If there's some major issue with that, let me know and I'll re-evaluate the options. On a side-note, the icons aren't included with this license. I prefer to keep though from being re-used.
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby beoran » 21 Jul 2014, 08:55

First of all on the game itself. Sorry to say this but I think having to click on the mine, gather or scavenge button thousands of times before you can start crafting something meaningful is simply no fun at all. I wanted to make a better mattock but for that you need an anvil (20x iron bar) for which you need 200 iron in total, but the chance to find iron on mining is 1 in 20 or so, which means that with average luck it might take 4000 clicks on the mining button to build a single anvil. That's a way too heavy requirement.

This is a one player game, not an MMO, so there's no reason for such steep requirements. If you could choose what to mine for and needed less materials for crafting it would be better. the crafting part is actually the interesting part of this game and it needs to be emphasized, while the mining needs to be made less boring. Remember that "A game is a series of interesting choices". On the other hand I do think the game shows that a great deal of effort went into it and I think that is laudable.

Secondly on the license. The point of open source games is to allow reuse of the game engine and in the best case the art assets for all purposes. A noncommercial license makes the reuse of the game engine harder in certain circumstances (e.g, if someone wants to put ads on their page to recuperate hosting costs). And why not allow the game art assets to be reused as well? The true spirit of open source is to share without worry or fear. You could use a licence like GPL or Sleepycat Licence to ensue that others share alike. :)
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby Skorpio » 21 Jul 2014, 12:05

beoran {l Wrote}: Sorry to say this but I think having to click on the mine, gather or scavenge button thousands of times before you can start crafting something meaningful is simply no fun at all. I wanted to make a better mattock but for that you need an anvil (20x iron bar) for which you need 200 iron in total, but the chance to find iron on mining is 1 in 20 or so, which means that with average luck it might take 4000 clicks on the mining button to build a single anvil. That's a way too heavy requirement.


You don't have to click, you can hold S, D and G for scavenging, mining, and gathering. It's pretty fast, but it would be nice, if you could just enter a number, or even better let it mine automatically until a requirement is met (e.g. 100 copper). The armor and weapon also speed up the mining speed tremendously.

There are some buildings which mine automatically, but they are way too slow compared to just holding a button.

The inventory screens (scavenging, raw materials, ...) should have icons, so you don't have to click through the list all the time.

In the crafting list, it would be good, if you could directly craft the requirements when you select a building or other item (saves a lot of scrolling/searching time).

Also, I think you shouldn't be able to craft items that don't meet your level requirement. I upgraded my pickaxe so often that I couldn't use it anymore.

Good job on the game so far.
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby beoran » 21 Jul 2014, 14:33

Well I tried it again with the keys, but holding down the same key for minutes also is not very much fun. It would indeed be better if the mining was handled differently. Why not have something like worker robots that yo can assign to scavenging, mining or gathering? Then the game would be much more strategic.
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Re: Multiverse Miner

Postby antlong » 21 Jul 2014, 17:24

When I get either 1) more help 2) more time the game will use your stat values to automatically dig/gather/scavenge (x amount of times) every second.


"This is a one player game, not an MMO," It will never be an mmo, but there will be multiplayer when i implement a backend.
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