Some cool things to add would be different drill heads that can drill through rock.
Different Jems like Saphire, Crystals, Opal, etc…
Maybe add other planets to mine since the space station is built and we can buy planets to mine.
Add an elevator system to store cargo in and transport it back to the surface.
Add in a mini map to show what’s around you and where your at
Obviously more upgrades and what not haha

Obviously a lot of ideas good or bad but still a thought, I still play this game in 2018 so it must be decent.

Thank you for the detailed and well thought out feedback. I will look into adding an instructions page to the main menu or something that explains basic gameplay. I like the idea of adding a picture of the Uranium to the message so it is clear which mineral is dangerous. Someone else who tried the game was surprised when their drillship suddenly blew up because they had uranium in their inventory as well.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time to really test/finish the game balancing. Several of the resources come too early in the mine. I appreciate the thoughts on the current upgrade values and will look to lower the fuel tank benefits while increasing the hull armor benefits. I plan on adding some more tasks/upgrades to the town that will require more resources and should extend gameplay.

I really like the idea of allowing gameplay to carry over multiple mines, However it is currently cut out along with some other good ideas that would bog down completing the game. I would like to look into allowing the player to start a mine shaft anywhere on the surface as I find only two starting areas annoying as well.

Brett

One thing that I found very confusing when I started playing was the controls, not with moving around the ship, but with navigating menus and knowing how things work. The biggest thing that would fix this is having a tutorial, or even just a block of text for instructions as a menu option, but I do think they could be a bit more intuitive as well. It's a bit hard to reach from control to escape and then to Y and delete as well, so I think grouping them together a bit would be nice. Another thing that was confusing was, actually, with the minerals that cause damage to the player. Initially I had a hard time identifying uranium, even though it seems like it would be easy by just checking the inventory, but then plutonium deals damage too, and then I started worrying about everything I picked up. Potentially a description of the appearance of what causes damage in the initial warning message about it would be nice. Also, either plutonium causes too much damage, or the hull needs to be able to be upgraded more.

Speaking of upgrades … I feel like they're a bit inconsistent. The maximum fuel upgrade seems like a bottomless well of fuel, while the cargo hold feels just sufficient and hull integrity seems too low with radiation damage, but not really fall damage. Probably an additional level to upgrade to that costs an absolutely huge amount of money would fix this.

The amount of money that you get from each of the minerals is pretty good, though. However, I think the diamonds became a bit too frequent early on considering their price, because once I reached that depth I maxed out the upgrades immediately and then had nothing to spend my money on.

Okay, two more things. First, I think a cap on the depth you can go wouldn't be a bad idea. Then you have less to work with, so you have to try to mine more of what you find rather than just going down and only grabbing what's convenient. Second, it would be great if there were more places on the surface where you can begin drilling at, because otherwise you have to go all the way back and forth across the map if you want a different access point, and, once you drill those two holes, you can't do anything to try to get more routes around the top layer of the map.

Sorry, I lied. One more thing, and this one is pretty minor. It might be nice to be able to restart the map without actually losing your progress, just for the fun of it or because you made a bad choice with what path to drill in, and now you can't do something that you want to.

That might seem like a lot of criticism, but I hope it's not - what I'm going for is more just telling you about my experience as a player, rather than a developer so that, if you want to, you can more fully develop or flesh out any rough spots. Anyways, I had a lot of fun, and I hope you find my feedback useful!

Later, Brett! (And feel free to ask any questions.)

Thank you for trying my game. To load your save game, press the DEL key to open the main menu. Then, just select the menu option 'load game.' (I really need to assign the main menu a better key then DEL.) Let me know if this gives you any trouble!

-Brett

I played your game for probably thirty or so minutes today, and I had a lot of fun - however, I didn't complete everything to my satisfaction, so I'm going to hold off on the feedback for just a bit longer, until I can load my save. See, I closed the program and then when I opened it again I couldn't figure out how to load my save rather than overwrite it, at least without an Xbox controller, which I haven't tried. If you could let me know how to do that, it would be much appreciated, so that I can finish your game and get back to you with what I think about it. =]

Since the competition is over, I'm posting a demo of the game to the download section of the BitBucket Repository below. It is built with XNA, so it may fetch some additional files from Microsoft if you don't already have XNA installed.

https://bitbucket.org/BrettWoodard/tunnel-lords-demo/downloads

Game Controls

Keyboard

• Movement: Arrow keys
• Accept: Left Control
• Cancel / Exit Menu: ESC
• Open Inventory: Y
• Open Main Menu: Delete

Game Pad: Game pad controls have been added, but not yet tested.

Couple of things I learned during the competition:

Experience using Mercurial as a version control system.

• A better understanding of how Delegates work and some new uses for Generics.
• Some improved naming conventions.
• Robert Martin's smell G23: Prefer Polymorphism to If/Else or Switch/Case. I had an aha! moment when replacing part of my code that was requiring multiple switch statements with a polymorphic object. I realized that I finally understood what Robert Martin meant in this code 'smell'.

Future work:

• Balance game play (Money collection, resource locations, benefits of upgrades)
• Improve Sound Effects
• Improve Graphics
• Add Music
• Add controller joystick sensitivity to drillship speed
• Test Controller use
• Complete story line
• Hook in all the tasks and their benefits
• Add damage for running into walls.
• Add more hazards to mine
• Add warnings for low health and fuel
• Test on XBOX 360

I hope you all enjoy the game so far, as I have really enjoyed programming it. Hopefully I'll be able to complete it in the near future, but there is much work to do.

A couple of Badges:

• Game Over
• The Tinker (for the game collision system and movement system that I redid 3 times)
• What, Writing, We're Talking About a Video Game
• The Great Unveiling.

Over the next couple of days, I look forward to trying everyone else's entries.

This update is a little less exciting because it was more working on the game's plumbing. There are now 3 new screens in the game. Two allowing the player to save or load a game. The save file just resides in the same directory the game is installed to. I also hooked it to the code in XNA to save to an XBOX360, but haven't tested it extensively yet. There is also an error screen in case of an error while saving, but this hasn't been rigorously tested either.

I made a quick splash screen for the main menu that allows starting new games, loading a game, resuming, or quitting. The menu works well.

Most of the major features in the game are complete, so I'm in a decent spot nearing the end of the competition. The last major revision required is finally fixing the game logic for moving around the map. There are a couple of lingering bugs that prevent entering narrow passages or look funny visually. With this complete, the game should be mostly playable. Hopefully, this will go fairly quickly and I'll have some time to polish the game.

I do plan on actually releasing a demo, but wanted to wait until the moving logic is actually fixed.

Also, I'll claim the It's Just Temporary badge for the sweet jet engines on the Mining Ship.

I'm excited with the progress made over the last 9 days. The game is now being backed up using Mercurial to bitbucket. I've never used Hg on a project, so it is good to play with and learn. Plus it is a little more consistent than me zipping the project every other week and uploading to a cloud drive for storage.

The following features have been added:

• 'bulletin screens' that contain storyline. Different bulletins are triggered based on the depth the player has dug.
• A depth gauge in meters
• A caution sign when the miner's cargo hold is full.
• Upgrades are now available for purchase at the factory. Three different components on the miner can be upgraded.
• The miner ship now has jets that extend when flying.

I reworked the movement system on the map, which is now much better. Unfortunately, there are still some flaws in the movement and it will have to be rewritten one more time. This is certainly turning into the biggest challenge of the program.

Below is a new video of the game in play.
http://tinypic.com/m/ip77n6/2

I think the next step will be to add Saving/Loading of the game. I'll plan to compile the map data and miner data in a binary file for saving and then writing the data into simple data classes to load a game. After that I'm split on either adding more content or working over the movement system.

This week I uploaded a short video to show the development progress. Includes basic map movement, drilling, collecting resources, and a basic inventory screen.

http://tinypic.com/r/121z98g/8

The game now includes the ability to sell resources at the smelter, using fuel, health, and maximum storage. The movement system still needs work, as the player can fly, but cannot move left or right while flying. This makes exiting the mine to the surface quite tricky.

This week, I plan to continue to refining the screen movement so you can move while flying and jumping. I am also looking to implement a basic title screen and game state for saving and loading.

Creating and drawing a random map went surprisingly well. Please don't mind the placeholder artwork. Kudos for my wife who designed the dirt and big rocks, which look really good. They were for a different project, but adapted nicely. The toughest part was getting the border in the empty tunnels underground to look good.

Below is another randomly generated map.

Making the map came together really quickly because of past experience making a 2D tile game (of course never finished). I have partially completed animating the mining ship and adding movement logic. The next update will probably be when that is complete. I'm a little worried about how to add gravity into the map.

Tunnel Lords: Mining Epsilon Eridani

You are a miner with a fabulous mining ship in the not too distant future. Your colony needs resources to grow, thrive and provide money for upgrading your sweet mining ship. Mine deep beneath the planet's crust in search of valuable minerals. Help your meager colony grow into a thriving city on the single planet of the Epsilon Eridani star system.

The game will be a vertical 2D scrolling game with pixel graphics. The intended ESRB rating would be E for everyone, if it were to get rated. The platform is XBOX 360 and PC.

Increasingly valuable metals will be mined as you travel deeper underground. Environmental hazards will hamper your progress, such as dirt becoming more difficult to remove, magma wells damaging the ship if dug into, and increased hull temperature. Purchasing ship upgrades such as new fuel tanks and new hull plating will help you overcome the difficulties of the lower levels.

A simple story line will progress based on tasks given by fellow colonists. Fulfilling the tasks will require different minerals. All other minerals will be sold for money to buy upgrades. These tasks will open up new upgrades for your mining ships and buildings. The colony will consist of buildings right above where you mine. Game saves will be limited to one location in the colony. Death in the mine will require reloading from your last saved game. Game play will consist of a couple of hours of mining and upgrading.

And that is most definitely too aggressive for one month of work… Also, I'm no artist, so please bear with the bad programmer art. My first goal will be to get a working 2D tilemap on the screen.