[DEV] Thoughts on Shattered's mining mechanic?
[DEV] Thoughts on Shattered's mining mechanic?
Hey Folks. I used to make posts like this on the Pixel Dungeon subreddit back in the day, so I figured I'd make some here too to help get us started. I've added some rudimentary support for tagging posts (it just piggybacks on the title), and other devs are welcome to make [DEV] posts here if they want.
The new mining area has been in Shattered for a couple weeks now, and I'm curious how people are finding the new mining mechanic, and the idea of a new quest that'll make use of it! Keep in mind that the specific area in the game right now is just for testing, the actual quest area in v2.2.0 will be notably more elaborate.
Thank you for this great looking development! I like the mining mechanic, and I'm eager to see the final product. I know you're already working on your own ideas, but here are some more:
-A metal detector or similar item that blinks or beeps faster and faster when you dig nearer to gold, and maybe changes color or tone when you get close to a hazard block (I presume those will exist in the final release).
-Some other interesting use for the Dark Gold Ore besides paying off the Blacksmith or selling it for pennies. I'm thinking of some alchemical application: perhaps enough Gold Ore could cure a resin-enhanced wand so that you can add more upgrades to it without losing the resin bonuses, or fix an enchantment on another item so that additional upgrades don't eliminate the enchantment.
-Instead of a solid edge that you can't mine through, have the edge be some kind of hazard. For instance: a player mines too far, and then water breaks out and washes the player back toward the center (and are those piranhas?!); or perhaps mining too far just drops the player plummeting into the next level for fall damage.
I also find that trying to dig in a straight line when searching for something feels unnecessarily tedious. I don't know what the best solution is, might be just as simple as a single button to continue digging in a direction. Vertical horizontal and diagonal
I agree that straight mining deep into a wall is tedious, I'm going to be trying to design the level in such a way that makes this largely unnecessary.
Hey Evan. The mining mechanic works fine, even though I am concerned about the "openness" of the map. Boundaries help me navigate with a purpose - I don't like running around with the hope of finding something. I realize this is just a testing phase, but having some landmarks to give provide direction to reach some objectives would help me avoid the feeling I described.
The actual quest map will be more structured, with objectives/hazards, etc. The current map is largely just one giant cave room, and is pretty random as a result.
I like the idea, but I find the mechanics tedious. It would be great if there was an auto-mine mode similar to the auto-nav mode in regular floors where the player finds the shortest path to a selected move tile.
Since the level is hunger blocked, it might make sense to let the hero mine its own way to a selected and unknown tile in the quest map.
If there will be traps and hazards, maybe the player stops automining within a radius of a.hazard because "That rock sounded hollow?" Maybe not? Maybe the player breaks into free space and activates any effect of the first tile before observing adjacent tiles?
Maybe auto-mining "thaws" hunger fr a modest penalty to he lazy?
To be clear I am gonna play the levels either way, but I'll need to zoom in because the mining feature just too imprecise
I expect there is going to be a lot more to do in the acual mining area, and I am not going to encourage the player to dig deep into wall terrain. That should alleviate a lot of the tedium with mining in the current area.
didn't try it yet
I was thinking - what about letting the player use the pick to mine on other levels if they keep it?
Letting the player mine outside of the quest area would break a lot of the existing level generation structure, unless I restrict it so heavily that it becomes unfun.
Gotcha. Makes sense.
Looking forward to seeing new content. New things are always nice and add variety, like the duelist, sickle, katana, etc. I'm still on 5 challenges runs, trying to learn strategies to make wins more consistent. One day I'll switch to 6 and 9 eventually.
Thanks for making this community. Reminds me I haven't played Shattered since some time, need to check out the recent changes you made! Its still on my phone, just taking breaks from it every now and then.