Tin Mining

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.52
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.30
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.04
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Manage a Cornish tin mine, placing orders for the workers to mine and build


The year is 1790, and the Cornish tin industry is booming. You are a businessperson who has just secured investment to build a mine. The area is known to be rich in tin, which is in high demand.

Rather than controlling your workers directly, you drag out plans for tiles to be mined and built on.
The workers will mine tunnels and build where ordered. They will carry mined resources to the surface to be sold.

The map is _procedurally-generated_, and the workers use behaviour tree based AI with a work queue. Behaviour trees make it easier to make extendable NPC behaviour, which will be useful post LD.

This is my first Ludum Dare, I started this a day late, and had to work on Monday - so this only contains the bare minimum gameplay. I had planned to add hazards, buildings to prevent hazards, and a tech tree. For example, gas explosions and toxic gas is quite a problem in mines, as well as flooding from the nearby sea.

This is a solo project, and all code and art is original.

Controls


- Pan: Right-click drag / middle-click drag / arrow keys to pan
- Zoom: scroll wheel
- Select tools from build menu, and then:
- Left-click and drag to place orders.
- Esc to cancel the tool.
- Tip: you can order workers to mine and build a ladder on the same tile, and they will mine and then build a ladder.

Troubleshooting


- Workers may get stuck as the pathfinder is quite picky:
- Make sure that the worker doesn't need to jump down more than one tile to get to the target.
- Make sure that they can get to one of the 4 neighbouring tiles (above/below/left/right) of their target.
You can build ladders to help them reach places.

Changelog


- Fixed not being able to build from neighbouring node
- Fixed workers getting stuck due to path invalidations
- Fixed incorrect pathfinder weightings
- Fixed item transport interrupting other work
- Fixed tin ore item having the wrong texture
- Fixed update issues due to uncapped dtime
- Reduced weight of ladder nodes to fix pathfinder timeouts
- Fixed broken entity failure lock causing MoveItem saturation
- Fixed weird back-and-forth when dropping off items
- Fixed missing collision check when leaving ladder vertically

Screenshots



Desktop only: this game won't work on mobile.

Comments15

vknauss27 Apr 2021, 22:30
This is nice! It feels like a super clean demo. I especially liked how I could click with the mine and then the ladder on the same tile and they would mine first then build a ladder. Definitely would be cool to see expanded gameplay!
LeYamez
LeYamez27 Apr 2021, 22:32
Cute clean graphics, wish there was a bit more to the gameplay though..
joe.z27 Apr 2021, 22:36
AI worked surprisingly well. Almost feels like it could be an animated wallpaper.
Luke Frisbee27 Apr 2021, 22:37
Really solid game! It feels like a perfect demo to a full product, I could totally see this developing into a full release. There's not much content, but it perfectly displays the core mechanic!
LDJam user 212364
LDJam user 21236427 Apr 2021, 22:44
Great concept though not much to do (which isn't uncommon in game jams). It looks and works really well, nice job.
Globulous27 Apr 2021, 22:45
the game is really cool but i think the html5 version is bugged, i was blocked at a moment, but great job i like this game. Enjoyed playing this =)
joselor27 Apr 2021, 23:06
Super clean graphics ( really pretty by the way ), the AI worked really well especially when asked to do one task after the other, i had 0 bugs whean i was testing. The historical setting is good as well because it gives more depth to the game. The game would be even better if you had more time. But as a prototype, the work you did here has clearly a lot of potential
LDJam user 244504
LDJam user 24450427 Apr 2021, 23:25
I really like this kind of game. It's kind of addicting and soothing at the time :smile:

It seems like AI does work fine with simple instruction but it gets buggy at some point and I don't really know what is the cause.

Here are some thought of what could cause them :
- I did test mine and ladder on single tile > it works fine
- when selecting a range of tiles with mine or ladder, some workers seems to get stuck ? I'm not sure
- when I order to mine an already mined tile, i think the worker will still go there and then get stuck? > not sure as well
- when switching tabs on the web browser and then come back, some workers get stuck and no longer move > this one does seem to be consistent. (I'm on Firefox)

Besides these, it's a great game ! Congrats on your first ludum dare ! :tada:
rubenwardy
rubenwardyauthor28 Apr 2021, 01:37
Thanks to all for your feedback :)

--------------

@gcake I believe I have fixed the issues you mentioned:

- The changing browser tabs issue was a simple broken limit on delta time
- I found a bug in how the job queue marked Move Item jobs as impossible. After a while, this would have resulted in the workers constantly trying to do impossible jobs, causing them to freeze up

--------------

@globulous not sure what you mean by "blocked at a moment". If it's regarding workers being stuck, then read above :)
Lone_Wolf
Lone_Wolf28 Apr 2021, 15:32
Welcome to Ludum Dare!

This is a really nice first game, especially considering the amount of time you had to make it in.

I'll probably keep this open in the background while I rate LD games. I must mine the entire earth!
Mykola30 Apr 2021, 16:38
Very nice game! Good graphics and decent implementation of a pretty challenging game mechanics. Unfortunately, I haven't made any money on my mine =D But it was fun watching AI walking around and doing stuff. Great job!
waltsontanaka1 May 2021, 03:30
Cool idea! Would really love to see it with full range of ideas (hazards, buildings, economy). And I really like the workers movement not being just straight lines, really adds a lot of movement and fluidity to 4x1 pixel characters.
Don Fouts
Don Fouts1 May 2021, 22:45
Nice job, this seems like a solid entry. As others have said it would have been cool to have hazards or upgrades. Even without upgrades, I still found it a little addicting.

Other games by @rubenwardy

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