In the near past, the dig mechanic historically dates back to 1982 with the retro arcade classic puzzle game Dig Dug. Players control a 2D avatar to dig into the dirt in 4 directions, limited to only horizontally and vertically.
Gameplay video link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrvmDJxq86I
Recently in 2013 SteamWorld Dig was released for the Nintendo 3DS
It has been successfully combining digging mechanics with fun 2D Platforming.
There has been many games that have used the similar mechanic that uses 2D voxels that can be destroyed to clear a path.
Minecraft being the major success of combining 3D voxels into a mining and crafting game.
Mechanics in the game include exploration, gathering resources, crafting, and combat. Although the main mechanic is arguably digging. The majority of the time, the player spends digging through various surfaces such as dirt, rock, snow
Shovels are used to dig dirt, grass, sand, gravel and snow faster than by hand. Shovels are required to dig snowballs.
In our recent Sheridan College student capstone project, ARM is the working title currently named Asteroid Robotic Miners. The core mechanic is drilling, cutting, and blasting holes into 3D voxel asteroids.
Space Engineers has a mechanic of mining, with a custom crafted spaceship that can be equipped with an approximate 3 meter spinning drill bit. This drill acts as a melee style ‘weapon’ that can cut into rocks at close proximity. Overtime, the drill bit can overheat and eventually break.
Learning from games that have similar digging mechanics, the choice has been made to make the core mechanic based on digging for minerals in a 3D space.
The main focus is for the mechanic to be fun, simple to pick up and play, and allow the player to become a master of the tools. When doing so they are rewarded with higher purity minerals that have more value, rather than minerals that have been hastily dislodged or damaged from the asteroid.
"We don’t want boring with a drill bit, to be boring, drilling pun intended." - Clinton Bowman
The choice has been to go with a fast and fluid flight controls mixed in with a tools that can be the optimal choice for the targeted asteroid. The design choice is to lean towards fast, fun and casual, opposed to slow, boring simulations.
Rather than the player being confined to tight claustrophobic mine shafts, the player has the freedom to fly and explore 360 degrees around the asteroids. Freely moving and positioning the allows for free range to ‘attack the situation’ at the precise angle and distance. Tools such as The plasma cutter are a similar comparison to an advanced space blowtorch. Its alternate fire, can change the nozzle and allow for a wider spread torch
Various degrees of scanning an asteroid can reveal valuable information about the structure density and geology. If the asteroid contains mainly iron and ice, the player may want to only equip on the drone Plasma cutters and Heat Rays. In situations where the asteroid is 90% Ice, the best option would be to ‘dual wield’ two Heat Rays, to more efficiently melt the ice to expose the minerals.
Once the minerals are dislodged, the player can switch back to piloting the cargo frigate, and align the electromagnetic beam to retrieve the alloy based minerals. Gases, and other non-metallic resources can be collected from other tools such as the Anti-gravity disruptor that can control the gravity so the resources will ‘fall’ towards its direction. Gases can be collected in tanks, once the airlock is opened, they suck in the gases like a vacuum.
This is the second attempt that I had to rewrite this blog, due to losing my original copy. Kinda, actually glad that I had to rewrite it, because it allowed me to look at it from another perspective. Almost tempted to writing it a third time to see what other mechanics I could dig up.
No comments:
Post a Comment