Blogs - ChrisCobay

Crazy GoldRush:Dredging Alpha 0.0.3 Game Link!

9/7/2016 Update Log and Bug Fixes:

-Changed Pirate Behavior
-Pirates now avert their attack if the player has enough paydirt before they reach your ship.
-Added Animations
-Player and NPC have Animations when moving and dredging.
-Fixed Random Event Mermaid
-Mermaid no longer drains fuel while distracted
-Player no longer gets stuck in the area of where the Mermaid random event last was.
-Reduced 1st Dredge Upgrade sprite size
-Increased Fuel,Sluice and Bank/Gold Exchange range:Now easier for bigger dredges to access.
-Changed the player detection for Fuel/Sluice/Bank(A trigger to enable buttons when in range)
-Now players must come to a complete stop in order to use buttons
-Fixed Players dredges from accelerating in last pressed direction(No more crashing into walls)
-Fixed Dredge Upgrade Button
-$12,000 Cash is removed instantly (Counter would not update till next cash use)
-Fixed Dredging animation
-Now when the player stops dredging the animation for dredging defaults to normal(idle animation)
-Before fix: Player dredge animated even if there was no gold left to dredge

Game Instructions

You are the Captain of a gold dredge (Water Vehicle that uses a hose to suck up gold from the sea floor.
Your goal is to get as much gold as possible. To do that you have 4 resources to pay attention to:

Fuel: This is what powers your dredge. Without it you will stranded.(Will have a Fuel rescue possibly in future)

Paydirt: This is the material that your vehicle suction dredges from the sea floor. You will take this
to the sluicing facility to refine your Paydirt to Gold. To find paydirt you will need to pay attention
to your Gold Scanner. The Gold Scanner will flash to indicate you are currently over a gold deposit!
Once you've found your spot just sit back and let your Captain dredge till the paydirt is gone.

Gold: This is the resource you are after! Once you have sluiced your Paydirt and have your Gold
you will take it to the Bank/Gold Exchange. There you will sell your Gold for cash.

Cash: Who doesn't love Cash? After you get Cash from selling Gold or random event rewards you
will use it to buy Fuel to continue your operation. You will also use cash to purchase Dredge Upgrades.
In the future you will use cash for other things (Possibly to build your own Mining Town/Empire).

Another important aspect of this game is Dredge Upgrades:

Your first Dredge upgrade becomes available after you have acquired $12,000 Cash. After purchase
you will notice that the amount of Paydirt recovered doubles! But be careful because Pirates want your
Paydirt too so make sure to sluice and sell your Gold often.

Occasionally you might stumble across one of three currently active Random Events:

The Mermaid: Just as it says, the mermaid will distract you from working for a short period of time.
During this time your dredge will not be able to move. After the effect is over you will regain control of
your dredge.

The Treasure Booty: You will occasionally find a $10,000 Cash reward that you can use as you wish.
This is a reward that is easy to get currently. In the future it might be more rare to get that amount of money.(Yeah I spelled Bottom wrong)

The Kraken: This tentacle monster will rise up and destroy your dredge. In the future this event will change.
Right now this event triggers Game Over and leads you to a Online HighScore Leaderboard(Might be down due to my free
web service, though it will be fixed once a new host is found).

Pirates: Pirates will attack and board a players dredge if they carry too much Paydirt. If you want to avoid a pirate attack sluice your Paydirt often. If a pirate attacks and you want to prevent it, make your way to the sluicing facility and sluice your Paydirt. If you make it before they reach your dredge you will avert the pirate attack.

Controls are pretty simple right now:
Left Arrow= Left
Right Arrow= Right
Down Arrow= Down
Up Arrow= Up

A big thanks goes out to all of my recent Alpha Testers and Bug Finders:

Skyler: Dredge Size/Fuel Purchase/Mermaid Bug/Alpha Test

Jacob:Alpha Test

Devon:Lack of Instructions/ Alpha Test

Michael: Mermaid Bug/Dredge Size/Fuel Purchase/Gas Draining Bug

I'm still waiting for a few others to send in their reports, but either way this wouldn't of been possible without the time and effort of these awesome individuals.

Each of which also gave great suggestions and comments regarding current gameplay and future possibilities for the CGRD.

If you want to learn more on Gold Dredging and what it's about here's a Wiki link for you En.wikipedia.org

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for future updates!

Crazy GoldRush:Dredging Alpha 0.0.3 Game Link!

Awhile back I was working on a test project to see what the capabilities of the 3DS's browser were.

The result of which was ZombieCade!

So I decided to do some small updates to it. Some of which was this guy. I call him Mr.Meltdown.

Also updated:

• Zombie sprites (now with basic animations)
• Grass sprite(sucks but it fits my style more)
• Road sprite(sucks but also fits my style)
• Added Bubbles around the Health and Kill counters to increase visibility.
• Added Barricades(I guess I made them a year ago and totally forgot till now
  • Will block zombies from seeing player allowing him to regroup for an attack.

So nothing too major, but it's long overdue. Besides my motivation gave me Mr.Meltdown so Rock On!

Feel free to try it out at Game Link: ZombieCade!

Thank you for showing your interest in testing and reviewing my 0.0.1 Alpha of CGRD.

Please Email responses to TheGlobalMeltdown@Gmail.com or you can Message me on IndieDb or just leave a comment.

Crazy GoldRush:Dredging Game Link

I've included some information and questions for those who want to help. If there is anything else you have to suggest or say please do so. I'm a pretty blunt person and I appreciate honest responses.

To help with that I have written a description of the game to give an idea of what I imagine it would be like:

Basic Game Summary:
Crazy GoldRush:Dredging or CGRD is a game where you control a small dredge working against NPC's
to dredge, sluice and sell as much gold as possible. Throughout the game you will be able to upgrade
your dredge. With each dredge upgrade your gold income increases. (Not yet activated): Once you have
reached the highest dredge upgrade you will be allowed to dredge the sea beyond the harbor.
(consider the harbor newbie training grounds). Once in international waters you will have more competitors
fighting you for the lead in establishing you gold empire. Perhaps you will use your money to build a mining town
to either limit your overhead(since you own your own bank,gas station,sluicing). Perhaps you will even charge the
NPC characters for their use! That's if they don't beat you to the top of empire ......

Here are some of my questions for you to answer, which will hopefully allow me to make a better game:

1)Are you interested in mining games?

2)Does the idea of mining games interest you, but not dredging?
Would you prefer a land based mining game?

3)Would you play this game on your PC Via Web Browser/downloadable copy if it were finished?
Or would it be more suitable on a mobile device?

4)Do the 2D Graphics quality turn you "Off" to this game?
If the Graphics were better would that matter?

5)Does the idea of allowing you to spend your in-game virtual money to build a mining town
(to further your gold mining empire) interest you?

6)Would you prefer having a fleet of dredges that controls themselves(instead of point click behavior)?
Or would you enjoy focusing on one main dredge that you can upgrade?

7)Do random events,rewards and disasters interest you? (Treasure chest, Mermaid, Kraken, Pirates ETC.)

8)When this game is finished, would you enjoy playing this game as a time waster? Or if saved games
were possible a lengthy single player campaign?

9)Would you play this game on your mobile browser or download it on your mobile device?(if it was free of course)

10)Would you be interested in a Moon Mining game? If so what interests you?(EX: Base Building)

Today I was alerted to the fact that 000webhost was not allowing everyone access to my game. So for now I am supply a link to my game off of Dropbox.

In the future I'll have a more suitable host. I apologize for those who attempted to test my game out and encourage you to try again! Thank You

Crazy GoldRush:Dredging

So I've realized I need some feedback about my game. Sadly not too many people have tried it. It's a shame because there really isn't a lot to do yet, thus it's not very long.

If you think you can try out my game and give a detailed response on your experience as well as:

Do you have any suggestions to make it better?

What is your level of interest in mining games?

Did you hate the idea of dredging, but perhaps still open to other mining games?

Would this game be more suitable for a specific platform?

Would "X" idea make this game more enjoyable? ETC

These are just some of the questions I have.

Not only that but I have some other ideas from the past that I might need some help on as well as future ideas.

If you are or know someone capable of:

Music/Sound skills

Making 2D Sprites/Animations

Graphic Design/Logos

or any other interesting skills please contact me here or email me at TheGlobalMeltdown@gmail.com

Thanks for reading

Okay,

It's been over a year since my last update on Crazy GoldRush:Dredging.
Since then I have gone through a lot of personal hurdles that has left me with little time or
motivation to work on my game. After my last job closed down, I lost my apartment, friends,vehicles
and my personal business that supplemented most of my income. Not having a solid place to work, sleep
or call home has left me in a rough spot in regards to CGRD. Mind you, that I'm doing this on a
Presario V2000 Compaq Laptop that barely runs HL2 in low settings.

I was hoping that my situation would improve and allow me to continue this game. Sadly it hasn't
gotten much better to be honest. But I do have this old laptop and a internet connection so CRGD
isn't dead yet.

Recently I spent some time working on a few things that really bothered me before all this started.
1.Created a really bad looking, yet working High Score Leaderboard!
2.Tested it on my Android phone and can say that touch controls do work properly!(Text hard to read though).
3.Used 000webhost to upload my game, so that's a step in the right direction.
4.I've Been testing to see if Multiplayer is feasible. Right now, no. But down the road I'd love to say YES!

I originally planned on releasing this on multiple platforms using HTML5 as a bridge between all of them.
This would of allowed for cross-platform multiplayer capabilities which is what I've always wanted.
But with Multiplayer currently on hold, I've been trying to re-imagine what the focus of this game should be.

My new focus is not far off from my original description. I want your character to be an average joe who started
Dredging for the chance to rise up and control a mining empire. I want your character to earn enough gold to
buy his own equipment and cut out the middleman. I want your character to be able to build a mining town financed from
his Dredging sucess. Pick a piece of land and slowly start building it up: Player Base, General Store, Bank, Homes for
other Dredgers and much more.

I want your character to capitalize off the NPC's still coming to get rich(They need your facilities to process paydirt, bank money or upgrade their dredge).
Perhaps you might even have a nemesis that threatens the future of your mining town?
What if he owns more than you? What if he has more Gold/Money?

Random events will still be a funny/unexpected surprise. I really enjoy them in other games (SimCity)
and think they will keep gameplay dynamic. I'm not trying to create a game that is too easy or overly fair.
I don't want a player to sit there and figure out what formula/strategy is needed, then realize it's nothing more than
repetitive BS that becomes boring or predictable.

I have tons of other great ideas for future games in the mining simulation genre that are really
intriguing to explore. But I won't move on until I'm satisfied that CGRD is either undesirable or reached it's end.

So with that I am releasing CGRD in Alpha 0.0.1 in hopes that people try it out and get excited about the possibilities.
I encourage you to submit suggestions and ideas about things you would like to experience (even random events good or bad).
Sure there isn't much to do yet, but hopefully your imagination will inspire you like it has me and encourage further development of CGRD.

Remember, I'm a one person team with barely a roof over my head and an outdated laptop. So my game may not be up to your expectations or my own,
that's why I'm typing this, that's why I'm releasing this, that's why I'll never stop trying. So help me, help you, make an awesome game.

Rock on!
- Chris

Check it out at www.coldspiritcreations.comlu.com

As you can all see I have been busy at work. I know I haven't always been perfectly on time. My apologies for that.

So here's a little peek at what I've been up too:

I've added the random event art to the game as seen below (Ex:Mermaid/Treasure)

When the player is cruising around for gold the player might randomly find a Treasure with $10,000 or the player has a chance to get distracted for a couple of minutes by a Mermaid.

I also added the Player Base to the game as well. It will change views based on the players proximity.

While the player is in the area of the Player Base, the player will trigger the sluice button active, if the player has at least 3 PayDirt.
PayDirt will be displayed in this icon.

I also updated and removed the HUD I originally created altogether. I just felt it couldn't display all the information I needed it too. So I created individual Icon/Counters for each.

Fuel

--Fixed NotEnoughGold text
-Was not properly displaying

This won't be a lengthy blog post by any means, maybe my shortest. But either way I wanted to express my interest in making this game playable on Game Consoles.

After reading a very interesting article on GamaSutra today about HTML5 support for consoles it occurred to me that I am leaving out a whole branch of people that might otherwise play my game.

So this morning my first act of business was to test this out and see if the game would be playable on the X-Box One. Which indeed it is!

So this has made me very happy. The game-play was quite smooth so far though I still have more testing to do.

The problem is this has opened up a world of ideas and possibilities for future game development ideas. I actually really like the way it disables normal browser controls, once detecting the Xbox controller making all buttons usable without accidentally clicking back or forward in the browser.

Though I shall not lose sight of my goals, I just wanted to share how awesome this was and the potential I think a lot of HTML5 developers are ignoring.

Until next time...........

Hey everyone!

So I was going to post this last night but as I was loading my screenshots I clicked the X on my browser after I finished typing.......grrrrrrrr.

Anyways so I wanted to go over a few things today about what I have been working on. I have been pretty busy with my 30 Day Challenge, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy working on other stuff.

Point and Click

PS: I hate my new default water texture even more in these screenies........ if anyone has suggestions for that PLEASE speak up.

So I apologize for not updating yesterday. I didn't get home till 1am. So to say the least, it wasn't the best time to update. But now that I am done helping my friend move more time for CGR:D!

I was debating on what I was going to do with the dredges. I wanted to create as many dredges as possible but then it dawned on me....... Maybe I shouldn't change things up too much. I have 2 dredges that for now are going to sit on the back-burner and maybe if people adapt to the game well enough I will add them when Diving is Implemented.

I didn't want to add something that was dependent on something I haven't added to the game yet.

But for now I have created two of each dredge with a different theme so this way when upgrades are added down the road...... you won't just Upgrade a dredge and move on. I still have to add sluicing and diving at some point. So I'm trying to not to get too far ahead and end up hanging myself.

So here they are:
Dredge 1:

Dredge 2:

Dredge 3:

Dredge 4:

Dredge 5:

Dredge 6:

Dredge 7:

Dredge 8:

Dredge 9:

Dredge 10:

Not only that but as promised Pay-Dirt will now be reflected as what you dredge instead of Gold
Later down the road Pay-Dirt will be sluiced to get gold!!!!!

I didn't get a chance to take any in-game screenshots yet this morning as I just woke up and haven't finished my first cup of coffee while doing this yet. SO give me some slack :)

But I will have to find a way to make it up to everyone for my tardiness, I'll release something cool soon to make up for it. Again sorry for the wait, sometimes real life just takes precedent.

So next on my list is adding a Player-Base and Random Event Art. I think you guys might see an update on both those before I reach the date but no promises!

To all those that actually read this please leave a comment or suggestion. Hell even if you just say Hi!!!! That would be awesome. Your opinion matters to me, so don't forget that.

Finally ........... now that my coffee is cold.......... and I hate nuking coffee........ arrrrrrrrrrr