You want to see what a huge pain in the butt it can be to mine with tunnels and shafts and elevators, play a little Clonk Planet. It's actually pretty "realistic" by the OP's standards, despite being 2D. The tunnels fill with water, you break through into oil pockets which flood your shafts and random explosions kill about half of your crew, and then you have to build a town on the pitted ruin you just trashed with your mining operation. It is nice to get a mine cart full of gold or iron ore up to the surface, though. Very rewarding.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage You want to see what a huge pain in the butt it can be to mine with tunnels and shafts and elevators, play a little Clonk Planet. It's actually pretty "realistic" by the OP's standards, despite being 2D. The tunnels fill with water, you break through into oil pockets which flood your shafts and random explosions kill about half of your crew, and then you have to build a town on the pitted ruin you just trashed with your mining operation. It is nice to get a mine cart full of gold or iron ore up to the surface, though. Very rewarding.

This sounds fun. XGen Studios has a cool mining game called MotherLode, which focuses much more on a single avatar. You're constantly trying to risk falling, getting into tricky spots and (later in the game) avoiding death from lava and gas pockets. It's pretty mindless, but has a light strategy element (you can't dig up) that gives it just enough of an addictive loop.

Returning home is a PITA, though, which the game allows you to dispense with by warping.

Blizzard is well known for making well polished games, but usually not "unique" titles, Starcraft for instance wasn't anything all that new, it was just done really well. I've never played WoW, but i can understand their approach to mining. In Runescape mining is abit more realistic in that there are stationary deposits of ore in surface mines and in caves, but the problem is hundreds of people camp the bejesus out of these deposits and it can be incredibly frustrating and damn near impossible to gather any sufficent amounts of ore. People end up fighting over them and it frustrates and puts people off. With random "nodes" people can't camp them, thus reducing the stress of competing for good mining spots. Having sat for hours on end mining one spot, i can also appreciate exploring the countryside or random pockets to help break the mind-numbing tedium.

[Edited by - Gyrthok on September 13, 2005 12:33:54 PM]

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Original post by Siolis Um...I’m kinda saying that’s just what is wrong. I've played dozens of MMORPG's and consol RPG's and my gripe is that the sub games are crap. I'm currently writing a novel based on a game idea I’ve got which I’ve put aside for the moment but in the game design I’ve got a plan for a realistic mining system, with caves, breakable walls, ore stores, tools, the works and I’ve checked out the C++ code and database handle i would need to do it and its perfectly possible to make. I made the plan because i got sick of mining in the MMORPG, Legend of Mir II: The Three Heroes, BUT AT LEAST THAT HAD A WALL TO MINE!! My problem is that i don’t like the fane attempts people make at what could be a really cool part of a game, hate something, make something better is my attitude.

This reminds me of a post on a board I used to frequent when I was a young lad (old man murray, I still weep over your demise). Someone excitedly posted along the lines of "hey check out the demo for this game", to which the only reponse was "if you liked that, check out this demo."

The point of that anecote is that just because you would enjoy an all-mining WoW addon doesn't mean anyone else would. I'd wager that the vast majority of WoW players didn't sign up looking to spend all day in gaming's medieval equivalent of the sewer (I'd also wager that your dream mine is similarly full of crates and spiders). Your idea of a super cool mining simulation sounds like something I'd play to cure insomnia.

How's this for the quick version: if I'm building a bridge in SimCity, I don't want it to be a minigame of Pontifex. I want to click and place the damn bridge and get on with the game.

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Original post by Dobbs How's this for the quick version: if I'm building a bridge in SimCity, I don't want it to be a minigame of Pontifex. I want to click and place the damn bridge and get on with the game.

well, as long as you could always place prebuilt ones, the option to try designing your own would always be cool.

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Original post by Oluseyi So... why is this in Game Design, again?

There are mysteries that are deep as the deepest pit. If you think you could get a simple answer, then... you are unexperienced and naive as a blonde. ^_^

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Original post by Talroth Quote: Original post by Dobbs How's this for the quick version: if I'm building a bridge in SimCity, I don't want it to be a minigame of Pontifex. I want to click and place the damn bridge and get on with the game. well, as long as you could always place prebuilt ones, the option to try designing your own would always be cool.

Why? What does it add to the game? It's not a game about bridge building, just like WoW is not a mining simulation.

And please, no slippery slope arguments.

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Original post by Dobbs Quote: Original post by Siolis Um...I’m kinda saying that’s just what is wrong. I've played dozens of MMORPG's and consol RPG's and my gripe is that the sub games are crap. I'm currently writing a novel based on a game idea I’ve got which I’ve put aside for the moment but in the game design I’ve got a plan for a realistic mining system, with caves, breakable walls, ore stores, tools, the works and I’ve checked out the C++ code and database handle i would need to do it and its perfectly possible to make. I made the plan because i got sick of mining in the MMORPG, Legend of Mir II: The Three Heroes, BUT AT LEAST THAT HAD A WALL TO MINE!! My problem is that i don’t like the fane attempts people make at what could be a really cool part of a game, hate something, make something better is my attitude. This reminds me of a post on a board I used to frequent when I was a young lad (old man murray, I still weep over your demise). Someone excitedly posted along the lines of "hey check out the demo for this game", to which the only reponse was "if you liked that, check out this demo." The point of that anecote is that just because you would enjoy an all-mining WoW addon doesn't mean anyone else would. I'd wager that the vast majority of WoW players didn't sign up looking to spend all day in gaming's medieval equivalent of the sewer (I'd also wager that your dream mine is similarly full of crates and spiders). Your idea of a super cool mining simulation sounds like something I'd play to cure insomnia. How's this for the quick version: if I'm building a bridge in SimCity, I don't want it to be a minigame of Pontifex. I want to click and place the damn bridge and get on with the game.

That’s pretty spurious thinking. You know nothing about me, my design or my game except that it is based on the real world idea of mining and your willing to wager that my dream mine is full of crates and spiders and that my idea of a super cool mining sim is something you would play to cure insomnia. Tell me, do you design games, would like me to pass judgement while your still building it or do you even play games? I play quality computer games like metal gear solid, final fantasy, zone of the enders, ma-friggin-rio ffs, if you have ever played any best selling or otherwise quality game there’s a good dam chance I have too so if I designed a game based on what I know to be quality of computer games, doesn’t it make sense to you that it wont be total shit. Ya think, maybe there’s a chance that a hard core games player might be able to at least design some kind of descent game? But wait, you can’t really answer that can you, you know nothing about me or my design!

As for WOW, considering some of the points which have been made by other posters maybe a full mining system just aren’t required in WOW, mostly due to it being a MMORPG I suppose cus people would camp the mining zone otherwise and it is a fantasy combat game after all. However i still stand by my thought that if WOW were my baby i would not have done nodes.

My mining sim would probably be either offline or employ a system like Guild Wars which generates a kind of offline map where you can play alone and only see other plays when you return to a pre-generated town. As for the other points about game play, I wouldn’t make it unbelievably hard for the player to move about, mine and get the ore out or anything else. I would make it fun and easy but with a challenge, as computer games should be. I’m not going to go into full detail about my game just yet and I don’t have them on hand just yet but give me the benefit of the doubt at least that I’m not an idiot cus I’m doing the same for you.

Siolis

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Original post by Wavinator FWIW, surface mining is perfectly realistic depending on the age of the world. In 3000BC you could find many precious metals just sitting right on the ground. Early civilizations picked these up and turned them into works of art, armor and adornments for royal buildings pretty quickly just by beating them into shape. Smelting and mining didn't come until much later, as surface metal deposits became more scarce. Then, of course, there's magic... But how would you design mining to be risky, interesting and dangerous? Rocks don't attack (normally), acrobatic and platform jumping gameplay is probably a no-no, and you have to crawl back out of every hole you make. Geomoding, as shown in Red Faction (why doesn't anyone use this these days?) might be fun, but it's possible to get stuck, and hard to let you go in any one direction for long. I think you could do 3D mining with reasonable limits, such as faking it with a flat plane and mixes of prefab "tunnel" meshes. But you'd need to worry about things like pumping in air, pumping out water, explosive blowouts, keeping your magical mining equipment and orc slaves in shape, and fighting against enemy miners. Could be very Dungeon Keeper-ish.

Well ok fine, WOW can have its nodes but i still think a full mining sub/joint part of an RPG game would be uber cool. I personally would love to take a break from my hack and slash dutys and go dig tunnels, collect, process and sell ore on an open market and that, if done correctly it would be very original if you ask me.

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In an RPG you could have a part combat, part mining type character alteration where you can pound rocks with a hammer and if you see a monster you can go kill it useing your hammer and your mining gear doubles as effective lightweight armour maybe or even magical armour which is light but takes the damage instead of you. Acrobatic maybe not but platform jumping gameplay is perfectly possible, in WOW you can jump, if you made it a bit more controllable and accurate im sure it would be good for cave exploring. If you used a tele-tie system like Horizons: Empires Of Isteria or WOW you could tie yourself to the cave enterance and use a free telespell to return yourself to the cave entrance if you get lost, stuck, traped by monsters etc. Ive got my own game engine called Cubed Space which is basicly a kind of 3d isometric mesh of cubes which indivually hold information and graphics which can link together so live specficing tunnel designs and using prebuilt ones is not an issue. Just pick a tunnel shape, grab a tool and smash the wall in to build a tunnel, just make sure you move the earth using a crystal storage device first and you wont have a problem. Using crystals (a serious part of my RPG) bring in air, removing water and earth, explosives etc wouldnt be a problem, technolgy can also be used to do many of these jobs and fictional tech can do just about anything so its all possible.

Siolis

(Sorry about the spelling errors, in a rush to leave collage room.)

Well mining above ground is perfectly possible. A quarry is a deposit on ground. It can be mined from above like the ones in WoW. But actually who cares? It's the fun of the game that is interesting. It doesn't matter how it's achieved.

Some people just likes realistic games that takes about a million tries to learn (like Grand turismo and other simulators). Some people might just enjoy making a gang and hack it out in the World of Warcraft.

You can generally say it's a very good game. But not everyone can like it otherwise no one else need to release another game.

Me on the other hand would hate if I had to walk from my house. Go to the locker take on my clothes, mining hammer etc. etc. Walk the two miles (at realistic) pace. go to the caves. Take the elevator down. Work for one hour in the cave and have the seeling fall down over me and be permanently dead (hmm well at least my character).......