It most games that include mining it's usually very secondary and you get a nice little mesh, texture or icon to indicate where you're supposed to mine. What if you had to do it based on clues instead? If you're looking for gold, for instance, probably the worst thing to do would be to wander aimlessly. Gold might be more likely found in the bends of rivers based on the way it forms in nature and is deposited. Other minerals might be found by specially hinted at rock formations. Ultimately you'd have some sort of limited resource for each mining attempt (let's call it "Drill" for right now). So you could theoretically go mining anywhere on the map, but you'd be wasting Drill. Is this really just the same thing that's always done, just with one layer of annoying abstraction? Alternately, I could mix and match this idea with how it's traditionally done: You can see small surface deposits on the map, but for the real rewards you have to learn and look at the geographical clues. This would make the difference between running around all of creation picking up scraps or using your head to find the motherlode.

I think I would do a mix and match method. In the easlier stages the resource are easily identifiable. Later are all clue based. This method could teach the player that certain resource is associated with certain clues also.

The justification is that pattern recognition (as in mine-sweeping) is fun. For me I would keep the two stages somewhat distinct, such that the player could identify the mines and defusing them could be happen in two phases. This would probably be your case also assuming that you could mark a location on the map (either as a flag, by sending a drone or by placing a construction order of a mining depot).

I see two cool possibilities with this.
1) Utopia did something where in you had a separate map that gave you a report on geographical findings. You had to check that before building mines.
You could replace this with a surveyor team that just goes around auto-scouting the map, and marks areas you can mine at, so they aren't normally revield, you don't HAVE to survey, but it makes your life easier.

2) Have both on-surface deposits to hint at mining locations, as well as locations that you have to trial-and-error at. But, generate an actual grid of resources under the map, miners tap a point on the grid, and slowly flood fill into the adjacent resource rich nodes up to some range from the starting point. You could indicate those locations when the player mouses over the resource node. So, the first clue is finding an outcropping and mining it, that will hopefully reviel a vein that leads to more deposits so you can build more mines.

I agree with Wai. What if you had small, easily identifiable pockets of resources which you could use at the start. Then, scale it. Ie, the harder it is to read the clues, the more there will be. This could be quite an easy way to teach the player to read the signs.

One thing worth remembering is this could seriously unbalance any multiplayer aspects if the pro can easily spot huge deposits of resources that the noob can't even recognise.

I think if the game offered some sort of obvious clue (e.g. a wiki page or in-game help system that lets you read about each feature of the game, including the available resources) that the player could refer to, then it wouldn't be such a big deal if the player could find out that gold doesn't grow at the base of volcanic deposits, and obsidian can't be found in river bends. If he wastes time/drillbits/widgets digging where he shouldn't, it's his own fault for not R'ing TFM.

I think that prospecting is one of the things you either have to go all out with, or make very simple.

One of the keys features of a great game is the ability to play it without reading the manual. In other words, the player must be able to learn the clues without having to resort to a block of text in a reference or hint guide. Most games that feature 'dig to find treasure' systems don't provide many useful clues as to where to dig, or they make it a silly game of hot & cold which quickly is forgotten about. The most recent game with blind mining that I played was Kings Bounty. All I had to do was press the D key while running around on the overland map to check if an item was hidden underneath my avatar. Doing this was instantaneous, it didn't stop movement, had no animation and could be done as quickly as I could press the D key again. Still, I soon stopped pressing the Dig key at all, and probably missed a lot of secret treasures because its not fun to run around spamming a button. Its even worse in games where dig attempts have an animation.

The worst part about those secret treasures is that they either make the game too easy, or the game may be too difficult without them. The designers will either assume you found the secret set of red dragon armor and make the next major fight more difficult, or they wont, and the fight will be all the less challenging because I did happen to find the armor.

I've just seen too many games with poor digging implementations that I've been turned off to the idea. Far too many games make it non obvious where to dig for resources. What may be obvious to the designers isn't as obvious to me, I suppose.

A good implementation would need a lot of information, or a good strategy to tutor the player. I'm told that gold is found more often at river-bends. OK. Say I'm looking at a map with 3 distinct river bends, but I can only place down 2 mines. How do I know which river bend has a greater chance of having gold than the others? What clues does the player look for? It seems like a potentially complex topic that would require a lot of training on my part. If prospecting was one of the core features of the game, I might focus on it enough to learn the subtleties of it. But, if its a small feature, its probably better to just boil my odds down to a number.

If you want to make mining a big thing, think of fun ways to tell the player what the clues are. Don't assume the player will naturally learn the clues on their own, as many developers seem to do.

I like how it worked in The Settlers. The mountains can contain either gold, coal, iron ore or nothing. If you just plonk a coal mine on a random bit of mountain, chances are it won't produce anything. So first, you've got to send your prospector (I forget the real name of the unit) and he'll mark the spot with a sign that tells you what's down there. Then you can plonk down your mine and know that you're going to get what you're after.

Something to think about maybe...

I like responding to your posts with examples from Star Wars: Galaxies. Such an awesome game.

Mining in SWG involves building a survey tool (a number of different types based on what you're looking for such as metal, gas, flora..).

You set the range on the survey tool, then ask it to survey for a specific type of resource (copper, aluminium etc). It comes back with a grid of %'s in [range] distance from you that indicate basically how much of the resource is in each grid point. Grid points are around 8m at 64m survey range.

If the resource is over 20% I think it is you can attempt to get a sample. You can then also place resource harvesters.

This system is of course suited to futuristic games but could be adapted to magic quite easily, and non-magic medieval with a little brain usage, such as having an "Analyze Map" skill that simulates you going and studying each area of the map and making notes based on your current skill level, or as suggested by Codeka above, an NPC prospector could do it for you.

Planeshift, which is a roleplaying oriented open-source MMORPG, doesn't tell you where the mines are.
You take your tools in hand, you type /dig some_ore, and if you're in the right place it will dig, otherwise you get an error. If you dig in the right place, you may find ore or not depending on your luck.

I don't find it to be a very nice system, however. It would be better if you could dig anywhere and just see what you get.

Ideally, it shouldn't depend on luck either. Ore should just be in some parts of the geometry, and once you take a part of the ore vein, that part is not there anymore. You'd probably need a fully destructible world with a voxel engine to do that well, however.

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Original post by Wai I think I would do a mix and match method. In the easlier stages the resource are easily identifiable. Later are all clue based. This method could teach the player that certain resource is associated with certain clues also.

Yes, my gut instinct says if I do it to go this way, especially because then the gameplay doesn't become impossible for the player if they either don't get the clues or don't care to puzzle over them.

I'm thinking of making the stages distinct based on equipment. So when you upgrade, you get tools that allow you to maybe either mark the map or send out drones or whatever.

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Original post by KulSeran You could replace this with a surveyor team that just goes around auto-scouting the map, and marks areas you can mine at, so they aren't normally revield, you don't HAVE to survey, but it makes your life easier.

Auto survey teams could work once you've made a lot of cash and mining isn't so interesting. I want you to start with an avatar (vehicle) that goes around looking for minerals first, though.

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2) Have both on-surface deposits to hint at mining locations, as well as locations that you have to trial-and-error at. But, generate an actual grid of resources under the map, miners tap a point on the grid, and slowly flood fill into the adjacent resource rich nodes up to some range from the starting point. You could indicate those locations when the player mouses over the resource node. So, the first clue is finding an outcropping and mining it, that will hopefully reviel a vein that leads to more deposits so you can build more mines.

I understand you in terms of actual resources on the map, but I wasn't following "flood fill." Would that sort of an RTS thing where you have miners and they expand a radius around them in terms of where they're digging?

The "Drill" resource probably is going to pertain to a drill on your prospecting vehicle. (In truth, I'm not even thinking about this as an operation where you have agents working for you, but rather as you being the lone prospector combing the terrain for mineral sites-- but maybe I misunderstood you.).