We Made A Game...About Space Mining...And It's Free!

You may or may not have noticed that I've been rather absent since September. I have 3 pages of Quicklooks to watch. Months of Bombcasts. I haven't played half of the GOTY contenders. But there is a reason. A very good reason. I've been making a game.

I'm a philosophy student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Because of my previous exploits, I was permitted to join the fourth year computer science course "Game Design & Development". The majority of the course grade comes from a group project, which we started in late September and will be submitting a few minutes after this is posted. There are many things that we would like to improve or expand upon. Development was incredibly stressful due to team management issues. However, we are hugely proud of what we have accomplished and feel that it is good enough to share with the world.

The game is called "Harvest the Sky", and it's about space mining. It's a little bit like Asteroids, but with a resource management bent and very calm atmosphere. If that sounds even remotely appealing, you should check it out.

(There were some bugs that were pointed out that I could fix quickly, so I did. Updated version below. 11/12/ 9:53)

http://hallmonitor.ca/wp-content/uploads/Harvest-The-Sky-Redistributable1.zip

The game is in the folder "Harvest the Sky".

In the linked ZIP file you will find the game, the prototype that we constructed before we began development, and a list of attributions for resources that we used. Yo, there are phat stacks of other people's music in here. I'm not Jimi Hendrix. I don't know Jimi Hendrix. I don't even know Jimi Hendrix's estranged third cousin.

Note that the game autosaves when you dock, and there is only one save slot.

(One area where we believe the game is deficient is that it doesn't communicate enough information to the player, so if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer. Also, try to remember that this is a 2-person student project!)

This Project brought to you by:

-Eve El-Semaani

-Adrian Hall

FAQ

I will continue to update this as questions seem worth addressing

What am I supposed to do?

-Harvest asteroids by either dragging them into one of the asteroid receptacles, or breaking them down into manageable chunks, collecting them with your asteroid catchers and bringing them back to your base.

Why can't I take leave the base?

-You can't leave unless you have health, fuel and at least one thruster.

Why won't Darkstar move?

-It's a very heavy ship, especially when loaded up with fuel! You will need more and better thrusters. Darkstar takes up to 8, so you'll want to stack a few. (Upon further testing, we have found that Darkstar needs more tweaking to meet it's gameplay function. At some point we may post an updated version of the game with some needed balance tweaks)

Why do ships lose their fuel and health when I switch them?

-Rental fee.

This seems kind of terrible!

-Hopefully that's just because you are playing the prototype. If it's not in 3D, go back into the zip file and run the executable in the folder "Harvest The Sky". If that's not the case, please tell me about your issues! Every piece of feedback is a learning experience.

You may or may not have noticed that I've been rather absent since September. I have 3 pages of Quicklooks to watch. Months of Bombcasts. I haven't played half of the GOTY contenders. But there is a reason. A very good reason. I've been making a game.

I'm a philosophy student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Because of my previous exploits, I was permitted to join the fourth year computer science course "Game Design & Development". The majority of the course grade comes from a group project, which we started in late September and will be submitting a few minutes after this is posted. There are many things that we would like to improve or expand upon. Development was incredibly stressful due to team management issues. However, we are hugely proud of what we have accomplished and feel that it is good enough to share with the world.

The game is called "Harvest the Sky", and it's about space mining. It's a little bit like Asteroids, but with a resource management bent and very calm atmosphere. If that sounds even remotely appealing, you should check it out.

(There were some bugs that were pointed out that I could fix quickly, so I did. Updated version below. 11/12/ 9:53)

http://hallmonitor.ca/wp-content/uploads/Harvest-The-Sky-Redistributable1.zip

The game is in the folder "Harvest the Sky".

In the linked ZIP file you will find the game, the prototype that we constructed before we began development, and a list of attributions for resources that we used. Yo, there are phat stacks of other people's music in here. I'm not Jimi Hendrix. I don't know Jimi Hendrix. I don't even know Jimi Hendrix's estranged third cousin.

Note that the game autosaves when you dock, and there is only one save slot.

(One area where we believe the game is deficient is that it doesn't communicate enough information to the player, so if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer. Also, try to remember that this is a 2-person student project!)

This Project brought to you by:

-Eve El-Semaani

-Adrian Hall

FAQ

I will continue to update this as questions seem worth addressing

What am I supposed to do?

-Harvest asteroids by either dragging them into one of the asteroid receptacles, or breaking them down into manageable chunks, collecting them with your asteroid catchers and bringing them back to your base.

Why can't I take leave the base?

-You can't leave unless you have health, fuel and at least one thruster.

Why won't Darkstar move?

-It's a very heavy ship, especially when loaded up with fuel! You will need more and better thrusters. Darkstar takes up to 8, so you'll want to stack a few. (Upon further testing, we have found that Darkstar needs more tweaking to meet it's gameplay function. At some point we may post an updated version of the game with some needed balance tweaks)

Why do ships lose their fuel and health when I switch them?

-Rental fee.

This seems kind of terrible!

-Hopefully that's just because you are playing the prototype. If it's not in 3D, go back into the zip file and run the executable in the folder "Harvest The Sky". If that's not the case, please tell me about your issues! Every piece of feedback is a learning experience.

Congrats on finishing! You've worked so hard on this, I hope it takes you places. Or at least gets you a fantastic grade. I can't wait to play the final product...but I'll have to wait, stupid campus internet slowing down the downloading process...

GLORIOUS!

Nice! I'll check this out later.

Oh, wow. Awesome. Checking this out later tonight. 
Good job, I know it's a struggle to make games.

Is it wrong that the first thing I'm going to do is try to break it?

@c0l0nelp0c0rn1: I suspect very much that you will succeed.

whoa.. i also go to dal, and am taking computer science with the intent of doing in my fourth year exactly what you just did. i'm downloading the game now, congrats on finishing. i totally know what you mean about the team management aspect though.. my "team" just made a super simple platformer in my first-year class, and out of the three of us i did all the art and 99% of the coding. but on the bright side i learned a ton, as i didn't even know how to code at the start of september.

@killacam: We should meet up at some point and chat then! I'm kinda nuts until the end of term, but after the break for sure.

@nintendoeats: absolutely. it'd be nice to talk about this stuff with someone who actually knows what they're doing.

Excited to try this out, good work duder.

Well, the teacher's submission deadline just passed, so if anybody finds any more glaring bugs it's too late to fix them for submission. HOWEVER:

A friend spent about 8 hours playing the game. Based on his feedback, I'm starting to think seriously about finishing it, which would probably take until mid-summer if I got somebody else to do the music and modelling. I will continue to collect feedback to aid this decision/make the final product better, so keep it coming!

My first thought was: "'Harvest the Sky' is a great name. Anyone who's ever tried to create something will know that naming it is one of the hardest parts.