Category: Announcement

Tunnelers Beta 1 released to little fanfare

This is a bug-fix release, and I hate bug-fixing. Argh. There were like a ton of them. But they are gone. Well, mostly.

If you want, you can play or download it on itch.io. Or you will, when I upload the packages. I’ve been delaying this for three weeks now, and I don’t want to delay it anymore by not having time to build packages (EDIT: all done and uploaded).

Just to be clear, this is a MINOR RELEASE. I won’t even bother doing a gameplay session, since the most visible change is probably the main menu tweaking.

I know, I know, half a year from the open-sourcing of Tunnelers, and I give you this, and say it’s almost no different.

But actually it is different, but most of the changes are internal. For example the tank controller is completely new, and the syncing is much more reliable. The code is cleaner. I’ve started to implement interfaces for better modularity. I started commenting the code, so it’s easier to understand. The whole project is ported to Unity 5. A whole bunch of GUI bugs were fixed, and settings were introduced. Also, the main menu was redesigned a little.

And don’t forget that I was doing this all through school, so I had limited time for it.

But don’t worry. The next release will be much more interesting. Details in the next post.

You might have noticed I changed the site theme. Hope it looks nice. Font is a bit too big, but meh. It’s cleaner than the last one.

Also, itch.io added support for paying with Bitcoins. So, if you have some microbitcoins to spare and you have no idea what to do with them, chuck them this way, it’ll be really appreciated. Cheers.

Tunnelers: Unified has turned open-source

Tried to keep it quiet so the it would be a big BOOM.

OK, so with the important stuff first: have a look at the source code HERE.

People new to code, feel free to browse it with awe.
Pro’s, feel free to look at that crap jibberish some noob wrote up, and give him a lesson.

If your somewhat familiarized with Git and Github, feel free to fork it, just make a pull request when you think that you made some good change.

Reasons

  1. The school year started. That’s right. And you know what’s even worse? I’m on a new school (I don’t know how you call it in English. High school? Probably. Gymnasium to be accurate). That means: less time to code. Open-sourcing Tunnelers prevents it from dying out.
    NOTE: This does NOT mean I’m leaving Tunnelers alone!
  2. I love open-source. I would probably open-source it even if I wasn’t going to school.
  3. I like the Github interface much more than Bitbucket’s, but Github doesn’t host private repos for free.
  4. I was tired working on it alone. Now people can at least see that I’m actually doing something on it, file issues, create pull-requests, etc.

Pretty good reasons, huh? If you don’t like them, well, bad luck. There’s no way back.

Want to help? Sure! Just mail me, we’ll have a chat.

Now to the other things:

Newsletter

Please please please subscribe to the newsletter you see on the left, if you want to continue getting news on Tunnelers. I never ever use those emails for something different than sending mails when there’s a new announcement, and, as you see, that doesn’t happen often. The process of sending the newsletter is automated, so you will always get the news first.

Chances are you’re reading this only because I’ve personally told you. Please do subscribe.

Thanks.

Roadmap
Beta:

  • fix bugs
  • add mute button
  • optimize network usage and client-side prediction
  • make a little graphics (but only a little)
  • bots. AIs. Call them what you want, but you will be able to play and have fun playing alone when they will be.

Gamma:

  • Mobile ports. Android and iOS. Maybe Ubuntu phone with some tinkering.
  • fix bugs
  • maybe add some tanks

Delta:

  • public vote on what future roadmap. This is where all the fun starts. Just to be quick, you will be able to choose from: digging, new tanks, new game modes, new maps, better graphics, new GUI (see note), text and voice chat, controller support, new platforms and so on.

Note: I will completely recreate the GUI when the new GUI system arrives in Unity, and that will probably be later this year.

The gaming session

Thanks to everyone who was there. If you captured a video or something, mail me. Hope everyone had fun. I sure did. See you next time!

And a very important thing for the end:

Thanks

To everyone who made this happen:

  • Shadowcrush, for the music and coding support, and for being cool.
  • @damagefilter, or Chris, or whatever you want to call him, for the excellent Unity networking tutorials. Without it, I don’t know how I would code all of it. You can still see snaps of his code in the source.
  • and, of course, everyone else, who I am not going to name because I’m not going to risk I will forget somebody. I you ever asked when will Tunnelers be released, played it with me, criticized me or chat with me about it, you should be here. Great thanks. You make this happen. And to those thinking I should write you all down, I don’t think it would fit here.

Thanks again. You helped Tunnelers: Unified be a reality, if only a fable one.

Tunnelers: Unified Beta is finally finished

I mean it. Done and ready, built and uploaded.

Gentlemen, it is time for me to announce that you can play Tunnelers online again.

It’s not as good as the original, but hey, I made it myself.

I am so sorry for the gigantic delay. It has been a very hard year for me and I had very little to none time to code.

But the important thing is that it is finished.

AND NOW THE IMPORTANT THING I AM WRITING THIS FOR:

WHEN SHALL WE PLAY?!

Write in the comments! Will you play and when will you play.

Now that Tunnelers: Unified is multiplayer, we need a party of people to play with. Idealy 8v8 or more. So if you can, come!

What you can look forward to in Beta:

  • multi-player
  • capture the flag
  • lasers
  • explosions
  • two new maps
  • a brand new UI (with a Quit button!)
  • and of course, the rejoicing of old comrades

All the features should be fully functional*.

So what are you waiting for?! Comment!

The site is now looking… cooler

Yep. I worked on the site yesterday a bit, and it’s now better than ever.

The biggest changes:

  • should load faster
  • the site should now be found by search engines
  • a new FAQ section
  • THE AWESOME TUNNELERS WALLPAPER!
  • a new way of auto-posting to social networks
  • a subscribe by email button
  • a new contact form
  • better sidebars
  • a slightly new comment system
  • WordPress.com sign in
  • and some other thing

Warning: this site is still not perfect, and there are many things that could be better.

Don’t worry, Tunnelers is just around the corner! (I know I say that every time)

Shortly after this I’ll make a post with some snapshots from the first map. See ya on the battlefield.

How it looks like now

Well, FINALLY I got to write this. At last. Whew. Sorry for the delay, tons of things seem to happen now.

WELL. First point. I am working on Tunnelers multi-player, but it;s been DAMN harder that I thought. All those little complications that just show up and then hit you in the face. Sometimes I spend a week in debugging.

To make it clearer what I’m doing, I’m gonna write it all here.

So, second point. I wanted to the ship the first multi-player release with CTF. Why?

  1. It’s the best mode.
  2. It’s awesome.
  3. It would be boring to just run around a simple map with a tank with nothing to do.

But, this also created some major complications, listing

  • The game needed a game manager, that would sync the scores of the team and the players between the server and the client.
  • The game also needed actual flags that work with the network system fluently.

And, that’s all. It doesn’t look like much, but imagine you have to write down EVERY DAMN game event as a method in the server script, together with how it changes the scores, etc., and the write down all of the game events as methods AGAIN in the client script, AND THEN make the execute of the client method from the server method with an RPC call, and make sure every parameter can be RPC-ed, and if not, convert it to something that can be, and then convert it back in the client script.

Ugh. (breathes heavily, calms down a bit). Well, that’s over, and let’s go to something more positive.

Third point. The WORLD. Ya, the world. Actually it’s quite a small world with some cubes and stuff. Here it is:

ss (2014-02-04 at 04.51.56)

Say, “Hello, World”. Well, it’s not called “World”, but “test_scene”. Okay, it’s not called that, but it will. right now it’s called “c_sharp_network_test”. I didn’t have time to rename it. But I will.

Continue reading How it looks like now

Registration enabled.

Well, after some time the registration is definitely ENABLED.

The problem with spammers is also solved (at least I hope). I’m testing a anti-spam plugin (it’s like an anti-virus but it’s anti-spam), and it seems to be working. I had 200+ users before it, but now it has deleted about 200 users and left me with 8. My host reported my database writable with 0.5 MB on it. It has a limitation of 30 MB and it was full. Again, because of this database problem, cause the database will not last forever, I might change the hosting to wordpress.com. Maybe.

Also: this site now has an alias on vacuumwithstyle.6f.sk . Technically, it’s the same site, but with a different name. I like it more so I might change it permanently if there won’t be any issues.

You might see this post on Facebook and Twitter too. I’m testing the auto-poster, so you can follow this page there too. No Google+ I’m afraid. It hasn’t got an read/write API, so it’s not easy to auto-post there. There are ways, but they’re a bit difficult.

Be careful while registering please. There’s a security question. As you might have guessed, the answer is no, but it reports correct/wrong answers 0/1865.

Oh, and enjoy the new generated avatars.

Registration disabled.

Registration on this site is disabled because of the TONS and TONS of spam users. Until I fix it, it will be like this.

But, if you really really really want an account, you can send a message, I’ll add you manually. Send only your username, I’ll email you your password which you can edit later.

Also: just found out that I’ve got 824 spam comments, all in this month (thank you Akismet for blocking them!).

If you know how to block spam effectively, PLEASE contact me.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

PS: still working on Tunnelers, got the main menu almost ready now.

Tunnelers Alpha 2.0 is out.

As promised, the new version is out. With ROCKETS.

Go get it here.

Main changes:

  • ROCKETS!
  • optimized digging system for better FPS
  • outer walls of the map

Full changelog.

From now on, I’m working on getting Tunnelers MULTI-PLAYER. Wish me good luck.

I’m open to any bug reports.

PS: This is probably one of the last versions with the current digging system, cause I caught a glimpse of run-time terrain modification. If I get it running, get ready for digging with smooth edges.