Running Pixel's official development Blog. Running Pixel is a multiplatform indie games development team with several games published; this blog is maintained by Alfio Lo Castro, team founder, game designer and lead programmer.
WRLDCRAFT is ready for an important step, the OPEN BETA stage!
This means that everyone can test from now on this game giving suggestions, feedback and helping me in catching bugs and bottlenecks.
Please fell free to share these links with everyone. The more test, the better.
Every beta tester is allowed to grab as many plot of land he wants for free! (please do not abuse :D)
Note:This open beta is limited to 20000 users (10k android and 10k iOS)
WRLDCRAFT has a story, a long story.
Everything starts in the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) age, good bless you XBLIG, platform and market where in 2012 I made a quite successful Minecraft Like sanbox game called Miner4Ever. XBLIG market does not exist anymore but loved that game and I learned a lot about voxel engines, shading techniques and multiplayer.
It was not enough, I wanted to port it in the real world and IRL. After some attempts with marker based AR (I lost the videos of that) the true plot twist was in 2017 when I put my hands on a mobile device with Google Tango in, that is a precursor of current ARKit and ARCore and this is what I did in early 2017 (a tech show-off video, not a real game).
So digging and building in real world with persistence using Augmented Reality was totally doable. Unfortunately there were not many Tango enabled phones around, so I put the project in standby waiting for a diffuse technology letting me do a real game with all the features I dreamt.
Today ARKit and ARCore are mature enough to do what I have in mind. Persitence, cross platform, world anchored buildings, cooperative building, multiplayer experience and much more.
Two months ago I leaved my daily job as Technical Leader, resumed my old dream, worked hard, and this is how WRLDCRAFT project is born!
It's out! Grab your free beta release of Miner4Ever facebook edition right now. We need you! Be one of our beta tester, the more you play the more awesome the game will be.
Today, ok tonight... here in Italy is 2.30 AM... I'm going to put in playtest my latest XBLIG game, the first after a long long pause.
I'm very proud of this game because I did everything on my own, code, game-play and graphics with except for the BoxArt and the menu backgrounds that are a Benedetta's creation.
What is Miner4ever?
It's more than a Minecraft style game, it's a mining game with several browser games and RTS gameplay elements.
Start building your empire! Mine resources, dig and build structure to increase you hourly production. Miner4Ever will update your production even when you're not playing with it. Miner4Ever is a game where the classic mine crafting game meets the online real time strategy.
Here some screenshots:
Soon a gameplay footage and further details.
In the case you have a XNA Membership you could download and playtest the game on the AppHub right now.
