World of Shiny Stuff - News

Kickstarter campaign for gold mining game

2017-07-08T22:19:27+10:00

For those of you pining for some mining in those winter months, check out Gold Rush: The Game on Kickstarter.

If you support the Kickstarter campaign, each Wednesday they send out demo keys for Steam to backers. The demo is pre-alpha but surprisingly playable.

The Kickstarter campaign ends 1st of August with the game scheduled for release sometime around September.

GPX file downloading will be temporarily disabled

2016-01-17T10:32:15+10:00

Due to large number of downloads, I will be temporarily disabling downloading of gpx files. I will re-enable this feature once I have a better way of managing the bandwidth.

Introducing the new Global Map feature

2015-11-01T14:45:27+10:00

After getting a little frustrated with no being able to see a bigger picture of locations sometimes, I decided that I needed something more dynamic and on a grander scale.

Inspired by office/store locators, I set myself to the task and came up with what I'm toting as the Global Map.

It's not perfect yet, it takes a few seconds to load the locations once you stop moving around or zooming.

All locations will be viewable once you zoom right on in (for those so inclined at zoom level 15).

I am aware that it behaves a little odd when you are zoomed almost all the way out - I will fix this once I find out why

Unallocated VIC locations have now all been allocated

2015-07-19T12:51:26+10:00

All the Victorian locations have all been assigned to a region. I had to use some 'creative license' when assigning some of them in the part of VIC that I've been referring to as the 'Eastern Wilderness'. If anybody wants to offer better regions for some of those spots I am more than willing to make the adjustments.

Queensland will be my next target, with Tasmania to follow.

Unallocated NSW locations have now all been allocated

2015-06-03T16:35:46+10:00

It's only taken me about 2 months, but I have now finally assigned all the unallocation NSW to a region, making them now browseable through the 'Fossicking By Location' menu. Previously they could only be found by searching.

Next on the schedule will be Victoria

GPX file generation support now added

2015-05-24T12:35:37+10:00

I have now added in the ability to generate .gpx files on the fly. Currently I have only coded this in for single locations, or for single regions, however the underlying code to actually produce the .gpx file can handle multiple of each. The capability to do multiple locations/regions will be added shortly, as well as the ability to export an entire state (or states).

The files generated are GPX version 1.1 compatible and may not work on older devices.

Photos can now be associated to a location

2015-04-18T16:55:10+10:00

Recently a member of a forum I participate in offered me some photos for a location he had given me the details for. His reasoning was that it would help people find the location easier if they can see what it looks like, and not just the stale top down views that Google maps provides. As I thought about it, I realised this was a fantastic idea so set myself to the task of implementing it right away.

The result I think looks good but still needs some improvement (it doesn't handle images of diferent sizes very well).

Take a look at Lowmead for an example - just scroll on past the Google map.

Needless to say, if a location doesn't have an photos associated with it, you will not see that section

Large number of new sites added

2015-04-05T12:35:47+10:00

As previously mentioned, I've added a large number of new locations today - 18108 in fact. These are all current and former gold mines across the country. You won't find any of these yet be browsing through the "Fossicking By Location" menu, but they can be found using the search functionality e.g. To find the new sites for NSW, search for "NSW Unallocated". I will over the coming weeks tidy up the data, and fill it out some more, and then assign it to a proper region.

The "Fossicking By Location" menu behaviour has changed slightly

2015-03-29T16:34:33+10:00

I started adding a lot of locations (13000+) in my test environment and found the site was not coping with such large numbers. So to fix this I changed it from 3 to 2 levels, and made the 2nd level a link. The linked page will then display the list of locations for that region.

This is being done to support me doing bulk location imports, which I expect I will start doing next weekend.

Locations can now have boundaries

2015-03-21T17:34:52+10:00

I have now added in the ability to have overlays on the map of a location to show you the boundaries of where you an fossick at that spot. Take a look at Tomahawk Creek for an example of a site I have populated with this information