Gold Rush! - Expanded Edition

It's 1849, and there's gold in those hills! You've got to get your gold, coal, and rubies to market by building bridges for your mining cars. A variety of valleys, ditches, waterways, and canyons lie between you and your destination. As a poor miner, your building supplies are limited to small numbers of wood girders, logs, rope, and track.

Your score is determined by how much of your hard-won treasure makes it to the other side of the crossing without falling out of a rail cart, but also by how much stress was placed on the bridge during your crossing. While crossing, your bridge may experience stress and strain that weakens it over time.

Gold Rush uses some of the principles of civil engineering to create stable structures. Creating bridges using randomly-connected girders, cables, and stone will probably not turn out well. Instead, you'll need to think like an engineer. Will a rectangular or triangular girder structure provide less strain on the girder joints? Does it make more sense to attach rope near the beginning and end, or near the middle? How can you use logs, which are similar to wood girders but fixed-length, to best support your girders and track.

You should also consider the physical properties of wood and rope, and how the sheer and tension caused by the weight of your rail cars affects your construction. On some crossings, rope may provide additional support from above, but they are also limited in quantity.

Several user controls are available, including zoom in/zoom out, grid overlay toggle, show/hide bottom controls, reset the entire level, undo, and delete (the "X" icon). This should be fairly obvious based on the icon. At the far right, bottom corner is an up/down arrow to toggle the bottom control bar display.

Many of us have built bridges with toothpicks in school projects, or created a sturdy structure with a limited number of tools and materials. We all know how challenging - and rewarding - this can be. Now you can have that kind of fun in your pocket or purse all the time with Gold Rush!

If you believe that you have achieved an optimal bridge for the level, please take a screenshot of your bridge (or just a normal camera picture!), and post it to the Gold Rush Facebook wall at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gold-Rush/156910021089507

Or, if you're having difficulty finding a good solution for a particular level, check our Facebook page for ideas and comments from other Gold Rush users. Also checkout "Link!", a similar train simulation game.

Let the Gold Rush begin!

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Developers! I'm now making 100% of the source code for this app available at the following URL:

http://www.sellfy.com/digitalmeme

This app was created using the Corona SDK.

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In version 2.0.0, all images have been optimized for a quicker load time.