DevBlog #111 | Foundry Fridays: Blueprint Ghosts
Hello everyone! Two blog posts ago we shared our first preview of the upcoming blueprint system . We asked for feedback about the gamification of the system and the feedback was almost unanimous in asking for it being more than just copy & paste of buildings. Therefore today
Hello everyone!
Two blog posts ago we shared our first preview of the upcoming blueprint system. We asked for feedback about the gamification of the system and the feedback was almost unanimous in asking for it being more than just copy & paste of buildings. Therefore today I present our first iteration of how such a system may look like.
So how do you get it built? Simple: We modified the personal mining drones to become personal “helper drones” (final name pending), which will automatically build ghosts in your vicinity if you have the required item in your inventory.
[previewyoutube=G7bNK2EqTGM;full][/previewyoutube]
This is the first step we’re exploring and right now it feels very promising. We plan to ultimately implement more depth by letting the construction industry buildings build the ghosts as well, but we have some challenges on the game design part to solve first, as they only consume construction material at the moment.
[previewyoutube=qRBwOQEaD08;full][/previewyoutube]
We’re trying to approach this step by step, so for now all focus is on the personal drones. This also opens up a bit more content around character upgrades about improving those drones, so that should be a positive side-effect.
[previewyoutube=xWzEV1uSkng;full][/previewyoutube]Just use demolition mode to cancel a ghost. We’ll also have a toggle for the drones, so you can disable them.
We’ll keep you updated as the system progresses, meanwhile we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Just keep in mind that it’s still early in development!
See you next time,
-mrmcd
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Stay tuned for more news!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/
Original post Blueprint Ghosts
When you place a blueprint you’re now creating a so-called “blueprint ghost” instead of instantly spawning the buildings itself. The ghost acts as a preview of a planned building:
So how do you get it built? Simple: We modified the personal mining drones to become personal “helper drones” (final name pending), which will automatically build ghosts in your vicinity if you have the required item in your inventory.
[previewyoutube=G7bNK2EqTGM;full][/previewyoutube]
This is the first step we’re exploring and right now it feels very promising. We plan to ultimately implement more depth by letting the construction industry buildings build the ghosts as well, but we have some challenges on the game design part to solve first, as they only consume construction material at the moment.
[previewyoutube=qRBwOQEaD08;full][/previewyoutube]
We’re trying to approach this step by step, so for now all focus is on the personal drones. This also opens up a bit more content around character upgrades about improving those drones, so that should be a positive side-effect.
[previewyoutube=xWzEV1uSkng;full][/previewyoutube]Just use demolition mode to cancel a ghost. We’ll also have a toggle for the drones, so you can disable them.
We’ll keep you updated as the system progresses, meanwhile we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Just keep in mind that it’s still early in development!
See you next time,
-mrmcd
Follow us on socials:
Stay tuned for more news!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/
Here's to the next one!
If you only connect one belt, it behaves as you would expect, and with multiple it would kinda act like a splitter/merger. Does that look interesting to you? Or would you prefer the classic approach with single input and output connection? This is just one of many questions, but certainly one of the more important ones.
In case you’re wondering: We don’t plan to remove the freight elevators, as they still serve their own purpose in having higher throughput, being bi-directional and they have the ability to excavate terrain on their own.
We do have a couple other things we’ll soon want to look into, but currently it’s summer time and there’s a bunch of vacations, so things are naturally advancing a bit slower. Stay tuned!
That’s it for today, see you next time!
-mrmcd
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Work in progress.
Work in progress.
We haven’t fully decided yet, but most likely we will merge the Filter Loader’s functionality into the regular Loader, so that every loader can have a filter assigned if needed.
Please keep in mind that the video/image above represents work in progress, and there will be more polishing and things are subject to change. Still we’d like to hear your feedback and thoughts if that looks like a good solution. Let us know in the Steam comments below!
See you next time,
-mrmcd
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Zoom level on the right image increased by ~4 times!
Configuring your assembly line producers was streamlined: If an assembly line producer is connected to a configured assembly line start building, the UI will skip the selection of the product and immediately bring up the action selection. Also you will be able to see if a producer within the assembly line is already taking care of a production step, making it more obvious which further steps remain to be configured.
Last but not least, the snap mode for assembly lines has been improved, making them more comfortable to be placed.
Work in progress
If you played the game for long enough, you have seen our Assembly Lines which are used to make the humanoid robots. Every step is visualized, and you can see the robots being manufactured step by step. That is a very unique feature and we think it deserves more attention, so we’re experimenting with bringing the small Bots to the Assembly Lines as well.
For this to work we need a smaller, more beginner-friendly Assembly Line:
[previewyoutube=_HnySGhd5kY;full][/previewyoutube]Work in progress
We believe this will further help us push some of the more unique mechanics of FOUNDRY into the spotlight and make the game feel more exciting. We’re also working on adding more depth to the commerce part of the game, but that isn’t for today.
What do you think? We’re looking forward to your feedback!
Community Screenshot from Natiri
Community Screenshot from Delicious Desire
Community Screenshot from Avernar
Community Screenshot from Avernar
An alien planet perhaps?
Original power poll design against a neon sky
Chunky asset store art adorned the blocky world of early days Foundry. 
A brief return to the neon skies of Foundry 
Gone were the Minecraft cubes, replaced with bevelled edges 
The orbital laser felt like a core feature to me
Graphical Improvements
Bug Fixes
Pets. Animals. Mobs. Whatever you call them, they deserve something nice. How about you build some sort of pen for them? And while you’re at it, why not something that can enrich their environment.
Xeno Power Plant: Endless power from a complex power plant made out of multiple modular buildings. More details 
More Science Pack 5 Content: Three more assembly line robots and some new components.
Information Overlay: More information about your factory with a brand new info overlay showing various machine states. More details 
Construction Drone: A remote controlled construction drone which makes building your factory more convenient. More details 
New decoratives: A set of glowing neon tubes.
Polishing and Improvements: Lots of polishing, bugfixes and improvements.
Obviously we support branching and merging, and also tracks crossing each other.
It is the same solution most factory games and many simulation games with trains use. I know it needs a bit of time to understand for a beginner, but ultimately we wanted to ensure that complex train solutions will work and that the player has the control needed to make interesting builds. We’ll have an info database page where we’ll try to explain the basics to get started.
We also have helper visualization showing the segments (while having a signal equipped):
For cargo transportation we have a wagon for solid items and one for liquids/gases.
Work in progress
Let's have a look at each of the five new buildings.
Except for the Reactor and the Steam Generator, which need to be connected in a loop, all buildings are to be connected sequentially. We initially thought about going for a more complex mechanic, but ultimately felt that this would be enough to achieve our goals. Those of you familiar with real life nuclear power plants will certainly see the parallels in the design approach, although in reality you’d have up to three loops instead of just one.
Let’s talk about the configurability of the modular buildings next. One of the key features our modular buildings support, is the ability to make buildings with different properties, depending on which or how many modules you use. However, for the power plant we have kept it straight forward, and there is no module tinkering on any of those buildings. The reason is simple: To modify a building, it needs to be shut down and construction can take several minutes. If the power plant is your main source of power, it is just too frustrating to be forced to shut it down as your factory might spiral into a power blackout. If your construction industry runs out of power, you can’t even finish the construction to get the power back up. We do not want to introduce any catastrophic pitfalls like that.
However we went with a different approach: The reactor can be throttled up or down, in steps of 10%, and this affects both power generation and fuel consumption respectively. For each 10% of reactor utilization, you’ll need exactly one Turbine. This allows you to start with a small power plant of, for example, just one or two turbines, which should be enough at the point where it is unlocked. After that you can gradually expand the generation capacity of the plant by building more turbines without the need to shut down the other parts of the plant.
What do you think? Looks good?
We have also started the process of adding more polish on the sound effects side, we have improved a bunch of SFX and are working on improving more. We’re also working on making multiple machines play the same SFX in parallel to sound better. FOUNDRY has a very large amount of sounds, so please do not expect most of them to change with Update 4, but we’re addressing those we believe are the most critical and will continue to do so with future updates. Are there any in particular you believe we should take a look at?
Alright, that concludes this week's blog post. I hope you like the new stuff. We’ll be back in two weeks.
Until then,
-mrmcd
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There are more things in the oven! For example, a remote controllable construction drone which should make early game building more comfortable. However, I won’t be talking much about it today (oh wow, spoilers!), but what I’d like to mention in this episode are a couple other changes we’ve made recently.
The Control Panel will also show how much ore is left in this patch. Truly, a revolution! Some other elements were removed to make the panel easier to read.
Second, item tooltips will have an expanded mode (ALT key) which allows you to immediately bring up the crafting recipe.
As a small bonus, inventory and crafting action hotkeys will be always displayed on the little panel to the right instead of being hidden behind tooltips.
There is more to come from where this came from, so stay tuned and don’t forget to oil your joints!
-Omi
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