Greeting engineers!
This is Alimen, the developer of Alan's Automaton Workshop.
Time flies, it had been three weeks after the launch of AAW. New engineers from all over the world came to the city of Grantabridge and the community grow steady. It's such exciting to receive all the suggestions and advice from you guys – and I'm very very happy to be able to grow under your help!
First thing first, please allow me to rewind a little bit, to review the change which is inspired by you:
1. The 'Quick Test' button allows players to speed up the test run immediately.
2. About renaming the devices: We add the 'Rename Device' button in Build 30130, to make the diagram more readable.
The 'rename' button only affect the device that created by player. The devices given by the level has its own place, so they are not allowed to rename now. Once the sand box mode is out, since all the devices are created by player, there will be no restriction.
3. The "You may not get both of certifications with one design" hint is added for the achievers who is eager to get all the certifications in game but frustrated of guessing what to do in a level. Please noted that, for example in level 2-3, an experienced player might still figure out the way to get both certifications with one single design, so we have to emphasize the 'may' part.
4. We also get a boost to the memories window and the dialogue system. A 'watched' checkmark in the memories window to mark the conversation you had read and an 'exit' icon on dialogue option which will end the conversation.
Phew! That's a lot! But here comes the part that everyone looking forward to:
How will AAW progress in the future?
The following is the future roadmap we'd summarized from your kindly suggestions. Here it goes!
1. The long-awaited 'NOT' operator update!
It will be our first major update at the end of February. By the help of this new operator, we can significantly reduced the mouse clicks to create a "if NOT … take this Transition" condition and bring more flexibility to the diagram.
The 'NOT' operator will be available in level 2-3 and come with a little tutorial about it.
2. Improved tutorials, hints and UI!
In the very same update, we'll also introduce couple improvements concerned by the communities that helps the game more friendly to everyone. Including the difficulty change to Chapter II – There'll be more tutorials and hints about Switch Array and the loop structure.
At the same time, we'll also make some adjustment to the movement rule of the Edit Panel – It will be more like a dockable window on the screen and only minimize when it needed to. We believe the change can help us flatten the learning curve of our UI system. You can also enable / disable this new feature in the option.
3. Language MOD
The tutorial of installing or making your own language mod will be available in the next week. Struggle to invite a player who didn't read English / Chinese / Russian? That's the way you did it!
4. The introduction of new puzzles
They will be slightly delayed until the first week of March. There'll be a new issue of Automaton Journal available in the reader desk in the library, including 2 or 3 simpler puzzles about the NOT logic and a harder challenge. Welcome back to do some warmup!
5. The schedule of the second major update is still rough
The only thing can be sure is it will include the difficulty adjustments of Chapter III by adding the tutorial of binary numbers and more hints to the levels. The manual / reference of hardware devices will be added in the same update.
6. The sandbox mode
Which is still in progress. Sadly I can't tell when it will be done now, but I can promise that I'll notify you as soon as I can.
7. IP Products
We are about to publish the much-anticipated official artbook and soundtrack in the next season. Sorry for the delay, but we never forget about them!
8. Others
We'd received a lot of friendly messages from other developers who is also focus on programming games since our launch, so there'll be a bundle on the schedule (yes!). As we promised before, the Demo of AAW will be available just before the bundle is ready. For the engineer who haven't make up your mind, a little patient is all you need.
And that's all for now!
Once again, Thanks for all the help, all the supports and all the recommendations from you, the amazing automaton engineers. May the Alan's Automaton Workshop become better and better. Thank you! 🙏