We are now less than two months away before Outpost Engineer releases as early access on Steam.
A large part of my time is currently dedicated to polishing the codebase, doing some test play-throughs, and just making sure everything works.
However, seeing that does not make a very interesting devlog, I figured I talk a bit about the current threat mechanic that is present on the volcanic island.
Spoiler Warning: this is a bit of a spoiler so skip the text if you want to play without pre-existing knowledge (but on the other hand it is no secret either).
Pollution
Currently, most machines generate pollution, some more than others.
The world threat comes in the form of an aggressively growing fungal organism that consumes pollution to grow.
The game world is divided into segments called 'chunks' which are 16x16x16 voxels big.
The pollution slowly accumulates at the chunk level, until it reaches a certain threshold. This pollution can spread to neighboring chunks to some extent.
When the pollution becomes too high however, fungal spores will materialize in the air. They take down a little pollution, and will float around until they hit the terrain.
They are slightly easier to spot at night, but you'll also hear them popping into existence.
Bulbs
When they hit the terrain, they can instantly grow a 'creep bulb' ( some kind of fungal fruiting body) if there isn't one yet in the vicinity and the conditions are favorable.
They will also deposit a small amount of 'mycelium', which is the vegetative part of the fungus. This mycelium can be removed with the pickaxe.
Once spawned, Creep bulbs will consume (and hence reduce) pollution to grow. Their growing tactics vary according to the surroundings:
1. If they sense an electrical machine in the vicinity, they will try and grow a tentacle towards it. When they reach the machine, they will sap a small amount of energy from your network.
2. If not, they just grow locally, consuming pollution and converting it into a bulky mycelium body.
3. They may also periodically spawn a toxic cloud, which can damage the player and slow down conveyors temporarily. The cloud cannot pass solid terrain, and will dissipate in time.
4. If pollution is low, they remain dormant.
Defense
At first you'll probably need to cleanup the growths manually. You can also take the creep bulbs themselves down.
Once you unlock the research for it however, you can build turrets and produce ammo.
Turrets will scan their surroundings for airborne spores and shoot them down. They will also shoot at mycelium growths themselves, slowly chipping them away, and thus cleaning up your factory for you.
The more advanced ammunition can also take down creep bulbs directly.
This mechanic is not meant to overwhelm your base, while providing some pressure it is mostly meant to challenge the player to build more and diversify production, as opposed to creating a game losing situation.
In time, additional gameplay mechanics may be conceived around harvesting these growths. Currently they provide good value for research points.
Thanks for reading!
BTW: If you are interested in participating in a limited closed beta (3 weeks), make sure to check our discord for details (which will be posted very soon).