Hi
This is my first devlog about Outpost Engineer. As such I'd like to introduce myself.
About me
I am the solo developer of Outpost Engineer.
I've been a gamer for a long time. I'm also a software developer. I've dabbled with many smaller projects in the past, and started to create this game because I wanted to create something I enjoy playing,
and wanted to finally combine my skills as a developer with something I love doing.
I am heavily inspired by other great factory automation games and base building games such as factorio, satisfactory, fortresscraft evolved, oxygen not included and more.
Current Status
I've been working on Outpost Engineer for a while now, and as such, the foundations of the game are already there.
Gameplay
As for gameplay, I have currently implemented what you could call the first tier of processing and factory automation:
Smelting tin, copper and bronze.
Creating products from bars, such as copper wires, bronze gears, tin plates.
A transportation system, consisting of conveyor belts and splitters. Inserters can pull resources from belts or containers and pass them to machines.
An electrical grid system, and an electricity generator.
Constructors and Assemblers which can take products and make more complex products (such as more conveyor belts, inserters, etc).
A research system, based on analyzing resources, generating datacubes, and communicating those back to earth, in exchange for blueprints.
A day and night system, and torches and streetlights to illuminate the darkness.
Tech
The voxel based rendering of the terrain is 'chunk' based and works smoothly. I'm using a home grown shader to render the terrain. It uses barycentric coordinates to blend voxels of different types at the edges.
Image: The wall is made out of three types of wood patterns. The lamppost is plain concrete. The floor is built from concrete tiles.
The textures are stored in texture arrays, allowing me to add new textures for terrain and structures as I see fit. I currently have about 80 different texture/voxel types, which include several variants of concrete, wood, and metal textures.
I'm going for a bit of a steampunk and concrete look for the game (at least the factory part). I plan an adding more textures as I go on.
The rendering uses a marching cubes algorithm for the voxels, which means you won't be seeing block worlds.
The terrain is, depending on the voxel type, smooth (grasslands, hills and mountains) or chunky (when you build walls and floors for example).
Image: A manually built structure, at night. Some copper and tin metal panels included.
All 3d assets (products, machines, ...) are currently also built out of voxel models.
Image: Some bronze gears, copper wires and tin plates.
The user interface is largely functional, with a main menu, mappable keys, configuration settings and detail pages on selected machines, crafting stations and more.
A save system is in place. Save files will be per world, and saving is done automatically (when you exit, when changes happen to the terrain, and at regular intervals).
Plans
While the current game is already somewhat playable and enjoyable I have a lot more plans though. I also have more polishing to do before I can release the game.
My current expectation is to be able to release the game, as early access, in June 2021.
More devlogs will follow.
You can also find me on Twitter (see external links) where I regularly post screenshots and small videos about the development progress.
Thank you for reading!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1433470/Outpost_Engineer/