Last week, we held a Developer AMA on the official Techtonica Discord. We received a lot of great questions from our community over the open submission window.
This week, we shared our answers. While we absolutely invite you to join the Discord to read all of them—and connect with like-minded factory builders and sci-fi lovers—we wanted to share a few of our favorite questions and answers here.
Away we go!
Is the world procedural or handcrafted?
The world of Techtonica is handcrafted.
We want to tell a really compelling story in Techtonica, and part of building that strong narrative relies on our ability to intentionally shape and mold the world to meet our story’s needs. We can’t do everything we want to do with a completely procedurally generated world.
Related to the world gen/creation, how large scale is the map going to be? Relative to whether it's handcrafted or infinitely procedural?
The world in Techtonica is big. We may have handcrafted open spaces, but the destructible terrain means players will be able to carve out their own factory floors as they look to expand. This goes in vertical directions, too, as you’ll be able to dig and build multi-layer structures.
We won’t use words like infinite or procedural, but players will have an opportunity to make their factories sprawl.
There will also be massive ore veins buried deep within Calyx rock caverns that will require serious excavation to reach. There will be enough resources to last 1000s of hours alone.
What are your thoughts on various environmental hazards throughout the world?
In a word: yes. Your question sort of answers itself here, but we’ve absolutely discussed and are working on environmental hazards and considerations for players. We have some cool ideas (the trailer hints at a few), and we will have more information regarding mechanics like hazards soon.
Will there be any PVE content?
While there is no combat, there will be environmental hazards and challenges for players to solve, mitigate, and exploit. It’s important for us to make environmental challenges that both apply pressure to players and create opportunities to advance their factories.
Will there be any PVP content?
There will not be any PVP content. While we enjoy various kinds of games (including those with combat and PVP!) we, as a studio, choose not to make violence one of the core focuses of our games.
We’ve joked around internally about using the M.O.L.E. (that’s the tool that fires black holes to cut into the rocks of Calyx) to bury co-op partners in massive holes. PVP? Not really. Still fun.
Will there be liquids? (that can be used to craft things or do other stuff)
Yes, we have plans for liquids. In fact, there’s a lot of excitement internally about what liquids can do for a lot of the dynamic systems in Techtonica.
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If you have any questions about Techtonica, we encourage you to bring them to our Discord. We will hold AMAs like this one regularly.
-Fire Hose
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/