This past week I took on the challenge of reworking the games conveyor belts. The old conveyors were more of less a quick and dirty implementation of the feature that did what they needed to do given where the game’s development was. As things have progressed, they have become increasingly in need of an overhaul. So, while a good portion of the code could be reused, I went back to the drawing board, literally I got out the old white board, and laid out what I wanted from them. Not all the features I want made it into this first build of course, but they were planned for and designed around as best I could.
The biggest change is that conveyors are no longer a 2x2x2 and now only occupy a single grid space. While this change does make it feel like they are too small at first the possibilities that it opens up are massive for building. This also allowed (and required) for items to have their size reduced by half making them much more reasonable proportion wise as well as manageable. Conveyors now are limited to a single input from the three options (back, right, left). They will search for other conveyors that have their output set to one of their inputs as well as buildings that have inventories they can extract from (i.e., chests). An ability to override this and set its input direction manually will come in a later build. This has the added benefit that when the conveyor has an input defined to the side it can adapt itself to being a right or left turn with its own model and have items animate the turn as they move.
Here is a little preview of what the new conveyors look like taken directly from this week’s build. Please be aware that with the size change old saves that have any conveyors in them will likely break.
Conveyor ramps have yet to be updated so they have been disabled for now but the new code and size reduction should make them far less problematic this time around.
Engineer Alpha Changelog v0.1.9
• Updated Manual crafting table UI
• Reduced the rate at which Labs consume parts by a factor of 5
• Increased player observation range to 8 meters
• Added an error message if an object is too far away to be reached
• The tech tree now remembers your scroll location within a single play session
• Added range indicator when an object is observed with text color change if out of range
• Potato seeds can now be crafted from the start of the game, place them in a patch of dirt and a
potato plant will grow. This will likely move into a farming tech eventually.
• Conveyor belts have been reworked! Conveyor belts now only take up a 1x1 block space so if you are updating, please remove any that are built in your world.
• Conveyor ramps have been disabled temporarily. They are still a work in progress and will be reenabled soon.
• Items on conveyors now correctly animate corners.
• Most character action controls can now be rebound from the controls menu.
• Added a search bar to the Cheat menu