Greetings fellow Golems!
James and I have been working hard to wrap up Shared Workload and are nearly there - so close in fact that we considered releasing it this week. We decided that a little more time in the oven would be best given how anticipated this multiplayer update is before we push it to the main branch. In the meantime, we wanted to go over the finer details about what's being added, what's changing and encourage everybody to try out the update in Experimental.
Multiplayer
After months upon months of development time, Multiplayer is finally in a good place. While it took a considerable effort to relocate most of the game's systems architecture, the real struggle was catching and fixing all the wonderful new bugs that appeared. Thanks to everybody's help testing, we are confident it is in a stable enough place to deliver to the main branch very soon.
For Multiplayer itself - it is simple and easy to host a world and join a friend's game. To get a game going you can browse friend's sessions via menu, use Steam Invites, use a special Join Code or even connect directly with an IP address.
Playing together is a fully cooperative experience, with progression being shared. Key Resources are also shared - Ancient Tech, Void Matter and even the new Trinkets (more on those below) - so no need to fight over upgrades!
We look forward to everybody being able to play with their friends and family to create some wonderful, collaborative, "technically functional" spaghetti factories!
The Cosmetics Aisle
With Multiplayer, we knew it would be confusing to have a bunch of identical looking players running around so this update also introduces our new Cosmetics system! Using the Mainframe, under one of two new tabs, players can freely customize their Golem. We have a handful of skins in, with different color palettes available and for the time being have made them all available by default.
In the future we will be locking most if not all skins behind various quests and achievements, but for now please enjoy the full selection of options available. Now that we have the system implemented, we will also be adding many more skins and palettes as time goes on - this has been a really exciting feature for us but required a lot of work to set up, so we're thrilled to now have this system finalized. What's your favorite skin and why is it the cat on Otto's head?
Decorations
With the Multiplayer update we also wanted to introduce more player expression and more variety in gameplay! Sometimes some of us just need a break from building sprawling factories and want to chill and decorate a little house or hovel! Decor items are here to the rescue and are very simple to craft - using only core Matter materials (Biomass, Mana, Metal, Mineral, and Fabric), you can indulge in over 50 different objects and structures to decorate the world. To begin we have several decoration themes, exploring the furnishing styles of the denizens of AutoForge - the regal Corvus and the down-to-earth Pookas each have their own sets, rounded out with a full range of Ancient Decor too. You might also find a few more ethereal pieces among these initial offerings....
As mentioned previously we also have some gorgeous new craftable tilesets to fully round out the new Decor sets that are incoming too. All of the above will be found in a new crafting category for Decor, and much like Cosmetics will all be fully unlocked for the time being. We can't wait for you to check these out and hear what you'd like to see in future! Let's spruce up the place!
Exploration Redesign
In our previous announcement we hinted at our exploration redesign and today we want to give you some of the juicy details. Our motivations for the changes are simple: make exploration exciting and rewarding. This has translated into what we think of as incentives and resistances.
Incentives are things that are supposed to draw you out of the factory noodling into the world. They include things such as obtaining rare items to use in your factory, finding resource nodes, unlocking cosmetics/trinkets/decor, and even just finding cool points of interest.
Resistances are how the world challenges you and gets you to make considerations and problem solve. They include things such as a brand-new Energy System, reduced initial jumping capabilities, fall damage and environmental hazards. These aren't as exciting on paper, but they give the world depth and make exploration and rewards more meaningful.
The Energy system is probably the biggest addition - making all of Otto's abilities consume a small amount of power that gets recharged whenever he is close to Apotheos, Conduits, Factory Power Relays or other discoverable world sources. When depleted, Otto will lose advanced movement abilities, and his mining/combat efficiency will be decreased, so it's a good idea to recharge when it starts to get low.
We do anticipate experienced AutoForgers to feel unnecessarily bound by the introduction of some of these resistances but ask that you humor and give them a little time to adjust to see how they make the game feel to you. We will also say that between additional new upgrades and the aforementioned Trinkets that there are new bonuses that can negate these pushbacks and even take some abilities beyond their previous bounds. So do check things out, and please do let us know how you get on with them!
Shiny Trinkets
Trinkets have already been teased a little, but what exactly are they... ? Trinkets are unique, global items that can be found throughout the world and equipped at the Mainframe. Equipping a Trinket provides unique bonuses that allow you to pick some extra upgrades to suit your playstyle, such as stat buffs, an additional jump, negation to fall damage, and even increasing harvesting area to allow for up to 4x4! Each Trinket has a point cost associated, so choosing your Trinket loadout requires its own optimization, but they are freely changed under the second new tab at the Mainframe at any time.
A little like cosmetics, Trinkets will have slightly different unlock requirements in the future, but for now all 19 of the current selection will be unlocked via special chests found throughout the world.
Quests, Tutorials & Journaling with Otto
One of our goals with this update was to revamp the tutorial system and untangle the main story from it. Ultimately, we landed on introducing a full-fledged quest system with a dedicated Journal that will allow folks to have better control over managing these and future activities, as well as manage associated unlocks and rewards. Please note there is no new story content in this update - for the next major update we are planning to add many smaller quests that will make use of the new system, as well as expand upon the world. There may or may not be a Quest Board popping up at a certain tavern... More on that another time.
Along with this new system and other changes to the HUD (if you're looking for your current quest progress it's on the other side of the screen now), we are also adding something we've called Large Notifications. These are brief pop ups, separate from the notification tray that will display major events like unlocks and story progression, we think they're helpful!
The Guidebook
Along with our tutorial revamp we are introducing a proper Guidebook that fills in the blanks with complicated systems that either don't quite fit into the tutorial or might require extra guidance to interpret. It covers most of the advanced topics in the game - from the Toolbar to Phase Stations, with new additions unlocking at the appropriate times as you progress. We didn't want to break up the gameplay or create UI noise, so we've kept it as a separate window and look at the Guidebook as an optional supplement that assists with clarifying/refreshing any details as needed.
Dive Into Shared Workload
While full release is very soon, we would like to invite everybody who is interested to give Shared Workload a go over on the Experimental Branch. So far in testing it has iterated its way through 20 patches with countless bug fixes and improvements, but we really need as many people as possible to help us break it before it hits the main branch.
If you're willing to participate as test subject, back up your saves and check it out now!
Obviously any and all testing of the update is fantastic, but multiplayer sessions are especially helpful. If you know another Golem or 3 who can test with you then even better- players have also been linking up over on our Discord too!
We're excited to share this finished update with you soon and thank you for your patience as we work on ironing out the final kinks!
Jasson and James