Heyo!
This month was a big one for Exofactory.
I finished a lot of important factory-building pieces, including better belts, cleaner building placement, baseplates, and major improvements to how the Exoframe and Global Mode feel.
You can read the full technical post here A Really Big One: Exoframe Feel, Finished Belts, & Baseplates.
Belts Are Much Better Now
Belts now look and behave much closer to how I want them to. They can handle straight lines, clean 90-degree turns, weird angles, and tight connections to buildings.
Items also follow the belt surface properly, even across curves, which makes the whole thing feel much smoother.
You can also raise belts while placing them, so crossing uneven ground or other factory parts is much easier.
Buildings Can Snap Into Place
Factories are much easier to organize now. Buildings can snap to inputs and outputs on other buildings, making it easier to line machines up cleanly.
This should make factory layouts feel much cleaner.
Baseplates Are In
Baseplates are now fully working. You can place them in grids, expand them, shrink them, and build factories on top of them.
They also carry power to buildings placed on them, so you do not need to manually wire every machine.
Larger baseplate grids need substations to bring enough power in from the main grid.
The Exoframe Feels More Like A Real Thing
After showing the game at RustWeek, I got a lot of useful feedback. One big takeaway was that the player should feel more connected to the little robot body, the Exoframe.
So I added things like a better HUD, camera effects, lens details, movement feel, and stronger sounds.
Global Mode also has a more distinct transition now, so switching between the robot and the factory-wide view feels more meaningful.
Thanks
This was one of the biggest progress months so far. The game is feeling more like itself, and the factory-building tools are getting much nicer to use. Thanks for following along, and if you want the deeper technical version, the full post is here: Read the full Exofactory dev blog
~ Cait