From prototype to a full game #Devlog 1
I'm sure many of you saw the earliest version of Core Splitter, published back in October after it got some coverage from Orbital Potato and Glidercat (Thanks guys!). After a somewhat positive reception and despite a few "Factorio clone" comments I have been working hard to take Core Splitter from a prototype to a real game. Here's an update on how that's been going over the last two months:
A new look and feel
I have ditched most of the assets from the old prototype (left) and replaced them with brand new ones that are now fully animated. Particularly the belts look much better and smoother in motion as they now use a spline path rather than animated sprites.
All animated buildings and new belts
Every building in the game will be fully animated.
New features:
Combat overhaul: I have completely reworked combat. It is now turn based field combat where you deploy your units to a field and they auto-battle the enemy units to capture the site when won. Combat will happen automatically in the background once started, so the panel can be closed.
Drill Underground View: The Core Splitter Drill mechanic is the main mechanic of the game, so it deserved some love. After the prototype stage I decided to make this actually visually drill through tiles and get rewards based on the broken tiles. Some inspiration for this screen was taken from "Drill Core" which is a game I found while researching how I wanted to display the drilling mechanic. Check that out!
New building: Grid controller - power switch for large radius of buildings, can toggle all on/off or toggle power individually in a list, useful when power outages occur.
New Item: Laser Enhancement Module and Simple Laser Enhancement Module and - Inserting these into the Core Splitter Drill adds a bonus to the laser's sideways movement speed.
New building: Science Hub, this unlocks the Technology tree, technology is unlocked with new Dust resource.
Technology tree: This is the last UI to still be overhauled, but here is a preview of what the tree will look like:
Added new global resource "dust". Dust is received early in the game by feeding Drillium into Surface Drill buildings. Later higher tiers of dust are received via the Core Splitter Drill
New Building: Surface Drill - A low surface laser drill that is powered by Drillium to collect Rock Dust.
New Building: - Drone Transporter, connects from any tile (belt/building) to any other tile in it's radius. Can also apply a filter. It is essentially a very long ranged filter inserter (for those familiar).
New Item: Laser Speed Enhancement Module - Inserting these into the Core Splitter Drill adds a bonus to the laser's sideways movement speed.
New Item: Power Cell - up to 3 can be placed in a captured site to boost productivity.
New Character: The old character was too abstract, I have now added a new character, the old character still makes an appearance in the game as a follower that provides extra light when unlocked.
Character has a mining animation, he now uses a laser to collect resources.
New Site: Mole Nest - tier 2 site, when captured, outputs Drill Component that is used to construct the core splitter drill. Contains enemy Drill Mole
New Site: Scorpex Hive - tier 3 site, when captured, outputs Scorpex Spine.
New Map visual, rendered vs unrendered terrain now has a different look. You can now move the map and zoom in and out on the map. This is still going to need another pass to be how I want, but I am struggling a bit with performance for rendering chunks far away.
Smaller additions:
Buildings can no longer connect to each other via input/output, they now always need a belt in between.
Buildings no longer rotate their sprite when rotated, only input/output changes. I have to admit this is done for time saving reasons. Drawing the entire animation from 4 different angles is simply not feasible with my current skill (or lack thereof) and the scope I am aiming for.
Added an "infinite resources" option when creating a world, sets all resources to 999,999 so they will not be exhausted.
Standardized inventory transfer shortcuts for all inputs/outputs (Ctrl+click to transfer full stack, shift-click to transfer half)
When belts are replaced with a new path, keep items on there.
Added option to delete a site
Added a detached camera option, click on a site on the minimap to view it in detached view. Also when losing a site, click then notification to enter detached camera view.
Use of Shaders: I have started experimenting with shaders in Monogame. The results are quite positive, the new character has a few shaders on him and the mining ability is a shader. The entire game has a slight bloom shader and the Drill Detail View laser also has some effects that make it look much nicer than a flat sprite.
Changed map generation distribution, less frequent, larger ore patches
Added a credits section
Changed font, old font was not very legible.
Footsteps/prints from your character when walking
Added intake ports to buildings when connected, the port hides the gap between the belt end and the building where items "enter" or "leave" a building via inputs and outputs.
The dreaded UI overhaul
It was on the agenda for a while already but I was procrastinating. However I managed to get the new UI out, with the help of my wife's UX/UI design skills, she drafted up a Figma from all my old components and spend a few of her free evenings to make a new style guide. That means I am now able to produce new UI for all types of upcoming features along with having converted the full suite of old UI components:
Some old vs new components:
Figma UI file (Thanks to my lovely wife):
Playtest
If you are interested in being an early playtester for this version please reach out to me on Discord https://discord.com/invite/RnhGAXXaKT or shoot me an email at [email protected]. I am actually looking for people to playtest the game in the near future and need feedback on this version. It would be a great help to me, thanks! Closing thoughts
I want to thank everyone who wishlisted the game or showed any kind of interest so far. I am working hard and it encourages me to see so many of you interested. I am aiming for a demo before March 2026 and a full release (Maybe early access) somewhere before July 2026. I have to remind everyone that this is an evening/weekend project and will be my first game release ever, so progress is not as rapid as I would like it and I might make some mistakes along the way, but that's the reality. Thanks everyone and have a great Christmas and new years!
Kind regards,
Levi from Splitter Studio