Hey Autonomics,
It's been a while, our team has been so hard at work, oomf. Just a quick update for you on where we're at with our upcoming update.
This V3 update is pretty chunky. We still have to reorganize a few major systems to put the project on stronger rails going forward. Let me quickly run through what's coming next and what got improved and modified.
Load and Save
We now have a fully, properly functioning load and save system. You'll no longer need to exit your game to the main menu just to save (lol, brutal, I know). Now you've got a mature system where you can save right from the Escape menu, name your saves, all that good stuff. You'll love it.
Bullet Proof Watering
Oh man, this one was annoying. We've watched you struggle with the watering system for two updates now. I think we finally got it under control. We fully rewrote the watering logic, and now it waters exactly the plot you're highlighting, no misses, no wasted water.
Fertilizer System
We're introducing our first fertilizers to the game. It's a new system that lets you apply fertilizers to boost or protect your plants during their growth period. We'll start with just a few and expand the selection over time, shaped by what you want to see.
Supply Relay and Contractors
In this update we're introducing a system that lets you properly earn Bucks (our in game currency). You'll need to build a station called the Supply Relay. It's a pretty cool looking machine with keys on the sides that move based on how full its storage is.
You can pick up contracts from different (virtual, for now) NPCs who show up in your in game messenger app with their material requests. Each contractor comes from their own industry. For example:
Grace supplies smart drones and precision parts to crews who need dependable tech in the field. He prefers thoughtful vendors who deliver clean, reliable components without the usual hassle.
Kurt owns Odyssey, a trucking company that delivers goods for businesses across West Cope. He is looking for reliable part vendors who can keep his fleet running strong.
April is a field veterinarian who helps ranchers keep their animals healthy, calm, and productive. She often orders animal products, care supplies, and specialized equipment to support her work across remote farms.
And there are more. For each contract you'll build a Supply Relay and assign the contract to it. From there you can drop produced materials into the Relay by hand, or connect conveyor lines for the bigger production requests. Each contractor has Relationship levels too. As you level them up, they'll offer new technologies and in game unlocks.
Plasma Cutter Multitool
The game got so rich with functionality that we started drowning in tool juggling, a separate tool for every little thing. You needed an axe for chopping trees, a pickaxe for mining stone and breaking boxes, a hoe for plots, and so on. Now you only need one tool that's dynamically contextual.
It doesn't have modes you toggle, it switches based on what you're aiming at. Aim at a tree and it goes into chopping mode, aim at rocks and you can mine them, and so on.
It opens up great options for upgrades down the line, and it's super intuitive and fun. Later on you'll capture animals and other living creatures with it too. And here's the cool part, most of the old hand tools still work in the game, like the pickaxe and axe. Making plots with the multitool is a blast \\o/
Optimization and World Interaction Improvements
Some of our devs were heads down on performance. We reworked our foliage distribution and rendering systems, and now we not only got performance gains there, we can also push trees and bushes out to a much further horizon.
This gives us strong CPU wins, and I hope some of your machines will appreciate that. We also reworked the grass distribution and rendering system, which gives us breathing room on both the GPU and CPU sides. On lighting, we did a bunch of optimization and tweaks, and slightly desaturated the world to tone down those super mega overpowering colors on your screen.
Bush and Rocks Destruction
With the new multitool you can now clear areas of unwanted rocks and bushes, and of course, while you're at it, grab some spare resources from them.
Optimized, Updated Playable Characters
We replaced our old characters with new models and an updated rig for animations. The goal was performance gains, more mature visuals, and bumping up the average age of our characters.
This change also let us finally introduce the clothing swap system. You'll be able to find clothing out in the world and swap it onto your character through the inventory.
A little later, clothing pieces will add buffs or debuffs. You'll run slightly faster with no pants and no shoes, but the stumping damage will catch you off guard at times, so take your pants off with caution.
Keep in mind the characters you're playing right now are just temp placeholders. Down the line you'll build your own character at the start of the game. Character motion got a little better too, with snappier controls.
Localization System Update and Rewrite
We had to circle back to our localization system. This is what handles all the text you see in the game, and it was junky, creating a lot of conflicts when our devs were working on text fields at the same time. It's in great shape now, which means we can finally start translating the game. We'll begin rolling out other languages in upcoming updates.
Full Controller Support (almost)
This update brings full controller support. The reason we say "almost" is that it still needs to go through rigorous testing with you. With controllers, everyone tends to have pretty different preferences for how buttons and shortcuts should work. We'll keep maintaining and improving it going forward.
Electricity and Data System
We polished and improved the electricity system. Guess what.. you can now delete wires without reinstalling your game /s lol. On top of that, we added multilevel positioning for poles, so you can choose how high you want your poles to be, and you can even run your wires underground!
We also added electric grid customization through a new machine, the Electric Terminal. It lets you track the details of your grid, like how many generators you have and how many things are drawing power. You can customize each grid individually too, choosing wire color, glow intensity, and even assigning a name to individual grid setups.
Solar panels now properly track sunlight and respond to environmental conditions. Fog and clouds can affect their generation, and so can their rotation and position in the world. Windmills generate more power when placed at higher elevation.
We're also introducing the Data Receiver antenna. You'll need it to feed Data to machines that require it, and it comes with its own poles and fiber wire that you'll need to craft.
Weather and Season Adjustments
A year lasts a few hours longer now, and weather has been further balanced and tweaked. Springs are windy and rainy, summers can be scorching, falls are cool, rainy and foggy, and winter, well, it's winter, snow and all that. One cool thing we added with the snow is that it now accumulates on the ground based on how hard it's snowing and the season/temperature. You'll see it melt as things warm up and pile up faster during blizzards. We also updated the rain particle visuals, we've got lit particles now and they look great.
Updated Quests and System Rework
We updated our Quest system, which was creating tons of limitations for us. We can now have multidirectional quests, meaning you can choose to chase side quests and progress toward different areas like farming, home improvements, and so on. It's a massive system and it got us a bit tangled. The quests and story themselves are getting updated too, and we're starting to introduce the game's lore and story. Some quests were deprecated, and some new ones took their place.
Indoor Facilities
We built a system that lets us have indoor facilities. Autonomica isn't only about surviving the surface world, you'll also start learning more about the lore and the story. We're building interconnected underground facility networks, great places for loot and future Phantom encounters. With this update we'll introduce a small piece of our Biolab, where Autonomics (the engineers in this world) were running experiments on cucumbers, and one of them escaped, stilling lead lab scientist Vera Koval.
First-ever NPC Introduction: Yuna
In the Biolab you'll meet Yuna, locked out after an incident. Yuna Ren is a young Autonomica research assistant from Koval Lab 03. A little snippet from her bio:
She is highly intelligent, kind, and still idealistic enough to believe science should help people understand the unknown rather than dominate it. She isn't naive because she lacks knowledge, she's naive because she still expects intelligence, empathy, and procedure to matter when dealing with something that has already outgrown all three. She's seen enough at Autonomica to stay functional under pressure, but this incident has crossed into something personal, because Vera is involved.
We don't have the relationship system fully developed yet, so for now you'll have basic interactions with Yuna. A little later you'll be able to learn more about her and her story.
Centrifuge
The Centrifuge station lets you process different liquids. You'll be able to create drinkable water, reagents, electrolytes, acids, and other liquid chemical substances. We're also introducing Filters you can use in recipes for producing chemical substances. It comes with its own snazzy user interface.
Inventory Management Improvements
You can now use shortcuts to split items in your inventory and assign them to slots with double clicks and shift clicks. We also added a completely new system that lets you drop items on the ground (ground-breaking tech lol), but trust me, it was harder than it sounds thanks to our internal logistics structures.
FuBar Interaction System
Some items in the world are locked behind an interactive Breaching system. You'll need to craft a special tool, the FuBar, that lets you breach elements on the map through a mini game. When you start breaching to extract valuable modules from machines scattered around the world, you'll face a minigame of pressing arrows up, down, left, and right, amaze. This system is designed to create intense moments in future multiplayer, when you're breaching something, other players will hear it and start heading your way.
New Materials and Construction Blocks
As usual, we're adding new construction blocks with a fresh material selection for your builds, plus new furniture sets. There are also new resource types like Fiber Glass cable, Tech Tape, Memory Modules, Power Supplies, and more.
Right now, the team is working hard to wrap up these systems for the upcoming update for you guys to enjoy. It'll probably take us just a few more weeks to run everything through our internal QA testies team and make sure we're handing you more or less stable systems. Some of our devs have already started on the next big features for the update after this one. One of them is our first ever co-op. We're also building a user account management system right now, with the goal of giving you cross platform support across Xbox and PS5 (Steam Machines, we wish, not yet, needs more optimization). Once that account system is done, we'll start rolling out the Kickstarter digital rewards. We're also working on a fully interactive world map, so please hang in there with the current super lame one, you'll love the new functional map, I promise.
Quick one before we go. There's a handful of things we'd genuinely love your input on, so drop your thoughts in the comments or on Discord:
Fertilizers: what kinds do you want to see? We're starting small and building the list from your ideas.
Languages: which ones should we prioritize first/asap for translation?
Controller support: once you've played with it, let us know how it feels. Still raw, totally fine, or fine but a few things could be better? We'll keep tuning it.
Your feedback on these actually shapes what we build next, so don't be shy.
I probably missed a few things, but this should give you a solid idea of what's coming and help us manage expectations. Development is healthy and on track with our roadmap. This Sprint #3 plan should be fully fulfilled, and we even pulled a few systems and features forward from Sprint #4.
We'll post detailed patch notes on release day. Thank you guys, stay patient, we're working hard.
p.s. Steam players To everyone waiting on Steam, we know you’re excited to try Autonomica, and we’re working toward opening the demo for everyone soon.
Right now, the game is still a bit too messy for a public release, so access is limited to our early Kickstarter backers while we clean things up.
Sorry for keeping you waiting. We appreciate your patience, and we’ll get you in as soon as we’re ready.
