Hello everyone!
It’s Friday again and here is our Foundry Friday Blog! Today I bring information about our Assembly Lines and the robots they assemble. A feature we have announced a while ago but have been pretty quiet ever since. This time we don’t need a long paragraph of text to get started, let’s jump right into it with a video:
Please note that everything shown in this post is still work in progress and not yet representative of the final version.
Motivation
Now that you’ve seen what it’s all about, let’s look at what motivated me to add this feature: To me it always felt like missed potential that you produce so many different items while playing a factory game, yet you rarely see how any of the items are actually made. Machines take certain items as input and after a few seconds something else comes out on the other side. And while there are options to add a little more immersion with machines similar to 3D-printers (where the output item is faded in) I always wanted to go further.
Scope
The reason why it’s uncommon to visualize the process of items being made is simple: It’s very difficult and takes a lot of effort. It requires animations, models, engineering work, and lots of polishing to bring it all together. On top of that it also comes with a performance cost so it needs optimization work. Therefore we settled for a middle ground where we are going to visualize the assembly of our final products, the things you work towards and have the most impressive looks.
For now that means that most of FOUNDRY’s gameplay stays the same while you will be building those assembly lines for our end products. Depending on reception of this feature we might go further and visualize more product manufacturing in future updates. Especially in the metallurgy part of the game I see a lot of additional potential.
Robots
You’ve seen the videos and gifs, we’re making robots! We’ve been quiet about the end products in FOUNDRY but now we can finally share the secret: You’re going to produce robots, lots of robots. Different models too. However, “why” is a question that we are going to leave unanswered for now. Feel free to speculate in our Discord, we enjoy reading all the guesses, maybe someone gets it right?
Robots work really well when you want to visualize their assembly process, for now we have shared how different parts are attached and welded, but there will be more. You’ll be manufacturing the robots circuit boards, batteries and many other things. And putting it all together will be part of the assembly lines.
As the final step you get to paint your robots, you can even select different colors for each part.
Gameplay
I’m sure many of you would like to know how the game mechanics actually work, so let us have a quick look at that too. You start with, for lack of a better name, the “start building” of the assembly line, at which the initial robot part (the torso) gets hooked onto the overhead rails. From here on you build those rails like conveyor belts, they can go up, down, left, right and there are even mergers and splitters. To add parts to your robot you need to bring them to an “Assembly Line Assembler” at which you can select what action it should execute.
You are not forced to build your robots in a fully linear way, so you get to pick the order of assembly. Of course there are some limitations, it’s hard to attach a foot when the leg has not been added yet. The individual parts like arms and legs are made in regular machines like Assemblers and need to be brought to the Assembly Line by conveyor belt.
Once your robots are manufactured and painted they go into a special building. But since I haven’t disclosed why you need to build robots, I also cannot share any more information about where they are going - I surely can’t reveal everything at once :)
Steam Next Fest 2023
Before ending this Foundry Friday episode I’d like to bring your attention to our Steam Next Fest participation. Starting October 9th there will be a free demo for everyone available on Steam.
I’m looking forward to your thoughts and feedback and I hope to see you during the Steam Next Fest,
-mrmcd