Engineer Alpha's Log #74: Giving You More Control

Engineer Alpha

An open world survival and automation game. Engineer Alpha combines an infinite editable world, building and connecting of automated machinery, and RPG style player progression.

I have been finding that there is a small issue with shafts and gearing. When ever I make a machine that uses rotational power as its input I find that there just are not enough options for its power requirements. What I mean is there are only a few generators in the game and a limited selection of options so a shaft in will for example be a whole steam engine or a half and not in-between. I want more freedom in how I design machines and the best solution I found was to give the player more control over their shafts. In 0.7 shaft splitters will not longer be locked to using a select few options for how power is split between the two outputs. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41217644/db56dac80748bc298a5e1346c40473c75e605715.png[/img] You the player will will have full control of what percentage of torque will go either direction. The old buttons will still remain as a set of quick pick options for convenience. You will be able to move the slider to change on a single percent as well as type in values to change to several decimal places. I decided to make this change because it didn't really add to the building to have things be limited in the way that they were as you still have to manually go up to the building and decide where to send the power you can just send more of it to where you want it. Gearboxes will also receive a similar treatment with things appropriate for them. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41217644/ac539db1942b8325699aa90f333af98d73b60fa2.png[/img] The Gearbox does not use the slider bar since it is a ratio and not a difference it didn't make a ton of sense. I also changed ow the buttons were laid out as I was not happy with how they were. I decided to split them into two different sides as there was no good way to show them all together largely because there is no official agreed upon way to write gear ratios. You can now choose exactly what you want the gear ratio to be to several decimal places so your machines will run as fast as possible.