Hey friends! Been a busy month with lots of testing! Jamie's been hard at work checking everything's working properly and lot's of feedback and QoL stuff being discussed and added - starting to feel like a proper game now. In case you missed it, we had to rename the game from "Feed The Beasts" as it was trademarked - we asked the Factorio team half-jokingly but they said yes, so we're calling it Snacktorio now! [hr][/hr] [h2]No Place Like Home[/h2] So while Jamie got to work testing, I started on some of the more "boring" systems that games just have to have - like a home screen or a settings screen. First I sketched out roughly what I would need so I'd have a good idea in my head of what I'd need. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/2592dc30c57b17a3877566350583f713adf0ece1.png[/img][i]TheRealRatKing is my OC dont steal[/i] With that done I got to work on adding them in the game - I'd already setup a nice dynamic system for "player" menus, i.e. menus that need to stay fixed to the camera rather than move around in the game space, so I added them all using that. This meant all I had to do was define some buttons and draw some sprites where I needed them, and all the rest was handled automatically. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/8d4c2fe99233b94d7e982bb11d19e325b045182b.png[/img][i]plenty of sassy home screen messages to enjoy![/i] I love the whole "show your last file in the homescreen" that APICO has, so I re-used that as I just think it looks nice and makes for a much quicker route to jump back into your last save. At this point I also finally stopped saving and loading to a hardcoded system and setup a proper file system so that people could have multiple saves, and added a backup system too as right now the game is very unstable. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/3d95258826e55d58e4da92284cb4230eaeebae5a.png[/img][i]ah yes, thats me, a plate of spaghetti[/i] I then added some basic settings as well as a control menu - for now there's not any keyremapping yet so I'm just showing a hardcoded image of the controls, but it's still on my list to do before we launch the demo! I added the same menus back into the game when paused, and then tested everything a bunch for any jank. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/ae202d06edbf5b322cbb566c86dc684b7d273a54.png[/img][i]cant wait for you to all hear what Moth's been cooking up for the music![/i] With that done and a bunch of testing we now had all the "boring" stuff setup, but it also helped make it feel a lot more real, which was nice to see! [hr][/hr] [h2]Check The Schematics[/h2] So one thing I've been doing on the side is slowly working away at all the "HD" drawings - there's 3 different books and they each have a bunch of intro chapters and then information chapters for specific machines/recipes/beasts. Each one has a different style, recipe book is more sketched, beast book is more runic/cave painting, and then engineer book is very technical drawing-esque. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/a14751c17ca2caba39dff9ff18bee374b223389f.png[/img] There's 6 main intro chapters that cover the basics, and given each main machine chapter has the large isometric cutaway of the machine with the imps inside, I thought it'd be fun to carry on the isometric style for the chapter graphics! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/64e54f71ea2991ba3ce497e3ee0e6a3d40a3bfc1.png[/img] I'm actually super happy with how they turned out, and a bit sad that they're only used in the chapter books tbh, I'll have to try and find a way I can use them somewhere else, like maybe in loading screens or something! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/dffdf10a8567789ec4bdf1964979dd3bd61a8bb0.png[/img] Anyway I won't spoil all of them, I just thought they were cute and wanted to show them off. [hr][/hr] [h2]Baby's First Beast[/h2] So we playtested a bunch and one of the things we found was having just the one beast with 3 different recipes was a LOT, mainly because the first recipe is pretty complex. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/eeff07c7298919a295844c4f104bbab462cad1e2.png[/img][i]i will draw that dish at some point I promise[/i] You have to set up harvesters + blenders to get your tomato sauce, and then a whole bunch of stuff to get pasta - void manipulators for eggs/bones, grind bones, mix eggs, extrude the dough and boil, then combine it all. The game already is chucking a lot at you when you start so for a first recipe it's pretty nuts. What we decided instead is that first you'll meet a different monster, who only has one recipe - a new one, for tomato soup. Once you meet the requirements for that one beast he'll introduce a second one who wants the other 3 meals. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/871f2c8780665ea287e86e079f9493edb1033019.png[/img][i]a tomato soup mini factory[/i] Tomato soup only needs the tomato sauce and some basic spice mining, so compared to the first pasta dish its easily half the complexity - players already have to initially setup their fabricator/resource factories so reducing that initial step should help people get into the groove. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/24327e47f5b96c312d8af2a4a80c5fcbe750ca7c.png[/img][i]excellent placeholder beast ell[/i] By the time they've met the tomato soup order they should be pretty comfortable with how everything works and can focus on adding in pasta production to their existing factory rather than doing it all from scratch. Still needs a bit more testing but combined with an tutorial section at the start I think its much better paced now. [hr][/hr] [h2]Inventory Upgrades[/h2] So as mentioned before we changed how tools work to remove durability because we didn't feel like it added anything. We also removed basic crafting, replacing it with fabricators. This meant however for all the tool items, you only had one, and while it couldn't break people will definitely lose it, so first up we added a little handy tool replace that gives you a tool if you've lost it! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/e846d9ede027878dc73c8229b47310abb5c62049.png[/img][i]little ghost imp... spooky[/i] Next up I added a trash bin slot, plus a hotkey to press "Delete" to send items to the trash bin - similar to APICO items build up pretty quickly and while you can toss stuff in oil you don't want to accidentally toss yourself into oil too! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/34d4ab2bd8cc49d15dcc6945d2c6e6fef6fe8f32.png[/img][i]both things APICO should have imho[/i] Finally we decided to add a "free hand" slot - the first slot of the inventory is always empty. While this permanently reduces the hotbar, the amount of stuff you ever need out at once isn't anywhere near the volume APICO has, and it's worth it to prevent yourself accidentally using the various tools. [hr][/hr] [h2]Testing My Patience[/h2] There was a lot of tweaks and balance to various things - but no point me going into them as there's no real frame of reference. I guessed a bunch of numbers when I first added everything and it's only now we can see whole factories in action to see where the bottlenecks are. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/1397f28ee7e0bf733ca8baffb22a4af6c7a2cb34.png[/img][i]some serious factories being built[/i] To get all three meals done (well 4 now), you need a whole bunch of "minifactories" setup, and have them all connect to each other - so it's a lot to create and manage, and a lot of work to make sure its all working let alone make sure it's rewarding to play! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43848552/6f537baaeeb068fb4ea7d9b2c5d472baa952f89d.png[/img][i]I dont even know whats going on in this one[/i] It's nice to see the game finally at a point where all the core mechanics are robust enough that we can build these mad factories - I worry about scalability a bit but that's definitely a future problem for the time being! [hr][/hr] Pretty happy with what we got done this month! There's still the whole tutorial/intro section, a whole bunch of PFX + SFX, and a LOT of placeholder art to replace in the books, but in terms of the core gameplay I think we've nearly narrowed it down to something we like thats fun to play. Next month will be more testing, and I'll be trying to make a stab at the tutorial section to make sure we're onboarding players to the billion different moving parts we want to show off! ~ Ell [This post was released early for KoFi Supporters]