Greetings, Magnates!

Oh boy, this update is long overdue.

I'm happy to report everything is going well. I picked up development early January and have been at it ever since, although I've been taking it a little bit easy in May. But overall It has been 5 super active months. A lot have happened and many things have sort of fallen into place.

I could talk about that for several pages worth of reading, but to save my time and yours, here's a list of the most notable news:

• Added 14 new buildings and 31 new items, for a grand total of 34 buildings and 55 items.
  
• Scope was cut; got rid of the idea of managing multiple factory sites simultaneously.
  
• Contract and market mechanics were scrapped.
  
• Some unsatisfactory content was removed, most notably water tiles and pipes.
  
• Economy as a game mechanic is almost entirely gone; the only purpose of money in the game now is to purchase bonus effects (mentioned later in this list).
  
• Optimized and refactored a bunch of stuff.
  
• Changed map generation and animated some tiles.
  
• Added clouds and passing ships, because why not?
  
• Implemented building augments and upgrades. Aaaand then removed them again..
  
• Implemented a brand new UI (again!), but this is the final iteration, guaranteed.
  
• Implemented a main menu. 19 months of development had gone by without one at that time, so it was a pretty big milestone.
  
• Implemented proper screens for saving, loading and starting a new game.
  
• Implemented the Codex, an ingame wiki-like interface.
  
• Added particle emitter capabilities to buildings and tiles.
  
• Implemented the core objectives mechanic. This is going to be the main driver for the player to progress and ultimately win the game.
  
• Implemented a player rank system, XP and special bonuses that can be purchased whenever the player ranks up. Bonuses will affect the factory in various ways.
  
• Implemented the core research mechanic.
  
• Made every string translatable through a simple JSON file, allowing for community translations.
  
• Started the Steam integration: rich presense, cloud saves, achievements, and, you know, launching the game from Steam. But I am getting a little ahead of myself, because the demo won't have achievements.
  

Greetings, Magnates!

It's been 5 months since the last devlog, but that doesn't mean the game is abandoned. Oh no.

My absense is explained by the simple fact that I needed a break. Being an indie game developer isn't easy; it comes with a lot of stress and concern. The actual coding is the least of it all. It's more about living up to expectations, not failing super hard when it releases, worrying that noone will notice and buy the game, that not enough effort was put into marketing and so on and so on. And I just needed to get away from all of that.

I'm still dead set on finishing and releasing this game, don't worry.

In the mean time, I've been working with an artist. First of all, there are new assets for everything. Tiles, buildings, items, visual effects. This is a great step forward in terms of more broad visual appeal.

The new assets are double the resolution they used to be, and with an actual artist on board most of the buildings now resemble what they actually are. Miners looking like miners, smelters looking like smelters etc. Very happy about that.

Following that, we worked on new Steam assets (screenshots excluded; they still need to be updated). They look much better now and should hopefully start to drive a bit more traffic to the store page for the game.

I present the latest changelog below, which is a list of changes that happened before I went on a break. I'm allowing myself to continue this break until the new year. Come January I expect to be back in the groove.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

• New assets for everything.
  
• Changed world generation; rocks are gone, replaced by stone deposits instead. Water has rocky shorelines now. Water isn't surrounded by sand/beach anymore, instead sand generates in deposits. Flowers are gone, they didn't serve any purpose anyway.
  
• Water tiles are animated now.
  
• Pumps will now work on moist soil (dark dirt). That should make pipelines less annoying.
  
• Redid the liquid distribution system; liquid volume will now try to distribute evenly between all connected supported buildings.
  
• Had to undo a previous design choice; distributors and intersections can no longer feed into each other.
  
• Started work on visual effects for buildings.

Greetings, Magnates!

It's been a little longer than usual since the last update, but to make up for it I got some cool new stuff to talk about. Without further ado..

[h3]Parking the drones, for now[/h3]

Cargo drones were intended to be the method of selling and transporting goods off the map. Having playtested this feature, I've come to realize it isn't very efficient (in terms of gameplay). So, the new method is to simply transport goods off the map by conveyors; you're paid when an item leaves the map. Nice and simple, easy to understand and utilize. That sort of instant gratification speaks more to me than having to wait for a drone to arrive. I hope the drones can be refitted to have another meaningful purpose, but for now I'm leaving them be.

[h3]Contracts are making a comeback[/h3]
Contracts are coming back, but in a very different form than before. Contracts used to be the only means of making money, but now they are comparable to quests/tasks/missions that you undertake.

• The region will offer a few new contracts every so often.
  
• Contracts can be either in the form of "deliver X quantity of Y item at Z price per item" or "deliver as many as you can of Y item at Z price per item for some duration" (duration being a number of ingame days).
  
• The upside: you're paid a fixed price per item for the entire duration of the contract. The price doesn't fluctuate like it does on the market.
  
• The downside: you're only paid once the contract is completed, and you can only have one active contract at a time. You also can't cancel an accepted contract.
  
• Completing a contract will also reward you with influence points. Building influence with the region is the only way to "win" a region, which ultimately will "win" the planet, or at least that is the idea - for now.
  
• At certain influence levels you'll be able to pick a perk that affects the region/market/factory site in some way.

• Added pause and game speed buttons.
  
• Changed the UI again, now featuring a "hotbar"-like building toolbar, discrete buttons, sliding panels and a more blueish color scheme.
  
• Changed all icons from Material to Font Awesome 6.
  
• Tweaked a bunch of factory stuff, most importantly the ability to transport items off the map and the ability for some buildings to feed items directly into each other.
  
• Added the new contract system.
  
• Added loans to the economy system.

Greetings, Magnates!

Last time I talked about getting the market simulation up and running. One big remaining task here is balancing, which affects the whole in-game economy. What should buildings cost? What should the upkeep cost? How much should products pay when sold? And so on. It's going to be a huge, ongoing effort to make sure everything is reasonably balanced. But, to balance things, all parameters must be known. And they are currently not.

One of the parameters is energy (power). Some buildings will require energy to work. So I've started implementing the new energy system, and all the basics are in place and done; energy is currently generated only by solar panels, energy is stored in capacitor banks (homage to Minecraft mod Ender IO) and energy is then relayed wirelessly through energy nodes. Any energy consuming building in range of an energy node will receive energy automatically.

I need to add more energy sources, and, again, balance everything. How much energy should this and that produce, and how much energy should this and that consume, how fast should energy flow between buildings? Etc. It may not sound like a big deal, but it is. As the game designer I want to strike that perfect balance where the player needs to put some thought and effort into the energy system, but not too much because then it just becomes an annoying element, but also not too little because then it just becomes a superfluous and thus annoying element..

Anyone saying game design is easy clearly hasn't tried it.

Anyway, moving on to the next parameter: research. There will be a tech tree of some sort, but I haven't settled on a model yet. Either way, I want to add a bunch of unlockable augments you can apply to buildings. One augment could increase mining speed at the cost of increased energy consumption. Another augment could decrease energy consumption but increase the upkeep cost significantly. With each augment and/or other possible unlockable modifiers I have to consider how I'm going to offset that in other parts of the game, making sure there's not an obvious route to "easy mode".

Right, I should also mention that my intention is to reward the player with research points based on how much money they allocate to research.. soo yeah, yet another factor that affects the economy. And everything else, really.

This is one of the reasons it takes so long to make a game

I'll leave you with this recent gif and the changelog:



[h3]Changelog[/h3]

Greetings, Magnates!

I'm happy to say things are going well. There is still like a humongous list of things to do, and unfortunately some days that list is growing more than it is shrinking, but progress is made each and every day.

[h3]UI[/h3]
The last couple of weeks I've been mainly working on UI (again). I have a good foundation now, and although it still may change, it is good enough for now. Having an actual interface to interact with is so much better than having to remember a gazillion hotkeys.

I posted this on twitter a while ago. It shows most of the UI and explains what the various things are.

Click here to open full version.

[h3]Market simulation[/h3]
Quite of a big deal, I've implemented the first working version of the economy slash market. Some of you may remember the old concept of contracts; that's been scrapped for now. The new way of making money in this game is by satisfying market demand. The short version of this subsystem is that your factory site is connected to a "region" (aka sector, district, whatever) on the planet. That region has its own isolated market. A market in this context being simply a series of products that the region has a demand for.

When you connect your factory site warehouses to an outgoing drone track, the region can interact with your warehouses. So it will start sending cargo drones to your warehouses to pick up the products it needs. You are paid on pickup. Here's a tweet showing drones coming in and picking up products:
https://twitter.com/RisingTail/status/1396066807492927501?s=20

A lot of work goes into this simulation, and I've barely scratched the surface. I'll be hacking away at it the next couple of weeks.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

Greetings, Magnates!

Just a quick update on what's been going on the past 2 weeks. Development is progressing well and I've reached a stage where it's safe to take a break from expanding the factory builder and work on other important things in the game. I believe there are enough things to do for a first demo version, but it's not done, and I will keep adding buildings. I just need a change of scenery, so to speak.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

Buildings:

Greetings, Magnates!

It's been a while! There is a very good reason for that. I already talked about this on twitter, but the TLDR is that I was working with an artist to make sprites for the game, and it didn't pan out as I had hoped (and I'm not blaming anyone). During that time development was halted and I spent a lot of time thinking and coming up with new ideas for the game.

Development is back on track now, with a few but important changes:

• I'm still making the art myself, but I've decided to employ a slightly different and perhaps even more retro style than before. (FYI: At the time of writing, the store page hasn't been updated with new screenshots)
  
• I'm changing scope on some things. Most importantly, the factory builder is getting a massive overhaul.
  
• I'm specifically working towards a demo. I'm trying really hard not to work on things that aren't required for a demo version.
  

Rewrote most of the engine to accommodate for all the new things I want to do;

• Buildings (formerly known as units) can now be 1x1 or 2x2, possibly 3x3 if I want to.
  
• Went back to regular tile maps rather than textures.
  
• Rewrote map generation, specifically ore deposits are much better now, and during map generation I can guarantee that every ore will in fact generate on the map.
  
• Abandoned the old made-up ores in favor of real life well known resource types (coal, iron etc).
  
• Remade all the assets.
  
  Added new buildings:
  
• Mechanical and powered miner (replacing the old miner).
  
• Furnace (replacing the old crucible).
  
• Kiln.
  
• Blast furnace.
  
• Ore processor.
  
• Pump.
  
• Pipes and liquid distributor.
  
• Item cache.
  
  Added new items:
  
• Coal, copper and iron chunks. (These are raw resource chunks that have to be processed in an ore processor to yield an actual useable ore "item".)
  
• Coal, copper and iron items.
  
• Copper, iron and steel ingots.
  
• Sand item.
  
• Coal coke.
  
• Silicon.
  
• Glass.
  
  Removed:
  
• All old energy related units, I want to do this differently.
  
• All old storage related units, I also want to do this differently.
  
• Some other units and tiles; some of them will make a return soon enough.
  
• The concept of contracts and relations, at least for the time being.
  
• All old items and products.
  
  Other noteworthy changes:
  
• Renamed bridge to intersection.
  
• Disabled all modding for the time being. It's not compatible with all the new stuff I'm adding.
  
• Rewrote the save system. Save files can be hacked now
  
• Ditched all of the UI(!), because it was tied to the old concepts and range of building options. It will have to change to support all the new stuff.
  

Greetings, Magnates!

Since devlog #3 I've been spending most of my time thinking, brainstorming, defining and refining various game design aspects for Factory Magnate. While that is a good thing it also means there's not a whole lot to show off this time.

Instead I'll talk a bit about the ideas I've been working on. I should emphasize that none of these are being actively implemented yet, they are just ideas. Some will make it, some will not. But this is your chance to have a say if you want to see some of these ideas developed; comment on this post or hit me up any time on twitter.

[h3]Currently exploring these ideas[/h3]

• Distribute energy through under ground conduits. As of now there is no distribution at all. All units will work as long as there is enough energy on site.
  
• Have companies pick up their cargo themselves.
  
• Related to above, some sort of transit station and storage with cargo ready for pickup.
  
• New units for pulverizing, painting, alloying, packaging.
  
• Factions. This could be a big one. Allow the player to pick a faction. Factions will have some perks and disadvantages. Much like civs in Civ.
  
• Company classes that define various properties like what products the company will trade and definitely not trade, trade terms like wanting to pay more for certain products, how fast they grow etc.
  
• Planet upgrades, adding an entire strategic layer to the game. Allow the player to upgrade planet stats like infrastructure, industry, consumerism and others. They would be paid for by influence points and money and in return offer some perks but also a path to victory. Having one or more fully upgraded planets could be a win condition.
  
• Related to above: change the current "relation" system to influence. Influence would be earned by gaining a foothold in the local planet economy. The more business you conduct, the more influence.
  
• Revised contract system. As of now, contracts are for a fixed quantity of products to be delivered within a certain time frame. I'm seriously considering changing it to long term commitments where you enter a contract promising to keep delivering products to the company for some time. You'll be paid according to market price of that product, which will go up and down depending on the quantities of that product in circulation. (A basic demand and supply simulation)
  

• Added a LOT of decorational tiles
  
• Added ability to rotate deco tiles
  
• Added mouse scroll support to unit UI windows
  
• Added property to units: light_emitter - will enable modders to specify radius, color/tint and blink behaviour
  
• Added property to units: shadow - will enable modders to specify whether the unit casts a shadow or not
  
• Drag-building tiles will now only show a ghost image on top of valid map tiles (used to be all tiles)
  
• Cleaned up some of the JSON used for items and units
  
• Did some QA to be quite certain some parts of the game won't capture input events when they don't need to, fixing some bugs in the process
  
• Generally speaking, the code base is pretty clean now and ready to be messed up again
  

Greetings, Magnates!

Wow, is it February already? Let's see what's been going on with the game the past 2 weeks, shall we?

As I mentioned in the previous devlog, I wanted to spend more time doing small quality of life things and "polish" to the factory building part of the game. And that is indeed what I have been doing, although this first one isn't exactly what I would call a "small" thing:

[h3]Day cycle and night mode[/h3]

I wrote a little something about this over on the subreddit, so go read that if you wish. But the TL;DR is that I added night mode which then evolved into a proper day cycle. I want to emphasize one thing, and that is that even though you play in a made-up solar system with several inhabited planets that in theory should each have their own day cycle, it's just not feasible. There is a key concept of time in the game (e.g. "how many days do I have to complete this contract") and design-wise it could get really messy with multiple time scales. So for simplicity's sake time is always the same everywhere.

Anyway, the day cycle serves a couple of purposes:

It provides an incentive to consider other energy sources than just solar power..

That last point is mainly for myself. I need to work more on the energy aspect of the game. So there's a subject for a future devlog..

[h3]Lots of small details[/h3]
Contextual mouse pointers, tooltips, double-click mass-selecting.. you know, why don't I just show you with a couple of gifs? You can read all the changes in the changelog at the bottom of this post.




[h3]New build category: decorational tiles[/h3]
I played around with this idea the other night and decided to give it a go. I tweeted a gif, asking what people thought of the idea of decorating factory sites. I was unsure. The people were not! The feedback I got was very convincing and thus it's going to stay in the game and I will definitely be adding lots of various tiles to make your factories pretty. The two tiles in this demo below are just to test things, there will be much more!


I know I plug my twitter a lot, but this is a fine example of how you can influence the development of the game simply by interacting with me on twitter. So if you're interested in any of that stuff, make sure to follow me.

[h3]Full change list[/h3]

• Added eyedropper and drag-select mouse cursors
  
• Enforced rules for when a unit can be built on top of another unit (or be built at all)
  
• Drag-building and selecting conveyors will display a useful tooltip
  
• Disabled generic tooltips on unit click because they were more annoying than useful
  
• Fixed sorter UI staying in selection state after closing the UI
  
• Fixed sometimes having to click twice on output slots in sorter UI
  
• Contract detail UI will now reflect properly if the contract offer has expired since clicking on it
  
• Added day cycle/night mode
  
• Added helpful tooltip when dragging conveyors
  
• Clicking a unit will visually indicate it has been selected
  
• Clicking again on a selected unit (not conveyors) will select all units of the same type
  
• Clicking again on a selected conveyor unit will select all connected conveyors (a segment of conveyors)
  
• Pressing the DEL-key will delete all currently selected units
  
• Added a search filter to the sorter UI
  
• Added tooltip on item hover in various UI
  
• Added UI to storage controller; it'll now show you what you have in storage
  
• Added new build category for decorational tiles
  

Until next time!
Fey at Rising Tail

Hello Magnates!

It's time for a bi-weekly update. Let's see what I've been up to these past 2 weeks.

[h3]Website[/h3]
I spent a sunday creating a simple website for the game. Yes, I know, that time could have been spent on gamedev, but marketing is important!

Speaking of marketing, there's also a subreddit for the game. Feel free to join and talk with me about the game.

[h3]New product line: satellite components[/h3]
The game will have a yet-to-be-determined number of product lines. A product line is a series of products that fits the same theme or category. So far we have

• Raw materials (ores and ingots)
  
• Intermediate products (plates, rods, wire)
  
• Electronic components (circuits, batteries, coils)
  
• Satellite components (antennas, housings, solar panels and 4 kinds of modules)
  

• All contracts are only available for so long until the offer expires. If you want a contract, you need to accept it before it expires, otherwise that's an opportunity lost.
  
• Once accepted, you have a certain amount of time to complete the contract.
  
• If there's a bonus attached to the contract, you have to complete the contract within a certain threshold (i.e. faster than normal) to earn the bonus.
  
• The relation effect is important (I talked a bit about that in the previous devlog). In the early game it's more important to earn money, but later on you will probably go for contracts with a better relation effect.
  

• Drag-selecting a bunch of units to remove them all at once.
  
• Eyedropper feature to quickly select a unit by alt-clicking an existing unit.
  
• Displaying unit build cost when plopping down units.
  
• Various performance improvements.
  

Greetings, Magnates!

It's a new year and a great opportunity to start involving you more in what's happening with the game. I do tweet game stuff almost daily, but of course not everyone uses twitter. So let's see if we can make this a recurring thing. I'll try to keep it short and to the point.

I took two weeks off in december to work full time on the game. It was a great experience and I got a lot of work done. Now, as the game is still in what I consider semi-early development, there aren't a lot of really focused updates where I work on just one thing. Working on one area/aspect/feature of the game often leads to more work in other areas of the game, and then those things often needs further refinement, so it's a lot of back and forth all over the place. But here are the main highlights from the past month of development:

[h3]UI style[/h3]
The game has seen probably 4 or 5 iterations of the UI by now and I finally (hopefully!) believe that I've settled on a style that works well and looks good. However, there's still a chance it may change again as I start implementing the rest of the features that are UI-heavy. Time will tell!

[h3]Contracts[/h3]

Contracts will be the main driving force of the game. Companies in the solar system will put out contracts for certain products. When you accept a contract you commit to deliver the amount of products stated in the contract within the stated timeline. Some contracts offer an upfront payment, but otherwise you won't get paid until the contract has been completed in full, so you have to plan ahead. The first couple of contracts are deliberately easy to fulfill but soon enough you'll find that you need to diversify and redesign your factories to keep up with demands.

In the beginning you'll be locked out of a lot of contracts because you must have a factory site on the same planet as the company offering the contract. This encourages you to establish new sites on other planets, thus having to manage multiple factories simultaneously, which is a key element of the game.

[h3]Relations[/h3]

Relations and contracts are closely related; you gain relation points by completing contracts. A better relation with a company leads to better rating on that particular planet. The rating is an indicator of your dominance on the planet, and once you're dominating all the planets in the solar system, you win the game! The relations system is still in its infancy so there's plenty to come.

[h3]Map visuals[/h3]

As an experiment I made the default map less earth-like (removing grass and water) and more barren planet-like (making everything more dark and brown) by applying a texture to the surface. It turned out to be a massive improvement. There are now 4 map themes (all moddable); default, ice sheet, desert and rocky.

And that's it for this first proper devlog. If you're interested in more, you can follow me on twitter: @risingtail - oh, and don't forget to wishlist, if you haven't already. It's incredibly important for a small indie dev like me.

Until next time,
Fey at Rising Tail

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1475310/Factory_Magnate/

[h2]Hello future Magnates![/h2]

This first update marks the first full week on Steam. I didn't really know what to expect, but wishlisting has indeed been going on every day, and that's very encouraging. Thank you!

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to announce that Factory Magnate will have mod support!
I've been spending a lot of time ripping apart the entire codebase to implement mod support. It's far from finished, because as the game evolves, so will the moddability.

But, as a starting point, you will be able to:

• Change core content
  Make new graphics for any item or unit, and you can even turn a static unit into an animated one if you wish. Or the other way round.
  Edit various attributes, like unit costs or storage capacity.
  
  
• Create new items
  You can create entire new product lines if you wish!
  
  
• Create new units
  Want to add an advanced version of a core unit? You can. Want to add a new unit that produces some of your new custom items? You can!
  
  
• Add recipes
  A recipe determines what input a certain unit accepts and what the output should be. You can add new recipes and change core recipes.