Monday Musings #62 – The Advent of the Alchemist's Journal
I have been talking about this feature for literally a year, and today is finally the day to put it in the game. MoteMancer has many unique rules and behavior and systems, and just a lot to learn in general, so naturally one of the things the game needs is a little bit of a guide to help you along the way. I specifically tried to set up the world where both the player's character and the player…
As I've been looking through the toolbox for ways to bring buildings to life, one nagging problem has remained unsolved: particle interactions with portals. MoteMancer's solution to Portals is not super common among games. That brings the benefit of being a novel effect to many players, but also one that presents many hoops to jump through. Proof of Concept I still remember the first proof of c…
Thank you for all the suggestions and reports. Many of these improvements came directly from forum posts and in-game F1 feedback. Thank you for helping make MoteMancer better! v0.5.060 Bunch of QoL requests filled Quality of Life · Inactive research now sorts lower than research that is actively progressing · Completed research now shows its final infusion progress · Inventory tooltips now show…
When I first implemented underground belts, I made them a fixed length of three underground spaces because it was easier while I was still figuring out conveyor belt code in general. Over time, though, I realized the fixed length had a number of advantages that were worth preserving. The primary downside is obvious - you don't have infinite freedom to squeeze a variable-length underground into…
Even though Art is the focus, there's still room to slip some quality of life and bug fixes in :) v0.5.044 Quality of Life · Blueprints now support horizontal mirroring with H. This is rebind-able but not present in the blueprint window yet, it needs a bit of an overhaul. · In-game windows are now temporarily draggable, they will reset positions on closing. · Belts have more nuanced crossing lo…
Happy glorious Monday! First, a huge thank you to everyone that's been playing the Attunement Update and sending in bugs and suggestions. Today I wanted to celebrate some of the discoveries from the last few weeks and share some fun bug stories in case you missed them. Nuclear Launch Detected There's been an edge-case for Lava Generators for a long time where you can technically make a small tr…
Thanks for the bug reports and suggestions! Hotfix v0.5.025 · Torrential Streamway structures tick twice as often to solve mixed-streamway-chain compression. This could be a slight perf hit for Torrential-heavy bases, but still probably negligible in the scene as a whole. · Ascendant achievement was reading from the Foundations menu rather than the current active Foundation set. You should be a…
Greetings MoteMancers! If the last update shook the foundations of the elemental planes, this update is poised to hone and refine your alchemical journey. The Attunement Update brings character customization, major performance improvements, achievements, power system refinements, and a host of quality-of-life upgrades. Full patch notes are available below, but for now let's talk shop! Personali…
I've always been a super math nerd, especially when it comes to color math. I used to say "Math is my paintbrush". While working as an FX artist I used math to shape and sculpt procedural textures like clouds or fire or water to great effect. And so this week while creating the character customizer, I found out that the color picker I'd come to know so well wasn't a standard thing available in…
When I teach design, I often reference Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Model , because it is one of the most concise images I know of. I play tons of games in just as many genres, but Completion is definitely one of my primary motivators. I want to see everything a game has to offer, and fully explore the space. Naturally that means I have some very strong opinions on what makes a good suite…
Happy Monday! I'm still knee-deep in tutorialization and performance, but I thought today it would be fun to talk about how MoteMancer fell into using both 2D and 3D pipelines simultaneously, and the opportunities it ended up providing. There are definitely both upsides and downsides, and I'm not sure I'd do it the same way again, but I also definitely remember how I got here, so let's go on a…
Greetings Mancers! Experimental has been pretty stable, so the updates to help performance are being rolled into the live game. There are more coming, but it's a good break point to migrate what's working well into the main build. There's also a fix for old saves having rare odd research tree states, and some polish to post-portal tutorial beats. Updates · Presentation updates to post-portal Tu…
Happy Monday! Many players have been asking about MoteMancer's specific plans for performance improvements, I'm happy to say the current Experimental branch is live with the opening salvo. No plan survives contact with practical reality, and MoteMancer has had quite a journey in that regard. I'd love to share some learnings today. If you want to experience the improvements for yourself, jump in…
The Experimental branch is now live with a series of performance improvements implemented. Many of these came with significant refactors of existing systems. If you'd like to test your game in experimental, the transfer should be safe and backwards compatible, nothing about saving has changed. Thank you in advance to anyone testing and submitting any bugs of feedback through F1! 0.4.033 increme…
I spent some time recently just watching players hit the opening of the game and reading feedback about early experiences, and it’s been illuminating. Nothing is fundamentally broken, but players are getting in their own way, and that’s on me. So rather than layering more on top, I’ve been going back and reworking the first 10 minutes with everything I’ve learned over the past months. Teaching,…
Polish and Behavior * Inventory items will now highlight contextually depending on the active structure window. * All structure and research progress bars have new elemental art. * Timers and %'s are shown as well on progress bars. * Collectors now upgrade speed by .25 intervals based on research, tooltip changed to 8% to reflect this, this whole system will be going away in favor of Elemental…
There are so many places to add FX and polish, and this week I found myself drawn to the unassuming progress bar. It’s a great warmup before tackling heavier pieces, and it’s always worth adding a bit of delight wherever you can. These bars use a technique I like to call frequency fighting. I’m a sucker for color math, and it’s amazing how far simple adds and multiplies can go. Even better, som…
Polish & QoL * Tutorial games now only allow Twinseed, World Veins, and Ancient Spindles (this change is to lower complexity for first-time players). * Tutorial ? helpers now only show on the currently active step if available. * Pipette now contextually grabs the correct runeshrooms from ritual previews. * Active Rituals have updated and colored constellation lines in the Runeshroom Window. *…
It's so wonderful to have a community invested in modding, sharing blueprints, and theorycrafting. Earlier today, the community took a step further and added MoteMancer to FactorioLab . It’s a small thing on the surface, but it means a lot to me. MoteMancer now sits alongside some of the games that inspired it, as part of the same ecosystem of tools, planners, and shared knowledge. One of my fa…
* Mod icons now fallback to the ? icon instead of a white square. * Infinite reach mod no longer breaks Meteor Swarm * Fix a few bad icon references in tutorial banners * Shift clicking a crafting button will now queue the maximum number of crafts possible for that item. Right click still queues 5. Shoutout to MissedFrizzle for uploading our first community mod! Sandbox Mode
Quality of Life * Blueprint creation now has 3 selection modes: Rectangular, Diamond, and Radial. Use X to swap modes or click the HUD icon. * Copy mode shows grid like connected structures do * Blueprint shader is now a little more legible * Blueprint mode now suppresses world hover tips * Pipette now allows grabbing from structures even if you have 0 of them in your inventory * Pipette on a m…
I received a very fair critique from multiple sources: If your game is all hexagons, why are you using that tired old rectangle selector for blueprints? I love this kind of feedback because it points directly at one of the most important north stars in any creative work: immersion. A longer way to say it is that everything in your game should tell the same story. In MoteMancer that shows up eve…
Steam Workshop Mods are coming to MoteMancer. Happy Monday! Mods have been part of the plan for MoteMancer from the beginning. The automation genre itself was born from mods, so it only feels right to pay that forward. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what role mods should play here, and I’d like to share some of that philosophy today. A Platform for Creativity First, I want to underscor…
Polish & QoL · Change single blueprint ghost placement to Shift from Alt, no longer requires blueprint tech. · Control click on a structure can once again refill from your inventory repeatedly using successive stacks (regression from Foundations update). · You can now set keybind from the crafting menu by hovering and pressing a number in addition to inventory. · Extended grippers no longer hav…
The new Foundations update brought a lot of great discussion about all of the new game modes available, but one of the conversations in particular reminded me of the greatest question you can ever ask yourself or others while discussing solutions: "What problem are you trying to solve?". It sounds so trite and obvious, but if you take that question seriously, I find the value of the exercise in…
Fixes from reports from the weekend: · Large number display no longer throws an exception if "Infinity" or > 1trillion gets passed in. · Fix a rare case where mote patches can be destroyed mid Sovereign Manaheart burst. · Capture doodad size at creation time (another random guess fix for large doodads and doodad nudge interactions). · Fixed a rare case where hitting x while you had no entity he…
Thanks for all the reports, have a great weekend! Bug Fixes · The Action Bar should now correctly save when you clear a button. · Collector UI when World Veins is active now shows the Collector inventory count again. · Change how tutorial detects if you've gone to a second plane. (fixes Fire tutorial automatically claiming in certain cases) · Fix lava pedestal tweens fighting if you destroy/bui…
Thank you for all the bug reports and feedback on the Foundations update! Foundation Fixes and Tuning: · Jeweled/Chromatic Fields - Icons for Multi-Mote Patches on the Map now match the Foundation icon. Miner displays (tooltip and window) support more than 3 mote types at once. · World Veins - Mote Field tooltip were decrementing the max count even though it wasn't actually decrementing. Change…
MoteMancer's third Major Content Update is Live! Foundations are modifiers that change the rules of the world and open the door to endlessly varied playthroughs. With the new Enduring Research system, your most optimized factories can now fuel infinite upgrades that carry forward into future worlds. Whether you want to sculpt a unique new challenge or push your alchemy further than ever before,…
Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.