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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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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.