Hello everyone!
Welcome back to another FOUNDRY Friday. Today we’re taking a look at a new take on loaders. One of the things we’ve been working on the past months was a re-interpretation of loaders, and while it’s still work in progress, we’re finally ready to show it.
Redesign Goals
Before we look at what we’ve come up with, let’s summarize the key points we were trying to achieve:
- Allow loaders to transfer from machine to machine without a belt.
- Allow loaders to transfer directly from belt to belt.
- Reduce the amount of unique items.
- Improve user-experience and reduce the amount of clicks needed.
New Loader Design
First, we parted ways with the multiple Loader items representing different lengths. Going forward there is only one Loader item, and instead of it being placed like a regular building, you drag it from a start point to an end point.
Watch on YouTubeWork in progress.
This system has a very nice side-effect: The direction you drag the loader will also automatically be the loader’s item move direction. However you can still toggle it from a button on the loader, just like before. The maximum range will be increased through research, and most likely we’ll also allow them to go further than they did before.
Second, we managed to add support for belt-to-belt and building-to-building transfer. While we don’t see those use cases as future core gameplay, we believe that this will be very convenient and allow for new layouts and more diverse ways to build your factory.
Work in progress.
Work in progress.
We haven’t fully decided yet, but most likely we will merge the Filter Loader’s functionality into the regular Loader, so that every loader can have a filter assigned if needed.
Please keep in mind that the video/image above represents work in progress, and there will be more polishing and things are subject to change. Still we’d like to hear your feedback and thoughts if that looks like a good solution. Let us know in the Steam comments below!
See you next time,
-mrmcd
Follow us on socials:
Stay tuned for more news!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/