*knock* *knock*
"Who's there?"
"Pete with a stupid joke and a status update!"
It has now been a full month since the Early Access launch. Wait, what? Only a month? Damn, it feels a lot longer though! Anyway, it's time for the third Werk in Progress, so let's go through a bit of what is going on.
The next update, v0.5.22, is going to take a bit longer than usual, as there are lots of things I want to improve in it, and it feels like now is quite a good time to do a bit of a larger update, as things have somewhat calmed down after the launch. It might already hit the testing branch some time next week, but no promises!
There are also some bugs in Unity that cause crashes, so I need to update Unity to a newer version. That means more testing, so that things don't break with the upgrade.
I've been doing some company-related things too, like finding an accountant and getting everything sorted out. Yay, paperwork, so much fun... not.
It takes some focus away from the game, but luckily not too much, as being the only person in the company keeps things simple. I'm lucky to be able to work in a company where even the CEO is a great guy, and he also hinted that I might get paid at some point!
Coming in v0.5.22
A short list of the main things so far:
- Hotbar: the tool bar becomes a hotbar of up to 40 slots and 10 pages, and you can fully decide what goes into any of the slots, including buildings and even specific tiers, so you can have Belt MK 1 in one slot and MK 2 in another, or just a single slot with the highest tier, etc.
- Keybindings: Shift, Ctrl and Alt can be moved to other keys or to a mouse side button, and looking around, clicking in the world and zooming can be rebound too. Keybindings will be reset, though, as there are so many changes that it would have been a lot of work trying to map everything out as it was.
- Pipes and belts: pipes join only where you connect them, no longer "randomly" based on direction and adjacent pipes and pipe junctions. A pipe aimed at the base of a building that holds or uses fluids places a Fluid Pump there automagically, and similarly for belts and Inserters.
- Building in fluids: buildings can be placed on fluids, and if the fluid level is low enough, it gets automatically drained. Buildings in deep fluid can be placed, but they stay as plans until the fluid is drained. Some buildings also become placeable inside fluids even without draining the area.
- Heat rework: rising heat now spreads along roofs and fills a room from the top down, instead of just piling up next to the roof. In general, there is much more horizontal heat spread instead of the current very upward-biased heat.
- Steam power: Boilers and Steam Turbines make more steam and power.
- Spores: harvested mushrooms give back fewer Spores, but there is a Chemical Plant recipe to make more of them, so you don't need to go exploring caves to expand your mushroom farms.
- Notification settings: every notification type can be separately adjusted to be visible/hidden, and also whether it plays a sound or not.
- Performance: the game runs faster with Terrain Details on, and the heat simulation takes less time to work out, so bigger bases keep running at full speed.
Plus a lot of other fixes...
I'm still not sure if I'll also try to put nuclear power into this update, or leave it for a later one. In any case, it will be there fairly soon!
A crashing PC with an Intel 13th Gen processor
One player with an Intel Core i7-13700KF has sent more than 20 crash reports over the last two weeks. The reports have no contact info, so I'm hoping you see this!
From the crash dumps it looks like the processor itself is failing. That fits the known stability problem that some of Intel's 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors have. The BIOS on that PC is from March 2023, which is older than any of Intel's fixes for the problem.
If that's you, or you have an Intel 13th or 14th Gen desktop processor and the game keeps crashing, this is what to do:
- Update your motherboard's BIOS from the motherboard maker's support site, for example ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte or ASRock.
- Choose Intel Default Settings in the BIOS, and remove any overclock or undervolt.
- If the crashes continue after that, the processor may already be damaged. Intel has extended the warranty for the affected processors, so contact Intel or your seller.
The details and the warranty info are on Intel's support page.
From v0.5.22 on, the game checks this too: if it crashes on a PC with one of the affected processors and a BIOS without Intel's fix, the crash prompt on the next start explains how to update.
And if it's you, I'd love to hear whether the BIOS update helped, here or on Discord, or you can leave your email in the next crash report.
Your feedback
In the first month you have sent over 400 reports from inside the game, about a hundred of them suggestions, and a lot more has come in on the Steam forum and Discord. The game is really getting a lot better thanks to all that feedback.
I might not always agree with the suggestions or do everything that people want, but I do take them into consideration even then. They do shape how I do things, even if not everything goes exactly the way someone would want it to go.
Most importantly though, if you don't see your improvement ideas or suggestions in the game yet, the most likely reason is just time (it has been only one month, after all).
There are hundreds of small things on my list to improve or add based on feedback (or my own ideas). How I choose what to add for an update depends on multiple things, like whether I'm already working on something related and it makes sense to do that at the same time, or whether it's something multiple people have brought up constantly. Or I might do something just because I feel like it's a fun thing for me to do, even if no one has asked for it.
Unfortunately, the reality of software development is that even with simple suggestions like "Hey, just add a button there for this feature X to turn it off, it takes 2 minutes!", that approach does not work long term on a massive project, as those tiny things added without consideration start to quickly pile up over time, and it ends up as a mess and a maintenance burden.
Don't get me wrong though, I do appreciate all of the tiny suggestions too, so keep them coming. Sometimes the simple things are simple and quick to add, but sometimes things that look simple are not as simple as they might seem on the surface, and it might take more time than expected to do them properly and with the long-term goals in mind.
Some players have also voiced concerns that towards the (current) end game the numbers grow too much and require scaling up your factory too much.
I hear you, and I also agree there that the balance is not great towards the end game, but the reason I'm not immediately just making numbers smaller or bigger is that the design goal is to scale up to thousands of buildings, and always will be. The current problem is mostly about the lack of tools to deal with it, and about the scaling happening in steps that are too large.
For example, the computing and power requirements are a lot, but the biggest issue there in reality is that nuclear power is not there, so your only solution is to just spam solar/wind/steam turbines. And while making a lot of buildings can also be fun, as you really see the factory grow and take space, there is a fine line there after which it becomes kind of boring gameplay, as you just spam your blueprint 500 times without thinking.
That spammy gameplay is not what I want the game to be long term, which is actually one of the original reasons for the solar panel maintenance that many disagree with. I think making a flat area and putting down 10,000 solar panels there is some of the most boring gameplay there can be in a factory game, which is why the maintenance mechanic is there to actually involve a logistics problem to solve by supplying the repair packs, while keeping steam power meaningful, as there you can actually use your brain to think about how to optimize the power production and heat management.
Of course, not everyone likes to play the same way, and if you think building thousands of solar panels to make free power is fun, who am I to tell you that you can't do that? That's why I do want to make these kinds of things optional with the settings, so players can play the way they like, as long as it is a reasonable option that doesn't break the whole gameplay. But the default gameplay vision I have for the game tries to avoid the boring building spam, whatever the definition of that is, heh.
It will take time to get more of the content, buildings, tools and balance changes in, so if you start to feel frustrated or just bored with the current content, it might be time to take a break and check on the game later.
I've seen people already play hundreds of hours, and the game will be there waiting later in better shape, so don't burn yourself out in the first month of Early Access!
You people are awesome, thanks for your support! Let's also keep making the game more awesome, together!