Hey mates! We're slowly returning to our regular updating schedule, so stay tuned for more news! As of today, here's a nice little list of patch notes:
v0.88 Released!
Added comment block, as seen in real-life programming languages
Updated zooming in the Editor
Updated GPT translations
Fixed a bunch of bugs around achievements
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out!
And if you haven't done it already, please don't forget to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist, it is an important marker to us, that brings the game's release closer:
Looking Good, Mates! - Craftomation 101 Dev Diaries, February 2025
Hey, mates!
Today, we'd like to talk about New Year's resolutions. We know it's almost the end of February, but time flies! Besides, we actually made our resolutions back in December. At that time, Ivan the programmer was coming up with a big plan of features and tweaks we'd like to introduce to Craftomation 101 before the v1.0 release.
We already mentioned certain ideas from this master plan in our previous piece but we have developed these ideas since, and had them entered in a document - that's how serious we are! Here, we've even made a (quite literally) shiny new art for the Steam page:
Here's the old one, so you can compare them and see that we mean business:
Below, you will find some highlights from our list of next features. Some of them are definitely making their way to the game. Others still need to be tested to make sure they're fun. But we're equally excited to try out all of them, and we hope you'll have a fun ride along with us!
Some things that (most likely) will appear in Craftomation 101 before v1.0
There are plans to replace the Sulfur source with an entity codenamed Research Center. Details will follow. Some day
More programming tools, definitely: conditional searching, debugging, advanced interaction between CraftoMates, global Variables, and much more
The Brewery will become mobile and more compact
Brewable items will become applicable to heating elements, organics, and maybe some other stuff on the map
Unique heating elements in each climate zone
New Storage mechanics: limited Storage capacity, an ability to rename Storage units and empty them quickly. We don't yet know if it will be fun to play; we'll discuss it with you when it's there!
Dynamite and the ability to throw items
Fishing (because it makes everything better)
Flying CraftoMate (AirMate? FlyingMate? The name is TBD, send your ideas to our Discord server!)
We're also experimenting with new animations, details of which we're not yet ready to share… however, we can show some WiP stuff instead: But you know how New Year's resolutions are: sometimes they don't get done. That said, this list is not a commitment, just an array of features from our to-do plan. It will be fun to check on this list again in a year or so and see how things will have turned out!
What is definitely happening - is the new look for the UI. Finally, we have moved on from making our own efforts and called an actual UI/UX designers, so now they're making this:
New Dev in Town
Please welcome Andrei, our newest mate on the team, helping us push Craftomation 101 beyond the current boundaries! Here's his short bio:
Name: Andrey Fenderov Occupation: programming, prototyping Works on: experimenting with web platforms and potential next games concepts Favorite games: disco elysium, outer wilds, minecraft, cyberpunk, the talos principle Favorite IDE: coding directly in Defold, because it's easier to switch between working with in-game objects and writing the code. Outside of work, it's VSCode What makes a good game: Who knows! I like it when the game allows you to feel as part of a fantasy world, no matter the way - be it the means of gameplay or the good connection between the art and the sound, or the fascinating story Other interests: painting, crafting silly presents, cooking, hanging out with cool people!
***
The year is young, and we have lots of things we'd like to improve in Craftomation 101. Thanks for being with us, and please: don't hesitate to share your thoughts about the game, the Universe, and everything.
Until we meet again!
Happy Robanukah! - Craftomation 101 Dev Diaries, December 2024
Hey, mates!
This edition of our developer diaries is quite deliberately named after the iconic (and totally fake) robot holiday from Futurama. Because it's the holiday season, and robots are playing a growingly important role in our lives, they deserve a holiday of their own, don't you agree?
You can post your ideas for alternative names in the comments, and we'll keep telling the story of Craftomation 101. It was quite an important year for us, as the game was released into Early Access on Steam.
Even more so, it started coming into shape, thanks to your generous feedback and a bit of hard work.
About a month ago we released the coolest update for the game so far. It is so cool that it introduced 2 new types of frozen areas for you to warm out. This system is a result of weeks of experiments and it comes to replace the infamous Thorns (along with a weird thing called Ancient Ice). After many experiments with them we came to the idea that progressively colder areas felt more intuitive.
So now the planet is effectively more icy and even more lifeless. We hope you enjoy it!
That also led to rebalancing existing heating elements, such as Bonfires and Furnaces. We even introduced new visuals for their area of operation - and then changed it again in another update, for your convenience. Now the preview shows the final state of the affected tiles, instead of the heating level change (which makes sense with the new climate zone system):
Heating elements will keep evolving further. We have spent a lot of time drafting a content plan for the game. Although the details may and will change as we go, we now know the general direction in which we will be heading. More on that below.
The biggest mission for the next few months will be to build a more fluent system of objectives. One target effect is to bring together various gameplay mechanics that sometimes feel like they work independently in their present state.
For example, remember the Sulfur Source? Once you unlock it, it's kinda just… sitting there. Which is a behavior expected from a mineral but it is not very fun. So, since managing that zone also implies working with various kind of organics, our idea is to replace the Source with something more alive. A giant tree? A giant forest? A wise giant turtle (not likely)? Ideas are very welcome: let us know in the comments or on our Discord server!
Introducing this… thing will most likely lead to a separate line of objectives which will not be like the ones given out by the Command Center at the moment. One of the concepts we're going to experiment with is to ask for a certain amount of items to be provided per second, in the hope of motivating the players to experiment with balancing harvesting and crafting various objects.
Another idea for new kinds of tasks is procedural goals - when a player will be asked to provide a random-ish number of random-ish items and write a program for CraftoMates, that will allow them to properly detect what needs to be delivered.
Proceeding to the Volcano will also imply a new structure for the objectives though this is still rather early in the works. But what's definitely coming soon is several new types of heating elements, so you could experiment more with the new climate zones and optimize heat levels in different parts of the map.
We do have a long backlog of ideas that we have plans to experiment with next year. Like adding more minor mechanics that will let interact with the environment in different fun ways (one word: dynamite!). The Brewery could use a renovation, both in terms of mechanics and visuals. And we still owe you that bonfire-carrying ability for CargoMates! It's coming, too. Highly likely.
It was a good year for Craftomation, and the year 2025 is promising to be even more interesting. Happy Holidays, mates, especially to those of you celebrating Robanukah!
New Update - v0.87
Hey mates! Here's the latest update for Craftomation 101, which fixes some important stuff:
v0.87 Released!
We've changed the display of work range for heating elements to make it less frustrating. It now shows exactly the result of placing a heating element on a tile
Optimized pathfinding for robots in case of an error
Fixed the bug that sometiomes caused a CraftoMate to freeze upon executing a Function
Fixed the bug that caused Command Center to shrink into total disappearance if a player placed a Storage unit with demanded items in front of it
Fixed the bug that caused incorrect of display of the number of discovered items in the wiki
Fixed a number of other bugs
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out!
And if you haven't done it already, please don't forget to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist, it is an important marker to us, that brings the game's release closer:
We promised you that in our last developer diaries, and here it is! The new cold and heating system is now in the game, and we can't wait to hear what you think of it! More on that below.
Warning: Unfortunately, this new system changes the game so much that the older saves are incompatible. We added an option to convert old saves and make them playable in the current version, but doing so may result in bugs (errors, not insects) emerging on your map. We apologize for any inconvenience, Early Access can be a bumpy ride (to making an awesome game)...
v0.86 Released!
The map is now divided into 3 climate zones, each one progressively colder than the next one: the first is as cold as the map used to be, the next one is 10 times as cold, and the last one is 100 times colder
Subsequently, Bonfires, Furnaces, and Heaters were rebalanced, so more advanced heating elements would be more efficient in colder areas
More powerful heating elements can also be used in colder areas to warm them out more efficiently
The display of heated areas and the heat map were improved to better show the areas, warmed out by heating elements
Great news for everyone who were frustrated by Thorns: they are gone for good! And so is the Ancient Ice. Don't hesitate to celebrate it!
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out!
And if you haven't done it already, please don't forget to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist, it is an important marker to us, that brings the game's release closer:
While we're working on some major new gameplay features, please enjoy this update that brings a lot of optimization to the game.
v0.85 Released!
Fixed the situation that was causing performance drops during the first seeconds of the game
Optimized heat map render that now works faster on weaker computers
Optimized the system for updating Objects on the map which improved the overall game performance
Added an upgrade to the upgrade tree which expands the battery capacity of your robots (and auto recharges all existing robots once you unlock it, as a bonus)
Fixed an old bug that caused connection lines between programming blocks appear on top of everything else in the work field
Game engine version updated
Added commmunity translation into Hungarian
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out!
And if you haven't done it already, please don't forget to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist, it is an important marker to us, that brings the game's release closer:
Trash it, change it, mail, upgrade it - Craftomation Dev Diaries, November 2024
Hey, mates!
The last couple of months were pretty intense for Craftomation 101. We got featured on Steam's main page for a while, we participated in a programming-themed event (that also got featured on the main page).
But most importantly, we released not one but two major updates, in which we introduced new mechanics, reworked the old ones, and added some long-awaited QoL improvements. It's been a wild ride, so let's try and summarize it all up.
It sounds somewhat ironic but we quite literally started this cycle of development by dealing with weeds. Those thorns that we had initially introduced to add more challenge to the game, turned out to be in the specter between annoying and frustrating.
So now there's an option to permanently deal with those pesky Bushes, or use them as a source of Thorns that can now be used for producing Fire.
But adding new ways to deal with Thorns (including a special brew known as ‘Uproot Beer’) has not solved the problem of them being frustrating, Thorns still felt out of place. Reinventing them would mean creating the whole gameplay mechanics from scratch.
The initial goal of introducing Thorns was to add more challenge to the game and stimulate the players to warm out map tiles more efficiently. So, after weeks of discussions, we remembered similar mechanics from earlier prototypes.
We’re now about to introduce a new system of snow, in which some areas will be more frozen than others. Here’s a work-in-progress example of how it will look:
This would mean rebalancing the Bonfires and improving the heat map but this system looks and plays more intuitively than the current mechanics. With it in place, the Thorns (and also Ancient Ice) will most likely disappear from the game in one of the next updates, so take your time to say goodbyes!
As for another mechanic that we introduced in September, it’s a keeper. We mentioned them more than once already but now you can finally try them for yourself: Ale Sprinklers disperse whatever Ale you load into it at an area on the map. This opens a whole new level of organizing your base: create dedicated areas near the resource where CraftoMates work faster? Sure, do that!
To enrich this part of the game we changed the effect of Primordial Ale: now it slowly replenishes the battery of your robots for 2% per second, for 45 seconds. Wanna try making an area with auto-charging for your CraftoMates? By all means, do that too!
And then, of course, there're new programming tools. The ‘uncombine’ command allows you to disassemble an Object into its’ components.
We also added 'any object' and 'nothing' categories to Object categories (e.g. in Variables): you can now make a bot check whether its' hands are empty, whether a selected tile contains Objects, etc.
CargoMates have dedicated commands for checking the amount of items in their backpacks. Oh, and in one of the next updates they'll learn to drag Bonfires around, too (although they don't look very excited by this idea):
Last but not least: let's talk about those UI/UX improvements. The word around indie devs today is that in 2024 users are becoming more demanding of the quality of Early Access titles. Craftomation 101, on the other hand, is an old school, ‘polish it as you go’ kind of an Early Access game. That means some pretty obvious and intuitive features take months to implement - sometimes due to technical limitations of the engine, sometimes because we get too carried away by improving the gameplay.
But we're getting there! Here's a brief list of improvements we made in the past few months:
‘Ctrl + Z’ and ‘Ctrl + Shift + Z’ now work in the Editor (oh yeah!!!)
Smoother camera zooming due to the release of a native camera module in Defold
You can now input numbers as arguments for variables from the keyboard (can you believe it?!)
We also added an option to input custom names for Variables and connectors of Functions
Oh, and for your convenience, there's now an option from the main menu that allows you to get unlimited progression points, so you could get the full set of programming options from the start, if you wish so. This feature becomes available after you unlock Sulfur Source at least once during a playthrough.
And if, on the contrary, you need more guidance in the early parts of the game, we have frozen not one, but two CraftoMates on the map, who have a premade programs installed in them: for your inspiration and maybe occasional copy-pasting.
We also added ‘fog of war’ into the wiki and the tooltips, which looks surprisingly good and intriguing:
As for the near future, we're up to something really exciting: we are now discussing the narrative structure of the game. After studying the feedback and playing the game again and again for a couple of weeks, we feel that this is the kind of motivation that Craftomation 101 is currently lacking.
We still have to figure out how it will work though, and we'll make sure to let you know as soon as we've come up with a decision. Our Discord server is the place if you want to hear about it first and discuss it with us.
See you in the next edition of our developer diaries!
New Update - v0.84
Hey mates! This content update comes with a new frozen robot, more flexibility for Variables and vital QoL improvements:
v0.84 Released!
Added functional 'Ctrl + Z' and 'Ctrl + Shift + Z' keyboard shortcuts! Small step for game development, huge leap for QoL: this was one of the most frequently requested features from the community, and it's finally here!
Added another frozen CraftoMate with premade code: it's found near the Sulfur source and it will help you deal with those annoying rock piles that are blocking the way
Added 'any object' and 'nothing' categories to Object categories (e.g. in Variables): you can now make a bot check whether its' hands are empty, whether a selected tile contains Objects, etc.
Added 'fog of war' to the wiki, that conceals Objects not yet discovered by the player
Bug fixes
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out!
And if you haven't done it already, please don't forget to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist, it is an important marker to us, that brings the game's release closer:
