Hey mates! This update adds one major feature to the game, the one that you've been asking for since release! We're very excited to know if it will make your terraforming adventure more comfortable, so please update soon:
v0.75 Released!
Bot-management interface is finally here! Here's what it does:
Allows you to quickly check the status of each Craftomate, and see if it's working, paused, out of energy or has an error
Allows you to create custom groups, pick names and colors for them
Allows dragging and dropping robots to groups
Allows selecting robots by clicking on them, naturally
What will be added later
Syncing switching between robots with arrow keys on the bottom of the screen with their position in the new interface
Controlling robots from the interface. Our plan is to see how people like its' current state and how they would like it improved, and then hopefully add more functions. Let us know what you think in the comments or on our Discord
We have also added community translation into Portuguese!
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:
It's spring in our hemisphere, so this update will be colorful, like flowers in bloom! Only it's not flowers, but robots.
Anyway, we've released a new update, please check it out and let us know what you think - your feedback is fueling the development of Craftomation 101!
v0.74 Released!
Cargomates can now be colored, the same way as regular Craftomates
Added an extra Cargomate by the Sulfur Source. It has a pre-written code, to help the new players understand what these big guys can do
Added an additional warning that appears when a player selects to delete a Craftomate's code
Switching to another window via Alt+Tab now mutes the in-game sound
'Repeat' command now has more comprehensive input/output names. The execution of the command was also made more user-friendly, as we've received a lot of feedback about this command being confusing. We hope it's all better now!
Old:
New:
Some extra pesky bugs were fixed, including:
That one that caused a collision between Cargomate and a Storage
That one that caused the grid in the programming interface to move, if a player switched between Craftomates while was open
That one that caused a function to crash if a player copy-pasted inputs or outputs of a variable from another function
See you in a couple of weeks, when the next update rolls out! Speaking of which, we have a teaser for you: many players were asking us about robot-management interface, which was part of our development plan but didn't make it to Early Access release. It is now officially in the making, although far from final form:
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:
Proceeding as planned - Craftomation 101 Dev Diaries, April 2024
Hey mates!
We love releasing our games to Early Access at Luden.io! Sometimes they can be rough around the edges at first, but that's ok for us: that initial release is just another milestone on the roadmap. We were updating Craftomation 101 every couple of weeks even before it became available - for no one to be seen, except for us and a handful of playtesters.
After the game landed on the virtual shelves of Steam, we took a side-quest for extreme post-release bug fighting, but now we're back on the usual track, planning to release updates for the game every 2-3 weeks. So let's check out what's new in the game, shall we? But first, take a second an enjoy this special picture that we made to celebrate the International Day for Human Space Flight:
What's new?
The second part of the game was our main focus of attention in the past couple of weeks. After watching the players go through it, we noted a bunch of things we'd like to tweak to improve the experience. The biggest part of it was adding a second ‘enemy’ (the first one being the snow) - growing Thorns, that need to be rooted out once in a while, otherwise they grow back, preventing Craftomates from interacting with the occupied tile.
We did not come up with this concept instantly, of course. At first, there was an idea to create a zone that would not allow manual interaction with objects, so only Craftomates could operate inside of it. However, we discarded it rather quickly, because we wanted to preserve the opportunity for the players to do everything by hand - it is a tough job, but an honest one! It doesn't mean that zones like that will not be added to the game at some point - it's just that their time hasn't come yet.
The visual manifestation of the new obstacle was also a matter of discussion. Before we decided to stick with thorns, we also briefly discussed sentient crystals and sentient mold. But thorns were a perfect match with the mechanic of growing back (which was the necessary part of the concept for the new obstacle), so here they are. We do not know yet, whether they are sentient or not. What do you think?
Please keep in mind: this mechanics is not yet final, so we could use some feedback from you! We will be conducting internal playtests as well. Our biggest doubt at this time is how those thorns will fit into current plant-growing mechanics, which rely on the temperature of the soil.
While most of the organics on the planet only provide benefits for the player, it makes sense to keep the ground as warm as possible (for it speeds up the growth of the plants). However, warmer ground makes Thorns grow faster, too. Switch to the heat map to see how warm your ground is:
One of the options we're considering now is adding another brewable item, that would withhold the growth of plants. This would also come in handy for those cases when you place a Bonfire on a tile with Thorn roots on it - effectively preventing you from harvesting the Throns, dealing with them only when they grow back fully.
By the way, at the moment harvested Thorns don't really do anything (except for being generally annoying), but we're considering options for making them more useful in the future. What benefits (or other effects) could they provide? Come discuss it with us on our Discord server!
Other steps to improve the experience of the second half of the game were taken as well! As part of balancing the aforementioned soil temperature paradox, Steam Bonfire (the most advanced Bonfire in the game so far) now warms out a larger part of the map, but does so at a minimal heat level, to prevent excessive growth of Thorns.
We have also changed the order of objectives in a way so tree-management gameplay would emerge roughly at the same time the players discover the Sulfur source.
Brewables were also boosted: previously there used to be a tradeoff from using them, but now they only bring benefits. With Thorns emerging, they can become a powerful tool for dealing with those pesky weeds.
What's next?
Major improvements of QoL are on the way, with many changes happening here and there. Key bindings are already in the game, the next step is adding a proper text input interface - we know it sounds like a feature that should have been there from the beginning, but our Defold engine, while being awesome in so many other ways, has no out of the box solution for text input. Fortunately, this issue is about to be solved:
The other feature that's going to emerge in the next update is rather colorful. We're going to let you paint Cargomates, the same way you do it with Craftomates. Make this world even more festive!
But this is just a temporary solution. The proper bot-management interface is now in active development, expected to appear in the game in May. Stay tuned for more information on that.
We'll see you again in a month, with more exciting news about Craftomation 101!
If you want to receive regular updates about Craftomation 101 (and our other games) development, consider joining our mailing list on Substack!
Weeklong Deal: Craftomation 101 is 20% off, DLCs are 10% off!
Hey mates,
This is one of those times, when the heading says it all! Random act of spring kindness: Craftomation 101 is 20% off for this whole week, and DLCs are 10% off, too!
Get one of them, or get them all! Tell a friend! Have fun, and let us know how you like it.
We wanted to throw it last week to celebrate the International Day of Human Space Flight and even made a special art for it (see below)... But then we decided to give that update some more playtesting. Besides, robots really started conquering space a bit later than the first human got there, so it only made sense. And they're doing a heck of a job too! Just look at those handsome shiny beasts:
----------------------How to get more involved?----------------------
If you want Craftomation 101, we got you! Here's what you can do:
Join our Discord server, find your mates and chat with us, the devs
Subscribe to our mailing list to get the latest Craftomation-related news
You probably saw the "Add to your wishlist" message several times here on Steam. But what are all the developers asking it for, should you click that green (or blue) button, what is it?
Or you can do it on the game's page just under the video trailer, like this:
For players
If you have a game on your wishlist you will:
Receive an email on the release day
See news about the game published by its' developer here on Steam
Get notified about the discounts by email
You can always remove the game from your wishlist.
For developers
The developer will know nothing about players who added the game to the wishlist. No email, no account name, no ability to send you a message - nothing. The only thing visible for the developers is the total number of wishlists This number is a thing that can help the developers understand how much players are interested in the game, and how many additional features and level of quality they should consider to work on.
1,000 wishlists - almost nobody knows about the game, probably players don't want it or never heard about the game
1,000,000 wishlists - players absolutely crazy about that and expecting something really really good from the developers
Now you know what to do
If you are interested - consider adding the game to your wishlist right now, it's like hitting the subscribe button on social media. If you are not sure yet (or you waiting for the discounts) and want to see how the game is being developed to decide later - adding to the wishlist is the best option to tell Steam algorithms that you want to be aware of news and updates from the developer.
P.S. If you want to talk to developers directly, suggest some features, and get more involved in the making of the game - Discord and Steam Discussions are great for that. Or let's chat down below if you have anything to discuss!
New Update - v0.73
Ahoy, mates!
Slowly, but steadily, we're setting up the rhythm for regular content updates of Craftomation! This time we bring you new content: another obstacle and yet another command for overcoming it!
v0.72.1 Released!
A new obstacle: Thorns appear in the second half of the game and provide you with endless fun of constantly removing them, as weeds do. Some more features might likely be added for them in the future (write us if you have your own ideas!)
A new command: 'Set Speed' allows you to change a Craftomate's gear right from the code. Speeding up increases battery consumption, while speeding down a bit does the opposite thing (duh)
'Wait' command is now animated, so a bot doesn't look as if it's stuck, while waiting
As was foretold, ales were buffed to the limit they're almost overpowered. We'll see about the balance, but in any case, combined with 'Set Speed', it provides you with new food for experiments
Mid-game objectives (revolving around Sulfur source) were rebalanced
2 achievements changed, all the achievements are now indeed achievable (also added progress bars to achievements, where applicable)
Fixed a bunch of particularly nasty bugs happening around the Brewery
Other 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:
It seems like this is our very first public update (hotfixes don't count)... So exciting!
We're going to start small though: a few QoL improvements that hopefully will make your playthrough more comfortable.
That big war with bugs, however, goes on the very moment you're reading this. We will prevail in the next updates!
v0.72.1 Released!
Visual effects optimization (resulting in the overall performance optimization)
Added key bindings and an option to turn on AZERTY keyboard layout
In the Program editor, tabs can be scrolled through, and their overall display was improved
Fixed the bug (hopefully) that prevented selecting an argument for a node
Fixed a bunch of bugs in processing Variables
Copying and pasting programs works in a more stable way now
A little teaser! There is a feature which didn't make it in this update, but will definitely appear in one of the next: it's a new kind of obstacle, which is designed to make your journey to the Volcano more challenging and interesting. Here's a screenshot with a placeholder art, to give you the general idea:
Our goal is to update the game every two weeks, which means - see you in a fortnight!
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:
You probably saw the "Add to your wishlist" message several times here on Steam. But what are all the developers asking it for, should you click that green (or blue) button, what is it?
Or you can do it on the game's page just under the video trailer, like this:
For players
If you have a game on your wishlist you will:
Receive an email on the release day
See news about the game published by its' developer here on Steam
Get notified about the discounts by email
You can always remove the game from your wishlist.
For developers
The developer will know nothing about players who added the game to the wishlist. No email, no account name, no ability to send you a message - nothing. The only thing visible for the developers is the total number of wishlists This number is a thing that can help the developers understand how much players are interested in the game, and how many additional features and level of quality they should consider to work on.
1,000 wishlists - almost nobody knows about the game, probably players don't want it or never heard about the game
1,000,000 wishlists - players absolutely crazy about that and expecting something really really good from the developers
Now you know what to do
If you are interested - consider adding the game to your wishlist right now, it's like hitting the subscribe button on social media. If you are not sure yet (or you waiting for the discounts) and want to see how the game is being developed to decide later - adding to the wishlist is the best option to tell Steam algorithms that you want to be aware of news and updates from the developer.
P.S. If you want to talk to developers directly, suggest some features, and get more involved in the making of the game - Discord and Steam Discussions are great for that. Or let's chat down below if you have anything to discuss!
Hello (again), world! - Craftomation 101 Dev Diaries, March 2024
Releasing a game is pretty much like throwing a party. You hang around some decorations (set up a page on Steam), plan the entertainment (prepare the game build), maybe invite a popular DJ (that would be content makers from YouTube/Twitch/TikTok). And then, when the time is due, you open the doors, expecting to see a hyped crowd.
What could be your worst nightmare at that moment? To see no one there, that's what. Were we afraid of it? You bet. But everything turned out to be alright!
Let's be honest: Craftomation 101 is a different kind of a game. We're no Fortnite, nor are we The Elder Scrolls VI (if you're reading this, Mr. Howard, please consider sharing more details about that game!). It's a game about programming. It's an Early Access title, too, meaning that only a small portion of the game would be available by the time we'd start selling it for money. We did see a decent amount of wishlists, but that's no guarantee that a game will spark interest in the players’ hearts.
With that in mind, we were prepared for the worst: that metaphorical empty space instead of a bunch of people with sparkles in their eyes and money in their hands. Fortunately, we were wrong. Even more so: despite all the bugs and bumps in game design, our players turned out to be very forgiving. We received a bunch of reviews in which people would meticulously list all the flaws in Craftomation 101, and still leave a thumbs-up review.
What is there to say? Thank you. Thank you! Thank you!!! Now we know that something clicked, and we're on the right track.
It also means that now we simply have to push this game to v1.0 release. It's probably gonna take some time, because Craftomation 101 is being developed by a new team at Luden.io, and it's a very small bunch of 3 people (with some occasional help from our very supportive peers).
It is also our first released project made in the wonderful Defold engine, and some bugs we're facing are quite unique, too! For example, we received a bunch of crash reports, that we struggled hard with, but weren't able to trace back for some time. The game would just crash upon launch and it seemed that nothing could fix it.
Turned out, that Defold has a feature of checking inputs on a user's PC, looking for connected controllers. If a user had some unexpected hardware connected - say, a joystick for flight simulators - the engine would crash: apparently, this is an issue for every game on Defold out there.
Luckily, Defold's team is very supportive and responsive, and this bug will hopefully fixed soon.
A side story: why Defold?
We meant to tell this story in the previous edition of these diaries, but it was so heavy on pretty pictures, that we decided to save it for later. So here it is now!
It took us almost 3 years to bring Craftomation 101 to Early Access release, and one of the big reasons behind that is that originally it was meant to be a whole different game. You see, in 2019-2021 our team was experimenting in the hope of developing a game that would prove beneficial for players with autism spectrum disorder. One of the problems that people with ASD often struggle with, is recognizing and dealing with emotions. At some point, we came up with the concept of a deck-building game, in which the players would need to defeat enemies by understanding their feelings and using words instead of swords and bullets. You can still play the prototype on our itch.io page.
Naturally, we also had to mind the fact, that neurodiverse children study in schools, and schools often have Chromebooks, or similar devices, which only allowed to launch apps in a browser. That's how we stumbled upon Defold, which would easily allow us to have a browser-based version, while still being able to release a good old installable version. As for the game for autistic children… turned out that those of them who play games usually don't need specially tailored projects, they play pretty much the same video games as their neurotypical friends. The jokes were on us, apparently, but the idea of making a game about emotions lived on - at least, for some time.
The game that would later become Craftomation 101 featured quite different robots: they would emotionally burn out, as they were drowning in more and more work. You can also play it, still! We've had great fun making it, but here's another thing that's magical about video games: sometimes you find out that the idea you thought would be fun to play doesn't turn out so well, but something completely different turns out to be way more exciting! For us, it was experimenting with combining resources first and automating robots to do it, second.
Which brings us back to the present day!
What's next?
At the moment, we're quite busy eradicating some nasty bugs that were discovered upon releasing the game - hang in there, folks, and thank you for your patience!
As for flaws in the design that our players mentioned in their feedback elevated our spirits, surprisingly perhaps, because, once again, the collective unconscious of our audience perfectly matched our plans for the future of Craftomation 101!
For example, many, many players want some sort of a meta interface for managing all the robots. It only makes sense in the late parts of the game, when there are so many processes to manage! We even wanted to add it before the Early Access release, but time is merciless, and the release date was set in stone. Which means, that this is what we will be working on in the next couple of months.
The next big feature… Well, this one we didn't foresee, although it matches the game's spirit perfectly: we'll add procedurally generated maps to the game! More replayability, more challenge for the brain - what can possibly go wrong? Time and playtesting will show, we guess.
Balancing the current map will be another thing for us to meditate on. We thought that we got rid of the silly strategy of building a hell load of Bonfires to unlock the map within a couple of hours before release. It turned out that some players would still refer to it, so we will probably add additional obstacles to prevent this in the future. Or maybe come up with something completely different! And remember: if you want to suggest your own solution, or simply have a chat, you're always welcome to our Discord server!
We hope that the aforementioned features will fix a big part of the issues that the players are complaining about now. And after that, we will be able to focus on adding more programming-related content. More diverse variables. Properly working counters. Other smart sounding stuff! Oh, this is going to be so much fun!
See you in a month, with more exciting news about Craftomation 101!
If you want to receive regular updates about Craftomation 101 (and our other games) development, consider joining our mailing list on Substack!
Hotfix v0.71.7
Hey mates!
These days we work especially hard, fixing the bugs reported by you! Oh, these unforgettable first days in Early Access, the endless source of good memories and, sometimes, a reason for going into therapy!
Anyway, here's the list of pesky bugs that v0.71.7 aims to fix:
Fixed interface freezing in the Editor, that happened in certain cases: when a Craftomate was picked by another Craftomate, for example
Fixed the logics of selecting numeric parameters in respective nodes - the previous solution sometimes resulted in the program breaking, shouldn't be a problem anymore
(Hopefully) fixed the problem with achievemnts, but we'll keep investigating
Improved our crash reporting tool, for more detailed reports and faster crash fixing
Other minor bug fixes
If you encounter more errors, please feel free to let us know on Discord, or leave a comment below this post, or on the forums.
And from the game, you can use the built-in feedback form:
