Engineer Alpha
Magnetube Preview Video
Engineer Alpha's Log #75: New Year, New Focus
Last year I made a road map with all of the planned releases for the year and while that went ok I am not planning to do something that far looking at this time. I do have many plans for what updates are going to be I am just not ready to share them yet. The final release on the roadmap Version 0.7 was planned for release back in December unfortunately that did not happen. Given how late 0.6 was you probably could have guessed. The plan is to release the development version on the 16th and I will have a video on more of what is coming in that patch on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
As for what is going to happen for the rest of the year the current plan for now is to focus on improving what the game already has as well as focusing on media presence and sales. The hard truth is I can't keep going forever as I am so its time to try something new. I will of course still be fixing any bugs and adding features that are needed so if there is anything that you want fixed or changed please say so either here on Steam or Discord.
Engineer Alpha's Log #74: Giving You More Control
In 0.7 shaft splitters will not longer be locked to using a select few options for how power is split between the two outputs.
You the player will will have full control of what percentage of torque will go either direction. The old buttons will still remain as a set of quick pick options for convenience. You will be able to move the slider to change on a single percent as well as type in values to change to several decimal places. I decided to make this change because it didn't really add to the building to have things be limited in the way that they were as you still have to manually go up to the building and decide where to send the power you can just send more of it to where you want it.
Gearboxes will also receive a similar treatment with things appropriate for them.
The Gearbox does not use the slider bar since it is a ratio and not a difference it didn't make a ton of sense. I also changed ow the buttons were laid out as I was not happy with how they were. I decided to split them into two different sides as there was no good way to show them all together largely because there is no official agreed upon way to write gear ratios. You can now choose exactly what you want the gear ratio to be to several decimal places so your machines will run as fast as possible.
October Video on Freight Containers
Engineer Alpha's Log #73: Prospecting
***Please be aware that all GUI's shown in this log are not final in any way and will change.***
One of the great things about Engineer Alpha is that is takes place in a 3D voxel world, however this presents the problem that you can't see anything inside the world so you don't know where to dig for resources. There are a couple of possible solutions to this problem the first that I took in 0.5 and earlier was to just make resources everywhere which does solve the problem but leads to uninteresting gameplay as everywhere is the same. The second option is to give the player surface landmarks as to what can be found under the surface e.g. diamonds are found under volcanos or whatever the case may be but I don't want to restrict the underground based on the surface. So I did what I always seem to do and made a machine to do it.
Prospectors are buildings that you will place in the world like any other and given power and time they will tell you what is under them. It is currently planned that the first level of prospector will be available late iron tier and will generate its own power.
Prospectors work by giving you a sample of the world. They test every 4th forth block in each dimension so it is 1/64 total of the blocks below it.
The GUI is still a work in progress but will allow you to select the scan start and end depth as well as the size of each layer to be scanned. When the prospector has completed its scan it will produce a readout of all the blocks that it found and the quantities of each. Later tiers of prospectors will likely have increased max size and depth as well as additional features for data analysis.
I wouldn't want the player character to be left out and I need something for the early game so you will also be able to prospect by hand. A new keybinding has been added, defaulting to [V] that will allow you prospect by hand. Holding down the prospect key while aiming at a block will start a prospect charging and the prospect charge bar will show on the screen.
As the prospect button is held the the depth of the prospect increases. When the player prospects it is every second block (1/8 of the world) in a 5x5 square and has a starting max depth of 10 meters which is increased by 1 for each 10 points of intellect you have. Each tick on the charge bar corresponds to 1 layer of prospect and you can release at anytime for the depth you want. upon releasing the prospect key you will be given a readout of all the blocks found sorted by the most abundant that will remain on screen for a few seconds.
Unlike the building prospector the player is not limited to only prospecting down and can look in any direction based off the face of the block looked at i.e. looking at a wall will prospect to the side.
Hopefully these additions allow you to find where you want to dig and not have it just be a total guessing game and hope you get lucky soon.
September Video On Cranes and Blueprints
Engineer Alpha's Log #72: Getting back into the swing of things
I built a new computer at the beginning of this month. My old one was past its 7-year expected life span and personally I prefer to update before things start having major problems. For the curious nerds out there I decided to go all "Team Red" for the first time ever and despite a few hiccups overall I have been very happy with it.
I missed last months video unfortunately but this months will be up very soon (most likely tomorrow). It covers the new Cranes coming in 0.7 as well as Construction Orders and Blueprints.
For other development tasks I started working on adding in the new steel tier of machinery, parts, and connectors. In doing so I realized that while I was working on it I should add in the higher tiers as well. I also decided there was no real reason to restrict the player from having access to these items & buildings (as the existence and nature of these later tiers I have mentioned before). Feel free to play around with these buildings and marvel at how much power a tungsten shaft can transmit.
Unfortunately 0.6 is not going to get the love and updates it deserves. No one has told me that the development version is completely broken yet so that is a good thing and honestly there wasn't a whole lot to break in this version anyways (ya know a tree model is a tree model!) There will be release of version 0.6.1 that will be coming out next week that will have some changes as well as adding in the ore washer. There is a lot of great stuff planned for 0.7 and I can't wait to show it off to you.
Version 0.6 Development Release
Version 0.6 is finally here for you to test out. The full list of patch notes is in game but the highlights include a world revamp, cable shovel, and even doors and beds.
There will be bugs and things that need to be fixed. If you find something please let me know about it here on steam or on the official discord and I will do my best to get things changed and fixed to be better for everyone.
Engineer Alpha's Log #71: When it Rains, It Pours
However this morning the main PC I use for developing the game and everthing will not turn on (I am writing this from my small little PC i use for watching movies and the like). The problem has yet to be diagnosed as of writing this but it is an older computer at just over 7 years and is due for an upgrade (I was specing out a replacement yesterday). I don't know when things will be back up and running but as soon as they are version 0.6 will be released.
Engineer Alpha's Log #70: The Perils of being a One Man Band
Aaron