Factory Magnate
Official Publisher Announcement
I have some fantastic news to share! As some of you may know, I'm a solo developer who has been working on this game for almost 4 years now, on and off. While I love creating the game, I must admit that the business and marketing side of things isn't my strong suit. Many times over the years, I've wished for a team to handle that part so I could focus on development. Well, that wish has finally come true.
I'm thrilled to announce that I'm partnering with indie.io. If you haven't heard of them, I highly recommend checking out their page to see all the amazing indie titles they support.
This partnership is incredibly exciting for many reasons. For those of you who may not know, having a game publisher like indie.io greatly helps indie developers focus on game development while they handle all the behind-the-scenes magic. From helping manage store pages to crafting marketing campaigns and even helping the game shine at both digital and live events, publishers help in all the aspects that indie developers often struggle with.
In other words, it's perfect for someone like me who just loves to code and make sprites move on screen. Unlike many other publishers, indie.io lets me, the developer, stay in full creative control. This means I can continue working on the game uninterrupted. And what's in it for you? If you ever doubted my commitment to finishing and releasing the game, partnering with a publisher should put those doubts to rest. This game is going to happen.
I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage you to wishlist the game if you haven't already and to join the Discord community. On Discord, I share dev logs and occasionally livestream my development process. It's a great way to interact with me and play a small part in the game's development because I truly value any feedback I receive.
Thank you so much for your patience. I can't wait for you all to play the game!
Regards,
Fey, the developer of Factory Magnate
Devlog #11
Oh boy, this update is long overdue.
I'm happy to report everything is going well. I picked up development early January and have been at it ever since, although I've been taking it a little bit easy in May. But overall It has been 5 super active months. A lot have happened and many things have sort of fallen into place.
I could talk about that for several pages worth of reading, but to save my time and yours, here's a list of the most notable news:
- Added 14 new buildings and 31 new items, for a grand total of 34 buildings and 55 items.
- Scope was cut; got rid of the idea of managing multiple factory sites simultaneously.
- Contract and market mechanics were scrapped.
- Some unsatisfactory content was removed, most notably water tiles and pipes.
- Economy as a game mechanic is almost entirely gone; the only purpose of money in the game now is to purchase bonus effects (mentioned later in this list).
- Optimized and refactored a bunch of stuff.
- Changed map generation and animated some tiles.
- Added clouds and passing ships, because why not?
- Implemented building augments and upgrades. Aaaand then removed them again..
- Implemented a brand new UI (again!), but this is the final iteration, guaranteed.
- Implemented a main menu. 19 months of development had gone by without one at that time, so it was a pretty big milestone.
- Implemented proper screens for saving, loading and starting a new game.
- Implemented the Codex, an ingame wiki-like interface.
- Added particle emitter capabilities to buildings and tiles.
- Implemented the core objectives mechanic. This is going to be the main driver for the player to progress and ultimately win the game.
- Implemented a player rank system, XP and special bonuses that can be purchased whenever the player ranks up. Bonuses will affect the factory in various ways.
- Implemented the core research mechanic.
- Made every string translatable through a simple JSON file, allowing for community translations.
- Started the Steam integration: rich presense, cloud saves, achievements, and, you know, launching the game from Steam. But I am getting a little ahead of myself, because the demo won't have achievements.
So yeah, that's 5 months worth of development right there.
I also recently finally gave the Steam page a long needed overhaul with new screenshots and a more fitting description of what the game will be about. If you don't follow me on twitter, you should go check out the updated Steam page because there will surely be something new for you to look at.
With that out the way, I want to address the big question:
When will the demo be ready?
Honestly I still don't know. I believe the demo is mostly feature complete, there are no huge programming tasks left except a tutorial. However, there is still plenty to do: play testing, build testing (on different screen resolutions and densities), bug fixing, balancing, laying out a plan for progression, defining objectives and research, sound and music, proper error handling. I will say that I HOPE to make the Steam fest in October, but I can't make any promises yet.
I'll keep you updated. I also want to add that any news of a demo will hit the Discord first, way before anyone else finds out. In fact I will be asking Discord members to help polish up the demo before it's released to the public. So if you're interested in that, you should join.
Until next time! (And I hope it won't be another 5 months)
Fey at Rising Tail
Devlog #10
It's been 5 months since the last devlog, but that doesn't mean the game is abandoned. Oh no.
My absense is explained by the simple fact that I needed a break. Being an indie game developer isn't easy; it comes with a lot of stress and concern. The actual coding is the least of it all. It's more about living up to expectations, not failing super hard when it releases, worrying that noone will notice and buy the game, that not enough effort was put into marketing and so on and so on. And I just needed to get away from all of that.
I'm still dead set on finishing and releasing this game, don't worry.
In the mean time, I've been working with an artist. First of all, there are new assets for everything. Tiles, buildings, items, visual effects. This is a great step forward in terms of more broad visual appeal.
The new assets are double the resolution they used to be, and with an actual artist on board most of the buildings now resemble what they actually are. Miners looking like miners, smelters looking like smelters etc. Very happy about that.
Following that, we worked on new Steam assets (screenshots excluded; they still need to be updated). They look much better now and should hopefully start to drive a bit more traffic to the store page for the game.
I present the latest changelog below, which is a list of changes that happened before I went on a break. I'm allowing myself to continue this break until the new year. Come January I expect to be back in the groove.
Changelog
- New assets for everything.
- Changed world generation; rocks are gone, replaced by stone deposits instead. Water has rocky shorelines now. Water isn't surrounded by sand/beach anymore, instead sand generates in deposits. Flowers are gone, they didn't serve any purpose anyway.
- Water tiles are animated now.
- Pumps will now work on moist soil (dark dirt). That should make pipelines less annoying.
- Redid the liquid distribution system; liquid volume will now try to distribute evenly between all connected supported buildings.
- Had to undo a previous design choice; distributors and intersections can no longer feed into each other.
- Started work on visual effects for buildings.
Until next time!
Fey at Rising Tail
Devlog #9
It's been a little longer than usual since the last update, but to make up for it I got some cool new stuff to talk about. Without further ado..
Parking the drones, for now
Cargo drones were intended to be the method of selling and transporting goods off the map. Having playtested this feature, I've come to realize it isn't very efficient (in terms of gameplay). So, the new method is to simply transport goods off the map by conveyors; you're paid when an item leaves the map. Nice and simple, easy to understand and utilize. That sort of instant gratification speaks more to me than having to wait for a drone to arrive. I hope the drones can be refitted to have another meaningful purpose, but for now I'm leaving them be.
Contracts are making a comeback
Contracts are coming back, but in a very different form than before. Contracts used to be the only means of making money, but now they are comparable to quests/tasks/missions that you undertake.
- The region will offer a few new contracts every so often.
- Contracts can be either in the form of "deliver X quantity of Y item at Z price per item" or "deliver as many as you can of Y item at Z price per item for some duration" (duration being a number of ingame days).
- The upside: you're paid a fixed price per item for the entire duration of the contract. The price doesn't fluctuate like it does on the market.
- The downside: you're only paid once the contract is completed, and you can only have one active contract at a time. You also can't cancel an accepted contract.
- Completing a contract will also reward you with influence points. Building influence with the region is the only way to "win" a region, which ultimately will "win" the planet, or at least that is the idea - for now.
- At certain influence levels you'll be able to pick a perk that affects the region/market/factory site in some way.
UI round #153297
Or so it seems.. who's counting anyway? As development progresses and I come up with new things I need to convey to the player, the UI inevitably also must change. This version is super clean and doesn't get much in your way. I quite like it, but of course nothing is final at this point..
Here's a fresh screenshot of the new UI. Click to enlarge:
Changelog
- Added pause and game speed buttons.
- Changed the UI again, now featuring a "hotbar"-like building toolbar, discrete buttons, sliding panels and a more blueish color scheme.
- Changed all icons from Material to Font Awesome 6.
- Tweaked a bunch of factory stuff, most importantly the ability to transport items off the map and the ability for some buildings to feed items directly into each other.
- Added the new contract system.
- Added loans to the economy system.
I should probably also mention that there is a discord now:
Until next time!
Fey at Rising Tail
Devlog #8
Last time I talked about getting the market simulation up and running. One big remaining task here is balancing, which affects the whole in-game economy. What should buildings cost? What should the upkeep cost? How much should products pay when sold? And so on. It's going to be a huge, ongoing effort to make sure everything is reasonably balanced. But, to balance things, all parameters must be known. And they are currently not.
One of the parameters is energy (power). Some buildings will require energy to work. So I've started implementing the new energy system, and all the basics are in place and done; energy is currently generated only by solar panels, energy is stored in capacitor banks (homage to Minecraft mod Ender IO) and energy is then relayed wirelessly through energy nodes. Any energy consuming building in range of an energy node will receive energy automatically.
I need to add more energy sources, and, again, balance everything. How much energy should this and that produce, and how much energy should this and that consume, how fast should energy flow between buildings? Etc. It may not sound like a big deal, but it is. As the game designer I want to strike that perfect balance where the player needs to put some thought and effort into the energy system, but not too much because then it just becomes an annoying element, but also not too little because then it just becomes a superfluous and thus annoying element..
Anyone saying game design is easy clearly hasn't tried it.
Anyway, moving on to the next parameter: research. There will be a tech tree of some sort, but I haven't settled on a model yet. Either way, I want to add a bunch of unlockable augments you can apply to buildings. One augment could increase mining speed at the cost of increased energy consumption. Another augment could decrease energy consumption but increase the upkeep cost significantly. With each augment and/or other possible unlockable modifiers I have to consider how I'm going to offset that in other parts of the game, making sure there's not an obvious route to "easy mode".
Right, I should also mention that my intention is to reward the player with research points based on how much money they allocate to research.. soo yeah, yet another factor that affects the economy. And everything else, really.
This is one of the reasons it takes so long to make a game 😄
I'll leave you with this recent gif and the changelog:
