It’s time for another FOUNDRY Friday and today I have a very special topic for you. I want to write about what I believe will benefit FOUNDRY the most in the upcoming updates and see how it resonates with you.
Let’s jump right into it by starting with what is our main focus: We want to make sure FOUNDRY is the most unique and replayable sandbox experience possible. The game already has a lot of unique features like the voxel terrain, construction industry and the production and selling of robots through the space station. The robot commerce feature in particular is extremely exciting as it motivates players to scale and expand their factories with a clear goal in mind. This feature is already in the game at science tier four and our plan always was to further expand it during science tier five and six. However I think the plan needs an adjustment. Those unique mechanics are coming too late and they are too linear. In my opinion the biggest opportunity for FOUNDRY is to focus on the production of robots as soon as possible and make it the central theme of the game. Therefore I have worked out a high-level concept of a plan for the game with which I want to test the waters and see how the community feels about it.
The Robot Factory
The robot factory serves as a complement to the science tiers, and provides an answer to the ‘why’ for what we are doing. I want to adjust the narrative and theming so that you start making your first robots as soon as possible. Of course not with an Assembly Line as that would be way too overwhelming. We would introduce simplified ways that are appropriate for the time played to provide a smooth onboarding experience into the game. Production and selling of robots should be equally if not more important than research. You would sell your first robot very soon, and the second robot would follow not much later.
I want to move away from the linear progression, currently you don’t have much choice about what you’re making next. The tech tree has some branches, but overall the next science pack is always the clear goal. Therefore my idea is to allow the players to create their own robot designs. You start by selecting a chassis and refine certain properties (add a cargo compartment to make a hauler, cleaning utilities to make a cleaning robot, a mining drill to make a mining robot). As you progress through the game there will be many options about what robots to produce and sell and you are not forced to produce them all, it would be your choice on which robot types to focus on. As the game progresses the robot editor would allow you to adjust and refine more parts of your robot designs, imagine you can pick the material it’s made of: Xenoferrite? Steel? Polymer? Produce whatever you want and ideally there is as much freedom as possible. For the immersion and sandbox-experience, customizability is key, an example: Increase component quality through science to give the next generation of your robot a better and more powerful CPU or better sensors to increase sell value. There are a lot of opportunities to make each playthrough unique. Now that I have covered the manufacturing side, I want to look at the other big topic ‘commerce’ in the next paragraph.
Commerce
Your products need to serve a purpose and what better opportunity there is than to be making a lot of profit? I always wanted to expand the commerce part on the space station, right now all robots shipped there are sold within minutes for a fixed price. This needs more depth, and it could look like this: Your robots are still sold on the space station, but initially demand is not endless. But worry not, we’ll provide you with enough opportunities to increase it. Be it the marketing module on the space station to make the galaxy aware of your products, the space station’s leisure centers to attract more customers or maybe a custom contract with a nearby mining planet to send a steady supply of new mining robots. As your profile as a robot manufacturer rises, your gained reputation will increase sell prices, product demand and other benefits.
This idea is a bit more experimental, but we might add trading of certain exotic goods, like advanced circuits. At first you can only buy them if you want to use them in your robots, but once you unlock the ability to produce them on the planet your profit margins increase drastically. For the robots there might be fluctuations in prices and demand, but I am a bit more cautious here as I know that many factory-game players want predictability to adjust their production lines accordingly.
Overall there is a lot of potential uniqueness around commerce, without it taking away from the base game. Let’s talk about that in the next paragraph.
Conclusion and Clarifications
If well executed, the above mentioned features would make FOUNDRY an even more exciting gameplay experience. That being said, I want to put some emphasis on the fact that this ultimately would not be a highly transformative change. Most of those features were planned for science tier five and six and we’re mostly moving things to give them the attention they deserve. I also want to state explicitly that these features might be impactful overall, but they do not significantly alter how time is spent in FOUNDRY: Almost all the time is still spent building and designing the layouts of your factories. We don’t want to make this into an economic simulation, the features wouldn’t be punishing, you would not go bankrupt or anything like that. It’s mostly additive so that the factories you build serve a better goal than just making more science in a linear fashion. We think of this revised system as complementary to the existing content.
Some of you might have concerns if that makes the early game too complex: Rest assured we’re aware of how onboarding needs to be accessible. It would all build up gradually with simple features. And for later in the game: I’m very confident in our ability to add complexity without it getting too complicated or confusing.
We want your opinion!
Please let us know all your thoughts around the topic, which parts did you like, which parts didn’t you like? Have additional suggestions and questions? Let me know! I’m really excited to read your feedback. We of course are working on many other non-commerce related features, so please don’t be shy about asking for them! For me and our team it always mattered what the community thinks and wants, so this is another opportunity for you to influence the future of FOUNDRY.
Cheers, -mrmcd
Check out the roadmap to find out about other planned features!
New patch with various Quality of Life improvements is here! Read the full patch notes below:
Changes:
batteries can now be connected to each other using power lines
allow for longer belt dragging
added new task that requires the player to insert science packs into the science server
added "invalid connection" indicator when placing conveyors next to a building to help players understand that they need to use loaders
added steam deck keyboard support
added ability to skip intro tutorial when starting a new game
mining debris will now despawn much faster if you use your drill/laser on it
dialogue lines are now skippable
Carl's dialogue no longer blocks mouse clicks
allowed hotkeys to be bound to mouse buttons.
made actions that were previously locked to mouse buttons rebindable
accessibility: Made previously unrebindable keys like Alt, Ctrl, Shift rebindable
added tooltip to explosives to make it clearer that they need to be turned into explosive charges before they can be used to blow stuff up
new pipe intake model/texture to make it more obvious where to attach the pipe
you can now exit out of building/demolition/tablet modes by pressing escape
increased flashlight range by 45% and increased intensity by 30%
initial ore patches now have a higher chance of spawning near the spawn point
initial ore patches now have a higher chance of spawning near each other
added more information to helper tooltip at the inventory frame and added error messages if an item cannot be equipped using instant mode
updated some of the tutorial tasks to help guide players on how to use loaders
Fixes:
fixed a crash that could occur when deconstructing buildings
fixed a bug/crash that could occur when using transport ships
fixed crash that could occur when making a funny looking conveyor loop that looped back into a loader
fixed an issue that could cause the player to fall through the world
fixed an issue that could cause the loader text to appear as black on certain graphics cards
fixed streaming issue that could cause significant delay in buildings appearing when standing near a significant amount of flowing pipes
fixed issue where you could fall off a downward facing escalator while running
fixed issue where quest to produce robots was not possible to complete
fixed a crash that could occur when building solar panels too high up
fixed issue where some some of the modding system attributes such as [AddSystemToGameSimulation] were being incorrectly stripped from the game
fixed issue where the gamepad cursor was drawing behind the keybind screen
fixed performance issue that could occur when looking at several research panels while research was ongoing and your power was strained
fixed black lighting artifacts that would appear under building blocks
fixed space station storage being bigger than it's supposed to be
drilling marble now returns marble instead of concrete
fixed issue where smoke would sometimes not collide with ceilings correctly
fixed a crash that could occur when interacting with inventories
fixed a bug where ore patches were not being properly removed from the map when depleted
dedicated servers should no longer create a new world every time they are started if they do not have an app.cfg setup
added new version of the camera tools(opened by pressing ALT+U)
fixed an issue where the power consumption and scan speed were incorrectly displayed on the Long Range Scanner building
made the button on the back of the emergency beacon more obvious
particles should now properly have fog applied to them in the distance
fixed an issue where fog was not being properly applied to the dark areas on buildings where items enter/exit such as the drone miner and the assembly line producer
fixed an issue where the localized version of the "show details" would not be visible
prevent tablet quick actions from triggering when you have a ui window open
fixed an issue with missing characters in the chinese/japanese/korean fonts
fixed a crash that could occur when deconstructing buildings
fixed a crash that could occur when placing landing pads at max world height
fixed pumpjack efficiency research to behave as described
fixed an issue where you could be disconnected from a multiplayer game if it was taking a long time to load the save file
To submit feedback or report a bug, you can press F9 in game or make a thread on our Forum. This is the best way to let us know that something is broken!
Welcome back to another FOUNDRY Friday after having skipped the last one - we were quite busy with the launch.
Two weeks ago FOUNDRY was released into Early Access on Steam and we are thrilled to see so many new people joining our community and playing the game. It feels great to finally have the game out and we are excited about the future. Seeing new players enjoying the game and providing us with lots of feedback is fantastic and we are already working on many of your requests.
What's next?
Before we look into the future, let us look at how we’ve been spending the past two weeks: Fixing issues you encountered. So far we have already released two hotfix patches addressing the most critical issues and there are more patches on the way for less critical (non-game-breaking) issues. Polishing and working on requested improvements. We have put together our first quality of life patch that addresses the most requested features in terms of polishing and usability. This patch is not yet released, but currently available on the testing branch, more information below.
The upcoming weeks and months we are going to focus on the first content update. We already made some progress on a few new features, but it is still too early to reveal what we’re working on for the first update. In addition to new content we will also look at which parts of the existing content need further development or adjustments. There is no release date yet, but at the moment our plan is to release two more content updates this year.
Testing Branch
Going forward we’d like to introduce the testing branch. The testing branch is a separate Steam branch that acts as an opportunity for the community to get an early look into the next update while it is still work in progress and to help us spot any issues early before it goes live. We have made it available yesterday and as a preview for the upcoming quality of life update and we plan to do so with other (although not necessarily all) upcoming updates.
Please understand that you will potentially encounter bugs, desyncs and other issues with higher probability on the testing branch. It is not intended to be used for regular playing, but for people who want to provide early feedback and assist us in ensuring the highest possible quality for the upcoming update.
More information on how to join it can be found on our Discord server under #announcements.
Thank you for reading and see you next time, -mrmcd
Check out the roadmap to find out what is to come!
Today's hotfix has a couple of critical fixes for you. We have also started work on a much larger quality of life/bug fix patch. If you're interested in more details or if you want to give it a try, you can find more information here on our Discord server.
Changelog:
Fixed a bug/crash that could occur when using transport ships.
Fixed a crash that could occur when deconstructing buildings.
We are also aware of Steam Deck multiplayer issues since the last update. We are testing a fix for this but in the mean time you can work around this by switching to Proton 8.
To submit feedback or report a bug, you can press F9 in game or make a thread on our Forum. This is the best way to let us know that something is broken!
We hope you had a nice weekend playing FOUNDRY. We have been working on a first hotfix which addresses the most critical issues during these days, and it should be available now.
Changelog:
Emptying pipes when connected to a dedicated server should no longer crash.
Fixed issue where you could not launch Foundry directly from the executable.
Ore vein miners should no longer sometimes stop working when they reach the core.
Fixed a networking issue which should help players having connection issues when playing the game using proton.
Fixed an issue that could occur when attempting to save your settings after having opened the settings accessibility tab.
Fixed issue where the radio tower cannot be built in certain scenarios.
Fixed crash after demolishing a modular building which is under construction.
To submit feedback or report a bug, you can press F9 in game or make a thread on our Forum. This is the best way to let us know that something is broken!
Today marks a monumental step for Foundry as we launch into Early Access on Steam! From our early days on itch.io, surrounded by a tight-knit group of passionate players, to this exciting new chapter, your enthusiasm and support have been the foundation of our journey.
Foundry Fridays' have been our way of keeping you informed and involved, allowing us to share updates, insights and passions as we build together. This is your game as much as it is ours, and every voxel placed, every factory built, tells a story of collaboration and community.
As you dive into the enhanced world of Foundry, know that your feedback and creativity will continue to shape its future. We are here because of you, and we can't wait to see the new heights we'll reach together.
Thank you for believing in us and in Foundry. Let's build something amazing.
We are looking forward to seeing your beautiful factories!
It's time for the FAQ!
Hello everyone!
The Early Access release is already around the corner, and we see how many of you have questions about different aspects of the game. We prepared this F.A.Q. to answer the most popular ones and we hope that it will be helpful for you!
If there is something that is not included in the F.A.Q., please write it in the comments to the post :)
What is Foundry? FOUNDRY is a first-person factory building simulation set in an endless procedurally generated voxel world. Mine resources, craft machinery and automate your research to progress through the game. Face logistic challenges by planning and building a conveyor belt and pipe network. Manage a complex power system and expand your constantly growing production lines!
When will FOUNDRY be available? We will be available for early access on May 2nd, 2024!
What is the price of FOUNDRY? The cost during Early Access will be $29.99, regional price may vary. We will have a launch discount of 10% between May 2 - May 16!
What if I bought the game on itch before? Players who bought the game on itch.io will get a Steam key sent out to them prior to the release — the keys are already on the way! The key will enable itch players to redeem FOUNDRY Founder's Edition on the day of Early Access release, May 2nd.
What is FOUNDRY Founder’s Edition? FOUNDRY Founder’s Edition contains the base game as well as the Founder’s cosmetic pack. This cosmetic pack was created for players who were there from the start or who wants to provide extra support during Early Access. FOUNDRY Founder’s Edition contains fancy skins for the office decorative objects as well as a tie and top hat to cement your reputation as a highly respected Factory Founder! The edition will be priced $34.99, and you can also buy the additional skins and items separately if you decide to get them later.
What platforms will FOUNDRY be on? At the moment we are planning to release FOUNDRY only on Steam, but we will keep you posted if that changes in the future!
Is it available on Steam Deck? Yes, we are playable on Steam Deck :)
Will FOUNDRY have GeForce NOW support? Yes!
Why Early Access? With Early Access the community will help us to create a better game since player feedback is crucial for complex simulation games. We will listen to your feedback and you may influence the development. Additionally your early support helps us to make the most of the potential we see in FOUNDRY.
What is the official game website, where can I read more about the game? Here!
What languages will the game support? The game is available in the following languages: English, French, German, Spanish (both Spain and LATAM), Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Japanese.
I’d love to learn more about the state of the game! We want to be as transparent with our playerbase as possible and keep everyone updated about how things are going. We are now looking into various ways to make it happen (like streams, dev diaries etc), and we will let everyone know as soon as we have picked the best format!
How can I be notified about news? We highlight important news, updates and other content we think you might find interesting in Paradox Launcher, but also as a part of our regular newsletter! Sign up to be posted about the latest news and get a unique gift on Steam when the game is officially out — Exclusive Mining Drill skin!
I have a question I want to ask a developer, where can I do that? We have a beautiful Discord server and our Official Forum. Make sure to follow both of them not to miss a thing!
Do you have a roadmap? We will share our Early Access roadmap around the Early Access release! We aim to prioritize the features based on your feedback and actively work on the game together with the community. Feel free to share your own ideas and discuss upcoming updates with us across our social channels!
Where can I report a bug or send feedback? In case you encounter any issues in the game please press F9 to send an in-game report, or post about it on Paradox Forum (in the Bug Reports section which will be available when the game is out) as it is our main platform for bug reporting: this is the best way to let our developers know that something is wrong.
What happened/will happen to the itch.io version of the game? If you bought the game previously on itch.io, you can still access your itch version of the game. However it will no longer be updated.
Gameplay questions:
Does the game have online or co-op gameplay? It does! The multiplayer mode is mostly designed towards 2-4 players on the same server, but you can always go extra as there is no hard limit.
What about the dedicated servers hosting? This is something that we’ve been working on for a while! We are currently planning to have the feature available at the Early Access launch.
Will the game have modding support? Official mod support will arrive during Early Access, but the game is already moddable in large parts and there is a modding community on our Discord.
Watch the Dev Stream & Explore YOUR Factories today at 19:00 CEST!
Hello everyone!
We have another lovely Dev Stream, as the developers check out various Factories and how you can customize them in #FOUNDRY!
Join us today (April 25th) at 19:00 CEST / 10:00 PDT on Paradox Twitch and FOUNDRY YouTube, as the developers take a look at your Factories in FOUNDRY!
We will be live both on YouTube and Twitch weekly until the Early Access:
The topic for today is Customization. We'll cover all the tools at your disposal to make your builds not only work well, but also look good. Everything from decorative blocks to painting. Choose your preferred mode to play in and make your experience unique.
