This update brings even more overall polishing, but most importantly: all buildings in the game that were supposed to have animations now have them! These machines were working all the time but now you can see all of them in action - another big step towards the upcoming v1.0 release:
v0.90.188 Released!
Animated Inventory Teleport
Re-rendered Splitters
Slightly improved connections between different biomes
Slightly improved effect for items entering and exiting buildings
Catopia Ark now has a visual exhaust when lifting off
New tutorial: Research projects
Milk pasteurization recipe buffed (suggested by S'Kleer)
In this section of patch notes, we answer the questions from the community that were submitted via the in-game feedback form and/or seemed especially interesting to us.
Q: "1)Привет. Или я не смог найти функцию зеркального отражения чертежа, или её нет. Если действительно нет, было бы очень здорово, если бы она появилась.Спасибо за чудесную игру. " (Translated: "Hello. Either I couldn’t find the Blueprint scheme mirroring, or it doesn’t exist. If it really doesn’t exist, it would be great if it were added.") A: Alas, we can't make it happen. We've been experimenting with it, but certain buildings can't be mirrored due to art limitations, and making twice as much art for the sole purpose of enabling building reflection would be too much time-consuming. This is something we should have considered at the very early stages of game development, which we haven't, unfortunately. We might consider adding it after the v1.0 release though.
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How to Get More Involved
At Luden.io, we develop games while constantly listening to the feedback from our awesome players. If you feel proactive, you're very welcome to do one or more of the following:
Subscribe to our newsletter, to get the latest info about the game's development, and a sneak peek of the upcoming features and events
Record 10 minutes of you playing Learning Factory, and share it with us via this form. Your feedback is so helpful, that we'll include you in the game's credits for doing this
Preparing for the Big Day - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, October 2024
We have to admit: in the upcoming few month,s these developer diaries will be progressively more boring, at least in terms of news. The game is basically finished in terms of gameplay. There's a lot of testing and polishing to be done still but nothing grand will probably happen to the game until we hit that big ‘release’ button.
And then there's some art to be added, too! This means our dev diaries will at least be entertaining to scroll through, even without new killer features. The remaining few months before the v1.0 release will fly by momentarily, as time always does, you'll see!
However, this time there's much to be told, too! For one, we released the biggest update for Learning Factory in September. It pushes the game so much closer to its final state, that we have jumped from v0.3 to v0.9
The main reason this update was delayed for a few weeks was the infamous summer vacation season (even the most passionate of the game devs must take some time away once in a while!). But it was also a great time to thoroughly study the feedback from our players, take a look at the game with rested eyes, and make some necessary improvements.
There were many upgrades and balance tweaks that came along with v0.9 that made the game more comfortable and flexible. The full (and rather long: 100+ points) list of changes can be found here.
We won't list everything here but we have something better: video highlights! Check out these newly animated buildings in Learning Factory:
Occasional new buildings still make it to the game once in a while. Here's another advertising building which promotes laser pointers and also served us a great excuse to make yet another pop culture reference:
And this new building is meant for logistics fanatics: the structure of our game does not allow making Transporters faster, so we created this machine for packing items into archives, and then unpacking them, when needed:
A big part of our work is about many things around the game: the menus, the tutorials - things like that. We added over a dozen mini-guides explaining the trickier aspects of the game, and we’ll probably add some more (and likely accompany them with animated illustrations in the future).
As for the menus, they’re slowly coming into lighter, more modern form all over the game. Check out how the Research Tree changed a couple of weeks ago.
Old:
New:
Already existing structures get a lift up as well. Check out our more detailed redesigned Monument:
And the Trade Ports were upgraded with landing sites, with Zeppelins flying in and out to deliver the goods to the mysterious cat Guilds:
But perhaps one of the most time-consuming tasks was re-rendering Learning Factory's innumerous variations of Transporters, Splitters, Mergers and such. While Sergei the artist was at it, he got so deep into his early work that he started finding creepy-ish objects that never made it to the game, like this magnificent lineup of Tunnels:
One day we will gather and share as many weird artifacts like that as we will find, but this will happen once Learning Factory is properly released. Until then, there is more excitingly boring work on polishing the game. More tutorials, more visual upgrades, and vital QoL changes, hooray!
The big day is coming. We’ll be in touch!
It's Ada Lovelace Day Sale, Learning Factory is 38% off!
Hey engineers!
If you're following our news for some time, you might know that in our spare time from making games, we're also organizing an event that gathers games about programming, automation and engineering.
This year it is dedicated to Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating the first programmer in the world. We've got over 80 participants this year, and you might find some familiar names and hidden gems there:
And of course, all our games are discounted as well. Learning Factory is sold 38% off the price throughout this whole week, and the DLCs are 15% off as well:
We're getting back to our regular few-weeks-per-update schedule. The lists of changes will still be lengthy but incresingly more boring: we've really gotten ourselves to polishing the game, which means an awful lot of smaller changes to be made for almost every aspect of the game.
v0.90.187 Released!
Gameplay
Simplified recipe for making Gold in the Lava Cooler
Simplified recipes for making Quiality (+) and High Quality (++) Catnip Juice
Added another type of trade deal: CHONK Guild will exchange Quality (+) Gold for a certain amount of Milk
Added 2 new options for Zeppelins that allow you to disable item loading and unloading
Selected trade deals with the Guilds were buffed
Simplified requirements for filling up Solaris-powered Engine of Catopia Ark
Small Cargo Zeppelins can now travel between only 2 Docks per route
Decreased penalty for Jetboard speed when crossing over the water or hill tiles
Improved Campaign map
Improved Freeplay Mode maps
Improved terraforming logic
Improved plant fertilizing logic
Improved small buildings/items placement logic
Improved Cable/Transporter laying logic
Dr. Katz can now send requests for researching upgrades
1 new achievement
Graphics && Sound
Animated Laser Pointer Maker
Re-rendered Roadside Boutique
Re-rendered Experimental Lab
Re-rendered Teleport
Re-rendered logistic structures: Splitters, Tunnels, Switcher, Mergers etc.
Item Archiver now has visually distinguishable states for packing and unpacking items
Improved Halloween event art
QoL && Interface
Optimized and improved Zeppelin Routes interface
Added filtering options for Routes in Zeppelins' interface
Improved Zeppelins' interface
Improved interface for tutorials
Improved interface for Steamdeck
Improved main menu interface
Improved In-game wiki
Improved tutorial
Improved context warnings for Zeppelins (suggeted by S'Kleer)
New tutorial: map Grid
Improved feedback from using the Pipette tool
Techie Stuff
Performance optimization
Copywriting fixes
Bug fixes (kudos to S'Kleer, はっすぃ, GoEzTa, Kaiserschmarn)
UI/UX fixes
Re: Factory
In this section of patch notes, we answer the questions from the community that were submitted via the in-game feedback form and/or seemed especially interesting to us.
Q: "My first language is spanish, sorry for bad grammar. In Spanish version, the translate for "close" windows is wrong. Close has two meaning. To shut down something "CLOSE the door" and to say something is near "That was CLOSE". In spanish version its translate with second one. its translated as "cerca" that means near. The correct one is "cerrar".You are doing a great job with the game. Keep it up " -GoEzTa A: That has been fixed, thank you! Please remember that if you want to help us with community translation to your native language, our Discord server is the place to go!
A friendly reminder: don't forget about our collection of items in Steam Points Shop! Sergei the artist makes wonderful factory art to be observed from above, but his works' magic really shows at close-up perspective:
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How to Get More Involved
At Luden.io, we develop games while constantly listening to the feedback from our awesome players. If you feel proactive, you're very welcome to do one or more of the following:
Subscribe to our newsletter, to get the latest info about the game's development, and a sneak peek of the upcoming features and events
Record 10 minutes of you playing Learning Factory, and share it with us via this form. Your feedback is so helpful, that we'll include you in the game's credits for doing this
We don't want to distract you from processing that huge update we released tomorrow. But make sure you download this little hotfix to ensure the best quality of gameplay. It contains:
Bug fixes
Performance optimization
One Giant Leap - Major Update, v0.90.185
Hey, engineers!
Noticed how we jumped from v0.3 to v0.9? That's how serious we are about releasing the game! This is the final Major update before v1.0.
We did our best to meet this giant leap in version number. Just check the long list of changes that this update brings to Learning Factory:
v0.90.185 Released!
Gameplay
New building: Item Archiver allows you to speed up the logistics by increasing the throughput of Transporter lines and Manipulators. Comes with 2 upgrades
New service building in the late game: Shooting Range motivates the cats to buy Laser Pointers; also it can be placed underground
An upgrade that increases the speed of Cat Vitamin crafting (Suggested by shlainn)
An upgrade for increasing Wohlwill Purifier operational speed
An upgrade for increasing Tech Overcharger operational speed
An upgrade for increasing Land Digger operational speed (suggested by JoneY)
An upgrade for increasing Lava Cooler operational speed (suggested by JoneY)
An upgrade for placing Transporters and Cables in deep water without terraforming - enter Deep Ocean Bridge
An upgrade for Bridge Crafter, allowing crafting of Deep Ocean Bridges
Launching an Expedition with upgraded Catopia Ark modules provides Deep Ocean Bridges in New Game+
Decreased cost of the upgrade allowing to craft Lava Bridges
Decreased cost of unlocking and crafting Lava Bridges
Increased cost of research for Long Manipulator
Both upgrades for Fertilizer Dispenser were buffed
Upgrade for increasing Jetboard speed when flying over water was buffed (suggested by Дима Тертичный)
Cargo Zeppelins now have 3 slots for items
Decreased crafting cost for Soil and Fertile Soil
Decreased cost of research for Storage
Logistics Assembler is now available earlier in the game and easier to research
Inventory Teleport is now easier to research
Cable Crafter is now easier to research
Fishing Pier and Fishing Spot can now be placed on Bridges
Juice production recipe's efficiency increased (suggested by Дима Тертичный)
Base speed for all Zeppelin types slightly increased
Item capacity increased from 20 to 30 items in various buildings
Added a new tier-4 trade deal with the Cat Puns Union guild, allowing you to get Hard Rock Dynamite
Selected trade deals in Trade Ports rebalanced
Campaign map slightly improved
More random buildings appear on territories in Freeplay Mode maps
New achievement
4 new stats in 'Stats & Scores' section of the Monument
Improved logic of cat generation to prevent generating too many cats of the same type in a row
Minor changes in the distribution and the order of cats emerging in the early parts of the game
Increased the threshold for advancing research projects with points from Cat Knowledge archives from 25% to 33%
Graphics && Sound
New visuals for Trade Ports: Zeppelins now land from outside of the map to deliver goods
New visuals for Concrete
Animated Hammock Testing Booth
Animated Scratch-Testing Booth
Animated Schrodinger's Chamber
Animated Bling Machine
Animated Microchip Maker
Animated Battery Maker
Re-rendered Logistics Assembler
Re-rendered Storage units (for better display with a zoomed out camera)
Re-rendered Graphic Card Assembler
Re-rendered Soil Silo
Re-rendered Enriched Soil Silo
Re-rendered Polynomial Regression
Re-rendered Cat Gate
Re-rendered Target Ad Cat Gate
Re-rendered Exit Cat Gate
Re-rendered Optic Cable/Vertical Cable
Re-rendered Sphinx
Re-rendered Monument
Re-rendered Cat Blimps
Re-rendered Geothermal Furnace
Re-rendered Turing Trees with more diverse sprites
1 new color for Zeppelins
Visual effects for Hedge when the player crosses them over
21 line with voice over for Dr. Katz
Improved logics for switching ambient tracks
Improved logics for switching biome-specific tracks
Modding && Steam Workshop
Custom localizations available as a mod
Added an option to upload a custom preview image for Steam Workshop mods
New mod: generative map features are now available in the Scenario Editor, thus allowing editing them and creating scenarios with different territories
Not part of the patch note but a friendly reminder: here's a little guide about making mods for Learning Factory
QoL && Interface
New tutorial: Buildings' Panel and its hotkeys
New tutorial: applying a Cat Knowledge Archive on the Research Tree
New tutorial: creating routes for Zeppelins
New tutorial: using Trade Ports and Relays
New tutorial: finding Trade Ports and Relays
New tutorial: using map lenses
New tutorial: using the Pipette tool
New tutorial: quick interactions with buildings
New tutorial: building Transporter lines
New tutorial: Upgrades
New Blueprint available in the wiki article about Linear Regression
Added a new article to the Wiki, telling you all you need to know about cat researchers and their perks
Monument interface updated (partially)
Hotkeys for buildings can be assigned on hovering them in the buildings' crafting window
Improved Wiki interface
Improved tooltips for Data Storage
Improved tutorials
Improved search fields
Improved tooltips
Improved map lenses logics
Improved copywriting
Added on option to hide Zeppelins on the minimap (suggested by JoneY)
Auto-filling of buildings with items now works for a group of selected buildings as well
Added shortcut from the Research Tree to instantly open Wiki description for an upgrade (suggested by Misako)
Improved tooltips for locked tabs in the Monument
Smoother placement of multiple buildings in a row
UX for Zeppelins slightly improved (will be improved even more in future updates)
In this section of patch notes, we answer the questions from the community that were submitted via the in-game feedback form and/or seemed especially interesting to us, You can always contact us directly in the comments or join our Discord server
Q: "bonjour pourquoi aucun chat ne sort de la porte de chat en scenario personnaliser" (Google Translate: "hello why no cat comes out of the cat door in scenario customize") -florian.guilloud A: To make cats appear in a custom scenario, one must toggle them in the upper panel when setting up the scenario. Additionally, at least one item that respective cat types are looking for must be available in a scenario, otherwise those cats will not emerge on a Factory
Q: "Possible small bug - cotton harvesters don't seem to detect underground cotton if that cotton was planted after the harvester was placed." -Sunsphere11 A: It appears that you have Cotton Blueprints placed, instead of actual Cotton. It is possible to confuse them by color in the Underground, but if you hover your mouse on them, you'll see those are, in fact, Blueprints.
A friendly reminder: you can always chat with us directly on our Discord server. We're using Discord for work, so you'll find many of us there most of the time, don't be a stranger!
An even friendlier reminder: don't forget about our collection of items in Steam Points Shop! Sergei the artist makes wonderful factory art to be observed from above, but his works' magic really shows at close-up perspective:
----------------------
How to Get More Involved
At Luden.io, we develop games while constantly listening to the feedback from our awesome players. If you feel proactive, you're very welcome to do one or more of the following:
Subscribe to our newsletter, to get the latest info about the game's development, and a sneak peek of the upcoming features and events
Record 10 minutes of you playing Learning Factory, and share it with us via this form. Your feedback is so helpful, that we'll include you in the game's credits for doing this
The 4 features that didn't make it - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, August 2024
As your game gets closer to the release, you tend to look back more and more often. How many years has it been? Learning Factory was first drafted during the early pandemic months of 2020. Four and a half years in development is no record, but the density of events matters: we started with a quite different game. Let's talk about that today!
To set up the mood, check out this short video of how the game looked back in pre-alpha times vs. 2 years ago vs. today:
(It doesn't cover even half of the changes we made, so there probably will be more videos like that in the future)
Since we started digging up the past, we decided to remember some of the features that had been in the game initially, but disappeared under not so mysterious circumstances.
Day & night cycles
Learning Factory was contemplated to be a more compact game, with a good part of gameplay revolving around machine learning. It was more of a tycoon than a factory-building experience, in which the player would run a shop for cats by day and train machine learning with fresh sales data by night.
It turned out that machine learning models were not as interesting to tinker with for most players to make up a half of the game, while making and selling items was way more fun to be just the other half of the gameplay.
From then on, the proportions of the gameplay started changing, which resulted in Learning Factory of today. With giant factories and machine learning models working quitely behind the scenes, always ready for interaction and experiments, but demanding almost no attention from the players.
And with that, there was no more point of having a day/night cycle anymore. But hey, we have beatiful clouds and particle effects from plants today!
Turing Trees as part of gameplay
The increased scale of gameplay affected a bunch of our ideas that initially looked prominent. For example, some resources such as organics were initially planned to be either finite or at least hard to reproduce. There were no fertilizers, no fertile soil, and if one would root out all the trees on the map, they would effectively soft lock their game.
On the other hand, Turing Trees would could be used to prevent this from happening: as they're multiplying according to the rules of the Game of Life, they were a Turing-complete entity, which one could use for all kinds of things, like running DOOM with them (even if only hypothetically).
Or at least creating a park with self-replicating trees, since Turing Trees could be harvested for Wood back in the day! Here’s a little video (also serving as a reminder of that weird terrain we used to have until the spring of 2021):
This feature also turned out to be not very tempting for most of the players, as everyone kept asking for more and more cat-related content! Which is why Turing Trees now only exist for decorative purpose. But you probably can still run DOOM with them!
As for the content, producing and selling items could be even more diverse, but…
Items quality as real numbers
The current system of item quality only has 3 levels, but what if there would be, say, 100 of them? That would be possible if we'd measure quality with decimal fractions, so that any item could be of 55% quality, for example. This would open a way for an array of hardcore mechanics: the quality of item, for example, would take into account various modifiers and conditions, the same way as the probability of critical strike in action games consitsts is influenced by weapon/armor bonuses, buffs and debuffs…
Which would be really cool, but by the time we got to implementing quality mechanics, we realised that having quality measured in real numbers would become a colossal challenge for optimizing the game and would likely make the game way less of a zen experience.
Ships for Zeppelins & multiple map layers
Another part of the gameplay that we changed because we didn't want to overload the players’ minds, is Zeppelins, that were initially meant to be ‘Ships’ (and even ‘Cars’ in the initial draft), which would use reinforced learning to find routes from point A to B. Cars were discarded pretty quickly, as the ground part of the map is usually occupied with buildings and Transporters, that often change their positions because players are rebuilding their factories all the time.
Ships were seen as a simpler alternative, as oceans in Learning Factory have less buildings and resources, and a simple model would sooner or later figure out a decent way to travel around them. However, there still were too many chances for the players and/or models to mess things up while setting routes in the ocean, which would result in increased levels of micromanagement and frustration. That's why we decided to stick with the Zeppelins for the time being: there are no obstacles in the sky, and setting up a chain of logistics there is much simpler.
But what if there would be islands in the clouds as well? That could have easily happened, because the map in Learning Factory is designed to support more than just 2 layers. Imagine having 3, 4… maybe even 9 levels for your factories, with all kinds of connections and paths for goods and cats on them… If you think it would be a logistic nightmare - that's exactly what we thought, so we decided to stick with just 2 levels for now. But here's another piece from our archives - a video of a multi-layered map. Those Transporter letters do not really disappear, it's us changing levels:
What's next?
That's just the tip of the iceberg of stories about what has changed in Learning Factory since we started working on it, so expect another nostalgic post some time in the future. But not too soon though: we're just coming back from summer vacations and accumulating mana before that big leap towards the release! Here's a little teaser of what waits you in the next updates:
What are these cats preparing for? Stay tuned and you'll find out! Until we meet again.
Every Little Thing - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, July 2024
Hey factory builders,
Here we are, with yet another report about how Learning Factory’s being prepared for the full release. There’s not much to tell, but there’s a bunch of things to show!
For starters, we’ve freshened up Steam page assets (again), because the game has changed greatly since last revision (which took place in November ‘23). With that said, here’s the most up-to-date Learning Factory trailer:
Also, here’s a handful of new screenshots:
And of course, an array of Learning Factory’s machinery acquired animations/new looks in the past month. Here’re the new Linear Regression, Milk Drill, Brew Intensifier, Fish Maker, and Smoothie Maker:
Machine Learning Models got some cyberpunk vibes as well:
And just in case you didn't notice them in the trailer - here are our new Cat Stores:
Apart from the visual side, the most interesting changes are happening with the game's structure, namely - with the tutorials. Throughout these years, Learning Factory has incorporated mechanics that added a lot of depth to the gameplay but were not so easy to discover and understand.
Previously, in-game Wiki and descriptions on the Research Tree were the player's main source of information about those parts of the game, but seriously, who wants to search through bits of text for instructions in the XXI century?
So we have spent some time and left a bunch of short and intelligible tutorial sessions here and there in the game. You will learn how to handle Deposit and lay underground infrastructure, deal with service buildings and storage units, use sales data, and much more!
We already have about a dozen tutorials, and we'll probably add at least as many in future updates. Some of them have illustrations now, but eventually, we plan to add short videos to these bite-sized tutorials. From how to use Docks and Zeppelins, to the tiniest interface tricks, such as the pipette tool, we'll try to leave no chance for misunderstanding.
This would be a nice excuse for you to start a new game: chances are good, you'll learn about something entirely new! Or has it already happened to you? Let us know if you stumbled upon a feature you never knew to exist in Learning Factory!
Not that we'd want to post any spoilers, but… basically, we'll be working on the same things in July. More new graphics, more tutorials, more UI/UX improvements. If that does not sound very exciting to you, that's ok: just wait until we're done and you’ll see Learning Factory the way we see it in our minds - that will be the time to get excited!
Until we meet again.
Every Detail Matters - New Update, v0.31.184
Hey engineers,
When you get to design a factory, every small detail matters! And not only because you're working with complicated machinery, where everything will break if a detail breaks (do you like silly jokes as we do? share your favorites in the comments!). It is also important because we want you to feel comfortable while playing Learning Factory.
Which is why this new update is dedicated to making game prettier, along with making complicated mechanics more easy to learn!
v0.31.184 Released!
Re-rendered Vitamin Maker
New phrases for cats, specific for their place of origin
Increased speed (by 1 tick) for selective Manipulators (suggested by S'Kleer)
Increased size of bubbles for cat phrases on Transporters and in Stores, to facilitate reading
New premade Blueprint for Cargo Docks, available in the Wiki
New premade Blueprint for the tutorial
New item requests and cat types appear less frequently in early parts of the game
Performance optimization
UI/UX improvements
Tutorial fixes/improvements
Improved tutorial upon picking a Cat Knowledge Archive
Bug fixes (kudos to VladGev, U[A]T morningstar2651, Malolitrazhka)
Massive community localization update for the German language (kudos to Bass)
Improved Steam Deck interface
1 new unique cat researcher
A new item per each categories of appearance for cat researchers (3 items total)
Re: Factory
In this section of patch notes, we answer the questions from the community that were submitted via the in-game feedback form and/or seemed especially interesting to us, You can always contact us directly in the comments or join our Discord server
Q: "My life would be so much easier if selective manipulators worked faster, because I need 4 of them to load/unload a Dock, and it gets clumsy" -S'Kleer A: We'd like to make it so Manipulators would occupy 1*2 tiles instead of 1*3 tiles so they wouldn't occupy so much space. But since they were not designed to be of that size from the beginning, it would take too much work to change them. So we've tuned up their operational speed, which is supposed to make more comfortable to work with, as one would need less Manipulators to achieve the same result.
Q: "My game froze during the map change, or at least it didn't continue loading. I even have it on video since I was recording at the time. With an interstitial sequence, I was asked if I wanted to pack my things and get to know another map. After some text exchanges at the bottom of the loading screen, no new line appeared. I waited an additional four minutes, then I exited using ALT+F4." -Emanuel - Vito A: Please send us a saved game filee and/or a video of your gameplay, so we could better detect and fix this issue! Contact us at info@luden.io, or on our Discord server.
A friendly reminder: you can always chat with us directly on our Discord server. We're using Discord for work, so you'll find many of us there most of the time, don't be a stranger!
An even friendlier reminder: don't forget about our collection of items in Steam Points Shop! Sergei the artist makes wonderful factory art to be observed from above, but his works' magic really shows at close-up perspective:
----------------------
How to Get More Involved
At Luden.io, we develop games while constantly listening to the feedback from our awesome players. If you feel proactive, you're very welcome to do one or more of the following:
Subscribe to our newsletter, to get the latest info about the game's development, and a sneak peek of the upcoming features and events
Record 10 minutes of you playing Learning Factory, and share it with us via this form. Your feedback is so helpful, that we'll include you in the game's credits for doing this
It's that wonderful time of the year again, everyone! Time for picking flowers, enjoying the time in the sun, and (or?)... buying bulks of awesome games!
We mean Steam Summer Sale, of course, where you can get Learning Factory 37% off the price, and all the DLCs are 16% off too:
