Roboplant
Release 0.7.5
another small bugfix release, with this we hope the new release is stable. As usual let us know what you think!
Changelog:
- Fixed: Sometimes the ramp didn't allow workers to pass and would stuck them in the room
- Fixed: Workers couldn't pass near some structures.
See you soon!
Release 0.7.4 Changelog
a small update that should solve some minor bugs. Another come will in the coming days since there is a small issue sometimes with ramps.
What changed:
- Fixed: Loading a challenge could reset the next planetary event and cause issues.
- Fixed: Sometimes the day won't reset and will continue increasing the time.
- Fixed: Analytics is not setting properly the level id.
See you soon!
Planetary events, more base control and more is officially out!
Another small piece has been added to our game, and we can now announce the official January release! đ Step by step, we are developing the various points we have added to our roadmap thanks to your invaluable suggestions. You can find the latter in the loading screen of Roboplant and soon on our website as well.
As we had already anticipated, this release includes a fantastic addition that we hope will make your games more challenging. If you have already tested the preview of this new branch, you know what we are talking about. If you are curious about what this new update has in store, read below!
ATTENTION! Planetary events are coming âď¸
This is definitely the most important feature of this release. We wanted the game to become more interesting and demanding and decided to add an extra level of difficulty. Depending on the planet you are on, at some point in the game there will be a planetary event that will put your business at risk. You will have to keep an eye on your hydroponic machinery and especially your little robots that will need extra help.
Unleash your creativity, build more freely
Thereâs no more need to build rooms connected to corridors! Isnât it fantastic? Choose a room and add it wherever you want. And if you want to connect to another room through a corridor you can, but it is not mandatory anymore.
Enjoy moving around the game with new camera controls
We have improved camera controls so players can move around more fluidly. You can now rotate the view (mouse middle click) and pan (right click).
Smarter workers that never get stuck - or at least try not to!
One of the problems in Roboplant was that robots could get stuck and there was not much to do. We tried to make them smarter to avoid this kind of situation. If by chance one of the robots crashes, a notification will warn you.
Better, fewer notifications
We reduced the number of boring notifications so that when you get one, you know itâs essential. Also, we added a new icon on the notifications: if you click on it, it brings you to the target!
Improved performances
This is a work in progress but we managed to reduce the workload on the CPU and GPU so it should be faster on lower-end pcs. The road is still long, we have seen some limitations for some GPUs but we are planning some more improvements in the February release.
Balancing
We increased the day duration since it was pretty short. We also balanced the profits of each plant and increased some construction and worker costs. It should be more of a challenge now. You now have to research the small storage locker to unlock it.
Improving the experience
We did several changes to improve the experience: the producers will show you exactly which resource is actually missing in a billboard; Going back from any panel will bring you precisely where you were before; We made more clear what is the impact of having workers unhappy or untrained in your production line.
Experimental Linux support
We added support for Linux, itâs still experimental but we havenât encountered any functional problems. The main concern is that on some machines it doesnât recognize the drivers properly. Let us know if you encounter any weird glitch.
Analytics - A way to improve the game
Analytics is not mandatory and itâs totally up to you but if you opt-in you can give us a huge help. With data, we only track how Roboplant is played so that we can improve the gaming experience and we can also give out free content! Cool, isnât it? đ
Please, as usual, let us know what you think! You can write to us in-game, on the Steam forum, on the Rebelpug forum, or on Discord!
Enjoy the new features! And see you soon!!!
Planetary events update out in Preview
We hope you had a lovely December time! For us, it was quite busy with family, food, and friends.
We are happy to announce that the release of the planetary events is out in the preview branch. There are a few things we still have to do, but we plan to finish them by the end of the coming week. The biggest part is already done and itâs there for you to have fun with.
We also added a more in-depth roadmap as the game loading screen so that you can see where we are at, what we are working on, and what needs to be done. And yes, many of your suggestions are there already!đ
Letâs dig into what changed:
Planetary events
Keep an eye out for any snowstorm or sandstorm! These events could affect your workers so you need to be extra careful.
Build more freely
As you have shown us, the requirement to have a corridor to build a room was unnecessary so we removed it. Now you can build the room more freely.
More camera controls:
Another thing you highly requested was to be able to have more controls over the camera. Now you can use the mouse to rotate (middle click) and to pan (right click).
Smarter Workers
We canât promise that they will never get stuck again but we worked hard to make them smarter and avoid this problem as much as possible. And if they do get stuck, theyâll let you know.
Better notifications
We reduced the number of boring notifications so that when you get one, you know itâs important. Also, we added a new icon on the notifications: if you click on it, it brings you to the target!
Improved performances: Still a huge work in progress but we managed to reduce the workload on the CPU and GPU so it should be faster on lower-end pcs.
Balancing
We increased the day duration, since it was pretty short. We also balanced the profits of each plant and increased some construction and worker costs. It should be more of a challenge now. The small storage locker has been locked behind a research, so youâll have to research it to use it.
Analytics
This a complex topic, but let me start by saying that this is not mandatory and itâs totally up to you. With our analytics, we only track how Roboplant is played so we can improve the experience. Also, we need analytics to manage some future free content. But still totally optional!
What needs to be done:
Another planetary event: Itâs going to be thundering!
Bug fixing: We made many changes to improve the experience and it will come with some bugs đ
More balancing: We expect that some things still need to be balanced more.
Localization: We need to localize the new content in all languages.
Please, as usual, let us know what you think! You can write us ingame, on the Steam forum, on the Rebelpug forum, or on Discord!
See you soon
2022 Unwrapped
The bad and unexpected
Working on a new game is always an incredible adventure as well as an intensive challenge. Especially if the game in question is your first and your company is made of two people and a half.
During this year, we had to accomplish a long list of features and improvements and create the game from the beginning towards the most important milestone of them all: release Roboplant in early access on Steam at the end of November 2022.
The good news is that we managed to do it all with many coffees and long days of work. The bad news is that when we released the game, there were bugs we hadn't noticed and this made the gaming experience not very pleasant for lots of you. We apologised and we want to apologise again. Being the first game that our tiny team has ever worked on, there were things we wrongly took lightly and undervalued. We learnt a lot from our mistakes and we also understood how incredible a community of players can be. Through your feedback and suggestions, we were able to improve many aspects of the game, see things from other perspectives and thus become better game developers and designers. So even if the early access release was a bit bumpy, we are still on this incredible adventure and we canât wait to keep working on Roboplant together with you.
The good and appreciated
Despite the bad and unexpected events of 2022, the list of good things is a very long one! Since January, we have managed to achieve all the milestone in the roadmap and provide our gamers with new game features, new hydroponic systems, customized robots, a new planet covered in ice andâŚwell, the list goes on and on. But instead of listing all the stuff we were able to introduce in the game, we would like to say a big thank you to all the people who showed an interest in Roboplant, played it, criticized it or loved it. We would like to thank the ones who invited us to game events and gave us the opportunity to promote our project; our social media followers and our discord friends. And lastly, we would like to say the biggest thank you to the people who bought the game in early access: we are working on a special surprise just for you.
Whatâs next and new yearâs resolutions
We are very excited about the first game updates of 2023 and we canât wait to receive your first impressions and feedback. To simplify things for you, hereâs a list of what this new update will include:
Planetary events
To Spice things up we are going to add environmental events both for planet Maylo and Kytoon. This means that while you are building your hydroponic empire, you need to watch out for storms of different kinds that could bring harm to your factory.
Build your rooms more freely
Say goodbye to corridor constraints! Now you can position the room of your choice wherever you like without the need to connect it to a corridor.
Robots will get stuck much less
Thatâs a big promise, but we want to stick to it. We will explain how in the first article of January.
And what about resolutions for 2023? The first one is related to bugs and game improvements. We want you to enjoy the game 100% and in order to make this possible, we want to improve the game testing process and have a better idea of whatâs working and whatâs not. Secondly, we need to work harder on our marketing strategy: reach more people on social media, attend more events and discover new ways we can promote Roboplant. Lastly, we want to make sure to follow our roadmap and release all the features weâve planned. We know itâs not going to be easy, but itâll be worth it.
Before ending this article, we want to share with you what is probably the best gift we ever received for Christmas thanks to our wonderful 3D artist Alessia. A gift that once again reminded us how incredible the adventure of making Roboplant is.
Happy New Year and see you soon for the next amazing update!
Release 0.6.16 Changelog
we hope you are having a great time!
Here a new small fix for those that use a different keyboard layout than QUERTY! it will allow you to see in the tutorial (and actually use) the proper keys for your layout.
See you soon!
What is planned for January release
We hope you are having a wonderful winter time! We saw the snowfall this week so we are fully immersed in the Christmas atmosphere - as you may have guessed from the setting of the second planet available on Roboplant, we love snow!
December release went out nicely, it highlighted some deep problems we need to work on but we made a great improvement on the general gameplay experience and we are really happy you liked it so far. And of course, thanks for all the feedback you are sending us, theyâre much appreciated.
In every release, we want to give you something new but we also want to improve what is already there and January fits the idea perfectly.
Hereâs what we are working on:
Planetary events
We wonât spoil the surprise for you and write about this new feature with too many details but letâs just say that the ride is getting bumpy and you need to keep an eye out and be ready for new challenges. So roll up your sleeves and be ready, environmental events are coming to Roboplant!
Building a factory with fewer constraints
We noticed from the saved files you sent us that many of you are working around the limitation of having all the rooms connected by corridors. This made us think: what if we are forcing something that isnât necessary? Thatâs why from the next update you will be able to build rooms wherever you want even if you still need either a corridor or a ramp to give them access to the outside.
Performances are important
We know some of you had performance issues and this is not going to be the final solution but we hope that with the new release we will be able to provide you with a nice boost in terms of performance.
Workers should move better
Workers getting stuck was another thing that is bothering you. So we are working on improving the navigation system so that they will get less stuck. Meanwhile please be patient. If your worker gets stuck you will need to free a passage to the spaceship so that can move around again. Having workers stuck can mess your base up.
This is all for now but will keep you constantly updated with the latest news. Have fun and please let us know what you think about the new features and improvements!
See you soon!
Release 0.6.15 Changelog
here a small release with some minor changes. We have many more bug reports, mostly on performances and workers getting stuck. But for those we will need to wait a bit longer, we are working on them for the January release.
Here what changed:
- Fixed game wouldn't load and would return to the menu due to a rare bug happing when saving while a worker is building a corridor.
- Fixed sometimes after stopping moving an object and starting to build something else it was still trying to move the previous object.
Release 0.6.14 Changelog
we hope you are enjoying the new December update!
Here a small update:
- Updated contract generation so that you should be able to meet the requirements of more contracts.
- Fixed utilities production that was doubling up when loading a game.
- Fixed utilities production not going to zero when production was negative.
- Fixed ebb producer sometimes not being constructed.
- Fixed crystals not being destroyed when built over in Kytoon.
- Fixed some icons quality that was too low.
This is all for now, see you soon!
Roboplant December update is out!
As we anticipated in our article a few weeks ago, a new alien planet has landed in Roboplant's world and you can now build your hydroponics empire in a different, exciting environment. We decided to call this planet Kytoon and to cover it with snow and ice crystals in honour of the arrival of December and winter.
Some of you have already had the honour of testing this new game branch, finding all the nasty bugs and helping us fix them so we could make the gaming experience better. We thank you again for the messages you have sent us and for the enormous help! We hope you like the new game addition and enjoy playing Roboplant surrounded by a wintery environment.
For those of you who are new to the world of Roboplant, below you can find a small summary of the features that this new release will bring to the game:
A new planet, of course!
While you stay warm and cosy drinking some hot chocolate, you can immerse yourselves into a planet covered entirely with snow. On Kytoon you can do the same things you do on Maylo, plus there are some unique decorations related only to this planet. Ok, we are not really good at keeping secrets so weâll just give you some clues: gifts, ribbons and a magical snowfall.
A better UI
We got a lot of feedback from you on the UI and how we should improve it and that is what we did. We focused on two aspects, planning the production and managing your workers.
Selecting what you wanted to produce was a tedious task, it required a lot of effort and clicks just to set up one producer. But with the new panel, you are now able to choose what you want to produce much more quickly and with less hustle.
Managing workers was also a bit complex, especially when you had to plan their priorities. We visually improved the UI making it more clear and easy to use.
New plants to grow: melon and praisie
We are growing our vegetable and fruit family with two new entries: a melon plant and an alien one called praisie. Praisie is an aromatic plant whose red and orange leaves are used to flavour dishes in various intergalactic cuisines due to their fragrant and slightly sweet flavour. Are you curious to check it out?
Move constructions and auto buy option
To make the game smoother, we decided to add two very important features.
The first one is the ability to move constructions and objects easily - the good part is that you can keep what has been planned for the object and if it's a producer you only need it to start it again. The same goes for the research table.
The second one is related to ordering materials. Before, you had to constantly check what was missing. Now, we added the possibility to automatically order new materials when they go below a certain threshold. This automatic check on missing resources is done twice a day, at 8 am and 8 pm, so plan accordingly!
Additional storages
If you are able to grow your business quickly, you will reach a certain point where the initial storage space will no longer be sufficient. For this reason, we have added the possibility of placing new additional storage to satisfy your needs!
Wind power at your disposal
In Kytoon you can use solar panels to produce electricity, but they wonât be very efficient because there isnât much sun there. Luckily you have wind turbines at your disposal! They will give you a small and constant supply of energy. Be aware, on Maylo wind is not a big thing!
We still have many features to implement, the list is still long and we never stop!
In the meantime, we hope you can enjoy this Christmas season while having fun with our game. As always, write to us and let us know what you think!