Techtonica’s newest beautiful space is internally called Butterfly Cove
Have you ever wondered how developers talk about unnamed spaces in larger video game worlds? That is, how do teams talk about a single location on a map that never really gets a formal name?
It’s like callouts in a competitive multiplayer title back before games started naming specific areas in the UI. We pick one or two distinct features and start referring to the place in question by said features. Names can and do often change, though, and that happened with the place we’re spotlighting today, Butterfly Grove Cove. Sorry, caught myself.
Butterfly Cove is the space right near Production Terminal Victor. It was initially called “Butterfly Grove” because it’s the first place to feature the Waterglass Monarch, a beautiful name for a beautiful tree.
“Butterfly Grove” is actually present in the Techtonica demo that’s live on Steam right now. But! That version of this beautiful little space isn’t what we’re going for when we launch into Early Access.
The name evolved to Butterfly Cove when Ben, our Level Designer, added sand to the shoreline and gave the space an alien beach-like feel. Plus, as Game Director Richard points out, they rhyme.
What else changed? What can Groundbreakers like you expect to find in this new take on an already pretty spot? Let’s dig in.
The Waterglass Monarchs and their neighboring flock of plants take root
The flora is core to Techtonica’s art design, and its bioluminescence on Calyx has been central to our art direction from the beginning. These glowing plants and trees are meant to light the darkness, turning what should be a terrifying space into something bright and inviting.
That continues with the Waterglass Monarchs, Moon Blossoms, Maelstrom Lotuses, Yellow Emberstalk, and Painter’s Lilies that pock and spot the landscape in Butterfly Cove.
And yes! All of the plants and trees on Calyx are named, and you can learn more about them by scanning them and reading the databank entries that scans unlock.
Look up! The ceilings are alive with detail
The Butterfly Cove is now home to detail above, too. The cavern ceilings now feature dripping plant life and stalactites, making the space feel more alive.
The fluorescent flora on the cavern ceilings of Calyx often reminds me of starry skies from a planet’s surface, and seeing this already pretty space teeming with “stars” is beautiful.
Fully flowing waterfalls and rivers
Butterfly Cove got its new name from the sand added to the shoreline. That shoreline marks the boundary between Calyxian cavern floor and freshly flowing rivers fed by brand-new waterfalls.
This is the first time we’re sharing imagery of flowing waterfalls in Techtonica, and you’ll find them throughout the area you’ll discover upon Early Access release.
Surprises surround Butterfly Cove
If you played the Techtonica demo, you likely stumbled across a few narrative set pieces. Sparks was with you when you found, for instance, the mineshaft or the makeshift camp. These small narrative tidbits, and more like them, now surround Butterfly Cove.
We’re telling the story of Techtonica with big moments, of course, but little surprises like the ones in the demo will help breathe more narrative life into the smaller moments. We hope you like discovering them.
A sneak peek at the new Production Terminal Victor
Okay, so you’ve likely noticed the massive structure in the screenshots and clips throughout this post. As the letters on the building indicate, that’s the new design for Production Terminal Victor.
Next week, we’ll dive into the updated Production Terminals with a much closer look at Production Terminal Lima and how it works.
Stay tuned, Groundbreakers! Don't forget to Wishlist Techtonica!
Meet the updates to Techtonica’s Echosketch mapping system
In the demo for Techtonica, the Echosketch is a functional mapping system that lets you know where you are in Calyx’s network of twisting caverns.
In a game design sense, getting the Echosketch is a big part of how players in the demo move from Production Terminal Lima to the more open Production Terminal Victor area. You need the Echosketch to spot the caverns beyond the tutorial space you’ve grown accustomed to.
It works! For the demo.
But… we have so much more planned for the Echosketch you’ll build upon release, and that’s what we’re taking a look at today.
What’s changed, in a nutshell?
Colors have been tweaked to take the Echosketch from “eh, I can kinda see” to “ohhhhh, so that’s where I am.”
Resource veins now appear on the minimap and in the Echosketch, adding a completely new degree of usefulness to the tech.
Your machines also appear… and they even animate!
The Echosketch range will eventually be upgradeable in the Tech Tree so you can see fuuuuurther.
Okay, so let’s dig into these new elements of the Echosketch so you can see what’s what and why it’s super cool.
Look at all the new colors!
It’s a little tough to make out the player icon and the rest of the map on the Echosketch that’s working in the Techtonica demo. Those colors have been updated for the Early Access version of Techtonica.
At release, you’ll find a high-contrast map design that makes it easy to pick out the player icon against the terrain quickly. This update is pretty stark; see for yourself in the before and after screenshots below.
Before ⬇️
After ⬇️
Oh, there’s a massive copper deposit over that way.
In Techtonica, we want Groundbreakers to explore the world of Calyx and dig out secret hideaways, buried facilities, and lots more (seeeecrets). We also want Groundbreakers to tap into resource veins across the map, expanding their network of industry as they move.
The new Echosketch enhances your ability to find those resource veins by plainly revealing them on the map. A quick glance gives you a sense of where you should head next for that source of iron, copper, or atlantum.
Look at my lil’ factory go!
The Echosketch players will build upon Early Access release features machine placements.
It’s super helpful to have machines, belts, and belt-riding materials show up on the Echosketch map. As you explore the caverns of Calyx and expand your factory’s footprint, you can sometimes get a little turned around and forget where you put, say, that bank of miners or smelters. With the Echosketch, a quick look now tells you where things are and even if they’re operating.
Here’s what it all looks like in motion.
Yep, the little animated factories look great. And they serve the purpose of sharing your machines’ status from the map itself.
We asked Richard, the Game Director on Techtonica, why he added the animated machines to the Echosketch. As usual, his answer was poetry.
For fun. True.
Bonus round: Check out some early map concepts for the Echosketch
The Echosketch design has, as with almost everything in Techtonica, seen its fair share of iteration. We thought it’d be fun to share an earlier mockup of what the map system could have looked like.
Notice the machines, the conveyor lines, and the ore veins? Those are all in and working for the in-dev version of the Echosketch. The other stuff? Maybe those are hints of what’s to come.
Thanks for reading, Groundbreakers! We’ll see you next week.
Wishlist Techtonica, tell your friends. Let’s get to work.
Techtonica multiplayer progress report: Character animations arrive
Techtonica will have four-player co-op when it launches into Early Access next year.
We’re still in active development, and that means lots of what we’re sharing and showcasing should be labeled “work in progress.” Some of you eagle-eyed Groundbreakers even noticed a multiplayer clip from a couple of months ago on TikTok that featured dev team members moving without animation.
Recently, we added physics simulations to take our multiplayer character movement from locked and stiff, as seen in the TikTok above, to more fluid and animated. When you fire up Techtonica with your friends, it’ll look something like this.
That’s right. To help tell your friends apart, Groundbreaker suits come in a variety of colors.
Getting to the version you see above, though, was a ride.
Techtonica Game Director, Richard, made the mistake of sharing his work in our team chat, making it possible for us to grab the clips for posting here for you today.
Thanks, Richard!
He’s not paid for puns, folks. Still, this is perfect.
The next iteration was less underwater but somehow equally ridiculous.
Finally, Richard brought his work much closer to the final version you see near the top of this post. This is what your friends will look like when they join your multiplayer Techtonica sessions upon Early Access release in 2023.
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A note and a question for you before we go. In case it’s not obvious, we recently switched to weekly updates for Techtonica. We hope you're enjoying the extra looks at what we’re working on. These posts will continue, and we’ll showcase more interesting stuff as we near release next year.
Onto the question: Besides our planned announcements, what would you like to learn about when it comes to the development process for Techtonica?
Thanks for reading, Groundbreakers! See you next time.
Overhauling Techtonica’s resource and product models
Factory automation games tick lots of different boxes for all sorts of players.
Whether it’s logistical problem-solving, exploration, accomplishment, objectives, or that flow state we’ve talked about before, these games rely on lots of moving parts (literally and figuratively).
In Techtonica, a lot of satisfaction comes from seeing the fruits of your logistical labor reach their intended destinations. Watching the iron ore you mined move along Conveyor Belts to become iron ingots, then iron components and a swarm of Inserters is part of the magic of what makes factory automation games feel so good.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that our art team has been hard at work on the resources and products that move along each factory’s Belts.
If you played the demo, you might remember some pretty placeholder art and 3D models between your inventory menus and on your Conveyors. Those have all been replaced in the in-development version of Techtonica, and they look much, much better.
Creating an intermediate, such as Iron Components, starts with sketches against reference pieces. Those sketches get feedback and iteration as the concept moves from idea to model, as seen in macro detail below.
Feedback comes from members of the art team, of course, and it can be incredibly specific or more generalized. Here’s some mid-stage work with real feedback from our team.
With feedback, icons and models became much more refined into what you’ll actually see in the game at launch.
And here’s what it looks like on belts in the in-dev version of Techtonica. We’ve changed the way we render metal since the Alpha and demo, too. Metallic resources and products will look properly shiny in low-light environments instead of too dark or flat, as they were before.
The work includes what these resources and products look like in your inventory and crafting menu, too.
These models and icons come together to progress the vision of Techtonica and the world of Calyx for players. Hopefully, you dig what you see and take as much joy in producing these materials as we did in creating them for the game.
Until next time, Groundbreaker. Be sure to Wishlist Techtonica here on Steam, and tell your friends to check out the demo!
As we announced last week, the Techtonica demo has officially returned!
What’s changed? Super, super minor stuff, quite honestly. We did prepare these patch notes for your reference, though, and we’re renaming the Techtonica demo in order to solidify that this will not be updated.
The Techtonica demo is now live as the Techtonica Prologue!
Here come the patch notes!
You, the community, wanted a way to play the game after the Demo’s untimely demise, so here it is! The Prologue is very similar to the Demo, with a handful of small changes.
Please note that the Techtonica Prologue is an UNCHANGING MONOLITH, a snapshot in stasis, a stationary testament to how time makes fools of us all. Which is to say… we’re not gonna update this.
We’re pouring our effort into making Techtonica proper the best game we can, which means leaving the Prologue as-is.
🏭 Minor Updates 🏭 ⛏️ = Changed in response to community feedback
Updated in-game text to remove reference to Next Fest. Next Fest is so two months ago; the Prologue is what’s hot right now.
Disabled the in-game feedback form because we were tired of hearing from you (no wait, that’s a joke, please don’t go, just give us feedback in Discord!).
⛏️ Improved performance while navigating menus with large inventories (this does not affect some menu hangs on open/close)
Updated resource icons. They’re so shiny! They don’t match the models for their resources… YET!
A Note on Save Files
For the diehard Groundbreakers who just can’t let go of their Demo save files, good news! Your save files should be mostly compatible with the Prologue.
However, Demo/Prologue save files will not work in the Early Access release of Techtonica.
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Welcome back to Calyx, Groundbreakers. Now, let’s get to work.
It’s true! There are real human people making Techtonica, and we took a week to hang out, eat, play games, and bond as a team for the first time since the pandemic began.
Fire Hose Games was founded and is largely based in Boston, MA, but we now have team members distributed across the U.S. and in a few other countries around the world! We went remote because of the pandemic, and that means a lot of folks have never met in person beyond the confines of a virtual meeting place.
So! Before Thanksgiving here in the States, we held our annual summit in Boston and gathered as many of our team as possible to grow as a company and as friends.
We thought you’d like a little look at what we did over the course of the week!
Oh, by the way, the demo relaunches this week.
On Monday, we traveled.
When we officially got together, we chowed down on ramen and, of course, hot chocolate. A few of the team even made it out to a great dive bar for a few beers.
Tuesday? Aquarium.
On Tuesday, we ventured to the aquarium before a bunch of very (boring) important team meetings. Excuse me, Penguins.
Wednesday meant Boda Borg.
Boda Borg is this really interesting take on real-life video games, sort of. It’s equal parts escape rooms, puzzles, and obstacle courses, and the team had a blast breaking into groups and fighting through failure to stretch brain muscles and conquer rooms.
Thursday was museum day.
On Thursday, the Fire Hose team hit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a beautiful place and perhaps one of the most interesting museums I’ve ever visited.
On Friday, we called it quits.
We all made our way back to our respective homes on Friday, but not before we spent Thursday evening saying goodbye to Ruma.
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Thanks for reading about our adventures. Now? Other than swapping some language in the demo to relaunch it, we're hard at work on the Early Access release of Techtonica. You can expect lots more about the game soon.
We’ve heard you. We’re bringing the Techtonica demo back.
Here are the key details before we get into the meat of what we’re doing. First, the demo will go live in the next week-ish; we’ll be sure to update you here and on Discord. Second, the demo will not be updated as we focus on the main game.
Okay, here’s how we got here.
We launched the Techtonica demo immediately after the invite-only Alpha finished in September. The purpose of the demo was two-fold:
Open the Alpha experience up to everyone
Stand as our demo during Steam Next Fest
We left the demo up for an entire month after Next Fest, but the plan was always to remove the demo once the Steam festival ended.
The demo does have its bugs and performance issues. Moreover, every day, the demo gets less and less like the game that will launch into Early Access in 2023. Eventually, the demo won’t represent what players will get when they buy the game.
The demo returns next week.
With all of that said, we’ve heard folks would rather have the snapshot, unsupported demo than nothing at all. So, we’re making minor changes (like removing the references to Next Fest) and relaunching the demo for free on Steam next week.
Remember, we won’t be updating the demo at all. We’re focused on building the Early Access version of Techtonica, and we don’t want to spare the developer time to update the demo.
Because the demo is getting less and less like the actual game every day, we plan to remove it once we get close to launch (probably within the month of launch). We don’t want players to download the demo and think that’s the version of Techtonica they can expect at release. The Early Access version of the game features more polish and more content.
Thank you for being such a great community. We wouldn’t have reached this decision without your feedback.
Here are two new songs from the soundtrack of Techtonica
We’ve talked about this before in our Discord AMAs and across a few interviews, but we’re going for something special with Techtonica. Internally, we refer to it as flow or flow state.
It’s not something we made up! Flow is a real thing, it even has its own Wikipedia page, which is the standard for when a thing becomes real.
Essentially, entering a flow state means you’re in the zone, totally immersed in and energized by the thing you’re doing. As you can probably imagine, this is a super common thing in video games, especially in genres like factory automation, city sim, base building, and colony building.
We’re striving to build an experience that helps players achieve that flow state of energized and relaxed focus, and we feel that a huge part of getting there lies in the music players hear.
Techtonica’s soundtrack (and audio design) is being done by Cityfires. If you played the demo or were part of the Alpha, you’ve experienced the music firsthand. It’s super critical to the game, and we’re working hard on making it feel great.
Today, we’re sharing two new songs from Techtonica. These are both still in progress, so you’ll likely hear something different once the launch rolls around, but we like them enough to share them with you today!
The first song, above, is meant to drive home that flow feeling, and it packs a methodical pace alongside a dark and mysterious tone.
The second is much more up-tempo than the first, and we think it works well against a factory building backdrop.
We hope you enjoyed this preview of the tunes to come. If you did, we'll probably share more between now and launch.
Techtonica’s due for release in 2023. The soundtrack will be available for purchase here on Steam, too! Drop us a Wishlist to stay informed.
Techtonica featured as a Day of the Devs Official Selection
If you follow Techtonica here on Steam, this likely won’t come as a surprise. Factory automation games like Techtonica have a narrow, dedicated following, especially when compared to other marquee genres like the typical action, adventure, or FPS fare.
That’s why we were pleasantly surprised to see such a positive reaction from a wealth of players completely new to the genre at Day of the Devs.
Double Fine (of Psychonauts fame) partnered with iam8bit (purveyor of great video game merchandise, including vinyl that we adore) in order to host Day of the Devs, a one-day-event aimed at providing select indie studios a place to showcase their upcoming games. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the show and the first in-person event since before the pandemic.
We were picked to join the event, along with more than 70 other devs, and we took the trip to San Francisco with the demo in hand to show some new folks the wild world of factory automation and black hole gun-wielding.
It was a ton of fun!
Over the span of five hours, the show floor was open to players of all kinds as they listened to live music, wandered from station to station, and played some great indie games. Joey (that’s me!) ran the demo for the event, and Techtonica never sat unplayed as folks were treated to the very beginning of the demo and jumped to a later save with the M.O.L.E. built and ready to eat through some of Calyx’s walls.
What did we learn? Factory automation is an up-and-coming genre, people love wielding a black hole gun, and the voice performance for Sparks is really good.
We did catch a few factory automation fans, of course, with each of them super eager to share how many hours they’ve spent building factories across games. They took to Techtonica right away, laying belts, building machines, and upgrading tech.
This was a super cool event, and we were thrilled to showcase Techtonica to folks who would have never otherwise had a chance to play it.
If you were there and found us on Steam, say hello! Also, join our Discord!
Don’t forget to Wishlist Techtonica!
More ports, smaller footprint with new storage design in Techtonica
The Containers you’ve grown used to in Techtonica feature four ports, one on each side of a 3x3x3 box.
Containers with ports are super helpful for factory automation games. Coupled with the right combination of Inserters and Belts, Containers can serve as hubs for complex layouts or temporary sinks for starter spaces.
But, the large Containers on display during the Alpha and Demo were not meant to be around forever.
3x3x3 is a lot of space to consume on a factory floor, especially when Groundbreakers grapple with optimizing layouts for maximum efficiency. We’re talking about 27 voxels occupied by a machine with only four ports.
Oh, sure, we loved them for how ridiculous they were! One early playtester dubbed their first Container a block of cheese. As a team, we affectionately refer to the Container as Chonkin’ Charles.
Chonkin’ Charles? He’s going away before the game releases into Early Access.
Jokes aside, the Container players found and either loved or loathed in the Techtonica Demo was always placeholder. We’ve had alternate, permanent iterations in our backlog for a while now.
So, what’s replacing the 3x3x3 Container we called Chonkin’ Charles?
It’s a 2x2x2 wonder.
Yep! When Groundbreakers delve below the surface of Calyx in Techtonica as it launches into Early Access, they’ll find a smaller, more efficient Container waiting for them.
Gone is the massive box with only one port per side. In its place comes a Container that occupies only eight precious voxels in your factory. Even better, it comes with double the port count, featuring two on each side.
Check out a sample of the concept process done by our art team above. Below, you’ll see a screenshot of the new Container at work in our in-development build of Techtonica.
The new ports and smaller space requirements will allow players to squeeze out way more efficiency for their factories, and we can’t wait to see how Groundbreakers put them to use.
As for its internal name? Obviously, we call it Medium Melvin.
If you haven’t heard the news, the Techtonica demo will leave Steam on November 8th, 2022, as we shift our focus to building the Early Access version of the game.
We’ll fill the gap left by the demo’s departure with lots of behind-the-scenes and in-development news for Techtonica. That includes posts like this one.
Thanks for reading, Groundbreaker! We have so much planned for Techtonica, and we can’t wait to share it with you.
