LithoBreak News

Greetings Scientist,

Have you ever dreamt of exploring new worlds and managing your own space mining station? Well, now is the time!

From June 23rd to July 7th, LithoBreak will be 20% OFF! Now's a great time to jump into Lithobreak as our next major update is right around the corner! Lots to look forward to including multiplayer, voxel moons, and sooo much more.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091030/LithoBreak/

LithoBreak brings you 11.4 light years from Earth to the Aristarchus star system (61 Cygni), where tyrannical corporations monopolize deep space. Eli, a rogue inventor and scientist, is driven to restore balance to The Verse. By developing novel technologies outside the corporate grasp, Eli strives to deliver control of humanity's future back to the people.



Happy Summer Scientists, a whole new world awaits!

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs

Greetings, scientists!

May is over, and with it comes our Dev Log for the month! We’re really excited to share the progress we’ve made this month with you. So grab a seat, a nice cup of coffee, and let’s jump in!




This month we focused heavily on expanding the game’s current features, and polishing it in preparation for the next steps of development. This included expanding the current map’s terrain (we may or may not be looking into procedural terrain options ;) ), releasing tooltips in the mining UI to provide more information, and a major lighting overhaul that required us to completely rework the way the scenes are built into the game. But, let’s jump into those new features shall we?



[h2]Terrain Expansion:[/h2]
As mentioned, we expanded the terrain greatly, and now the players will have 9 times as much terrain to explore and build on! This includes more variations in the terrain (including mountains and dunes), and more constructible terrain: The hex grid we showed off last month will be generated all the way to the edge of the map.

To accommodate such an expansion, we adjusted the camera: It now has more zoom levels for you to admire your base and assess your next production lines!



[h2]Tooltips and Highlights:[/h2]
A lot of time was spent expanding and refreshing the highlights and tooltips in LithoBreak. The biggest one being, you are finally able to show multiple tooltips on screen simultaneously! This allows you to compare the input/output for multiple buildings and makes it easier to set production lines, or plan your next mining operation.

From a developer standpoint, we reworked the tooltips to be easier to implement and maintain in the long run, meaning we can expand or change them quickly and efficiently.

To be able to do so however, we will need your feedback! It will be crucial to let us know what needs changed or where more context is needed. You’ll get a chance to help us out in our upcoming Closed Beta! But more information on that later. ;)



[h2]Lighting Update:[/h2]
The lighting for the entire station has been overhauled. This not only improves the game graphically to provide a much more thematic experience depending on which room the player is in, but also provides a huge performance boost. We shifted our internal workflow for using lights, allowing more flexibility in setting lighting sources up, and a more stable framerate while exploring the space station.



That’s a wrap for this month everyone! The feature rework and polishing we focused on will allow us to have a much more stable platform for the next steps of our development, meaning a lot more changes coming in the upcoming months. Stay tuned on Discord, and keep your ears open, the upcoming closed beta is rapidly approaching, scientists!

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs

Greetings, scientists!

April has been a crazy month for us, and we are super excited to show you what we have been working on today! We apologize for being a bit late for this Dev Log, but trust us it’s worth it. So as usual, take a seat, grab a coffee, and dive with us on what April was all about for Lithobreak!



[h2]Episode 1 Rework:[/h2]
This month we heavily focused on refreshing and reworking the Episode 1 for LithoBreak, and it is shaping up to be a major overhaul of the entire game! While we had our work cut out for us, we’re proud to say we have made huge steps towards the final version of the Episode. Once we finish getting everything together, we will hold a limited access Closed Beta for you to try it out before anyone else. We are always looking for our community’s feedback to help shape LithoBreak into the best version of itself, so gathering that feedback in our Closed Beta test is extremely valuable to us.

Throughout the process of completing Episode 1, we improved the gameplay experience by adding in a new voiceover for our main characters, and a heavy rework of some mining mechanics; some of those changes are detailed below.



[h2]New Voiceover:[/h2]
Part of the Episode 1 rework includes a brand new voiceover, giving Eli and Sara more lines and enhancing the story. While the player expands their material gathering and part production operations, the two characters will engage in more comedic conversations. A lot of those will be dropping tips about the mining flow, and help the player figure out the best materials to make even better parts.

This voice over will provide a deeper dive into Sara’s character, and greatly expand her lore! We won’t spoil it there though. ;)



[h2]Mining Camera:[/h2]
After hearing feedback from our community on Discord, we decided to rework the camera from scratch. It will now behave like a more classic orbit-style camera. We spent a lot of time smoothing the camera movements out to make sure everything is set correctly, and will give the player nice feedback while moving around their mining operations.

To help with base navigation, we implemented higher zoom levels to watch your base from afar, but it’s still possible to zoom close to the ground and buildings to see the finer details! These new changes will allow the player to play in a more familiar top-down perspective, as is cherished in classical base building games.



[h2]Hex Grid:[/h2]
A very big change has been implemented in the last couple weeks that we’re absolutely stoked to introduce today: A hexagon based building grid!

This grid will help you place your buildings in a more detailed way, thus making your mining operations easier! The grid is generated based on the moon’s topology, so the player can instantly know if a spot is viable terrain for a new building or not.

All the current buildings in the game have been modified to fit the grid layout properly, and any new additions will follow this same grid pattern. This will be a very nice feature to test out if you’re lucky enough to get in our planned Closed Beta. ;)

This grid will fit very nicely with our reworked camera mentioned previously. The top down view combinated with the new Hex grid will make planning your base much easier and your operations smoother!



That’s it for this month, scientists! Thanks for sticking with us till the end, and we hope you’re as excited as we are for these new features! If you want a sneak peek at what we’re working on next, make sure to join our Discord, and to check out our Dev Live Streams.

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs

Greetings, Scientists!

We have been working hard on more features and improvements for our game, and we are very excited to show them off to you today! So pull up your seat, grab a cup of coffee, and join us while we discuss what’s been done behind the scenes of LithoBreak this past month!



[h2]Buildings Visual Improvements:[/h2]
We are spending some time reworking the visuals of various buildings in the game, making them more lively and appealing. For example:

• The ingots will now glow while cooling off
  
• Substance fillings will be animated and material levels show in the buildings
  
• Vacuum rocket engine exhaust!

[h2]New Main Console UI:[/h2]
A lot of work was put into reworking the UI, and after a lot of community feedback provided on our Discord, we’re happy to show off the final result!

The new UI is simpler to operate, and fits the new style of the game better

• The build menu is now on the lower left and easily accessible.
  
• Sprites and link connections overlay can be turned on and off on the right.
  
• An (in progress) parts list is available, with more information windows to come.
  
• The updated objectives will show up on the top left.
  
• SARA tags along too, showing up on the top of your screen.
  
• With everything closed the UI has a slick look!

[h2]Part Transport Revamp:[/h2]
Something we wanted to improve was the part transportation system we’re using in game. We have recently overhauled the core systems to be more performant and flexible

The major impact now is the removal of the noticeable lag spikes and allows part warehouses for storage. In the near future, we will extend this transportation infrastructure to include multiple locations via train networks and orbital transports!

The solution we have come up with is capable of handling hundreds of part types with thousands of individual parts across dozens of mining sites. If you are interested in the technical aspect, here it is;

• The different part types have separate mappings, allowing calculations to be split up.
  
• Part routes and production requests are calculated over multiple frames and cached for future access.
  
• When a part state changes, the remaining routes or requests for that type are ignored and flagged for recalculation.

This approach greatly diminishes the amount of calculations needed, and distributes the calculation load over time for a drastically smoother experience.





Thanks for taking the time to check out or dev log, Scientists! We’re really excited about the recent changes and what’s coming next, and we hope you’re just as hyped as we are! We’ll talk to you soon, but in the meantime, make sure to check out our Dev Live Streams, and to join us on Discord!

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs

Greetings, Scientists!

February ended in the blink of an eye, and before we knew it we were already in March! We hope you’re as excited as we are for all the new stuff we've been working on including various refreshes of mechanics, and the progress we made on the Ceramics Processing!




[h2]New Builds and Feedback:[/h2]
We’re stoked to announce that the main branch for the game has been updated with everything from our January post! We also want to thank you for all the constant feedback you provided in our Discord. We have been working hard on the changes the community suggested so we can make sure it is the best version of itself as we come close to re-releasing Episode 1!

As we are ramping up development of the reworked episode, we are testing out all the new improvements, and incorporating feedback on a weekly basis!




[h2]Objectives Refresh:[/h2]
We have been hard at work freshening up the objectives and associated screens for the game, including completely revamping the objectives to be more flexible and responsive to the Player’s situation in game! All those changes will allow us to create more varied objective types in the future as well, giving us plenty of room to expand the game storyline.

You can now also play messages directly from the Objective Screen, making the game progression smoother and avoiding unnecessary navigation in the tablet.

When selecting objectives on screen, the objective now expands downwards to show all the options available. When a selection is made, the screen resizes around the selected option and the unselected ones animate, fitting the game UI nicely!




[h2]Ceramics Refresh (WIP):[/h2]
We have simplified the Sifter, making it work more predictably and less RNG based. The processing speed is determined by a set volume input rate, making it process a starting substance with 50% Silica twice as fast as a starting substance with 25% Silica into purified Silica.

The Mixer “Recipe” (what the unit will produce) will soon be set directly from the given inputs, meaning:

• Setting Silica to the top slot and Alumina to the middle slot will produce Fire Brick materials
  
• Setting Alumina to the top slot and Silica to the middle slot will produce Kiln Brick materials

I know it is short and sweet, but we have so much more lined up still to update you on soon! We hope you’re as happy as we are about these changes, and we’ll see you again soon! In the meantime, make sure to check out our Dev Live Streams, and join us on Discord!

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs