Back to the Factory - Learning Factory Dev Diaries, August 2023
Hey engineers!
As you probably remember, last month we said our (temporary) goodbyes for the next couple of weeks, since the vacation period was upon us. Was it this time of the year for you, too? Did you manage to catch some rest? Share your stories in the comments!
Our programmer/game designer Ivan rushed into the office straight from a distant forest, where he had been enjoying his hobby of LARPing (this time, he performed as a dunmer from the TES universe).
We were about to release just one update this month, but it grew to epic proportions. So even with almost everything ready - the code, the graphics, the copywriting, etc. - it took us some extra time to test and prepare everything. Of course, it was totally worth the while! Let's review the hottest new content first:
Sergei the artist did a great job, providing us with a whole 3 new buildings, capable of producing top-quality Wood, Gold, and tech stuff. These late-game machines will provide a real challenge for the logistics genius inside you, for you will need to transfer exotic resources back and forth around the map.
Fun fact: Wolhwill Purifier is based on the actual process of refining gold to an amazing level of 99.999% purity. It is usually required for producing very expensive electronics, but if you feel like it, you can even recreate this process at home - if you have some pure gold, appropriate chemical equipment, along a handful of dangerous reagents. Science is fun!
As for the Quantum Tech Assembler, it's just beautiful. And quantum. Quantum makes everything sound more scientific, as is widely known:
And these two interesting subjects below are a product of some of our very productive discussions with the community. Some of you wanted underground floating cotton (is that still cotton at this point?). Sure, why not? And corner-shaped Splitters make total sense if you think about it:
By the way, if you aren't on our Discord server already, you're very welcome to join! Your feedback means an awful lot because that's how we learn how to make our games better!
[h3]The Great Rerender[/h3]
If you played Learning Factory, say, a year ago and decide to come visit it now, you might notice that some buildings have shadows. Some, but not all of them! This is because the process of polishing and rethinking the game's visuals is going on slowly. Steadily. The arrival of the coolest graphics in the world of cat factory-building games is imminent.
Fun fact: with the last update we have finished a rather prolonged process of redesigning items. There were two main reasons for that: one - some items looked visually noisy when the camera was too far away from the ground, and the other one - since we introduced the quality of items, it only made sense to make all the items look unique.
Some other items are getting a facelift as well. Right now we're considering a new art for trees. Here's a work-in-progress screenshot of them:
Several new buildings are in the works, too. We can't talk much about them now but their codenames are ‘Tech Overcharger’ and ‘Laser Infuser’. It is very probable (but not guaranteed) that you will see them in the next update, planned for September 5th:
You can follow our progress by checking out our Early Access Roadmap, which is updated regularly on Learning Factory's Steam page - just scroll down a little bit:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/
(And if you haven't done so already, don't forget to add Learning Factory to your wishlist!)
Another month is ahead of us, another bunch of exciting news about Learning Factory will emerge in the next edition of these developer dairies. Stay awesome, and play some awesome games! Until we meet again.
P.S. A little bonus for those whore read it this far: here's a couple of photos of our devs’ cats:
