Techtonica News

You can play the Techtonica demo right now on Steam. We’re keeping it up until we’re closer to launch, but…

…it’s not entirely representative of the game experience players will have when we launch into Early Access this year.

We’ve made tremendous gains in level, art, narrative, and progression design. The gameplay loop in the demo is a close approximation to the Early Access launch version of Techtonica, but the stuff that surrounds it has seen a lot of updating.



One of our main focuses as of late has been optimization work. Today, we’ll share some footage of the demo against the current in-dev build, and we’ll dive deep into the occlusion culling system we have in place for big optimization enhancements.

Let’s dig in.

[h3]Early framerate gains[/h3]

We put together a quick video pitting the demo against a recent in-dev build of Techtonica. You’ll see Steam’s FPS counter running in the top-left corner. Here are some things to note before you watch.

• Performance in our demo was solid, but...the level was barely decorated and a lot smaller.
  
• This video compares the demo to the still in-dev, Early Access version of the game.
  
• The Early Access version is 10x bigger, and it features enhanced elements like more lush plant life, facilities, and waterfalls. Put simply, it runs better even though there’s a ton more to load.
  
• The optimization work isn’t done! In fact, we captured this footage in front of PT VICTOR, which itself hasn’t been optimized. This will improve!
  

The first half of the video is the demo, the second is the in-dev version of the game as of April 2023.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It’s important to note that we’re still improving performance and optimizations. These gains really took off over the last couple of months as our team shifted focus to optimization work.

How did we do it? Well, let’s dive into one of the bigger ways…

[h3]What is occlusion culling, and how are we using it?[/h3]

The terrain and all props in Techtonica are split into 30m x 30m columns. We call these columns "chunks." We used to keep everything within visible range of the player loaded in all at once, but there are so many cave walls that block players' vision of everything behind them.

For example, you could be in a small cave, but there might be a huge cave behind a wall in front of you. You can't see the big cave because of the wall; but, if that wall didn't exist, you’d be able to see everything. Our old system would have rendered everything behind this wall. This can amount to tens of thousands of plants and machines and other expensive landmarks, like Production Terminals and Facilities, all getting rendered when they don't need to be.



In most games, you can pre-compute information about when to hide those objects since the position of the big props in the game never changes. However, in Techtonica, you can destroy just about everything in the game, so we cannot pre-compute that data. A wall hiding your view of another cave might get M.O.L.E.d away in a few minutes.

To solve this, we've rigged up a system to detect when those 30 x 30 "chunks" are blocking the visibility of another chunk or if they’ve been dug out with the M.O.L.E..

Using a simple search algorithm combined with this data, we can evaluate quickly which chunks are not visible to the player, and we can hide everything in those chunks (machines, belt resources, plants, rocks, facilities, etc.).

Below, you’ll see two GIFs.

First, we have a player panning back and forth with an overhead of the map. The front half of the GIF features no occlusion culling. The second half features occlusion culling, and you can see the map space load in and out as the player pans.



In this next GIF, we show you the moment when a player bursts through a wall with the M.O.L.E.. The map loads as the line of sight is established.



This is a really big win for us as we more or less cut down the amount of stuff rendered and visually simulated to a tenth of the original amount in most cases!

That’s it for this update. See you next week!

P.S. We totally overhauled our Discord and are now hosting community streams and events all in one place. Come hang out! discord.gg/Techtonica

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/

We have a brand new member of the community and marketing team.

Over the last several weeks, the Fire Hose Team quietly welcomed its newest member, Lauren, into the fold. Lauren’s been hard at work learning the ins and outs of Techtonica, our community, and our future plans to serve players as the Community Marketing Manager.

Say hi to Lauren!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This week, Lauren’s overhauling our Discord with a fresh onboarding experience, server enhancements, community events, Discord-exclusive stream announcements, and loads more.

You’ll see lots of Lauren on the Steam forums, too, but the best place to connect with fellow Groundbreakers, developers, and our Community team is our Discord.



We’re hosting a livestream with Lauren later this week on Discord (check the #📅-events channel in Discord that stays updated with all announced events), but! We thought we’d kickstart the conversation and offer readers a small chance to get to know Lauren a bit better before then with a quick Q&A.

What is your favorite game, and why is it Techtonica?
I love building games! Not only is there a great story in Techtonica (hehe), but the mechanics of building a factory are very intuitive, alongside a really beautiful glowing landscape.

Okay, seriously, do you have a favorite game or genre?
Besides open-world survival craft games, I truly adore large-scale RPG games with deep lore & magic. The Dragon Age series is a favorite!

What’s the most interesting game you’ve played so far in 2023?
I enjoyed playing DARQ as it had really unique level design and mechanics! A great indie horror game with fantastic music and art design.

How did you hear about Techtonica? What made you apply for this gig?
I actually wishlisted the game long before seeing the job posting! I’d been looking to switch from the music industry to gaming full-time, and Fire Hose seemed like the perfect team to join.

How do you spend your free time when you’re not gaming?
I read a lot of fantasy books and like to cook recipes inspired by them! I have a fully stocked medieval fantasy kitchen, and I like to spend time DIY-ing stuff around the house.

Finally, dogs or cats?
Why not both? I have two dogs and a cat and refuse to choose between them.

—

We’re excited to have Lauren on the team.

In two weeks? We’re sharing another bit of big news.

Until then, see you next week, Groundbreakers.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/

Welcome, Groundbreakers!

This week’s post is a little on the lighter side compared to our usual, but we hope you find it illuminating.

I can’t promise that those will be the last of the horrible puns in this update, but I will apologize for them. I’m sorry.

As we march towards the Early Access launch of Techtonica, we’re making lots of updates to stuff like optimization and tweaking items and basic recipes. At this stage, we’re not really adding new content to what will be available at the launch.



But! We did want to take time to update the light sticks before the game’s ready for players. That’s what we’re exploring today. We’ll showcase the new lights, compare them to the old lights, and talk a bit about why we wanted to get them upgraded ahead of launch.

Let’s dig in!

[h3]Hey, who turned on the lights??[/h3]

These are the new light sticks in Techtonica.



The light sticks stand at two voxels high and one voxel wide. They come in white, red, blue, and green (for streamers, of course), and they are additive in nature.

What do I mean by additive? The colors of the light that shines off of the sticks change based on the light mix nearby. Combine blue and red light sticks in a close area to get a purple shine. See that below.



[h3]The lights we lost…[/h3]

The light sticks that these fresh ones replace were, much like other things early in development, placeholder lights. The asset was temporary, as you can tell, and the design work done on them was incredibly basic.

Here’s what the lights looked like before this internal update.



[h3]Why the rework?[/h3]

Oftentimes, teams like ours have limited resources when it comes to tackling projects like updating light sticks. As we move towards Early Access launch, there are some elements of Techtonica that we’re comfortable with releasing in a work-in-progress state. These elements function as intended, but they will be improved as development progresses.

So, why did we tackle the light sticks ahead of launch? The main sources of light in Techtonica are plants, machines, and bioluminescent water. With Power Floors down, plants harvested, and factory construction in far-off corners, the subsurface world can get dark, quickly.



We overhauled the light sticks because we know players will want to replace the natural light with something they physically build and place. We wanted a strong set of options for lighting at Early Access launch, including a selection of colors.

Techtonica will evolve through Early Access, of course, and we have so many plans for lighting and factory decoration that we can’t wait to share.

Thanks for reading, Groundbreakers!

While you’re here, don’t forget to Wishlist Techtonica!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/

Wake up, Groundbreaker. While you were sleeping, we completely changed your cryo pod. In fact, we’ve changed a ton about Techtonica since the demo, especially where you wake up.

Lots of this happened after we took a good look at the player feedback from in-person demos and across places like the Steam Forums and our Discord. The central theme was that the opening section tried to do too much over a short span.

In today’s post, we’ll briefly explore the starting area of Techtonica as it stands in the demo. Then, we’ll move into the starting area that you’ll see at Early Access launch later this year.



This new area features a complete overhaul, and we’ll detail how we shaped this new space and share some of the basic modeling and asset work required to get it right.

Let’s dig in.

[h3]The demo space is old news[/h3]

Here’s a quick flythrough of the space as it exists in the demo.



Notice the basic cryo pods, the Crank Generator placement tutorial space, picking up Sparks, the voice-activated door, and the example factories? All of that has changed.

We wanted to cut down on the time it took to get into the real gameplay of Techtonica, and that happened thanks to a drastic redesign of this opening moment.

[h3]And here’s where you’ll wake up at launch[/h3]

You’re still waking up from cryostasis, but the facility around you has completely changed. It’s smaller, has no Sparks, no Crank Generator puzzle, no voice-activated door, and the distance between where you wake and PT LIMA is much shorter.

The result is a tighter tutorial area that quickly brings players up to speed with the story before setting them free.



If you remember the demo, then you remember the long hallway of small example factories that you walk by on your way to the Pickaxe and the locked door. That hallway was put in place thanks to some very, very early playtest sessions.

The early testers weren’t necessarily fans of factory games, just games in general. Without a broader sense or understanding of what Techtonica is, they’d go into the game without knowing that they should be building Miners to mine, Inserters to grab, or Conveyors to transfer. We created these example factories to bring players up to speed quickly.

And it worked really, really well.

So, you’ll see an example factory that you absolutely cannot miss once you leave the cryo pod, but the moment is much faster and more obvious.



[h3]Finding the right frozen look[/h3]

This is very inside baseball, but we figured you’d like a look at how teams like ours sometimes use pre-made assets to get a headstart on work and make development move a little faster.

The art team was tasked with polishing the tutorial experience. We wanted a cryo pod that we could position vertically, so all the player has to do is step out of it. We also wanted an asset that we could retexture to bring more in style. After we bought the asset, we did some layouts to test.



With the layout approved, the art team did a texture pass to get the cryo pod in line with the color scheme and materials of the facilities. We also did work to get a frosted material on the cryo pod glass to sell the cold environment, in addition to some color tweaks. Here’s more of that process.







Thanks for reading, Groundbreaker.

We’ll be back next week with another deep dive into Techtonica. Until then, come hang out in our Discord.

Oh! Bonus GIF for the Alpha Groundbreakers among us. Remember Cranky?



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/

One of Techtonica’s core (pun intended) gameplay pillars is unlocking and upgrading tech. You do that through scanning and research. Research Cores are the research currency in Techtonica.

In order to unlock tech on your tech tree, you’ll need the right count and color of Research Cores. They must be built and placed to count toward your tech tree, too.



We had these Research Cores in the demo, too! But the asset back then was temporary, and we knew we needed to overhaul them before launch.

What do they look like now? How did we get here? Do we have any hints about the full functionality?

Dig in, Groundbreaker.

[h3]Remember the Cores from the demo? Well...[/h3]

The Research Cores players built in the demo were pretty basic! They were a placeholder asset that we leaned on to get the Alpha and demo out the door for player feedback.

We wanted these things to do lots more, but here’s what they used to look like.



And here’s what they look like now.



Research Cores are bigger, have a completely distinct look and feel, and we worked to give them a mesmerizing motion.

Yes. We upgraded the thing that you’ll use to make your own upgrades. The irony is not lost on us.

[h3]Finding the right look and feel for Research Cores[/h3]

We started designing the look for the Research Cores with a relatively straightforward desire in place. We wanted a framework design that showed off the core and provided a six-way connection. Here are some early 2D takes.



We wanted the Cores to feature a glowing circuit pattern that was super pleasing to look at for players. So we took some of these illustrations and worked them up in 3D.



We landed close to version E in the sketch above.



[h3]A hint at what’s to come…[/h3]

We’re not really ready to share all the fancy things that come with the Cores. We will say this, though.

We want to enable players to eventually automate just about everything in Techtonica. That’s true for Research Cores, too, and there may be one more machine in the relatively near-future pipeline.



We’ll share this new machine in a post as we get closer to launch.

Thanks for reading this week’s update, Groundbreakers! We’ll see you next week with more.

Want to talk Techtonica and factory games in general? Join our Discord.