Techtonica News

Factory automation games like Techtonica are about making things work as well as they possibly can. Efficiency. How do you eke out more efficiency?

These games are also about on-the-fly solving of logistics puzzles that you, the player, create. You create these puzzles as you plan and build your factories.



As makers of a factory automation game, it’s our job to get you info in a quick, digestible fashion. We’re constantly improving the UI that delivers that info.

Today, we’ll showcase Techtonica’s Overlay Mode, which relays critical factory information and enables rapid problem diagnosis in a 3D, massive factory space.

Before we start, remember that a lot of this art is temporary! Techtonica will launch as an Early Access game this year, and elements of the game’s art and UI are regularly changing.

Let’s dig in.

[h3]Hello, Overlay Mode![/h3]

Activating Overlay Mode is simple: press the Alt key on your keyboard, and boom, it’s there.

You now have an overlay on all machines, from Inserters to Smelters and Assemblers. This overlay contains critical information. On Inserters, for instance, you can immediately tell which way the Inserter is operating. On Assemblers, you can see what the currently selected recipe is at a glance. On Smelters, you can see which ingot the machines are producing.



We also color machines based on their operational status. Green means everything is good. Yellow means the machine is paused and waiting (perhaps an Assembler that’s configured correctly but just waiting for the goods). Red means something is wrong.

With Overlay Mode, even larger factory floors become instantly legible. In the example screenshot above, Overlay Mode immediately tells me which side of my Smelting operation is copper and which is iron.

Some folks at Fire Hose leave Overlay Mode on constantly. I use it whenever I need to rapidly understand my layouts or am returning to an older save, confused and lost. (This happens often.)

[h3]Rapid problem diagnostics with big red icons[/h3]

In the spirit of making sure that Groundbreakers have immediate, highly-visible information about the status of their factories, major problems will show over machines regardless of Overlay Mode being on.



If your machines are out of fuel, if an Inserter is trying to insert the wrong resource type, or if your Crank Generator needs a fresh crankin’, we’ll tell you with a red status icon over the machine.



This means that your factories let you know about problems as soon as they happen. It’s super convenient when you’re working to keep large-scale operations running smoothly and an error shows up that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

[h3]Overlay Mode concepts and the future[/h3]

It’s time for some concept art! ...And practically ancient in-game screenshots.

Look closely and you’ll notice old versions of the Assembler and Inserters. You’ll also notice that Overlay Mode has been with us for, literally, years as our team drew on stuff like the Inserter directions.



What about the future? The icons are all changing to be cleaner, easier to read, and to feel like they're a better fit for the Techtonica universe. Here are some of the new concepts that we're picking from.



Techtonica drops later this year. Add it to your wishlist!

If you want to chat with some like-minded factory automation fans, join our Discord!

Until next week, Groundbreakers.

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

Power production in factory automation games is critical to scaling your factory. How do you meet shifting power demands as your factory grows? What new tech can help?

The power system in Techtonica will evolve throughout Early Access, but at launch, we’ll have several tools for players to harness and obstacles for them to overcome. Today, we’re talking about the Accumulator and Power Spikes.

Let’s dig in.



[h3]Powering your factories[/h3]

At Early Access launch, electricity-based power generation will happen through Crank Generators, whether connected to Water Wheels or activated manually by Groundbreakers.

Groundbreakers will also quickly gain access to Accumulators, which capture and store energy output by generators. That energy then flows into machines like Planters, Threshers, and Assemblers to power your automation chain.



A great bank of Accumulators and Crank Generators can get you pretty darn far when it comes to factory output. But what happens when power demands evolve?

[h3]Creating a power challenge for late-game factories[/h3]

As your factories evolve and you explore more of Calyx, your power requirements will change. Some mid- to late-game machines require massive power spikes to operate.

The Monorail Depot is one such machine: you need the stored power in Accumulators to handle the energy spike that launches each train.



We’ll also challenge you with power surges for researching late-game tech. This creates a sort of power-check system to validate that your factories are big enough and efficient enough to handle the technology you’re about to unlock.

We’ll push you to generate lots of power, and Accumulators hold on to that power until your factories make use of it.

[h3]Powerful concept art[/h3]

When we were working on designs for the Accumulator, we wanted a better way to visualize their charging status than, say, a light bar.

That’s when we landed on spinning. The Accumulators spin when charging up. Once they reach capacity (or power stops coming in), they’ll stop spinning and the lights will indicate how full they are.

Here’s some early design work.



Obviously, we’ve broken away from the blocked bank in favor of single Accumulators, but the angled sketch mid-rotation remains. You can also see that we tend to sketch players into our concepts to get a sense of machine scale.

Finally, here’s the Accumulator after our art team iterated on the initial sketch work with some 3D models.



That’s it for this week’s update, Groundbreakers! If you want to talk factory turkey, come hang out in the official Techtonica Discord.

Until next week!

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

Techtonica is a factory automation game, in case this wasn’t abundantly clear yet.

This growing genre is relatively fresh, and one bit of fairly untrodden ground is narrative. That is, factory automation games don’t typically have stories at their center, letting players pull at plot threads as they expand their factories.



With Techtonica, that’s exactly what we’re trying to accomplish.

If you’ve played the demo or watched the trailers, you likely already know that Techtonica features voice acting. That voice work is part of our broader narrative, and today we’d like to take a moment to look at another of our many narrative devices.

Facilities.

Before you split, take note: we won’t spoil anything in this post. We picked a facility that’s specifically spoiler-free. Have no fear and dig in.



[h3]Welcome to the Warehouse[/h3]

Hidden west of Butterfly Cove is a gate. Behind that gate? A treasure trove. The Warehouse is a storage facility on Calyx, and it contains tech that you’ll need to scan to progress to the next tier of unlocks on your Tech Tree.

Facilities like the Warehouse also feature scannable objects that won’t yield an unlock, instead revealing tidbits of information about what happened on Calyx. This is one of the narrative devices in Techtonica that rewards curiosity and exploration with breadcrumbs of story.



The Warehouse is one of many facilities, and others will feature lots more lore and discovery. As I said, we picked the most spoiler-free facility for this showcase, so expect to unearth plenty of Techtonica’s tale in the others.

[h3]You’ll need a little more to unlock the doors, Groundbreaker[/h3]

Some Facilities are going to require a little technological muscle to enter. For instance, the Warehouse demands a Crank Generator's placement to power the gate. Once inside, there’s another door that requires some advanced tech to unlock.

Locking narrative and equipment scannables behind doors like these gives us a way to motivate players to iterate on their factories, make them more efficient, and yield specific products and components.



[h3]Farm fresh concepts[/h3]

As always, we have a piece of concept art that I think is pretty cool. Andrii, our Game Designer, had a vision for the Warehouse that he sketched up before everything was made in-game. It wound up being pretty darn close to the playable version on the development build today.



There’s something intriguing about the isometric view of the Warehouse space. My favorite part? Andrii’s homage to Cranky, which is what we call the Crank Generator internally.



Thanks for reading, Groundbreakers!

We share these updates every week. If you’d like to receive them via email instead of having to check Steam, we have a mailing list that you can sign up for, too.

Wishlist Techtonica to be notified when the game launches later this year.

See you soon!

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

World-building in games is tough! Establishing a sense of visual, aural, artistic, and narrative consistency can really help make a game feel alive, a world fleshed out, and accomplishments more rewarding.

As you can probably tell based on past updates about Techtonica, we’re working hard to establish that sense of “life” in our game.



Our team recently achieved another notch on the belt of world-building in Techtonica… we got the Assemblers to animate the construction of the thing they were actually assembling.



[h3]Assemblers, ASSEMBLE!!![/h3]

I promise that’s the one and only comic book joke in this post.

Obviously, a factory automation game like Techtonica aims to deliver a rewarding feeling of accomplishment after players devise solutions to massive logistical undertakings. That rewarding feeling can come from a nice audio cue, an unlocked mechanic or machine, or even a juicy animation.

Here, we wanted to reward players for their work by showing their intermediates come together in a rush of molten metal and lasers on the pedestal of the Assembler. Here’s a GIF to show you how it looks.



That’s right, the iron components that the Assembler was set to construct are what players will see appear on the plater during construction.

The animation syncs up with the crafting time the item requires, too. That means complicated stuff like memory cores takes a while to assemble, and animation time matches that assembly time. For simpler recipes, like iron frames, the craft time is much, much faster, so we only run the animation once every three times the intermediate is complete.

I’ll admit, I’ve stared at this for too long a few times already during our internal play sessions.

[h3]Finding the right animation[/h3]

Assemblers are a super important machine in Techtonica. They represent the core of automation, and they are required to make specific items. We knew we wanted them to look and feel really hefty.

Part of that heft comes from the animation. The Assemblers chug, and a group of them looks like a series of pistons on an engine block. Unless they magically all drop at once like they did for me while grabbing the GIF below.



The chugging animation was built to look satisfying from far away, and the big motions really work.

But, that granular, detailed animation we were after? We knew we wanted it to deliver a satisfying vibe, and that’s how we iterated through these designs and animation efforts.

We actually have a timelapse of the assembler animation, at least an earlier iteration, coming together in dev.



Oh, also... This might be some of my favorite concept work done during the animation discussion process. Can you tell that it wasn’t done by one of our artists?



If you want to chat with the devs about the intricacies of world-building and minor touches in Techtonica, then you should join our Discord! Come hang out with like-minded factory automation folks.

Until next time, Groundbreakers!

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

A few weeks back, we offered a look at Butterfly Cove, PT VICTOR, and a little of what our studio goes through when we name an area in a game for internal reference.

Today, we’ll show and explain a little of the process of iterating on a space in Techtonica's map in response to new flora, expanding art, and winding terrain. What’s west of Butterfly Cove? Western Butterfly Cove, clearly.



[h3]A change based on plant life diversity[/h3]

Butterfly Cove is a large, open cavern with a waterfall, pooled river, and massive Waterglass Monarchs. That look was set to continue throughout the full Terminal VICTOR space when we started designing the level.

We changed our minds, though, with the introduction of a new plant. Meet the Shiverthorn.



The Kindlevine, if you’re not familiar, is the orange plant found all over the River Biome in the demo (and what will launch with Early Access). The Shiverthorn packs some different materials, and it's found initially in Western Butterfly Cove.

As the plant was introduced, our artists and level designers decided to reign in the space around it, bring the ceilings down, and introduce a new feel to the Western Butterfly Cove. Now? It’s tighter, more intimate, and evocatively cold, much like the Shiverthorn that inspired the change.

[h3]Bending the environment to a fresh mentality[/h3]

Nothing really highlights the differences between Butterfly Cove and Western Butterfly Cove quite like a brief fly-through of each. Here they are labeled in a single GIF.



[h3]Hello, iterative level design[/h3]

This process of slowly reworking and reshaping a space in a game is iterative level design, and it’s a pretty common practice in game dev. That iterative process can seem slow but brings vast, sweeping changes over time.

The introductions of the Shiverthorn, water plants, ivy, facilities (more on these later in February), stalagmites, and stalactites turned what was once a repeat of a nearby space into something completely different.



If you like these types of dives into the nuance of Techtonica’s design, you should join our Discord to chat with our team. Ask questions, get answers. It's where we hang out.

Techtonica releases into Early Access this year. Thanks for reading, Groundbreakers!

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