Craftomation 101 News

Upcoming puzzle-crafting-programming game Craftomation 101 gives you a frozen planet, some politely agreeable robots, and a bunch of raw materials. From there it's your job to tell them how to assemble enough heat, power, and industrial materials to bootstrap a terraforming process that'll make this world a warmer place...
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Hey mates!

We won't waste too much time on introductions this time, as the elephant in the room needs to be addressed to: Craftomation 101 is coming to Early Access on Steam on February 19, 2024!

Save the date! Tell a friend! Plan a vacation, maybe? And by all means, check out our brand-new trailer:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Things to do before the Early Access[/h3]
Play the demo, to help you spend time weating!

And if you like the game, please consider adding Craftomation 101 to your wishlist. It shows Steam that the game is interesting to potential players, making the game visible to more gamers out there.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101/

It will come in handy for you too, as you'll get notified once the game is out and whenever there's a discount on it.

Bottom line: adding Craftomation 101 to your wishlist is an anonymous, one-click way to encourage us to continue our work. Everyone's a winner!



[h3]Demo vs. Early Access: the nitty-gritty stuff[/h3]
All this time, we were doing our best to keep the demo in line with our in-house version. We updated the graphics and added all the UI/UX improvements that we made throughout the past year - and the two years through our development journey:





We were telling you about all the new things in the main version - we did that so much, that we almost forgot what we started with back in January '23, when the demo was out! But here's the time to review all those awesome things we can't wait for you to play with:

• Bigger map to explore & the final goal: wake up the mighty Dormant Volcano
  
• New Commands for Craftomates: counters, tending to organics, and more
  
• More types of organics and more ways to interact with it: like brewing Speedy Ale, and even Wakey Ale in an automated (craftomated?) Brewery
  
• Cargomate: the best kind of Craftomates for delivering bulks of items to distant parts of the map
  

All in all, the game now has 10+ hours of content, as opposed to 1-2 hours in the demo! Of course, we don't plan to stop there. That's Luden.io's development style: we release games to Early Access with about 30% of our ideas there, then listen to what our players have to say and continue developing based on that feedback.

A couple of days back, we got a comment on a Reddit post:



The honest answer would be: we don't have anything like that on our minds, but we don't know how things will turn up, once the players get to it! It's the magic of video games: there's no way to succeed if your players do not enjoy our work!

So please, share your impressions with us: write a comment, or come straight to our Discord server!

And we'll get back to the usual stuff: telling you what we've been up to in the past month and a half!

…Oh, but wait! Not that we have ‘kill, maim, destroy’ part in the game, but we did allow Craftomates to pick up each other… and more:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]What's new?[/h3]

Since you'll get to see all that stuff in less than a month, we'll try and keep things short this time. First, remember that ‘Gearbox’ feature, that allows you to balance the speed and energy consumption for your Craftomates? Here it is now, looking sharper than ever:

We have also added a grid to the programming editor, for your convenience! As seen in Unreal Engine (kind of). Snapping commands to the grid is something we're still experimenting with at the moment. We're not sure that they're a keeper yet - how do you like them, by the way?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

While we were testing the game, some major QoL issues were detected and fixed. For example, reaching the Sulfur source also grants a shortcut to your main base.

Previously you had to melt it out yourself, risking that the sole path between the two parts of your base will freeze while you're not looking. Not anymore:



Some other small yet important changes were made around the Sulfur source and the new content that comes with it, but we wouldn't bore you with tedious details, not in this edition of our diaries! Just remember that Craftomation 101 is going through some very profound testing & polishing at the moment.

Oh, and as part of it, we also have cloud saves in the game now, yay! They're coming to the demo soon, too.

[h3]What's Next?[/h3]
Lots of bug fixing, some post-release feature planning, and a handful of beautiful things for you! At this moment, we're working on redesigning the progress tree:



We're also working on adding more matching colors to the palette of Cratomates’ looks:



That big meta interface for Craftomates’ management is one of the things that didn't make it to our Early Access list of features, but we'll see how things turn out once the game is released: maybe existing ways of distinguishing Craftomates will be enough. If not, we'll get back to that issue in one of the following updates.

The big day is coming! See you in February, mates!

Hey Mates,

Our hands be shaking with excitement as we're writing these lines. Our eyes are goggled from the sensation of the moment's importance. Perhaps, even our ears are moving from impatience!

More than 2 years of thoughtful prototyping, playtesting, releasing demos, gathering feedback, and doing things all over...

[h3]Craftomation 101 is coming to Early Access on February 19, 2024![/h3]

Please enjoy our brand new trailer that we made to celebrate this truly glorious day:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There is no time to explain more... because more will be explained by the end of this week, in the next edition of our developer diaries!

We'll talk about our current progress and the cool new features that you'll get to try out in less than a month. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, there's one important thing you can do, which is to add Craftomation 101 to your wishlist on Steam, if you like such games and/or consider purchasing it.

That's how you get notified once the game is out, so you don't miss the launch discount (and all discounts that come after). Just click the button below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101_Programming__Craft/

(There's also a separate post, explaining why wishlists are important, if you'd like to know more)

Doubt not: more details will follow! If you want to know anything specific, we're always happy to chat in the Discussions section, as well as on our Discord server

These last days of 2023 feel like we found ourselves in a reverse situation from the “Interstellar” movie: the time seems to move at normal speed, while the number of features and tweaks we add to the game grows with each day passing.

As you probably know from our last post, there's Early Access brewing. In this version, you'll be on a quest to reach and awaken the most steady source of heat on the planet - the almighty volcano (codenamed “the Volcano”):



The land around the Volcano is now a work-in-progress thing, we're experimenting with some mechanics related to it. We're also trying to make your progress through the game more visually distinguishable, hence the flowers around our magma-nificent friend. But that's not just the Volcano, the whole grass generation system has gone through revision:



There used to be a system for emerging grass that seemed perfectly logical to us but not very intuitive to the players. So we got rid of it, and now it's blatantly simple: heat sources (such as Bonfires) generate higher temperature areas around them that decay the further they are from the source. As shown in the screenshot above, heating areas might overlap, creating more fertile ground.

Since we're talking about graphics, check out these beautiful animated objects that Alex the artist made for us. Shiny!





A bunch of new commands made its way to the game, too, including the long-awaited counters:



Now you can command your Craftomates to check whether the amount items on a cell (be it a source of Objects or a Storage) is more, less, or equal to a target number. The same check can be performed on other Craftomates’ charge levels. Most importantly, you can make your Craftomates perform an action for a selected number of times.

At the same time, we're experimenting with another concept, codenamed “Gearbox”. In the game, it comes in the form of a slider that you can use to speed up a Craftomate (increasing energy consumption) or slow it down. We've started contemplating this feature shortly after our playtest back in the Autumn, and the idea was to give the players more precise control of the processes happening around the base.

We had many doubts about whether this feature would work because that's video game development: you never know if it's fun until you play it. And played it we did! And it turned out to be quite interesting to mess around with!



The “Gearbox” also provides a new level of depth for the ale buffs, although we need to make some changes to it now. This thing (along with another feature to be mentioned below) will keep us occupied until the first week of January, after which we'll stop adding features and focus on polishing the current version of the game.

Actually, it has already begun. In December, Ivan the programmer embarked on a journey to the island of Cyprus, where Luden.io headquarters reside, to conduct a series of playtests among some friendly developers from other tech companies. The results were far beyond our expectations: perhaps, the most heartwarming insight was to see that people are sincerely enjoying our goofy little game - it seems like we're onto something here, and we can't wait to see how you like Craftomation 101 when it hits Steam shelves by the end of this winter!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Another good omen for us was a little story from our Discord, when two very enthusiastic players of ours spent a couple of days hacking the demo and making their way to the content that was not intended for their eyes (yet). We knew it was theoretically possible, but it was so awesome to actually stumble upon people doing it!

If you want to know how they did it (and maybe reenact their glorious deeds by yourself), head to our Discord server and join our friendly team of mates over there:

Back to those playtests, we brought a bunch of ideas for QoL improvements: some stuff to do with copying and pasting the code, along with creating a shortcut for accessing the tree of upgrades. Some of our players experienced trouble with finding it. Hopefully, this won't be happening as often anymore:



That's just an example though, we have some other things, big and small, that we're doing right now to make the game more comprehensive and friendly. For one, as we observed the playtests, we noticed that understanding what each Craftomate does at a given moment is one of the most desired features when it comes to identifying your robots. That's why we're gonna try and implement this into the game before starting on that big all-Craftomate interface we were talking about last time.

Other than that, the plans are: polishing, playtesting, and preparing for the big date, and absolutely no messing with new features! Seriously, we tried experimenting with a feature, and it did not end well… (Though we're still going to add it to the game)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Have a good end/beginning of the year (depending on when you're reading this)! The next couple of months are going to be pretty exciting, to say the least. See you there, mates!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101_Programming__Craft/

In the meantime, here's another bunch of things that you can do to help Craftomation 101 see the light of release ASAP:

• Add Craftomation 101 to your wishlitst on Steam, that'd be a huge help to us at this pre-release stage
  
• You can even scribe yourself into the game's credits: most of our games’ localizations are community-made, and we now have a spreadsheet for those who are willing to help us translate the game into their native language
  
• Buy the supporter pack to gain access to exclusive WIP stuff and full-time access to the devs’ ears and minds
  
• And of course, play the free demo on itch.io or Steam, leave us a comment, or come to Discord and discuss your experience with us
  

You probably saw the "Add to your wishlist" message several times here on Steam. But what are all the developers asking it for, should you click that green (or blue) button, what is it?

You can add the game to the wishlist right here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101/

Or you can do it on the game's page just under the video trailer, like this:


[h2]For players[/h2]
If you have a game on your wishlist you will:

• Receive an email on the release day
  
• See news about the game published by its' developer here on Steam
  
• Get notified about the discounts by email
  

You can always remove the game from your wishlist.

[h2]For developers[/h2]
The developer will know nothing about players who added the game to the wishlist. No email, no account name, no ability to send you a message - nothing. The only thing visible for the developers is the total number of wishlists
This number is a thing that can help the developers understand how much players are interested in the game, and how many additional features and level of quality they should consider to work on.

• 1,000 wishlists - almost nobody knows about the game, probably players don't want it or never heard about the game
  
• 1,000,000 wishlists - players absolutely crazy about that and expecting something really really good from the developers
  

[h2]Now you know what to do[/h2]
If you are interested - consider adding the game to your wishlist right now, it's like hitting the subscribe button on social media.
If you are not sure yet (or you waiting for the discounts) and want to see how the game is being developed to decide later - adding to the wishlist is the best option to tell Steam algorithms that you want to be aware of news and updates from the developer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724140/Craftomation_101/

P.S. If you want to talk to developers directly, suggest some features, and get more involved in the making of the game - Discord and Steam Discussions are great for that. Or let's chat down below if you have anything to discuss!