AutoForge News

[h2]Your package has been delivered![/h2]
We're excited to announce that AutoForge's next Major Update, Special Delivery, is now officially released! The delivery time for this update has been a lengthy one but we think you will find it was worth the wait. This shipment is jam packed with countless great changes from top to bottom, so let's open it up!



[h2]Need Input...[/h2]
Developing Controller Support turned out to be quite the undertaking! AutoForge has a substantial amount of UI, all of which needed to be factored in for controllers. While the top-level character-based movement and action of AutoForge was simple enough to translate, the automation and its many complicated user interface aspects added a difficult extra layer we had to juggle. Automation games (and their parent Strategy games) have historically been a tricky thing to translate to gamepad, but we think we've done a good job carving something out that fits our specific genre mashup well. We're sure there is still room for improvement, but being in Early Access we think this is a great place to build off of and improve with any feedback or ideas y'all might have. Let us know what you think!

As an additional bonus: while adding in support for controllers we expanded the input binding to allow secondary inputs, enabled input rebinding to ALL actions, and added in the ability to reset settings to the default. This of course extends to Keyboard and Mouse support too (which will also enjoy some spruced up input glyphs), so customize away!

Controller Glyphs are currently available and customizable for Dual Shock, Xbox, Switch Pro / Joy Con and Steam Controller.




[h2]Steam Deck Support[/h2]
We did it! Steam Deck is [deep announcement voice] VERIFIED! Fortunately, once we added in native controller support it was technically very easy to add in Steam Input support... Except I (Jasson), made it way more difficult for myself by falling down a completely unnecessary rabbit hole for a non-insignificant amount of time... I'm over it, I swear! Besides that, only a handful of other adjustments were needed, such as optimizations (see below), font scaling and setting up the on-screen keyboard. It should come as no surprise since AutoForge was already (completely unintentionally) running on the Steam Deck before we even looked at it, but we are still very impressed with how mostly painless (aforementioned rabbit hole notwithstanding) getting this working was.

Not being ones to ever just stop there, during the public experimental for this update, some community discussion also prompted us to build out support for the Steam Deck's very handy trackpad. The way this ends up working is how you would expect - using an elegant combo of the controller setup for movement / actions and mouse-like interface for aiming / cursor movement (utilizing the trackpad)- neat! We're not sure how many people will be into playing like this, so like regular gamepad support it is something we want to hear your feedback on!




[h2]Long Distance Transportation[/h2]
Transporting items and fluids over long distances is a thing of the past - Phase Technology is here! Items can be loaded up in Phase Stations and transported to other Phase Stations across networks, where they will continue their journey to whatever logistics problems you're solving! We've created multiple tiers of Phase Technology with the first intending to introduce the core fundamentals of phasing and then build up towards more advanced capabilities if/when you need them.

While this took a long time to get right, we're doing something a little different and are very eager to start collecting feedback. It shakes things up considerably and we will be listening closely to players thoughts on the system and how it affects the rest of the gameplay.







[h2]Tearing it Down[/h2]
Another long-requested feature, Deconstruction Mode also makes it's debut with 0.5! This was originally not intended for Special Delivery but since Long Distance Transportation will necessitate some big factory reworks, it seemed like a very welcome addition to try and include!

Along with Combat and Build, Deconstruct is a new in-game mode Otto can assume, that allows you to select multiple structures at once for mass-deconstruction; no more tedious dismantling of individual pipes and tubes!







[h2]Performance Gains & Improvements[/h2]
Between significant late game factory frame-rate drops and impending Steam Deck support, it became obvious that some serious optimizations were needed for AutoForge under the hood. In order to squeeze out more frames several key systems were moved from our scripting language to C++ while other systems were fully reworked to net additional gains.

The great news is that all of this work dramatically increased performance - seeing some giant factories go from 15FPS to 60+FPS on my machine. The bad news is that all of these systemic changes resulted in many critical issues that lengthened the beta and experimental stages, so we do apologize for the extra wait. We can say it was 100% worth it given how much better the game runs now. Thank you again to all of the wonderful folks who have been testing during this period, your bug reporting and automation efforts have been critical!




[h2]A Real Creature Feature[/h2]
New monsters have finally joined the roster! These have been a long time coming, as we have had their spawners, nests and farming aspects already in the game since Early Access launch! We're now very happy to say that the slime hordes will be thinned tremendously now that this new batch of monsters will be emerging from their designated spawn points.






[h2]In Your Face Interfacing[/h2]
Along with new symbols for inputs we've reworked lots of other subtle parts of the UI to help with readability, including some more notable things like the health containers and pointers. This is an ongoing mission, with additional changes already in the pipe for 0.6, but we'd love to hear your thoughts on the current state of all things User Interface and any ideas you might have!




[h2]0.4 Saves Detected, Continue?[/h2]
That's right! As previously mentioned there will be no save wipe with 0.5! Pick up right where you left off and enjoy the full host of new features with your current world!

We will also note that a heavily requested save-related feature is currently undergoing testing and is planned for release in the near future... Shall we talk about the near future?




[h2]Coming Soon In AutoForge...[/h2]
While we're all hands-on deck for fixing any issues with deployment of Special Delivery over the next few weeks, in-between dealing with those we will be diving straight into the Forgotten Wilds (our next Major Update). James has already been working on the graphics for the new biomes and the flora and fauna you'll find ready to great you, and I've begun testing and implementing some fancy new upgrades for Otto.

As far as the current state of the game in Early Access goes - we're both really happy now that a large amount of the major systems have been built! We're eager to switch over to introducing some more new content to the world of AutoForge and then start working on the next steps on our journey to 1.0. Let us circle back to that Roadmap once again for a little refresher on what we can look forward to!




[h2]Outstanding Issues[/h2]
There are still many smaller known issues that we're continuing to track down but believe this version is now far superior to 0.4. We do have one fairly major issue that we are having a hard time tracking down and need your help:

Bypasses and drills will seemingly randomly stop working - If you run into this please let us know and provide as many details as you can.

[h3]Known Issues[/h3]

• New text in game has not received proper translations yet
  
• Barberry invaders can get stuck on terrain
  
• Lighting can sometimes show incorrect brightness when a light source is just off screen
  
• Tooltips can block other windows while using a gamepad
  
• Researching technologies sometimes consume a little more resources than stated
  
• Many other small issues not quite as noteworthy
  

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]Major Changes[/h3]

• Introduced Phase Transportation for long distance item and fluid transportation
  
• Steam Deck support
  
• Native Gamepad and Steam Input support
  
• Greatly improved input rebindings
  
• Introduced Fire Wisps to the wild
  
• Introduced Wind Wisps to the wild
  
• Introduced Flame Crystace to the wild
  
• Introduced Ortomi to the wild
  
• Introduced Zabis to the wild
  
• Introduced Voidling to the wild
  

[h3]Quality of Life Changes[/h3]

• Added support for secondary input bindings
  
• Pipette secondary input defaults to middle mouse button
  
• Ability to quick transfer/split to items into and out (shift + lmb/rmb) of structures
  
• Ability to copy meta data (ctrl + rmb) and paste it (ctrl + lmb) to other structures
  
• Added support for rebinding inputs for all missing actions
  
• Added reverse rotate item input binding
  
• Added volume setting for factory ambience
  
• It is now must faster and easier to place a row of scaffolding and ladders (they work like tubes)
  
• Blocks can now be placed while running without having to move the mouse
  
• Sturdy Crates can now display inventory item hint
  
• Camera and Map zoom levels now persist between sessions
  
• Build Radius setting now persists between sessions
  

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• Added input hint displayed at the bottom of windows
  
• Introduced Slider element in a number of places
  
• Improved handling of interaction input hints
  
• Improved display of mouse and keyboard inputs
  
• Interaction input hints are now hidden when UI is focused
  
• Improved Technology Research
  
• Healthbars now display in front of most other things
  
• Changed HUD tutorial collapse/expand icon
  
• Settings menu now dynamically resizes based on game resolution
  
• Added ability to reset settings to default
  
• Improved visual styling for modal windows
  
• Closing a container inventory while selecting a limit will now reset that state
  

[h3]Optimizations[/h3]

• Greatly optimized the combat system
  
• Greatly optimized logic handling item transportation
  
• Significantly improved game startup time
  
• Optimized lighting system
  
• Several other smaller optimizations made
  
• Smoothed out frame drops spikes a good amount
  
• Greatly optimized drawing powered areas
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Dramatically changed how lighting illumination works to improve readability
  
• Added support for lights to have their lighting falloff at different speeds
  
• Countless changes to object lighting - including brightness, color, falloff, illumination and many new things now have a light source
  
• Oil Slime now face its target when attacking
  
• Upgraded engine to use latest SDL3
  
• Added idle animations for the remaining new NPCs
  
• Improved some tile readability with color changes
  
• Improved map grab and move interaction
  
• Improved visuals for lamps and torches
  
• Ladders and Scaffolding can no longer be placed on the backwall layer
  
• Reduced craft time for Silver Ingot from 9 to 8 seconds
  
• Reduced craft time for Gadget from 9 to 8 seconds
  
• Reduced craft ingredients for Gadget from (Iron Gear x2, Crank x1, Mana Fiber x3) to (Iron Gear x1, Crank x1, Mana Fiber x2)
  
• Reduced craft ingredients for Magical Essence from using 2 Gadget to 1 Gadget
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Resolved issue with craft queue tooltip not displaying the correct item
  
• Resolved issue with illumination overlapping incorrectly
  
• Resolved issue with illumination not working on Otto
  
• Resolved issue with some sprites being cut off on the bottom slightly
  
• Resolved issue with Adamantite Ingots and Cermet being craftable before researching
  
• Resolved issue with bad item in Refiner breaking all item fabrication
  
• Resolved issue with Mana Conduits not taking Mana II after Expert Conduit Tapping technology is unlocked
  
• Resolved issue with some NPCs not spawning correctly during world generation
  
• Resolved issue with some Mana Turrents created during world generation not being "broken"
  
• Resolved issue with not always being able to harvesting items while using more than 1x1 build area
  
• Resolved occasional crash within item transportation system
  
• Resolved a crash that could occur when attempting to target a recently deleted entity
  
• Resolved crash caused by monsters attempting to destroy a block that is out of bounds
  
• Resolved issue with UI Scale setting being reset based off of resolution during game launch
  
• Resolved issue with Barberry (invader) rarely becoming invincible
  
• Resolved issue with Sturdy Crate map icon not appearing - Sturdy Crate icons will only appear for newly placed ones (sorry!)
  
• Resolved issue with some ancient devices not showing up on Apotheos map (only fixed for new worlds)
  
• Resolved issue with Power Relay III having a shorter connection range than intended
  
• Resolved issue with an "error" sound playing when placing blocks
  
• Resolved multiple instances of technologies missing dependencies
  
• Fixed missing backwall for an NPC point of interest
  
• Resolved issue with game not initializing 100% correct when settings file is missing
  
• Resolved issue with Quaridin Egg recipe missing from Replicator
  
• Resolved issue with research progress bar on HUD sometimes being misaligned
  
• Resolved issue with collection range not being applied correctly with pipette tool
  
• Resolved issue with many things popping in and out when on the edge of the screen
  
• Fixed timing of when "crafting done" sfx is played to only play when a final product is done and not dependencies
  
• Fixed graphics for Power Relays
  
• Fixed graphics for Large Mana Crystal Variant
  
• Fixed graphics for Ember Calcite Light Doubling
  
• Fixed graphics for Drowned Tree Tile Vector
  

[h2]Closing Thoughts[/h2]
That about wraps us up for this one, Folks! As we said before we'll be right here listening out for any bugs you come across, so feel free to reach out here on our Steam Discussion Forums or over on our Discord should you need us!

We'll be in touch soon with exciting news on 0.6! Peace!
Jasson & James

AutoForge’s next update, Special Delivery, is now live on the public experimental branch! This means it has already undergone testing with our beta players and is now open for everyone to try.

[h2]Feedback and Issues[/h2]
During this experimental phase, we’re focusing on gathering feedback on the new controller support and phase transportation systems. Of course, we’re also on a mission to squash as many bugs as possible. We’re aware of some existing challenges—like ensuring the tutorial displays gamepad input glyphs correctly and making overall improvements to gamepad support—and we’re actively working on them.

If you do have any feedback to give or issues to report then please do so either in the Steam Forums or better yet over on our Discord.

[h2]Regarding Gamepad Support[/h2]
Since gamepad support is still in development we have not specified AutoForge as having gamepad support on Steam. This means that Steam Input likely is going to be trying to be active for AutoForge. In order for native gamepad support to for AutoForge you will need to disable Steam Input for the game. Unfortunately I do not believe it is possible to do this for Steam Deck without an external controller (meaning Steam Deck support is limited to docked mode for this build). Sorry!



[h2]Important Reminder[/h2]
Special Delivery is backwards compatible with saves from 0.4. If you are going to be playing on experimental then please backup your save files. You can find your save files in the folder: "\Steam\userdata\\1960480\remote\saves"

[h2]How to get started playing the update:[/h2]

Go to AutoForge Properties > Betas and select the "experimental" branch from the dropdown menu. Steam should update AutoForge to the latest build. You can verify this by launching the game and checking the version in the bottom left corner. It should be "0.5.1 experimental".



[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

• Native Gamepad Support
  
• Introduced Phase Transportation for long distance item and fluid transportation
  
• Deconstruct mode for quickly dismantling parts of your factory
  
• Introduced many new monsters into the wild
  
• Many new QoL changes
  
• Lots of optimizations
  
  Full changelog will come with the full release of Special Delivery!

Thank you for taking the time to play the experimental version of Special Delivery!

Greeting Golems!

2025 started off a little bumpy but we’re happy to say that development has smoothed out, and we’re making steady progress! Our focus remains on finishing Special Delivery (0.5), an update that may have grown in scope (how'd that happen!?), that we’ve since embraced and now have a clear path to release. Here’s what we’ve been up to!

[h2]Steam Deck & Performance[/h2]

One of our biggest goals for Special Delivery is official Steam Deck support. While the live version of the game technically runs on Deck, in order to get it playable we've needed two things: greatly optimized performance and proper Controller Support (also coming this update!). While our first update Strange Encounters (0.3) included lot of performance buffs, we were still needing to solve some issues that arise when dealing with larger, late-game factories.

To figure out where we were losing those precious frames, we turned to an amazing profiling tool, Tracy while using some test saves provided by our community (huge thanks to those who shared their CPU crushing factories). One particular test save was limping along at 15 FPS on my (Jasson) PC - all those machines and moving parts were simply pushing the engine to its limits.


Map screen of late game factory provided by eseidel on Discord.

The biggest culprit? Heavy workloads in the scripting language. This includes things like handling the logic for bypasses and processing everything going on in combat. Using a scripting language can be great; however, the overhead of the engine going between C++ to script constantly while running is fairly expensive. These systems are responsible for many objects and things such as combatants (monsters) incur that overhead cost repeatedly - we'd describe it as death by a thousand cuts. The good news is that these kinds of performance issues have a fairly straightforward fix: migrate the critical code from the script into the main C++ code. After some focused optimization, that 15 FPS factory save is now running at 80+ FPS on the same computer! Huge gains - and I'm not done yet!


Tracy profiler showing frame resource data.

[h2]Controller Support[/h2]

Development on controller support is still ongoing - it's a beast! Fortunately we've completed the initial pass and are now going back over everything to polish it all up and I imagine there will be some fine-tuning for this even after we've released the update and we gather player feedback. One head of this beast was making pixelicious, fully mappable glyph sets for all major controllers: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and Steam Deck - and they turned out juicy! Courtesy of James here's a little sneak peek at the Steam Deck controller glyphs - notice that we have not forgotten about the paddles! While our default controller mappings focus on basic setups, we wanted to make sure we cover all the bases for those who like to go the extra mile with customizing their experience with these more advanced options that are now available on newer controllers.

Sample Pixel Glyphs for the Steam Deck.

[h2]Monster Party[/h2]

For over a year, we’ve been eager to introduce more creatures, but there was always something "more important" to do — like making sure the game didn’t explode. Fortunately, Special Delivery has been such a programming-heavy update that James finally had time to let loose and bring his roster of little freaks to life!

All of these had been loosely introduced with Early Access for Monster Husbandry purposes as placeholder but they're now fully animated and we are excited to truly introduce them into the Wilds (can you tell that we are excited about the new Monster Hunter?).



From left to right: Wind Wisp, Zabis, Voidling, Otto (shocked his new friends threw him a party), Fire Wisp, Flame Crystace and Ortomi.


[h2]Wrapping Things Up[/h2]

We’re incredibly excited about how Special Delivery is coming together and can’t wait to share this massive update with you all. We still have a few more weeks of effort ahead, but the wait won’t be much longer!

Thank you for your patience, especially during the holiday season and my health struggles. Your support means the world to us. Stay tuned for another update soon!

Season's Greetings, Golems!

We hope the end of the year has been treating you all well however you might be spending it. The last 12 months have been quite the ride for us, with the holidays giving us a moment to refresh and reflect on what has been a challenging but excellent year. It's a great opportunity for us to share a few musings and a few gratitudes and to set ourselves up for the year to come.

[h2]Reflections[/h2]

Looking back to our Early Access Launch back in March, it goes without saying we had a somewhat spicy release. While the first few weeks had us quite busy stabilizing and fixing the immediate issues that come with launching any game, the first few hours were some of the wildest. Some may say a little hubris came from our pre-release demo being a little too stable... With the confidence gained we thought it would be very smart to make a few last-minute updates to a couple of core systems, which created major game-breaking issues with both the Research and Exploration (pure horror). Fortunately and unfortunately, we were blessed by a very generous and patient GiantWaffle encountering both of these issues on stream, which needless to say was a real humbling moment! While it made identifying the issues and pushing fixes extremely quick, you do sadly as they say 'only get to make one first impression', and we still think about that a lot as we continue AutoForge's development.



Moving forward and not keen to repeat such a fumble, both our Major Updates Strange Encounters and The Stargazer this year thankfully landed a lot more smoothly; the latter bringing Localization to a dozen new languages (that's a lot of first impressions). With AutoForge being such a big game and us being such a small team, we truly could not have done it without you all and we're so appreciative of everybody who has helped us. This requires an extra special shout out to our amazing Discord Mod Team: Grizzle, Fletcher, tsselle and Scarlett, who kept the wheels on for us during our chaotic launch and continue go above and beyond every day to help out players both on the server and here on Steam too. Thank you, y'all truly keep this factory running.

When we talk about AutoForge's continued stability through all the updates, patches and hotfixes following Early Access Launch, it is indebted to the incredible commitment and attention to detail our players have brought. The Beta and Experimental Participants have been the Vanguard in making sure the game continues to behave, and everyone else who has submitted a bug report or feedback or taken the time to leave a review has been just as invaluable. From the bottom of our blue, glowy Mana Cores - Thank You All.

[h2]Refreshments[/h2]

Jasson has unfortunately spent the last few months dealing with some persistent illness but is thankfully finally feeling better (it goes without saying but please take care of yourselves out there this season, in whatever ways you can). While he promises he has been resting, he has still been working hard on implementing the new features for 0.5 - Special Delivery and we're happy to say that the systems for the new Phase Transportation (and it's very finicky UI) are fully implemented. It took a little extra work to solve, since it goes against the way the established systems like fluids behave but we're really excited to have built this in a way that doesn't exclude any resources.



As a sequel to last month, we have another sneaky peak at Phase Transportation, this time with what to expect with the Phase Station UI. As you might have gathered already, this is our most complicated machine to date - requiring a huge amount of both functionality and control. We didn't want this complexity to be a burden on the player though and have worked hard to ensure that interactivity and readability are as straight-forward as possible, whilst also adding some new interactive UI elements you can expect to pop up elsewhere! See if you can guess what they might do!

[h2]Resolutions[/h2]

Early Access is a really tricky needle to thread - it comes with both the expectation of an already substantial and polished experience, whilst also being something that is shape-able and scale-able to grow with it's players. While tricky at times, we know this has really been the best thing for AutoForge's development and are very much looking forward to seeing the game continue to evolve thanks to your invaluable, ongoing support. With all that said, we're very excited to bring many new updates to AutoForge in 2025, so let's get cranking!

With Special Delivery on the horizon, maybe it's a good time to remind ourselves what's coming on that Roadmap...

[h3]Steam Winter Sale[/h3]

In case you missed it (which let's be honest: you didn't), the Steam Holiday Sale is well underway but there are still a few days left to pick up AutoForge at a cool 20% off.



[h3]Happy New Year[/h3]

All that's left to say is a Happy New Year and toast to you, our wonderful Community, for helping us continue to build this lil' game. It's a blessing that we count every day.

AutoForge Team

Greetings Golems!

The days are getting shorter and the air is getting cooler - the Forges are fired up and now it's time to show you what we're working on.

Following the smooth launch of 0.4 The Stargazer, thanks to the wonderful folks helping us playtest, we dug straight into 0.5 Special Delivery and are making great headway. As detailed in our updated Roadmap, we are working on adding some much-requested features like Controller & Steam Deck Support, as well as Long Distance Transportation into the game.

While we're not quite ready to spill the beans on exactly when Special Delivery is being... delivered, here's a little dish on the how...

[h2]Controller & Steam Deck Support[/h2]

With a game like AutoForge, there are a vast number of features that stack up between exploring, combat, survival-crafting and factory-building. When considering inputs, it is easy to forget just how many interactions you take for granted when using a Mouse & Keyboard. Playing with a controller then comes with it's own set of expectations (as well as limitations).



Special Delivery will bring both Steam Input as well as native controller support. This will give players the ability to setup and tailor their controller experience however they want; whether that means just plugging in and playing or, using their custom setups via Steam's own added input support. This also will make it easier to bring AutoForge to other platforms in the future (as far as controller support goes).

[h3]What goes into adding in Controller Support?[/h3]

To get technical, first, we need to solve the problem of the game reading the input events. For Steam Input that is done with the Steam API, but for native controller support we're using the SDL 3.0. Due to using multiple APIs we have had to ensure there was an abstraction layer sitting on top of everything to convert input events into game events... It's a lot of hassle but it's what needs to happen to get us to: "When I say jump, you say 'okay!'".

Autoforge, like other automation games, has a great deal of possible interactions. Running, jumping, rolling, placing blocks, digging, interacting with objects/NPCs, placing structures; the list goes on! Not only do these actions need to all be performable, but they should also feel good too. This has meant making sure that the input bindings feel comfortable and familiar, and also helped guide us building new smart cursor assistance for help with targeting blocks, enemies and other in-game entities.



Okay! So now that we've done all of that the game has full controller support, right? RIGHT?!
Sadly, we have got the dreaded User Interface (UI) still to consider. We need to be able to navigate all of those beautiful interfaces. This requires a whole new system for tracking what is focused in UI, adjusting layouts and interactions, a better solution for showing available inputs- oh! And let us not forget tooltip positioning needs to be improved!

With all of that said, we are mostly done with this beast of a feature. We look forward to getting it into your hands and working with the community on improving upon it ASAP.

[h2]Long Distance Transportation[/h2]

As the world of AutoForge gets richer and the Technology Tree expands further, the logistics puzzle becomes more and more about distance, that's why the next major technology we will be introducing is Phasing.

Phasing aka Phase Transportation is a powerful, multifaceted technology that not only sends and receives high volumes of resources between A and B at speed but gives you precise customization and control over large networks. It's a two-way system where you'll dictate which resources go where and they will happily make their way across a built network, without you having to fuss over the regular logistics of transport tube and pipe routing! That's right, we said 'pipe'- Phasing even handles fluids!



While we're still putting the finishing touches on Phasing, here's a little sneak peak at the Phase Stations which will sustain your networks. These are the 'hubs' and will be where the magic happens; set your input/outputs and dial each of them to specified frequencies to make sure every single item gets exactly to where it needs to go.

[h2]Autumn Sale[/h2]

Are we done? No!!! As we post this our fine partners at Steam are cranking the levers on the big Autumn Sale and AutoForge will be a cozy 20% off for the week!



Thank you as always to all the Golems, Gamers and just plain Good Folks who continue to help us make AutoForge a better game! We'll be here on Steam and on our Discord, so feel free to say hey and let us know how that factory is going!

- AutoForge Team