Happy 2024!
Waking from the Dark
Where are we? What's happening? Where are all my pets? I want to first thank everyone who's been following and waiting, your patience and support has been invaluable. Here's an insight into our journey, and why there hasn't been an update in a while.
Some old WIP features[h2]Adding New Areas[/h2]
One of the core features that has always been on the roadmap for Industrial Petting is adding new areas. There's an excitement to finding some new biome and seeing what creatures are in it, and then building the factories in this shiny new area. During early access, I've added the gem biome and a fossil biome, and ran into an issue: people's current saves.
Adding new areas disrupted existing saves and increased travel times, detracting from the fun and discovery. The gem update caused chaos for a bunch of people's factories, especially if the new gem areas got placed halfway through some existing area. For the update, I added some paths and hints leading towards the closest area, but that isn't a sustainable solution.
So I made a major change. To enhance exploration and reduce disruption, we've introduced disconnected worlds linked by teleporters, simplifying navigation and preserving your creations. Suddenly new areas are easy to find: there's explicit systems to travel there, and travel times are now not a problem. You no longer wander through the forest past a hundred cuddlers, hoping to see some weird shape in the draw distance.
Doing this required major code rewrites, as every gameplay system now needs to deal with another dimension for positions, and multiplayer needed to be fixed to deal with players being in completely different worlds. Everything was working and stable within two months of the gem update.
Unfortunately, this simple design change invited temptation...
[h2]The First Redesign[/h2]
Industrial Petting was once a very different game. It was a factory game, but there were no pets, no multiplayer, and no friendly robots. Just the "Industrial", building in a literal honeycomb. It was too complicated, with a building/factory system was "interesting", but a lot of the core mechanics weren't fun.
An enjoyable thing that game did have, was travel on a spaceship between planets, moons, and spaceports. I loved that part, and wanted to bring a little bit of that to the current game.
To do that, I threw away the entire game's progression system. Instead, you started on one of the space elevators from the title screen, and had a map in the spaceship. There were missions from different vendors on the ship, with timed goals and a ranking system for those missions. Pets were made in the tens of thousands instead of the hundreds, and nearly every recipe was reworked. It was a huge change, with lots of interesting little bits interacting together. I posted an update showing some preliminary art, and what systems were going to be in there.
But the experiment did not work.
Temporary art for the time-limited pet gathering missionsThe timed missions were too repetitive and stressful. The different vendors just added complexity without offering anything interesting from a narrative or gameplay perspective. Making meta-factories from a map view removed a large part of what makes the game enjoyable in the first place. The whole thing required huge amounts of art I did not have the resources to create. The game had veered too far away from what made it special.
[h2]The Second Redesign[/h2]
So I threw it all away, created a quick moose update, and started working on another redesign. I added a large, completely changed story, with new robots to talk to, resources to interact with, and new systems to unlock items. I was determined to create compelling story, and that story required major changes to the unlock systems and game mechanics. After making all these changes, I realized it also threw away the experience people loved.
A broken map robot, who won't make it into the game[h2]Back To the Roots[/h2]
But even failed experiments are valuable. After making and unmaking these redesigns, I now appreciate the original system's simplicity. There's a reason that the all major factory games have a similar research system: it encourages automation of more and more complex resources, it encourages careful consideration of resources, and it encourages using factories you've already constructed to push forward down the tech tree.
The upcoming forest update will not only add a new area, but rebalance all the existing recipes to reduce the need for constantly rebuilding miners, as well as fixing some build times and ratios to make factories feel less chaotic.
[h2]Thanks[/h2]
I appreciate the messages of encouragement and suggestions, and even appreciate the messages demanding news. It's motivating to see a community out there have enjoyed where this game currently is, and where this game is going in the future.
Before I sign off, a quick note on the journey ahead. I've been balancing this passion project with part-time contract work from the start. It's a sustainable setup that keeps me independent and fully invested in the world of Industrial Petting. So, no worries about sudden goodbyes – I'm here for the long haul, and I'm excited to keep building this game with you.
TL;DR
After much experimentation, we're enhancing the game with new technology and creatures to match. Expect more pets, more fun, and continued dedication to making Industrial Petting the best it can be.
Your enthusiasm fuels this journey. Send suggestions in-game, or join our Discord to share your ideas for new pets and areas.
