Industrial Petting News

Hey Everyone!

It's been a year since the release of Industrial Petting, and we're on sale until the 24th!

If you looked at the last post, you'll see I've been working on a big update for everyone, which will take a month or two (or longer!) before it's ready for the general public. I spent yesterday drawing progression trees and figuring out item prices and new balance numbers. The pet assemblers now need to be working at 4x the speed they are in the current game.

In the meantime, I'm going to be making a quick update this week which fixes a whole bunch of the VR issues in the game, and make it a more pleasant experience for everyone with a screen strapped to their face.

It turns out I'm the only one who likes doom-style movement and weird teleportation! I'm going to be fixing those and a whole bunch of other issues. I know I've been neglecting my VR players, and I'm hoping to fix the most egregious problems! Here's a picture of the cards for what's planned:



You may notice that the first two have a discord symbol next to them. Suggestions put in the discord are added directly to my project tracking. If you have ideas for what should be in the game, hop into the discord and share them with everyone!

Also, if you or a loved one has experienced an uncomfortable VR experience in Industrial Petting, leave a comment below.

I'm hoping to fix as many of these as I can right now!

Fixes pets sleeping/awake during the wrong hours.

(Cuddlers during the day and bugs at night)

Hello [Insert Robot ID Here]! We're close to the one year anniversary for you know what. The Early Access release of Industrial Petting!

The next big update isn't here yet, but I would like to give a preview of what's coming, and make it clear why it's been taking a little bit longer. First, a background on the current problems with the game.





Industrial Petting is a fun game about making little creatures happy, and building automated facilities to construct more of them. The moment-to-moment gameplay of finding new creatures, figuring out how to please them, and then determining how to automate that process is colorful and enjoyable.

What isn't working well are the story and longer-term gameplay loops. There's no explanation for what you are doing, and the only goals are to see more pets and experience more gameplay mechanics. It's also hard to to scale up production. There aren't good reasons to build more than a few factories for each pet type, and if you do, the game isn't optimized enough to handle very large collections of pets.

The story doesn't exist right now. You have a tutorial bot occasionally talk to you, and the title screen suggests something about multiple space elevators, but beyond that it's a mystery.





The current update is tentatively titled The Orbital Drop, and I'm hoping to begin fixing the story and longer-term gameplay issues all at once.

You'll still be building factories, finding pets in the forest and mushroom plains, but your larger factory is going to be quite different. Your home base is now a ship in orbit and you'll be building larger, dedicated factories over the surface of the planet, building thousands instead of tens of cuddlers. If that sounds like a lot, there are going to be some new mechanics to make it manageable.

On top of that, you'll be talking to new characters in order to sell the pets you're building for cash, buy new land, new parts, and access to new contacts who might help you in the production. Progression will no longer be arbitrary checklists in a long list of unlockable items, there will be a definite sense of purpose to all the factory-building and petting.



The screenshot above is the whitebox, no-art, test mothership.

You can see a board showing newly arriving space elevator packages, the orbital drop pod navigator, and a new market to buy/sell things and talk to the locals. They might be hideous right now, but code for all of these is in-game and working!

I'm designing and testing out the early game in this new progression system, and once I'm ready for feedback, there will be a very janky beta available.

This is a large project, but I believe that the payoff will be more than worth it. An actual storyline and clear goals are a huge step towards the full release. Industrial Petting will turn into a game where your factories are building hundreds of thousands of creatures over the face of an entire planet, and maybe more in the future...

If you're interested in talking about this, join the discord!

Hello Petters!

A Happy 2021 to everyone. Here in the development quarantine hole, I'm hard at work on the next big update for Industrial Petting.

[h3]What's being added?[/h3]
In the first year of early access I've built ground-level features to the game: new pets, new buildings, new food and a new biome. It's been fun adding these in and fleshing out how the game feels at a moment-to-moment level.

Even with the updates, the game has been missing some big items. There's barely any narrative, and a lack of progression and goals beyond the simple research tree. The next big update will start building these, and get us one step closer to leaving early access!

We're expanding the story, creating a late game, and making it easier to add new content in the future. The original prototypes five years ago had many of these features, and now it's time to put them back in.

• The beginnings of a narrative.
  
• Petting will be no longer be a local enterprise: you'll be building your factories at a planetary scale.
  
• A home base spaceship to plan that construction.
  
• Per-player upgrades for movement, construction, and petting.
  
• Factories are no longer in a single area, and those of you who can build layouts quickly or find more pets in the forest will be rewarded.
  
• Automating building production and food production will be core mechanics.
  
• Upgrades to make collecting pets in the forest more viable.
  
• Rebalancing the game so that multiple players helps immensely.
  

These changes will also make adding new pets and pet areas much easier. For the Crystal Update, I needed to choose how and where to position the new area, as well as make some tools to lead people to the new biome. This new system will allow me to create new areas and new pets with far less overhead, and less of a chance of breaking people's save games.

It also means less time wandering back and forth from the mushroom/crystal lands, and more time building pet factories and gathering new creatures.

[h3]How far is development?[/h3]
In the last few weeks, I've accomplished the scary technical challenge. Teleporting between your orbiting ship and different areas on the ground is working, even in multiplayer. The goal in the upcoming weeks is to figure out the specifics of the metagame being introduced, and rebalance the game so that the average player can have an enjoyable time with the current content in 5-8 hours. For more committed players, the new design allows for a longer gameplay tail, and potentially more interesting reasons to start up a new save.

[h3]What about currently broken things?[/h3]
There are some broken or awkward items being worked on, but may not be fixed until after the big update.

• Gatherbots and farming
  These are hard to use, inconsistent in their output, and not very fun. They're going to be replaced with an older gathering system which was in the beta, but that won't be until after the big update.
  
• VR movement
  The teleport movement and controls for smooth movement are awkward right now, and may be fixed before the big update. This has been the number one complaint from VR players, and I haven't forgotten about you!
  
• Various bugs
  Game-breaking bugs are going to be fixed and pushed as needed. Cuddlers sleeping during the day, for example.
  

[h3]When do I get to see it?[/h3]
I'm adding in the new gameplay first, so there won't be any new art for a while. However, I will be inviting people to look at the gameplay with temporary art assets sometime in the next few weeks.
If you're interested in playing a janky, broken version join the discord! I'll be posting the information for joining the new feature branch there once it's ready for public play testing.

In the meantime, go pet your real pets, and leave any suggestions for the update here or on the discord!

Off in the distance, the gentle glow of crystalline formations hint why this world is so packed full of creatures. The Crystal Update is here! Find a new area and pack it full of new creatures.

Also, for the first time since release, Industrial Petting is on sale! If you're looking to join the game, now is the perfect time to jump in or get another copy for a friend.

Some news on the development side: this update has been a test of how quickly I can implement new content on a deadline without adding new features in code. This crystal area was built in two weeks of work, including all the art. I’m (mostly) happy with the custom tools I currently have to build new pets and biomes. On top of that, I've added a whole bunch of unit tests to identify design issues and help reduce my playtesting burden.


I’ll be taking some time off for the holiday, but the next few updates are going to start fleshing out the story for the game, and add some clearer long-term goals for players. I was hoping to add a power system for this update; that's being pushed to next year while I try and figure out the specifics of the design. I’m very excited for what’s coming soon, so keep an eye out!

If you have feedback/ideas for what to add in the future, join the discord!

[h3]0.2.0[/h3]
[h3]Features[/h3]

• New Crystal Area!
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Vsync is now default until I can figure out how to change it in the newer Unity graphics system
  
• "Simple" quality mode now works better for lower-end hardware
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fix a mac-only graphics bug that sometimes lead to a crash