Industrial Petting News

[h2]Smoothing out the difficulty[/h2]Nibblers used to be an early game pain point. They are relatively inexpensive to make and easy to automate, but end up eating a ton of food which can't be automated until much later in the game. This led to people having pens full of hungry nibblers and no easy way to deal with them.

These new berry bushes help with that early game pain. They are a reliable source of food without setting up a carrot farming chain. They don't give nearly as much as a proper farm, but keep things moving early on. Also, nibblers no longer need to be petted, they are happy as long as they eat something.

[h3]What's coming next?[/h3]This update was slow, but development is back on track again! I just moved this last week, but boxes are now unpacked and the development server is online. The big May update has some initial designs, and I'm excited to see how people react to it. I'll have another bugfix/quality of life update before then, though. There are still some VR/controller control issues that really need to be sorted.

[h2]v0.1.9 Changelog[/h2][h3]New[/h3]

• Tetar berries
  
• Some colossal stumps in the forest
  
• Add vegetation density video option. Changing this should help people with
  GPU-limited machines. Doesn't affect gameplay, but increase/decreases density
  of grass, rocks, and little mushrooms
  
• Add fast pipe texture
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Nibblers no longer need to be petted
  
• Fence contract no longer needs slimecuddlers
  
• Double booster box connection maximum length
  
• Launchers now constructed with gardeners again
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Show all future contracts in contract menu
  
• Show error when unable to connect to Steam
  
• More consistent menu button coloration
  
• Increase scroll sensitivity in menus
  
• Reduce UI click volume
  
• Add acceleration to controller menu movement
  
• Slightly lower audio pitch of slime and goo cuddlers
  
• Remove looping navigation in Library/Help windows
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Gatherbots can gather spores
  
• Construction Cannon shows correct controls
  
• Construction Cannon works correctly on slopes
  
• Move Gardener and Goocuddler heart positions
  
• GooCuddlers no longer give scarecrow research
  
• Remove player inventory counts from factory recipe picker
  
• Fix stuck audio loops when deconstructing
  
• Add missing control mapping names
  
• Fix some stray lines in the main menu
  
• Fix fence placement with a controller
  
• Fix building inspection with controller
  
• Hide pet counters when contract complete
  
• All cuddler faces use same shader
  
• Space elevator launch now respects volume settings
  
• Prevent objects from generating too close to elevator
  
• Fix vegetation displacement
  

[h2]Notice[/h2]
Game has been rolled back to the previous version until a memory allocation loop gets fixed. Hold on a moment!

Mind Readers are here! Using these, it should be much easier to see what's going on. Simply point one at a pet and it will tell you what they need to be happy, and what they're missing.

In VR, it's already integrated into the inspection tool. On flatscreen, the interact button will now pull up the tool if you're not pointing it at anything.

This is the start of a new tool system, and an integration of the VR and non-VR. Moving forwards, I should only need to make one version of each tool, and it will work in both modes!

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
Today marks three weeks since the early access release! The current development pace is going well, with a week of bugfixing, a week of playing half life and doom, and a week working on the mind reading. The next update is going to add a separate tutorial area. Even if you already know how to play the game, it will have some dialog and worldbuilding to help you figure out why you're doing all this! Also some great music.

[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]v0.1.8
[h3]New[/h3]

• Pet Brain Scanner
  
• Figure out what they want and what they need
  
• Press 'F' when not looking at anything in 2D, part of the inspection tool in VR
  
• New FPS destruction tool
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Motion blur disabled, doesn't work with objects attached to the player
  
• Gardeners now much easier to please
  
• Redesigned hunger system
  
• Better client prediction for destruction
  
• More gardener sounds
  
• New elevator launch sound
  
• Petting pets now auto-locks to pet
  

A few fixes/changes, and a new suggested feature that seemed fun. I'm hoping to have the capacity to do small features like this between larger updates as development moves along.



[h3]New[/h3]

• Bored pets will now follow arrow signs
  

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Pets no longer need to see an elevator to run into it. This should make pet behavior near elevators much more consistent. Previously, if they weren't facing the elevator, they couldn't see it and wouldn't go in.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fix game not booting back to menu when server connection fails
  
• Potential fix for saves dissappearing when over 1 MbB
  
• Pets no longer stuck in place when they have nothing to do
  

v0.1.6 | 3/21/2020

This update changes some of the AI behavior backend. It may have some unintended consequences, so be sure to report odd behavior using the bug reporter or in the forums!

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Pets following you will now get bored after some time
  
• Hungry pets will stop following you to go eat
  
• Change Construction Cannon recipe to use Sploofers instead of Gardeners
  
• Reduce Gardener happiness requirements
  
• Increase SlimeCuddler generation probability
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Actually change oculus default controls (fingers crossed)
  
• Player can no longer look down to see arms
  
• Replace missing Gatherbot Garage output mesh
  
• Change name of "Shop" button to "Contracts"
  
• Text boxes now show correct glyphs when using a controller
  
• Turning on VR turning will turn off VR strafing, and vice versa
  

If you’re wondering what the current plans are for Industrial Petting, wonder no longer!



The first new piece of content will be a device players can use to better understand what pets are thinking. Along with some more tutorials and changes to AI behavior, it should make the game more playable and more understandable for more people!

After that, there are already designs for a new pet area with new resources, new pets, and some new behavior. Looking further out, the factory update should make the non-petting side of the game more interesting. The Factory Pocket Dimensions are currently planned to work similar to the factorrisimo mod for factorio. These are going to be little subfactories you can enter that have more space inside than they do outside. No pets allowed.

The exploration update is not going to have much in pets or factories, but it’s going to have much better reasons to make them. The goal is to add interesting objectives other than “make a bigger factory”, and have a world generation rewrite that allows for people to see much further than currently, and have more interesting large-scale geography. This may be split into two updates, but for right now we’ll pretend it will be one.

These dates are current estimates, they may get moved around depending on how development moves along. It’s been an exciting launch week here, and these next few months will see a lot added to Industrial Petting!