DevBlog #77 | Foundry Fridays: Update 2 Release Date & More Previews
Hello everyone!
Let’s start with the big news right away for those who haven’t heard of it yet. The upcoming commerce update has a release date, and it’s already pretty soon: May 6th 2025. Save the date!
If you’re curious about more details regarding the update, I recommend taking a look at the past four dev blogs which were called the “Commerce Update Preview” series:
[h3]Update Preview Video Part 1 from SpectrumDad[/h3]
We have worked with SpectrumDad to create a two part preview/tutorial video series about the upcoming commerce update. Part one of the video covers the basics and is now available on YouTube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Special thanks to SpectrumDad for making those!
[h3]R&D Lab[/h3]
Let’s keep going with showing off more new and upcoming features. The research & development lab, in short R&D Lab, is a buildable upgrade for your space station which allows you to increase your robot production proficiency by analyzing the robots you produce. It allows you to gain experience points per robot type for each robot you produce. Each robot has a corresponding level and gaining one will reward you with a “Tech Point”.
You can probably guess where this is going, it’s basically a light version of a skill tree per robot. You can spend your tech points on three different robot improvements. You can increase their quality and therefore their sales price, you can decrease the amount of resources needed to produce them or you can make them lighter (which can be useful to fit more robots into your cargo ships). We would like to add more improvements over time, but it’s actually pretty challenging to come up with those, let us know in case you have some ideas!
There are also some minor auxiliary features like focus research which allows you to focus on certain robots to increase their XP gain or to spend Firmarlite on increasing the base XP gain per produced robot.
To keep the balancing stable the unlocked benefits aren’t massively influential but they are clearly noticeable and feel rewarding. Our goal with this feature is to boost long-term motivation and provide immersiveness. It's only logical you would get better at making robots over time, right?
We don’t know yet, but I personally feel like this could be an interesting mechanic for other goods as well and not just robots.
[h3]UI Visuals Overhaul[/h3]
As a surprise change we have been overhauling major parts of how our UI looks. It is something that has been on our list since a while but we never really found the time to do until now. The upcoming update will feature a new and more polished look for various parts of the UI, most importantly the general frames and frame headers, buttons, scroll views, drop downs and sliders.
The elements mentioned above are the most prominent ones and that is why we have focused on them. Those changes already give the game’s interface a very different aesthetic, but we might do a pass on other elements too in the future.
Overall we’re very happy with the improvements, it makes the game look more professional and clean. We hope you’ll enjoy the changes. In case you wonder, this is mostly a visual change and doesn’t change the layout of most frames - which is something we’ll ultimately might be looking at as well.
As always, let us know what you think, we’re always eager to hear your feedback. Ideally in the Steam comments or on our Discord.
See you next time,
-mrmcd
Follow us on socials:
Stay tuned for more news!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/
Let’s start with the big news right away for those who haven’t heard of it yet. The upcoming commerce update has a release date, and it’s already pretty soon: May 6th 2025. Save the date!
If you’re curious about more details regarding the update, I recommend taking a look at the past four dev blogs which were called the “Commerce Update Preview” series:
- Part 1: General Preview & Game Intro
- Part 2: Robot Types, Space Ships & Shipping
- Part 3: Galaxy & Starmap
- Part 4: Galactic Market & Lava Caves
[h3]Update Preview Video Part 1 from SpectrumDad[/h3]
We have worked with SpectrumDad to create a two part preview/tutorial video series about the upcoming commerce update. Part one of the video covers the basics and is now available on YouTube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]Special thanks to SpectrumDad for making those!
[h3]R&D Lab[/h3]
Let’s keep going with showing off more new and upcoming features. The research & development lab, in short R&D Lab, is a buildable upgrade for your space station which allows you to increase your robot production proficiency by analyzing the robots you produce. It allows you to gain experience points per robot type for each robot you produce. Each robot has a corresponding level and gaining one will reward you with a “Tech Point”.
You can probably guess where this is going, it’s basically a light version of a skill tree per robot. You can spend your tech points on three different robot improvements. You can increase their quality and therefore their sales price, you can decrease the amount of resources needed to produce them or you can make them lighter (which can be useful to fit more robots into your cargo ships). We would like to add more improvements over time, but it’s actually pretty challenging to come up with those, let us know in case you have some ideas!
There are also some minor auxiliary features like focus research which allows you to focus on certain robots to increase their XP gain or to spend Firmarlite on increasing the base XP gain per produced robot.
To keep the balancing stable the unlocked benefits aren’t massively influential but they are clearly noticeable and feel rewarding. Our goal with this feature is to boost long-term motivation and provide immersiveness. It's only logical you would get better at making robots over time, right?
We don’t know yet, but I personally feel like this could be an interesting mechanic for other goods as well and not just robots.
[h3]UI Visuals Overhaul[/h3]
As a surprise change we have been overhauling major parts of how our UI looks. It is something that has been on our list since a while but we never really found the time to do until now. The upcoming update will feature a new and more polished look for various parts of the UI, most importantly the general frames and frame headers, buttons, scroll views, drop downs and sliders.
The elements mentioned above are the most prominent ones and that is why we have focused on them. Those changes already give the game’s interface a very different aesthetic, but we might do a pass on other elements too in the future.
Overall we’re very happy with the improvements, it makes the game look more professional and clean. We hope you’ll enjoy the changes. In case you wonder, this is mostly a visual change and doesn’t change the layout of most frames - which is something we’ll ultimately might be looking at as well.
As always, let us know what you think, we’re always eager to hear your feedback. Ideally in the Steam comments or on our Discord.
See you next time,
-mrmcd
Follow us on socials:
Stay tuned for more news!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/983870/FOUNDRY/