FOUNDRY News

Hello everyone!

Welcome to another FOUNDRY Friday episode, today we are taking an in-depth look into the recently previewed “Construction Industry” feature.

[h2]Feature Summary[/h2]
Very large structures and buildings are now built through construction sites. You set down a base object, which starts the construction site. Then you configure the building to your needs through a visual editor. The configuration affects the properties of the building, for example a bigger Blast Furnace has a higher throughput than a smaller one, but is a lot more expensive to build. Before construction can begin, construction material needs to be shipped to the construction site. This happens through flying transport ships. Finally your construction site gets built by construction ships and drones.



[h2]Motivation[/h2]
Although everything in FOUNDRY is built instantly by hand, to me it always felt a bit off when you build a massive building in an instant out of your pocket. The construction industry feature is an attempt to make large structures feel more impactful. It gives your factory a less light-weight feeling when large structures are built over time with specialized construction ships & dron, while other parts of the factory are manufacturing the required construction material and transport ships move it from warehouses to construction sites.

Another reason was to improve user experience, the previous way of building our large structures (also known as modular buildings) was a bit cumbersome and not easy to understand. This rework makes the process of planning those structures a lot easier while adding additional depth to the game. Through the visual building editor it is a lot easier to get an understanding of how the buildings will look, which parts you can modify and how to set it up.

Potential concerns which we are mindful of: FOUNDRY is a sandbox game and the ability to build and modify things quickly is very valued by a lot of players, therefore we are not going to make construction sites take ages to build. So far we are looking into build times between 5 and 15 minutes, although you might need to build multiple construction ship ports to achieve such build speeds. Buildings can be edited through this system, so you do not need to tear them down in case you want to modify them. And most importantly: When you tear down a building, you are never going to lose items. However, tearing down items will return rubble, which can be recycled into construction material. Also we are not going to convert dozens of machines into this system, the vast majority of objects built will remain as you are used to, this is mostly aimed at a handful, almost monumental parts of your factory.

My personal favorite about this feature is that some systems we have added, like the transport ships, tie seamlessly into other future gameplay elements, therefore making it a less isolated feature. I cannot reveal too much yet, but large modular buildings are not going to be the only thing you will be building in FOUNDRY. On a further note: The construction industry seems like the perfect way to integrate a blueprint system at some point in the future. But I want to be clear that we are not yet working on such a feature.



[h2]Construction Buildings and Items[/h2]
[h3]Construction Material[/h3]
The core item of this system is “Construction Material”. It is produced in Assemblers and is made of all major items: Xenoferrite, Steel, Machinery Parts, Polymer Boards, Glass, Concrete and Electronic Components. Construction material has a very low stack size and therefore is incredibly unsuited to be transported by hand. That brings us to the place where Construction Material is stored, the Construction Material Warehouse.


[h3]Construction Material Warehouse[/h3]
The warehouse's purpose is simple, it is able to hold massive amounts of construction material (in the range of tens of thousands) and it allows for it to be picked up there by transport ships. As a side feature Warehouses are also able to hold Construction Rubble (which you are getting from tearing down or modifying buildings) and it automatically recycles it for you back into Construction Material.


[h3]Transport Ship Ports[/h3]
Transport Ship Ports hold four transport ships, which are automatically searching for transportation tasks and fulfill them. No need for advanced configurations, if you have a Warehouse providing Construction Material, and a construction site requiring it, a transport ship will automatically take off and move the required items. As a side note: Those are not to be confused with our previously previewed cargo ships, which are intended as long distance transport option for specifically configured bulk cargo shipping.


[h3]Construction Ship Ports[/h3]
Moving construction material to a construction site isn’t enough, they aren’t going to build themselves. For that you need a construction ship, which is housed in a Construction Ship Port. As soon as there is any construction material available at any construction site, the construction ship will automatically take off and start assembly. Again, no configuration required, everything is automated.


[h3]Construction Sites[/h3]
It starts with the manually placed base object, and once configured and under construction, they cover the extents of the building, filled up with metal scaffolding. If torn down, the base object is left to be manually demolished as any regular machine.


[h2]Visual Editor[/h2]
Once a base has been placed, you can use a new handheld item, the Construction Planner to enter the visual editor. Once opened you’ll see a 3D and text based overview of the building. It provides all necessary information plus an easy and straightforward way to edit the building to your liking.



This concludes today's blog post and I hope I was able to provide a better understanding of this feature and I am looking forward to your feedback. It is a big feature and it surely will get a few changes here and there to further refine it. I’m never getting tired of mentioning how your feedback has been a tremendous benefit to the development progress and if you want to get in touch, both me and the FOUNDRY team are very active in our Discord.

Until next time,
-mrmcd


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Hello again! My name is Jason, the art director of Foundry. In this week’s ‘Foundry Fridays’ dev diary, I’m going to talk about how we create art in Foundry by walking you through the creative process!

[h2]Developing An Art Style [/h2]
Before building anything, it’s important to first establish an art style. Having a distinct art style is crucial for several reasons when developing a video game.

Visual Cohesion: A consistent art style helps create a cohesive and immersive world within the game. It ensures that all elements, from characters to environments to UI elements, harmonise with each other, enhancing the player's experience.

Early in development, we create what's called a Style Guide to help artists as they create content for the game. It illustrates key visual characteristics that establish a consistent visual language for the game.

Here are a couple examples of what you see in a typical style guide...


From an earlier post...

“Our art style can be described as ‘soft, vibrant and cleanly illustrated’. The weathered, chipped edges of metals on factory machines are ‘clean’ rather than ‘dirty’ with grunge and high frequency noise. Biomes provide a soft and welcoming backdrop that contrasts nicely with the heavy, bulky, industrial look of the factory machines. The ‘clean’ and ‘illustrated’ look is what unifies everything together to create a cohesive and consistent art style across the game.“

Brand Identity: A unique art style can differentiate a game from others in the market, making it recognizable and memorable to players. This helps in building a strong brand identity for the game and potentially leading to a loyal fan base.

You should be able to simply look at screenshots and instantly recognise that it’s Foundry. That’s our goal!


Setting the Tone and Atmosphere: The art style sets the tone and atmosphere of the game. Whether it's a whimsical and cartoonish style or a gritty and realistic style for a dark and intense game, the art conveys the intended mood and emotions to the players.

In Foundry, even though we’re building vast sprawling factories with heavy machinery, we wanted the tone and atmosphere to give off chill vibes. We want our players to feel they can spend endless hours, immersed in the world they’re building, feeling relaxed and comfortable rather than overly stressed and unsettled.


Technical Considerations: Different art styles may require different technical approaches and resources. For example, a cel-shaded art style might require specific rendering techniques, while a pixel art style might require careful attention to detail in sprite creation. Choosing the right art style early in development can help streamline the technical aspects of production.

The world of Foundry is an infinite, fully procedural voxel terrain system. Therefore all of the art needs to be created to specifically support this system. In our previous blog post about creating biomes, I gave an overview of the approach we took to create natural looking environments in a procedurally generated world.

Players have the freedom to build massive factories with thousands of objects. It’s important for us to build content with rendering performance in mind.

Artistic Expression and Creativity: Artistic freedom allows developers to express their creativity and vision. An art style that aligns with the creative direction of the game enables developers to bring their ideas to life in visually compelling ways.

Foundry’s creative direction is all about being the ultimate factory sandbox. By leaning into the infinite simulated voxel world generation aspect of the game, it made sense to go for a stylised look. And because it’s a factory builder, we designed our buildings and machines to have an exaggerated heavy, chunky and industrial aesthetic.

Audience Appeal: The chosen art style should resonate with the target audience of the game. Whether it's appealing to children, nostalgic for older gamers, or cutting-edge for enthusiasts, the art style plays a significant role in attracting and retaining players.

Overall, a well-defined and consistent art style not only enhances the visual appeal of a video game but also contributes to its success by conveying its unique identity, setting the tone, and engaging players on a deeper level.

[h2]Prototyping[/h2]
Before putting any work into making something look good, a gameplay feature or system has to be fun. A simple cube might be used at this stage to reach this goal. All design iterations take place at “we’ve-gone-plaid” warp speeds in the game engine during this stage of development.

Once a game feature is functioning as intended, we have a pretty good idea of roughly what size the object(s) need to be as well as the scope of work that will be needed to fully complete the feature with regards to 3D art, animation, UI, audio and VFX.

[h2]Gathering Reference[/h2]
Reference is an important early step in the ideation stage. It informs conversations that help define a direction to go in that satisfies both gameplay and visual design.


At this stage, the range of possibilities is purposefully wide so that through discussions, that range can quickly narrow to focus on a core set of visual design characteristics.

[h2]Concept Art[/h2]
When necessary, concept sketches are drawn to take those core visual characteristics inspired by the reference we’ve gathered and further ideate on a refined design that both supports gameplay and fits within our art style. In some cases, we’ll simply paint over a proxy model to get the information we need for when it comes to adding detail later on.


Depending on what we’re building and the complexity of the object, it may be possible in some cases to go straight into modelling the object and quickly iterate on a design in the 3D phase inside the game engine. This approach can only be done once there’s a deep understanding of the game’s art style. It’s more about doing what’s right on a case by case basis rather than sticking to a rigid process that might possibly waste development time.

[h2]Proxy Modelling[/h2]
At this stage, things really start taking shape, literally :) The faster we can get an idea for the visual design into the game, the better. It may look all good and pretty on paper, but unless it’s tested and functions to support gameplay, then it will remain as just that, a pretty drawing.

Proxy modelling is all about fast iteration using simple models (mostly primitive cubes, cylinders and spheres) that represent the basic shape of the concept design with proper scale. By keeping the model simple, we can quickly manipulate it, then test it in game with an iteration loop that’s only minutes versus hours.


[h2]The “High to Low Workflow”[/h2]
Once we’re happy with the proxy model in game for both gameplay function and visual design, we can move forward to the next phase of detailed modelling.

Typically, we use a “high to low workflow” which refers to a method used in creating both detailed and optimised versions of 3D models, particularly for use in real-time applications like video games.

[h3]High-Poly Modeling:[/h3] We begin by creating a high-polygon model with intricate details and high-resolution geometry. This version of the model includes all the fine details, surface imperfections, and intricate features required to make the object visually appealing. High-poly modelling often involves techniques such as sculpting, subdivision modelling, or boolean operations to achieve complex shapes and forms.


[h3]Retopology:[/h3] Once the high-poly model is complete, the next step is to create a lower-polygon version of the model with optimised topology. This process is known as retopology. Retopologizing involves manually or automatically creating a new topology (edge flow) for the model while preserving its overall shape and silhouette. The goal is to reduce the polygon count while maintaining as much detail as possible.


[h3]UV Unwrapping:[/h3] After retopology, the model needs to be UV unwrapped to prepare it for texturing. UV unwrapping involves flattening the model's surface into 2D space and creating a UV map, which defines how textures will be applied to the model. Proper UV unwrapping ensures that textures will be applied smoothly and without distortion.


[h3]Baking Maps:[/h3] With both the high-poly and low-poly models prepared, the next step is to transfer the details from the high-poly model to the low-poly model. This is typically done using a process called map baking. One of these maps called a “normal map” captures surface detail and shading information from the high-poly model and then transfers that information to the low-poly model.

Additional ambient occlusion, curvature and thickness texture maps are also baked out for additional surface detail information from the high poly model. This allows the low-poly model to appear detailed and visually complex without requiring as many polygons.

Here are a few examples of baked maps...


Texturing: Once the normal and other maps are baked onto the low-poly model, textures can be applied to the model's surface. Texturing involves painting the model to add colour, surface detail, and visual interest.


[h2]Game Setup[/h2]
Now we’re in the home stretch!

At this stage we bring the models and textures into the game engine and start hooking everything up. Materials are made, applied to the model and tuned in the context of the game with our fully dynamic time of day cycle. VFX, audio and animations are also set up to get the object fully functional.


The whole process takes collaboration and teamwork from developers of all disciplines to fully realise content in Foundry. It’s a ton of hard work, but so rewarding when it all comes together!

[h2]Till Next Time![/h2]
I hope you enjoyed this Foundry Friday. As always, if you have any questions, please hit us up on Discord.

Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone!

In today's episode of our FOUNDRY Friday dev blog I am going to talk about how development is going and what we are doing behind the scenes. Since we participated in Steam’s Next Fest back in early October 2023, many of you have been asking about the state of development and how our schedule looks. I do not have a launch date for you at this point, but I want to share some more information with you and provide insight into what we are working on. After that I also have a little sneak peak about another new feature.

[h2]Development Insights[/h2]
In one of my previous status updates I told you that we’re full steam ahead on our Steam Early Access launch. Let’s take a look at what that actually means in detail, so here are our biggest launch milestones:

[h3]Feature Implementation[/h3]
We need to finish the features we want to be part of our launch version. This refers to the core implementation of gameplay mechanics. Examples are the reworked underground mining, long distance transport, assembly lines and so on. If you’re following our dev blogs you might have noticed that the majority of those things are actually already finished or at least far into their development progress. The vast majority of work here has indeed already been finished, what is left are a few smaller mechanics, more polishing and a few adjustments derived from our playtests.

[h3]Gameplay Content[/h3]
Once a feature has been fully implemented it still needs to be added into the game's playable content.

Examples of what this means are:

• When is it unlocked through research progression and what does it cost?
  
• Decide crafting recipe balancing, item & machine properties (stack sizes, power consumption, …) and many other configurable settings.
  
• What additional content (items, production chains, new machines, …) is required so that it integrates well?
  

This is what we are currently working on the most. There is a lot to set up with many more advanced technologies added in Science Pack 4. It is a very creative and fun process, but it requires a lot of thinking, testing and iterating to get things right. Our experience reworking Science Pack 1-3 content proved that it is absolutely worth it. Progression is a key part about keeping a game fun, things shouldn’t go too slow to bore the players, but they also should not go too fast to overwhelm them. In general we are making good progress on this topic, but there is some more work to do. We also want to ensure that there is enough content for our Early Access release.

[h3]Quality Assurance[/h3]
This one is very straight-forward, in short it is about making sure that the game is (almost) bug-free and that it’s sufficiently comfortable to play, in terms of feature polishing. This also includes verifying that the game's balancing is working the way we intended it to. The way we approach this is by playing the game a lot on our own first (to find the biggest issues) and then we ask external testers to do the same and provide feedback. Sometimes everything is fine, and sometimes we need to get back to the drawing board and adjust things. Thanks to the alpha preview community and our Next Fest participation we had great opportunities to get significant amounts of feedback and testing and we are very grateful for that. Again, thank you!

[h3]Auxiliary Features[/h3]
A less visible part of game development is handling all sorts of what I call auxiliary features and implementations. When looking at game dev and how many exciting things it involves, it is easy to overlook some of the non-gameplay related things behind the scenes. I’ll provide a few examples: Localization support to make the game accessible in as many languages as possible, Steam integration to make the most of what Steam offers, and many other similar things. While this is by far the smallest part of game-dev, it does eat up some time and needs to be completed before a launch. Luckily we have most of those things already covered.

[h3]Conclusion and Outlook[/h3]
We’re progressing well and we are positive that our EA launch is not that far away. We still want a bit more time before we get comfortable about sharing a specific date, but rest assured we’re progressing steadily towards it. Over the coming months we’ll share more information on the topic. On top of that we also do have some yet unshared and exciting features to reveal in our future FOUNDRY Fridays. And one of them I am going to reveal right now:

[h2]New Feature Preview: Construction Industry[/h2]
We had this on our Roadmap & Idea Board for a while as “Modular Building Rework”. Manually building our very large modular buildings didn’t feel right and it sometimes was somewhat clunky. Therefore we have reworked the whole system into something new that I call “Construction Industry”. When you build a modular building you simply place the base part and then you can open an external window that lets you configure the building’s construction in a visualized editor. Please note: All following screenshots are work in progress.


For construction to start you will need to build construction and transportation drone ports and supply them with construction material. The process is automated, once everything is in place and supplied you can watch the drones and ships construct your buildings.


One of the reasons we have changed this is because we liked the idea of creating additional gameplay mechanics while making it more convenient to build or modify those large structures. Another reason is that some of those required buildings go well with some other not yet announced features. We believe those systems will provide a great foundation for what we have in mind for the future of FOUNDRY.


Also here is a new modular building, what could it be?


This is all for today. In a future Foundry Friday we’ll cover this feature in more detail and depth!

Until then, stay tuned and have a nice day!
-mrmcd


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[h2]Welcome to ‘Foundry Fridays’[/h2]
Hello again! My name is Jason, the art director of Foundry. In this week’s ‘Foundry Fridays’ dev diary, I’m going to talk about how we create natural looking biomes in our fully procedurally generated landscapes.

[h2]First, Let’s Look At The Real World[/h2]
Using the example biome of our forest in Foundry, the first step to creating a natural look in a procedurally generated landscape is to go outside and find yourself a nice little forest to get lost in :) Or at least research online for some pretty forest photography.


As you can see, trees and plants are NOT evenly distributed. Dirt paths and clearings from erosion and other natural factors help break up where foliage grows. Plants also have a tendency to group or clump together based on where and how far the wind carries their seeds.

By understanding these basics of what’s observed in nature, we can make some “rules” in our foliage generation system that simulate the natural growth of vegetation in a forest.

[h2]Let’s Make Some Noise![/h2]
A great way to create paths, clearings and clumps of foliage is to use procedurally generated noise for masking out areas where vegetation spawns.

We then use layers to embed different noises within each noise map. With this system, it’s easy to create rules for what types of vegetation should clump and what types of vegetation should always clump close together. The exact placement, scale and rotation of each flower or grass plant is still random within each layer’s noise mask. Combine that with a randomly generated voxel landscape, world generation is unique every time you spawn a new world.
All the while looking natural.

Here is an illustration that demonstrates how using layers of noise maps works to clump vegetation together.


[h2]Putting It Together, Layer By Layer[/h2]
In the game, we first build up a biome by adding a main terrain type (in this case with the forest we use a grass surface) and break it up with dirt using a noise mask. This creates areas of clearings and paths where foliage will not grow.

We play around with the procedural noise settings until we’re happy with what we’re generating in game.


It’s also worth noting here that we add a very broad overall noise to lighten/darken areas of terrain to help break up the underlying tiling terrain textures when viewed from a distance.

We then add a layer containing trees, large plants and rocks that will only spawn in the grassy textured areas of the landscape voxels.


Within the grassy textured areas, we add another layer with a different noise that creates clumps of grass blades. We can also set a parameter for each vegetation object that determines the likelihood or percentage chance a grass object will spawn per voxel of terrain. Vegetation objects are also randomly rotated, scaled and offset to the voxel they are spawned on to help with more natural clumping.


Then within the grass clumps noise layer, we use a third noise mask to add clumps of flowers.


We can go on and on, but this gives you the basic methodology behind how we generate natural looking, fully procedural worlds!


[h2]Till Next Time![/h2]
I hope you enjoyed this Foundry Friday. As always, if you have any questions, please hit us up on Discord.

Thanks for reading!

Hello everyone!

Today’s blog post covers three topics, first we are sharing more details and pictures about our decorative object system to provide a better understanding of how creative gameplay will work. Then we look at a new feature we call “Creative Mode”. And finally we have some exciting news for our itch.io alpha preview community.

[h2]Decorative Object System[/h2]
Last week we provided a sneak peek into our new decorative object system. It provides various blocks you can use to build more impressive factories with. Today we’re going to share screenshots of the blocks we have created so far:


The elements above should provide you with a wide range of possibilities, and as time goes on we will add more shapes and objects. All of them can be rotated around any axis to provide the utmost freedom.

By default they are white / light gray and they can be colorized through our new paint roller handheld object:


The paint roller comes with multiple preset colors, but also provides the option to create custom colors to apply to those decorative objects. For now you can only colorize the objects above, but we’re looking into giving more objects support for colorization.


You may ask what about getting creative with voxel blocks? Our decorative blocks are designed to be complementary to the voxel system, and we are still working on adding more regular voxel blocks with different textures to allow for more creative gameplay.

[h2]Creative Mode[/h2]
In future when you start a new game, you will be asked if you want to start the game in “Creative Mode”. If you enable it, you will have access to a new menu which allows you to spawn any item you want - regardless if it is already unlocked through research or not. This is for people who want to focus on creative building or just experiment with different mechanics.


Except the ability to spawn items everything is the same, so you can still conduct research and progress through the science tree with research servers. Some of you may already know our debug menu which allowed for a similar experience. The main reason we decided to make this into a new feature is that the debug menu lets you spawn items or do things which easily can break the game. The Creative Mode UI provides a safe and risk free experience with a better user interface for those who love to tinker.

[h2]Next Preview Version + Release Date Trailer Event[/h2]
For everyone who has previously bought our alpha preview version on itch.io we have exciting news: On Monday (15th of January 2024) at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (20:00 CEST) we will release the next preview version, containing the two features above and the majority of the Science Pack 3 content.

We have decided to launch an event until the end of this month: Use the regular or the creative mode to build good looking factories and send us the savegames. We are going to make a trailer that announces the Steam Early Access launch date, and we are going to use your provided savegames for that. More details on the event and how to provide savegames can be found in our Discord once the event starts.

We’re looking forward to your feedback and your factories!

Enjoy your weekend,
-mrmcd


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