FOUNDRY News

We have been sharing a bunch of exciting updates in our Discord over the past month. It has been a real great way for us to get community feedback as we work. I think now is a good time to share a recap of some of the exciting changes coming to version 0.4 we shared on Discord.

[h2]Terrain Overhaul[/h2]

In order to craft a more unique style that was consistent with our factories the terrain system needed to be rewritten. The beveled look shown here softens the look and allows lighting to hit the terrain in a less jarring way. Textures can now spill over the edges, allowing us to do things like having the top grass be visible from the side.


[h2]Atmosphere[/h2]
Previously the sky was a blank blue canvas, now it has been filled with dynamically rendered and animated clouds. The atmospherics have had a major impact on immersion.

The clouds look different depending on the time of day.


[h2]Mining Laser[/h2]
The laser mining tool now illuminates the environment, it now also collides with buildings correctly.


[h2]Walkways[/h2]
A new building system allows you to easily assemble multi-story walkways around your base, with the automatic placement of handrails.

These walkways may even connect to some new larger buildings we are working on! Placeholder and untextured art shown here.


[h2]What did you miss by not being on Discord?[/h2]
We added the ability for players to quickly set the default loader state and added user editable signs. We have plenty of mechanics, art and content changes in the works; to get the latest development updates as they happen join the Foundry Discord today!

After a long period without updates we're finally back with news!

I’ve always planned for enormous mega bases in Foundry, and it became clear our current C#/C++ hybrid simulation library wouldn’t support that. Therefore I have fully rewritten the simulation library in C++. Foundry is a simulation heavy game and it has greatly benefited from this work. This new library is the foundation that removes the technical limitations preventing us from achieving this plan. As an added benefit, the new library will also improve iteration speeds as we don’t need to consider two languages.

Discord user Illanyss’ vertical battery

The rewrite including QA/Testing and bug-fixing took about 4 months, about a month longer than expected. However testing was very thorough, the game is again fully playable and has most likely fewer bugs than before.

I also used the rewrite process to improve many systems. I'm not going into the details of listing all of them, but for example the conveyor system has been improved and our balancers now support input/output priority lane settings.

New Belt System Debug Visualization

Since roughly one month we're already working again on new features, which we're going to tease very soon. We have already begun sharing these updates on Discord.

[h2]Community-Interaction in the Future[/h2]
We want to hear from you! The feedback we have already received for Foundry has been incredibly helpful in shaping the future of the game, and now we want to try something new. We want to begin regularly sharing development progress and concept work as it happens, and integrate your feedback into those designs.

Our Discord features a channel called "dev-updates". We're really going to show active work in progress, so there is no guarantee that what you'll see will eventually make it into the game. We decided to share our experiments with the community to get early opinions. We have just started sharing these updates on Discord today, so see you there!

Going forward the DevBlog is going to be used as a place to summarize the best of those development updates and share larger updates. We will aim to write shorter articles but with higher frequency.

Discord user zytukin's latest base

See you at the next blog post or on Discord.
-mrmcd

We have been busy working on our alpha version of Foundry over on itch.io, getting it ready for Early Access. Today we wrapped up work on version 0.3 which adds some major new features to the game:

[h2]Underground Mining[/h2]
A new way of acquiring ore is the core of the update. The depths now hold layers of ore which you have to tap to unlock the vast resources of the planet. Use underground rail miners that carve through ore deposits. Minecarts will move your ores to mining depots, from where you need to handle reprocessing.


[h2]Freight & Character Elevators[/h2]
Since we're going more vertical, elevators were a must. Freight elevators can be connected to the belt system to move items up or down vertically, while a character elevator will make you never walk stairs again.


[h2]Ambient Lighting System[/h2]
Fully reworked ambient lighting system: Caves are finally dark and unaffected by the sunlight.

[h2]Explosives[/h2]
Mining terrain is a lot of work, streamline the process with explosives that get rid of terrain (and many other things) in no time! Buildings which are generally near excavation areas are blast-resistant, so no worries.


[h2]Reworks, improvements and new machines[/h2]
Update 0.3 brings a fully reworked energy system, re-balanced recipes, optimized performance and a couple of new machines on top of countless bugfixes and usability improvements.

[h2]Future Updates[/h2]
We will begin posting development updates here to keep everyone informed on where the game is going. We can't wait to share this game with everyone here!

Join the official Foundry Discord server to get the latest updates and to interact with developers. Come and discuss the game with an ever growing community, share ideas and be the first to know what's happening with the game.

Shareable Discord invite link: http://discord.gg/eqvCtNH