Jun 9, 2024

Code My Loving - Craftomation Dev Diaries, June 2024

Craftomation 101: Programming & Craft - ElJorro

Hey mates,

Although the past month was not very rich with new content for Craftomation 101, it was very important for the game. We released one very long-awaited feature and took some time to reflect upon what was already done, add the outcomes we took from your very generous feedback, and lay out long-term plans.

What's New

Perhaps the biggest star of May was that bot-management interface that so many of you asked for so many times. It is still a work-in-progress feature: we'd like to allow you to control the bots using that interface. But already it lets you to organize your Craftomates into groups and name those groups, so you could have a dedicated fire-making team, food-providing team, etc.

After shipping this crucial feature and eradicating the most vile bugs, Ivan the programmer went on a vacation, during which he enjoyed the magnificent views of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Could this be an inspiration for our next game? Given the cyberpunk cityscape and the amount of robots in the streets, the answer is - maybe:

But before Ivan embarked on his journey, he and our studio head Oleg discussed the intricate details of writing a game on Lua programming language in general and making a game with it and Defold engine in particular. It's easy-peasy: just took us a couple of years, and 60 000 lines of code. And then we wrote this article:

What do I think about Lua after shipping a project with 60,000 lines of code? (15 minute read)

We published it separately because it contains a lot of technical details, and if you're into coding and making video games - we suggest you check it out!

Shortly after Ivan returned from his journey, another one happened - a journey of mind! We updated the version of Defold to v1.8.1, which (among other things) fixed that pesky bug that caused the game to crash if a controller not supported by Defold was plugged in.

Additionally, it increased game performance for ARM Mac users. But for us, the devs, it meant a lot of QA stuff - transition to a new version rarely happens without any stress. But thanks to that, Alex the artist had time to make a loading screen for the game, so it no longer looks like it froze when starting a new game or loading a saved one:

But all in all, we're very excited about this transition! Among other things, it introduces a native module for in-game camera, which is a pretty big deal, as it comes to replace the unofficial one. Of course, we're infinitely grateful to the devs of the latter, because it made Craftomation 101 possible in the first place! But unofficial is unofficial, it has its’ issues… And the brand new camera module will allow us to introduce smoother camera zooming within weeks! We'll keep you posted.

And this is not the only thing that will keep us occupied this summer! Speaking of which…

What's next?

Believe it or not, but we're just getting back from processing all the feedback you sent our way since the Early Access release. Craftomation 101 turned out to be bigger than we were prepared for!

And that means it's time to elaborate on our development plans for the upcoming months. Upon studying hundreds of reviews, forum threads, and comments, we picked two major directions:

Interface & QoL changes. Not many surprises here, there's a lot of work to do, even the aforementioned bot-management interface needs polishing. Another subject for improvement is the programming editor: we need to make connections between programming blocks more graphic and less intricate. We'd also like to give you, the players, more control over this part of the game. As of now, lines are just sprites, a way to display the connections between things. Their next-level version will allow interaction with it, which will give us a whole new area to of potential features to explore!

If you want to know how it might look, here's a screenshot from Tinkercad, which is one of our main references:
The gameplay. Thorny bushes, which we introduced a couple of months back, were implemented to solve the lack of challenge in the second part of the game, but they're not enough. In order to analyze what parts of Craftomation 101 are underdeveloped, we drafted a matrix of all the gameplay elements and how they influence each other. As it turns out, the most alienated part of the game were the ales, the ones made in the Brewery!

At the same time, we were bothered that Bonfire management mechanics exhausted itself by the second half of the game. And that, in turn, made us remember the concept of area-of-effect buildings that we were contemplating at early (very early) stages of development. Check out this fountain, for example: it was supposed to recharge all of the Craftomates that were in its’ area of operations:

So, our next crazy idea is to create more of those AoE buildings AND use Ales to make them work! It's a very early concept, so we're just sharing our wildest ideas, but: imagine a building that would consume a special Ale, that influences the growth of surrounding plants. Or a building that can be charged with an Ale to provide a buffing effect to any robot around. We've got a bunch of ideas, and if you want to discuss them, you can find us online on our Discord server… or just leave a comment below! We're always happy to chat.

And if you're more fond of the programming part of the game, we've got a teaser for you too: more diverse variables! In their current state, they only accept coordinates as arguments - this is the remains of a very early concept of Craftomation 101, when we planned to treat the map as a memory unit. We took a different direction eventually, but the feature is still here. So, we're planning to make variables more flexible, to take your robot programming routines to the next level! Using numbers and object types as values for variables would be a good start.

Once again: the aforementioned features are just concepts. That's the drill in video games: we come up with an idea, we will prototype it into the game, we gather feedback from our players, and only then decide if we were right or wrong. Because with games, nothing matters if it isn't fun! Duh.

Before we wrap up for today, we've got a real exciting piece of news! We suggest you listen closely to the news from South America on June 26-30, because Craftomation 101 was selected as finalist at BIG Games Festival, which is currently known as Gamescom Latam:

We even have an official badge on our Steam page, so it's very serious! Wish us luck.

We hope you'll have a good rest this summer, and come back to see a better Craftomation 101! And if you're not planning to go offline for these months, feel free to stay tuned for more news about the game in the upcoming weeks.

Jun 9, 2024

Update 0.2.5 - Interface improvements

Dummy Dungeon - adi

General

The update is bigger because the translation of all the text and splash art took a little more time. That's why I managed to make the next update scheduled for about 2 versions ahead, here you have “Interface update” and “Dungeon events update”. And so in a nutshell what has changed:

All icons in the inventory (TAB) can be hovered over and a description will be displayed
Quick selection book at bar has new tabs for drinks and kisses
The Huntress and the Robot have received changes
Improved the performance of many dungeon events such as Robot Launch, Monk Endurance Test
Prices of most items in the dungeon have been changed
Many bugs have been fixed

New

From now on, all icons that are displayed in the inventory menu (TAB) have additional descriptions that appear when you hover over them.

Buffs(potions and passive skills) under the health bar when hovered over display exact numbers, description of action and duration
Changed the display of weapon modifiers, now the icons are always displayed next to the weapon image when hovered over, the modifier description is displayed
Added descriptions for character abilities, when you hover over an ability, a description of the action will be displayed

Quick selection menu in the bar now shows all options, not just character selection
Changed menu design for drink selection
A new menu has been added for kisses
From now on, if a character's skill recharges, a recharge effect will appear

Characters

Huntress

The hunter gets a complete change of ability. From now on, the bow is treated more or less as a third weapon that she can draw when she wants. Thanks to this change, the controls are a lot better because you need the attack button (LPM) and not the skill button (E) to fire. The stats are also changed to emphasize critical and explosive damage from the bow.

Number of starting shots 2 >> 1
[NEW] Bear trap: The hunter can throw a trap in front of her, the opponent who falls into this will be marked with the hunter's passive ability, get 10 damage and be slowed down
Defeating a marked opponent adds one arrow (rather than a random 1-4 as before)
Damage scaling of bow shots has been increased

Robot

The robot gets changes for skills it had in the game but performed poorly. Now they are as a separate skill

[NEW] Scrap: Ability active if the player is currently looking at the item. When the skill is held down, the weapon is destroyed and changed to gold.
[NEW]New Technology: An active ability that appears after 3 enhancements. When used, a choice of 1 of 2 robot perks appears
Interface updates correctly between floors

The rest of the changes

Fairy: scaling of ground impact damage with fall length has been increased
Bard: increased level 3 spell duration.
Monk: Changed the collision detection when using the rope, now it should not penetrate walls

Dungeon events

Changes for many challenges that unlock a character upon completion. It will now be easier to meet the conditions for unlocking a character. Challenges that are recurring and playable after unlocking a character will receive more variations

Launching a robot

There are now more hidden bags of parts on the 2nd floor (In the starting and special rooms).
From now on, the current number of robot bags is displayed next to the gold.
Fixed a serious bug by which parts to buy in stores did not count towards robot parts.
Changed the prices of robot bags in stores 200 >> 150

Gladiator arena

Removed laser ceiling, now there is more room to fly
Added new combat variants
Added a new trap that can appear during combat

Monk's Endurance Challenge

Monk dialogues have been changed
Added 2 new variants of the challenge
From now on, the challenge starts with a countdown
Added starting line on the starting island
UI design has been changed

The rest of the changes

Wolf rescue: Health needed to heal a wolf 200 >> 130
Knight and Maid: Reduced the number of encounters needed to finish the event 3 >> 2 and fixed a bug whereby the number of encounters did not transfer between approaches

Gold changes

The approaches in the dungeon have huge differences in the ability to get gold, so we are equalizing the prices of items a bit to reduce the randomness of finding the right weapon a bit. Price changes also get anvils, perks and potions to make prices more uniform.
Weapons
- legendary 500 >> 400
- epic 260 >> 280
- rare 180 >> 160
Potions
- Rainbow potion 400 >> 300
- Large luck potion 150 >> 120
- Small potion of luck 70 >> 60
- Small potion of evasion 40 >> 50
Perks
- legendary 350 >> 320
- epic 210 >> 240
- rare 120 >> 160
Anvils.
- darkness 400 >> 350
- elemental 250 >> 220
- metal 200 >> 180
- nature 250 >> 220
- prototype 200 >> 180
- royal 350 >> 300

Bugfix

Added an icon in the lower left corner showing a button for dropping weapons (Displays if dropping a weapon is possible).
Added visual effect for bars from selling weapons in stores
Added missing animations for multiple statements of various characters
Hints on how to unlock a character now mention the location.
Added normal perk where it was missing for rooms on the 2nd floor.
Fixed a major bug that crashed the game after selecting the witch's starter drink
Fixed the display of dialogs in the bar on the 3rd floor.
Fixed wall and ceiling collisions in the bar on the 3rd floor.
Fixed a bug whereby it was not possible to check the details of potions
Fixed a problem with disappearing objects on the 2nd floor.
Wind (weapon modifier): Fixed a bug through which the wind effect overlapped many times
Combat Fireflies (enhancement): Added a 0.2s delay to the firing of skylights to avoid bugs with other healing boosts.
Exclusive merchandise (enhancement): Now the price only updates the first time you enter a room or if the number of duplicates of this reinforcement is different from the last time you entered.