Hello everyone ! Quite a lot have happened in the last two weeks and we would like to share it with you. The biggest and most visible change is that our graphic Albert finished the basic tileset with transitions. In effect the game finally starts to look more realistic. At the moment the tileset is as follows: deep water, water, grass, dirt, cobble and sand. You can check for yourself updated screenshots at the Preview page. The drawback is that the entities with dummy graphics now look even more ridiculous :). But that will change soon.
In the past weeks we spent a lot of time working on the tutorial campaign. Tutorial campaign has 4 levels and will be part of the demo release coming out before X-mas. The campaign introduces the player into the game plot and teaches him the basic mechanics of the game. How to mine the resources, craft recipes and build parts of the factory. There will also be encounters with allien inhabitants of the planet and they probably won't be happy to see intruders into their territory ... We are already working with private beta testers (meaning friends of ours) to make sure that the campaign is enjoyable and it does a good job in explaining the game concepts.
Apart from graphics and the tutorial we did a lot of small tasks and bugfixes. For instance the generators (they produce electricity) now emit vapor which can cover your factory and give the whole scene a bit of industrial feel. And if you make a lot of them you just won't see much of your factory in the end. Well that will probably change :). With the core stuff for the demo pretty much finished we focus our energy on improving the game experience. Like for example we have added some ambient sounds giving more realistic atmosphere of the game. Or the game player interaction. We have spent a good deal of time with that. Trying to figure out how to make the controls easy yet powerful. So in the end you will be able to control the game with a single big button. Just kidding, we are not Apple. So go buy a new keyboard and stay tuned ...
