- Engineer Alpha's Log #84: But what is in 0.8? - 2 May 2024
As of this log I have not talked about what is planned to be in version 0.8 and beyond but that is no more. The plan for 0.8 is to add in both electricity and oil. Electricity will function much like you would expect for a game like Engineer Alpha. You will have both generators and consumers and they will be connected together in a network. The current plan is that there will be several sizes of power poles each with their own properties. Poles will have both a connection distance as well as a distribution distance. The connection distance will dictate the distance that can be reached to another power pole while distribution will limit the reach distance to end points (generators, motors, etc.). There will likely be numerical limitations on both of these for connection numbers but more on than once things are looking a little more final. There will also be an assortment of electricity p…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #83: Making Things Unlocked Earlier - 25 April 2024
In the last update to Engineer Alpha I moved around both Magnetubes and Cranes in the tech tree to make them reachable earlier. I did this for several reasons but will go into each individually. Conveyors have been causing me a fair bit of lag in my personal playing of Engineer Alpha. Of course buildings/objects that are inefficient are always going to be looked at to be improved. When it comes to conveyors their current implementation is not very good and leaves a lot of room for improvement. For those of you who know a bit of code each conveyor uses a for loop every update for all the items on it i.e. very slow to update. I have started working on an update for conveyors that will hopefully make them much faster but in doing so I realized that I was taking the wrong approach to the problem. Conveyors are great and serve a very specific purpose in the game best; move a single type of i…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #82: Those Mining Drills, They SUCK! - 4 April 2024
The most important part of any plan is knowing when to throw out the plan. The small and large mining drill that you unlock in the copper or iron tier respectively are intended to be a good source of resources throughout the early game. While they where never intended to completely replace hand mining at their point in the game they should make it start to feel like you need to do less and less of it. They were not really doing that for a couple of reasons. First they did not mine very many block 400 for the small or 1800 for the large and second they had to be moved way too often. Woth the idea in mind that I wanted the player to get more resources from their machines I came up with a few options. 1. Make resource finding easier. While it would certainly help you gather more of a specific material if you knew for sure that there was a big copper deposit somewhere there would be nothing…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #81: Updated Demo & Hand Mining Drill - 28 March 2024
I have updated the demo of Engineer Alpha to the latest version. It had been over a year since it had been updated so it was past time. The demo will likely not be updated for a while again but hopefully not as long as before. If there are any significant gameplay changes the affect the demo (which is limited to the very early game) I will hopefully get a new version of it out. In other news I have started working on a handheld mining drill for the mass removal of blocks. Manual tools like pickaxes and shovels were always intended to be the more precise way to remove blocks from the world and if you wanted something faster and a bit less precise that would be an option. The Hand Mining Drill (Name Not Final) is an item you will first research somewhere around mid Iron tier. It will never be consumed so you should only need to craft 1 (unless you lose it) but it will have an energy requi…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #80: 0.7 Release and Faster Conveyors - 7 March 2024
First thing is that version 0.7 is planned for release on Tuesday the 12th of March barring the finding of any catastrophic bugs. Balancing and changes will still continue to happen even after the release. Now to the far more interesting bit I have decided to increase the throughput of conveyors. in my playtesting I found it too difficult to move a significant quantity of items around especially when it came to things like stone that are in high number. When dealing with things like the output of mining drills it was difficult to get everything out on a single belt and making more than one belt line that could sort was a pain. Currently items on belts have a spacing of 37.5cm or 3/4 of a block. The standard size of an item on a conveyor is 25cm so 1/3 of the space on the conveyor is empty space. In the next build this spacing will be decreasing to 27.5cm so only 10% more than the size o…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #79: The Fruits of Playtesting - 15 February 2024
Playtesting is one of the most important parts of making a video game. If you don't play it yourself and enjoy it why should other people? Honestly I am not always as good about thorough playtesting as I should be, some days it feels like it would be a waste of time. However when I do playtest I make a whole lot of changes that I hope are for the better. So far I have gotten through about Mech pack 1 in my testing and have made lots of changes along the way, Most of the changes are aimed at making things less cumbersome to the player and streamlining the early game as much as feels reasonable. I have reduced the crafting time of many parts as well as adjusted the speed of several crafters to make sure you can produce parts at a reasonable pace. I am also considering removing a few of the copper parts like beams and frames as I feel they add unnecessary bloat at the point they come in an…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #78: More Steel! - 8 February 2024
Version 0.7 is coming along nicely and this week I added 2 more buildings into the steel tier; the Steel Boiler and the Quarry. The steel boiler serves as as an upgrade to the iron boiler that has higher energy output and improved efficiency. It can be found relatively early on in the steel tier and does not even require Mechanical pack 2 to be unlocked so you can start to power more things in the pursuit of steel production and science. The quarry come in a little later and serves as the mining machine for the steel tier. It can mine out a volume of 15x15x300 over 60,000 blocks. It is not the fastest taking over 18 hours to do so but they should provide you with a nice steady stream of resources. The design of the Quarry is heavily inspired from the BuildCraft Quarry and moves and extends to each block it is mining. I am sure the visual design will change eventually but for now getting…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #77: Too Much Science - 1 February 2024
You may have noticed that in version 0.7 there are no new science packs. This is intentional as I was starting to feel like there were too many for both me as the developer and the player. Replacing all 4 types of science pack every tier was just too much to keep track of as well as too much to refactor the production of every tier. So I have made the change in the next build that science will only go up every other tier. For example the Iron Tier will have a new Structural science pack as well as the introduction of chemical but will not have a new mechanical. Steel will have a new Mechanical and introduce electrical (when it gets added to the game) but will not have a structural or chemical. This alternating pattern will continue up into the higher tiers. This means that instead of the potential 18 science packs it is down to only 10 which feels a lot more manageable. I have also redu…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #76: A New Way to Support and More - 25 January 2024
Version 0.7 got it's first development build last week and while things with it are certainly not perfect it is mostly functional. A new build will hopefully becoming out tomorrow that will include freight containers, assuming I can get a few more bugs fixed, as well as dynamite that you can place or throw. There are still a few more features that will be added to 0.7 in the coming weeks as it approaches its final release form so be on the lookout. There are of course bugs also and if you find them please submit them here on steam or in the official Discord. I have created an official Patreon page for Engineer Alpha. If you are generous and you want to see Engineer Alpha developed further think about supporting it. It means a lot and will really help keep development going, Making an entire video game is a lot of work and I do need to eat at some point each month. You will also get acce…
- Version 0.7 Development Release - 17 January 2024
Version 0.7 is now available for you to try out. Most content is in Including updated cranes, blueprints, and Magnetubes. Unfortunately freight containers have not made it in yet they will be added shortly when a few more bugs are fixed. When you find bugs please post them here on Steam or the official discord and I will get around to fixing them as soon as I can.
- Engineer Alpha's Log #75: New Year, New Focus - 4 January 2024
I hope you all had a good holiday and new year's, somehow we made it into 2024. Last year I made a road map with all of the planned releases for the year and while that went ok I am not planning to do something that far looking at this time. I do have many plans for what updates are going to be I am just not ready to share them yet. The final release on the roadmap Version 0.7 was planned for release back in December unfortunately that did not happen. Given how late 0.6 was you probably could have guessed. The plan is to release the development version on the 16th and I will have a video on more of what is coming in that patch on Monday or Tuesday of next week. As for what is going to happen for the rest of the year the current plan for now is to focus on improving what the game already has as well as focusing on media presence and sales. The hard truth is I can't keep going forever as…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #74: Giving You More Control - 9 November 2023
I have been finding that there is a small issue with shafts and gearing. When ever I make a machine that uses rotational power as its input I find that there just are not enough options for its power requirements. What I mean is there are only a few generators in the game and a limited selection of options so a shaft in will for example be a whole steam engine or a half and not in-between. I want more freedom in how I design machines and the best solution I found was to give the player more control over their shafts. In 0.7 shaft splitters will not longer be locked to using a select few options for how power is split between the two outputs. You the player will will have full control of what percentage of torque will go either direction. The old buttons will still remain as a set of quick pick options for convenience. You will be able to move the slider to change on a single percent as…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #73: Prospecting - 26 October 2023
First thing is October's video will be out in the next few days so keep an eye out for it. Also 0.6 public will be coming out on Tuesday 10/31. ***Please be aware that all GUI's shown in this log are not final in any way and will change.*** One of the great things about Engineer Alpha is that is takes place in a 3D voxel world, however this presents the problem that you can't see anything inside the world so you don't know where to dig for resources. There are a couple of possible solutions to this problem the first that I took in 0.5 and earlier was to just make resources everywhere which does solve the problem but leads to uninteresting gameplay as everywhere is the same. The second option is to give the player surface landmarks as to what can be found under the surface e.g. diamonds are found under volcanos or whatever the case may be but I don't want to restrict the underground base…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #72: Getting back into the swing of things - 28 September 2023
It has been a tough road these past couple months but I am starting to get back to developing Engineer Alpha full time. I built a new computer at the beginning of this month. My old one was past its 7-year expected life span and personally I prefer to update before things start having major problems. For the curious nerds out there I decided to go all "Team Red" for the first time ever and despite a few hiccups overall I have been very happy with it. I missed last months video unfortunately but this months will be up very soon (most likely tomorrow). It covers the new Cranes coming in 0.7 as well as Construction Orders and Blueprints. For other development tasks I started working on adding in the new steel tier of machinery, parts, and connectors. In doing so I realized that while I was working on it I should add in the higher tiers as well. I also decided there was no real reason to re…
- Version 0.6 Development Release - 25 August 2023
We are back up and running! It only took a fully day of troubleshooting and a small fire that left me with a graphics card shaped paper weight. Version 0.6 is finally here for you to test out. The full list of patch notes is in game but the highlights include a world revamp, cable shovel, and even doors and beds. There will be bugs and things that need to be fixed. If you find something please let me know about it here on steam or on the official discord and I will do my best to get things changed and fixed to be better for everyone.
- Engineer Alpha's Log #71: When it Rains, It Pours - 24 August 2023
Two weeks ago I posted that Version 0.6 would be delayed due to a fmily emergency. Fortunately everone is alive and recovering well. The plan was to release 0.6 today as a am finally in a place where a can provide the bug fixing and support you all deserve with a new release. However this morning the main PC I use for developing the game and everthing will not turn on (I am writing this from my small little PC i use for watching movies and the like). The problem has yet to be diagnosed as of writing this but it is an older computer at just over 7 years and is due for an upgrade (I was specing out a replacement yesterday). I don't know when things will be back up and running but as soon as they are version 0.6 will be released.
- Engineer Alpha's Log #70: The Perils of being a One Man Band - 8 August 2023
I work alone on Engineer Alpha at present and while it has its perks it also has its downsides. Unfortunately one of the biggest just happened. Due to a family emergency I will have to delay 0.6's release. I expect it to be a week or two before it releases and I am able to fix bugs quickly and efficiently. Thank you for your understanding. Aaron
- Engineer Alpha's Log #69: A New World, Nice! - 27 July 2023
The world of Engineer alpha is changing in version 0.6 and I want to give you an early look at what things are going to look like. Everything is of course subject to change before version 0.6 comes out and and some of it will change for certain and some could even change if you give feedback here on it. I there really isn't much to say and I hope the images speak for themselves.
- Engineer Alpha's Log #68: Water, Water, Water - 20 July 2023
One of the hardest things to make in a fully editable game world is water. The pendulum of efficient and accurate always swings hard in one direction. For the water in Engineer Alpha I have gone for the efficient side of things for now but I can almost guarantee that things will change somewhere down the line. Water in 0.6 will spawn in "lakes" throughout the world. You will be able to jump into them and swim. If you remove a block that has water on the sides of it or above the water will spread. This function is recursive so water will fill as big of a hole as you give it. I am not super happy with how this makes water behave but I feel that it is good enough for right now and will expand on it in the future to make it a system I am happy with in the future (likely something with flowing water and more restrictive propagation rules.) With the addition of water the Well will also be rec…
- Engineer Alpha's Log #67: Developer Videos - 13 July 2023
Starting this month I will be creating a new series of videos that will be talking about new content that will be coming to Engineer Alpha. The first video is available right now. I plan to do one of these every month so the next one will be in August. The goal for these videos is to have a better way to show off new content to you. Previously I have done the "Megalogs" and while that did work it wasn't ideal as this is a video game which means things move and seeing them move is very important. My goal is for a mid length video no more than 20 mins each month and the first one came out to just over 10 minutes in length. This months focus on the Cable Shovel that will be coming in 0.6 and next month will be looking at some new content coming in 0.7. These Logs will still continue on here most weeks however they will not focus on big game features they will be more focused on game design…
