New Craft Feature!

Welcome back to your weekly EcoFactory Devlog!
This time, we’re excited to introduce our brand new Life-changing feature: Crafting!

Every well-known resource management game has it and we won't be an exception.
We're introducing special crafted materials that change the original purpose of the resources they come from.

But everything in life takes time, so your crafted materials will also need you to wait before they are ready to be used. Whenever you decide to craft a material, the resources needed for it will be consumed instantly, so choose carefully when to craft something (or not)  so you don't get caught off guard by one of our new systems: Defeat.

A game without challenge isn’t much fun, is it? Now, Defeat gives you real motivation to push toward a now implemented feature: Quotas!

Quotas

Before, the quotas were represented by a moving bar on the screen, which didn't really affect gameplay. But now, you’ll need to reach a specific material quota within a limited time to advance to the next stage, and each stage will be a bit more challenging than the last. You can see how much time you have left on the timer just next to the progress bar itself.

Plan your crafting, manage your time, and stay ahead!

New Features in This Build

-Craft Stations

We’ve added two types of craft stations that let you obtain brand-new materials: Coal and Cellulose (Coal is not yet included on this version of the build).
Just choose any quantity of the material you want to craft, spend the required resources and wait. 

Once you hit OK, a green progress bar will appear and when it’s done, the new material will be added to your inventory.

-Win & Lose Conditions

If you don’t reach the first quota within 5 minutes, you’ll lose your run and return to the main menu.
But every defeat is just a new beginning, so try new tactics and seek your next victory!

-Models

Trees now have their own unique 3D models! You can visually track how much of a deposit remains by how damaged the tree looks.  Models for rocks will also be implemented soon.

We’re also discussing to add progress bars to these resources too, that will make it easier to see how much of it is left at a glance, helping you manage your resources even more.

- Even Better UI

Our chat-like textbox is now fully functional!
It finally shows real-time, life-changing information, like when you pause the game!

- What’s Next

We’re currently improving terrain generation and tinkering on rogue-like elements!

As we said, we'll also continue working on the features introduced here, like giving some new utility to the new materials and new models for the structures.

So as always, stay tuned!