Adding Factory Mechanics to my Indie Game (Devlog)

[@RaphaelOnofre]

please don't give up on Lumbermill, this game has so much potential

[@TECHN01200]

Lol, love how you named the generator for just maple trees "Canada"

[@ydobemos]

I'm disappointed that I had to scroll down so much for this, but I suppose its because we're early.

[@Mysterium-zy6ri]

I was laughing so hard😂

[@FailRaceFan]

Guys wake up! BW posted! Thank you so much for coming back to this project. I know how hard it can be to get back into a functioning rythm, balancing work and free time. That's especially the case with self employment. We'll be always here patiently waiting for the next devlog, seeing the game grow more and more every time. You were partially responsible for my addiction to simulation games and choosing to study software development. Thank you for being part of my adolescense.

[@CrystalCoding-oy6qh]

i am so grateful that you are making videos again, please continue your devlogs are always fun to watch

[@shijikori]

make the maple-only island an easter eggs. something like if you name your company/mill something that has "Canada" or "Canadian" in it makes it so you get only maples.

[@isto_inc]

Oh ya. Hell ya. Love me some lumbermill devlogs

[@pwyounggamedev]

I completely missed your last video and just saw this pop up on my feed. I'm so glad to see you are back on this project and going back to the isometric style. I am trying to develop game stuff myself in an isometric style and there are a LOT of headaches, especially with a simulation game like this. I'm glad to see you're back at it. Hopefully we can both finish projects that we really like without driving ourselves crazy! Haha

[@enigmaticcat7915]

Love how you named the all-maple island Canada 😂 Great job with the development! I'm excited to see where it goes next 👍

[@isaacdachtyl1821]

Babe, a new Lumbermill devlog just dropped.

[@zachwolf5122]

*felled

[@mchsprod]

4:05 naming the maple island Canada gave me an idea of how you could include different generation settings in the game. Maybe at the start of the game you could choose a country or location and that would affect the difficulty, or just be a visual change. It brings it mind Rollercoaster Tycoon, where the different levels had different aesthetics, maybe you could do something similar with Lumbermill?

[@lastSKYsamurai]

You could try out a bit of dirt around the stump so they read better as a whole/from a distance. Though I suspect you’d need to carry the dirt texture over to seedlings else the visual switch would look wired once a seedling is planted. Then you might have to try fading out the dirt as the tree grows back into a full tree. Or just start with a dirt patch under every tree from the beginning & just have the stump texture read slightly different with some slightly darker soil or something. Just some armchair thoughts 😬

[@donkeydong6763]

One interesting feature could be to add the 4 seasons to the game, which could either be entirely visual or even add small features like conveyor belts freezing in the winter as an example 🤷‍♂️

[@popcorny007]

So glad to see the core gameplay loop complete! Having a MVP to iterate from is such a good motivator

[@TheShelfman]

Great devlog! Love the progress, and I gotta say your art looks as beautiful as ever

[@BWDev]

Thanks Jordi!

[@ThePixelMan626]

i have missed these devlogs SO MUCH thank you for posting these again!

[@jameskelsey3759]

This was wildly interesting, thanks! Seeing bug fixes was fun - I don't think enough people realize just how many weird little things happen when we're coding stuff, so I appreciate you sharing! :)

[@morgan0]

you might want to allow walking thru all trees, just with a big slowdown. otherwise workers could get stuck, and having them take a bit to free themselves would be less annoying than needing to direct another worker to free them

[@fracker9121]

Just looked up the last video again this week, and now there is a new one. Love it ❤ Much appreciation for your hard work ^=^

[@TheTrueJaxlyfe]

I'm so damn happy to see you back at it dude!

[@irazander]

i feel making it clear what the lumberjacks are doing would help, when they kept going to drop off logs i thought they were just going home

[@BWDev]

I’ll be adding a “current task” indicator to all employee control panels shortly 👍

[@tommy33790]

Amazing video, as always. I love the vibe

[@Skeffles]

Brilliant progress! I like how you've pointed out your small bugs but seeing the new worker behaviour is amazing.

[@ethandolbear3834]

So trees are obstacles? What would happen if a tree grew out of the sapling phase while a lumberjack walked over it? Would it just simply force the lumberjack out of the area?

[@maxime_rhmr6608]

I always liked seeing your videos when I was myself doing some unity projects. Now I don't anymore, but I love seeing the project advancing !

[@imaginify6173]

Honestly so happy this series is back, I absolutely love your content in particular when it comes to the "devlog" genre and I love watching the development of Lumbermill. Seems like you're making good progress and I can't wait for the upcoming videos!

[@icoso]

I don't think there's anything I can say that others haven't already! I simply love how cohesive the project feels, even at this stage of development. You're truly making something special here, and I can't wait to see more :)

[@Bomtoi]

Seeing the full plot cycle in the end was very satisfying.

[@Nico_44]

Happy to see another devlog

[@ClaeysGames]

Have to say your game has a special feel to it. Well done!

[@alvin_row]

Omg I missed your last video! I'm so happy you're back!! :D

[@artizard]

the greenhouse sprite looks absolutely beautiful

[@ThatNerdGuy0]

I love the music! I am in excruciating pain because i have to wait for lumbermill to come out before i can listen to it outside of the devlogs

[@Sparklmonkey]

Finally, the world is in balance once again. Lumber devlog just dropped, life is good :D

[@abuBrachiosaurus]

OH MY GOD YES, ANOTHER LUMBERMILL DEVLOG

[@neusaap5708]

Glad you uploaded again

[@casualuser5527]

Good to know this game is still going.

[@ThatGamePerson]

Love these videos, love the game, can't wait to play it.

[@m1bl4n]

When making a game like this, your respect to Chris Sawyer skyrises. Not only did he make amazing timeless and quite complex games (Rollercoaster Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, Locomotion), but he made them in assembly -- you can't make a game more from scratch than that -- and it all works perfectly on ALL systems. Meanwhile, we're struggling with "basic" stuff with an engine that exist purely for game development.

[@BWDev]

Chris Sawyer’s engine is built from the ground up for Isometric. Unity barely supports it so the workarounds actually often end up being more complex, not less. Purpose-built engines take a lot longer to build, but on the flip side prevent other headaches. Showing the bugs I’ve encountered isn’t struggling, it’s a normal part of the development process and I aim to show everything 🙂

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

There is a way to make a game more from scratch than that: Write each bit of the final executable to the storage medium by hand without the help of any kind of software and only the simplest hardware.

[@matiasgarciacasas558]

​@@TinyDeskEngineerthat's for rookies. Real game developers make their own computers by hand with their own instruction set and OS to make their game.

[@pixelz3040]

​@@matiasgarciacasas558 jdh is that you?

[@respectfulplayer]

​@@TinyDeskEngineerrefine your own silicon for the microchips

[@_JerJer]

In Unity, you can set the default font asset in the TMProSettings scriptableObject asset, so you don't have to change it for every text object separately when creating one! Just a small tip to save time

[@Woodythehobo]

Really nice visualisation of the lazy lumberjack tree chopping bug

[@jeremy.N]

Oh damn Lumbermill is back!!!

[@Selestrielle]

Had a good laugh at the "Canada" island type.

[@puzzlick7088]

So the seedlings the lumberjacks can walk through, but once they grow up a little, they can no longer be walked through. Couldn't that cause lumberjacks to possibly get stuck in between trees or in a tree?

[@grungko]

I was thinking about that as well, they could be stuck with an unfortunate timing and positioning from what i understood

[@BWDev]

In extremely rare cases, yes possibly, but trees won’t start becoming saplings until the growing phase has begun. At that point no staff should be hanging around in the plot anyway

[@russianman5099]

I think it would be cool if all of the actions (planting, felling and clearing) were being done kinda at the same time instead of taking turns

[@NateHuff24]

I know you said the maple only island probably won't be in the final game, but I have an idea on how you could make it more interesting. You could make it so you could tap maple trees for sap (making Canada the perfect place for optimizing sap production) and/or make it snow on Canada, adding a potential new challenge for the player.

[@Ze_Techno]

Nice work! I have a suggestion, which is to add more variations to the trees

[@ThePoinball]

Why can't NPC walk behind Trees like Human doo in real life :P ?

[@BWDev]

I was going to say that it’s because of the grid layout, but now I’m wondering whether I could allow staff to walk between tiles…

[@alvin_row]

​@@BWDev Maybe there could be two grids? One to make sure things don't overlap and another one just for things that the lumberjacks can't walk through. Honestly, it does look a bit like they should be able to walk past in between trees.

[@goldexperience6479]

I'd love to have maples only map in the game. It looks majestic!

[@Pre.Ellis10]

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOUR BACK OMG!!!!!!!!! THIS IS AMAZING!!!

[@anders19287]

To give the game a sence of goal instead of making it quests for money or building advance stuff for money, you can make a reward system that give research points based on the quests you'ved done. This add a early / mid game goal for the game. Instead of just oure money money money :)

[@PreslavKolev]

You should make the conveyors animated and also smoother on turns ( i mean add a 45 degree texture for example). This will make the game look and feel instantly nicer. I am making my own game and today i added a bunch of particles, as weel as texture variations and it looks nothing like before in the good way

[@BWDev]

Ah yeah I’ve actually got animations for conveyors but they’re switched off currently. Agreed it looks *a lot* better

[@CleeDotExe]

Been following for quite some time now, one question, how do you manage so many sprites without the performance taking a hit?

[@JFx09]

Best Devlog I'v Ever Seen!!!!!!

[@RobLang]

Awesome devlog. There's so much in here. I liked your sapling solution to the pathfinding issue. Without it, the planting and cutting turns into a Conways game of life simulation! How far off (in terms of features, not time) a demo do you think you are? Love your devlogs but then you knew that!

[@BWDev]

Thanks Rob! I’ve got a few main areas that need attention (land purchasing, mid-game trade and more base building stuff) and then I’ll reassess - hoping I’m not far off now 🤞

[@LikeGG]

new devlog yay!

[@GamesBySaul]

Excellent work, this is looking like an automated dream 👀 Was curious as to what project planning/ticket tool you're using? It looked cool!

[@BWDev]

Thanks Saul! It's Trello with the "SubTasks" plugin added 🙂

[@GamesBySaul]

@@BWDev ooooo I may check that out 👀

[@CjsRandomContent]

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@lolyman13]

Maple trees often have a greyish trunk. Changing it in the game could add a bit more variation.

[@MrVinc466]

Looks like you were pretty stumped by those stumps.

[@masynchin]

Dealing with pathfinding algo, I think that it would be more natural to choose the diagonal ways within the shortest ones

[@LethalChicken77]

If the Canada island type doesn't make it to the final game we should review bomb 😂

[@leonardoraele]

5:05 What bug tracking tool is that?

[@feydk]

In real life, stumps are removed by nasty chemicals or some semi-heavy machinery that removes the visible part and then lets the roots decay over time, which, you know, takes a considerable amount of time, making that area useless for planting new trees. So that might give you some ideas. Chemicals would obviously have long term negative effects, but work fast. Machinery - don't know how you would visualize that, but if so, it would be the more sustainable option. It would impact yield though. New trees in the same tile would grow slower and be smaller. Or perhaps it would be chance-based. Anyway, point being, there are lots of things you could do with this, rather than just remove the stump in one go.

[@PressXtoPlayMain]

That "Pathfinder" fellow has too much issues, probably therapy would solve it.

[@elfenixoscurooscuro1625]

do paths grant a speed buff? I feel like they should to not be purely cosmetic, also, tooootally unrelated, idea to add rails and minecarts that go zoom so your workers can move faster on megabig bases (lategame tech tree)

[@kaguiar1709]

Wait it's back?!?!?!

[@Cool-Game-Dev]

He’s back!

[@freshcupofjoel]

Trees Please

[@car2fast]

What editor do you use for your art designs, like where you're editing the stumps? Been struggling to settle on one and I like the looks of that one.

[@BWDev]

Aseprite :)

[@car2fast]

@@BWDev Thank you!

[@TheGMUniverse]

Hey! Is the pathfinding A* and a part of the behaviour tree designer?

[@justingolden87]

Return of the king

[@Arctan95]

The solution of making the saplings have no collision makes me nervous, I still feel like there's a fail case there where the plot gets filled out in a way that would make a tile inaccessible, the player decides a different task needs doing, the trees then grow and you end up with the same fail case again.

[@BWDev]

The problem of staff getting stuck in extremely rare cases is unavoidable - so in those cases staff will be able to cheat the pathfinding. My aim was to cover the most probable cases here. Also, the saplings explicitly do not start growing until the plot has left the “planting” phase. If the player forgets and auto mode is off, then staff can’t get stuck because the trees won’t grow.

[@Arctan95]

@@BWDev Sounds like a solid approach, absolute nightmare case allowing the staff to phase through certain tiles (specifically trees) I suppose in this case or, in the event the player locks an NPC in with 4 machines, they could even just throw an alert up that they're stuck. Great progress either way mate - lovely to see you back working on this project with renewed energy!

[@ragerungames]

very cool, are you using unitys' behavior trees or opsive?

[@BWDev]

Unity doesn’t have a built in behaviour tree feature unfortunately, this is Opsive’s 🙂 (Behaviour Designer)

[@ragerungames]

@@BWDev i think Unity introduced muse behavior some months ago. which is built behavior tree in unity. Can be downloaded from package manager or assetstore.. not sure

[@BWDev]

@@ragerungames Oh so they have!

[@cuboembaralhado8294]

I've been having the feeling your pixel art doesn't feel much like pixel art, since the gameplay is very zoomed out. Maybe making everything with less resolution, or less colors, more saturation or outlines? Don't get me wrong, your art is pretty cool as of now, but I think there's a pixel art feel that most pixel art have, so if you tweaked your art a little it would feel more pixel art-y

[@shroomax]

Hell yeah.

[@jennareynolds1403]

I still think the contrast of the pixel art is too low. I think the darks need to be darker, and the lights lighter in order to use the full range of luminosity. Right now it still feels very flat, color-wise.

[@BWDev]

That was my aim with the top down redesign. Not had time to go back and increase the contrast for isometric but it’s on the very long to do list

[@jennareynolds1403]

@@BWDev Awesome! Looking forward to playing it

[@craftingnerf2593]

please have the "Canada" generation preset be in the game

[@Mysterium-zy6ri]

Do you plan to add more types of trees?

[@BWDev]

Yes :)

[@1Science-and-learning]

How did you make the AI action system?

[@AzraelTheManHandler]

I’d like to offer two thoughts on some design things for the game. But these are just my opinion/thoughts so take them for a grain of salt. First, either the employees feel way too big or everything else is a little small in scale. The lumberjacks are the size of the trees. Which may be intentional as they are small trees but they seem really big. And they seem to be pretty large compared to the factory buildings. Would be interested to see what scaled up buildings could look like as scale referenced against the employees and having some more variety in tree sizes where some are truly pretty tall and maybe even wider? Second, the little saplings are great, but would be nice to see them in a root ball rather than a pot? I think when I usually go to nurseries they have the trees just in rough linen bags holding the root ball and dirt and not necessarily a pot. Maybe nurseries here do it and not elsewhere but otherwise I’m wondering where your arborists are putting all those pots post planting 😅 Great vid just some ideas I had!

[@BWDev]

Thanks for the detailed feedback! The staff sprites go back to quite early in the game's development, and at that point the rest of the game looked very different. Got a big redesign of them coming up soon. Pots are mostly a way to differentiate the seedling "item" from the planted seedling. I'm very limited by resolution, and a pot can be easily distinguished with very few pixels in a way that roots etc can't. I'd love to add more detail but it's pretty tricky with the items unfortunately

[@AzraelTheManHandler]

@@BWDev no worries! Just ideas and yeah not sure how to convey roots in a bag with pixel art, would definitely be an interesting challenge. Pot is probably the way to go currently. The staff getting a big overhaul will be cool to see 🙏

[@spenceabeen]

Gonk :D

[@Survivor_Shelter]

Where do you get an AI like that for bots? To give tasks like that.

[@BWDev]

It’s called Behaviour Designer, it’s a plugin on the Unity asset store. You need to write your own actions but it provides a nice UI and basic structure 🙂

[@marcboss]

cool

[@Bomtoi]

Bumberbill

[@aleksitjvladica.]

Finally!

[@Pizzalvr49]

What vs the.e do you use

[@BadgerSquared]

Are these AI behavior nodes coming from a Unity package or did you create that tool just for Lumbermill?

[@BWDev]

I use the Behaviour Designer plugin for the basic behaviour tree functionality / UI, but most of the behaviour nodes are specific to Lumbermill (e.g. remove stump, chop tree)

[@jakadak]

🔥🔥

[@mogaming163]

"Canada"

[@Tom_MC-GG]

Ive got a question is the price gonna be free or will you have to pay

[@arkane002]

lets gooo

[@bobandy7279]

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@BWDev]

🦫

[@حافة]

pls release on mac so i can play

[@BWDev]

Planning to release on mac 👍

[@CHEEKYlad_lol]

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@CHEEKYlad_lol]

🐠

[@BWDev]

:)

[@alexanderwalter4504]

Uh that means you go with Destroy() rather then some pooling for the objects to save memory and improve responsivness?

[@BWDev]

Yes, Destroy isn't a forbidden function that needs to be avoided at all costs. Pooling is used in quite a few places, particularly conveyor belt items - but in the case of trees, they're not being instantiated / destroyed at a rate that has any real performance impact so I've not implemented pooling there.

[@kerzid]

WHAT

[@Twentynyne]

i had found yourt twitter and found that you were having health issues and it scared me, having been a cancer survivor so i unfollowed, will follow again because i love your devlogs and lumber mill

[@kairu_b]

Canada

[@DemonPig666]

Aaaaaaaaa