Hello everyone!
We’re finally getting ready for the Alpha 4 release! Our target date is Tuesday, November 18th. Until then, we’re going to release a weekly series of posts to let you know about all the new features and improvements that Alpha 4 will have - starting with one of the coolest new features in my opinion, the Skyling!
HavenCraft is a sandbox game where you’re supposed to build a whole town. But building a whole town is a lot of work, so you need help. Typically, the answer to that is citizens. They can do all the work gathering and processing materials while you’re building. But that means you still have to run back and forth to refill your inventory.
This is where the skylings come in. Like the packling, a skyling is a little robot transporting resources. But instead of transporting them on the ground station-to-station, the skyling flies through the air delivering building materials directly to you. If you know Factorio, you may know this concept from the personal logistics system there.
Simple: As soon as you have unlocked skylings, you can make requests in your new extended inventory + crafting panel:
You can place a skyling station on any stockpile to make the items available to the skyling network:
When a skyling station has resources that match your request, it’ll send out a skyling that brings the resources directly to you:
And then you can use the resources directly for crafting or building!
It was a lot of fun to develop the skyling, we tried a bunch of different things. At first, I just made the skyling by attaching rotors to a packling, while our artist Adriana thought a bird-like creature might be fun:
But unfortunately, wings are hard to animate, especially if you want the flying behavior to look natural. So then we went in the direction of some kind of drone-bee. Something that can do a little bit more dynamic flying maneuvers, while also being a little bit inspired by the real world:
When we tested it as a team in multiplayer, it felt really cool to use, but also looked a little bit like a bee too much. It was supposed to be a helper robot, it would suck if a player thought it was an actual giant bee!
So that’s how we decided to bring in some elements of our bird concept again and create our Skyling from the combination of the best parts:
Since we were working with skylings and skyling stations anyway, we also took another look at the packling station. There were some known weaknesses with the previous packling station, like it being unclear where the packling would park in order to deliver or pick up resources. Another thing that was tough for some players was figuring out the packling station -> hopper -> stockpile connection.
So, we thought we’d make it so that you place the packling station directly on the stockpile, like the skyling station:
What do you think?
Last but not least, you may have seen it already: We finally have a proper logo!
I’m really happy with the logo. The HavenCraft world is supposed to be fantasy-like with some of its own industrialisation elements, like the packling or skyling robots (or some future machines we’re yet to show). That’s why a simple logo with a hint of a gear seemed to fit well.
Do you have any comments on the skyling, packling station, or the logo? Let us know!
