Automatia Update: All Aboard

The game now opens on a train, and the ride ends with an overview of the farmstead.

The starter train

Charter trains

I've implemented the concept of charter trains, which can take players somewhere and return the next day. Not in the game yet, but it will be a middle-to-late game feature.

Quest tracker

Although the game has quest support, there is currently only one quest, and it wasn't even very visible to see. We now have a quest tracker that shows the main quest prominently.

28-day months

Months are now 28 days long, down from 30, in order to for math to math and weeks to week. I don't want to explain further, it's embarrassing.

Privilege levels

There is now a concept of privilege levels in the server, and I've made it so that players can choose to go into creative mode at will. Doing so requires confirmation the first time, and players will forfeit the possibility of leaderboard rankings.

Final thoughts

This week I've been mostly working on trains, and getting them more polished and reliable. For example, trains rotate freely now, and players can stand on the freely rotating trains (as you saw in the new intro). Another problem was parking a train around a bend (as you also saw), which is now half-solved by pinning carriages to 45 degrees so that they line up better. This took some work, but I figured since people really like the trains I better work in that direction. So, expect more trains, I guess.

Thanks for reading. Bye.

-gonzo