Posted October 27, 2024 by goto64
Development of MegaFactory continues. The latest major gameplay feature that has been added is conveyor tunnels. These allow conveyors to go below ground for up to 5 tiles, so you can route your conveyors below other conveyors or production machines. Now you can make a true spaghetti pasta factory.
On the more technical side, the items moving along conveyor belts are now moving smoothly instead of jumping from tile to tile as they did in the alpha demo. The technical reason for the original movement is that the simulation of the factory runs in 1 second steps. However, by pre-calculating part of the next simulation step, the items on the conveyors can now be shown with smooth movement. Note that the GIF below is running at 12 FPS. It looks even better than this at the game's regular 60 FPS.
With these additions, the major features of the game are in place. What remains now is adding more products to produce, more machine types to build and more technology upgrades to unlock.
The game is now so far along that I will venture a tentative release date of 1H 2025.