I'm just suggesting but I think they should add a tutorial because I had just downloaded the game because it looked interesting, also I really the game but back to the point, when I started I didn't know how to play at all so I had to figure it out but I found there trailer video and that helped a lot.
The game is in pre-pre-pre Alpha, so they can't exactly implement a formal tutorial yet. But I can try to make one:
Welcome to Autonauts! Here you'll build workerbots to automate all the tasks in your quest to make the natives happy. (As of Alpha 14, there is no exact goal or objective. Keeping as many of the natives as happy as possible can serve as a challenge if you need an objective.)
That little guy in the center of the screen is you, the Automationaut! Look how cute you are! (As the Alphas continue to come out, your character will change).
To pan around the map, use WASD, Shift+RMB, or the middle mouse button. To move around, click any tile on the map.
Now let's try to pick something up! Look around for a stone and click it. Good! Now you've picked it up and it's in your hands! Now let's pick up another. See how they stack? You can hold 4 of the same items in your hands at once. Let's put the stones away for now. Use the "/" key to stow the stones in your backpack. Great! If you want to get them out of your backpack, use the "<" and ">" keys to go through the items in your inventory.
You can also use "i" to open the inventory screen. On the upper left, you see 4 squares. That's your hands. To the upper right is you! Those squares around your picture are the slots for clothes that you'll be putting on later. In the middle of the screen, you'll see a long row of squares. That's your backpack inventory. And on the bottom of the screen is for installing upgrades that can help you do more things. (As of Alpha 14, the Autonaut does not have any upgrades.) For now, let's put the stone back into our inventory. Drag the stone from your hands to your backpack. And click X to close your inventory, or just press "i".
Okay, now let's start making tools. You may be a robot, but you can't collect the local resources with your bear hands. Click any nearby stick. Now you're given the options to craft a Crude Axe or a Crude Shovel. For now, let's make an axe. Great! Oh, and one more thing about your inventory, you can drop all things in your hands by right-clicking any empty tile. Press ">", right click any tile, and press ">" again to pull the axe back out. Good.
Now click any of the trees nearby. Great, now you've made a log. You may have also gotten a tree seed or two from that. You may want to pick those up too, but you'll have to stow away your axe with "/" to pick them up. Now let's chop down another tree.
Good. Now let's start building things. Press E to open the buildings menu. Select "Simple Flooring" and place it on any valid area. Press E again to close this menu. Now take your two logs to the blue Simple Flooring blueprint. You can only carry 1 log at a time in your hands because a large item like a log uses up 4 hand slots. Stow them in your backpack if you want to take both, or just take one at a time. Add them to the blueprint by right-clicking the blueprint while holding the logs in your hand. Great. Also, in this game, for every building you delete, you can build it again instantly. Try opening the building menu again with E, click the garbage icon, and click the simple flooring. Now select Simple Flooring from the building menu and place one. See! So if you want to move something, simply delete it and replace it somewhere else and you don't need to worry about "rebuilding" it.
Next, we're gonna build a crude bench saw. We can only put THIS blueprint on simple flooring. We can use our axe to chop up logs into 2 planks and chop up planks into 2 wooden poles. But a crude bench saw will produce 4 planks from a log and 4 poles from a plank. You can see the materials you need in the corner of the screen when mousing over the blueprint.
When you've made your crude bench saw, next step is to make a Worker Assembler. This doesn't need to be on simple flooring. The Worker Assembler is probably one of the most important buildings in the game, as it allows you to make Workerbots which can do a task for you over and over. You can change the item to make in the bench saw by left-clicking it and insert what it needs by right-clicking when you have the items in your hands, like with blueprints. Once you've built it, continue reading.
Great. Now we're getting close to making our first Workerbot. One of the items we need for our Crude Workerbot is a Crude Gear. We can make one with a Basic Workbench from the building menu. This also needs to be built on simple flooring. When you've made it, click the workbench and select "Crude Gear." After you make it, add it to the Worker Assembler as you would with any other building. Continue once you've created the Crude Workerbot.
Awesome! We have a workerbot! But it's not gonna do anything yet. Why? Because we have to program what it needs to do! Press spacebar to enter "Whistle Mode," which will pause (As of Alpha 14, workerbots will not pause in whistle mode while walking until they stop walking) all workerbots and let you select them. Click the workerbot to show it's brain. In the brain, you'll see a button to play, record, and trade. There's also a small square button to expand the brain screen if you can't see all of the program. Have your axe out and click the record button to start programming the bot. Now the workerbot it following your actions. Click a tree and see how the orders are automatically added to his brain. Right now, there should be three commands: "Find Tree," "Walk to Tree," and "Use held item." If there are any other commands, drag them out of the panel to delete them. You can also click the small button of letters to open the command panel to see some more commands that are harder to do in person. Once you've chopped down the tree, the bot need need one more thing. See, right now, if you ran the program, it would only try to do the task once. This is because it doesn't have a repeat loop. Click the repeat button in the of the brain and then click Run. The workerbot should then walk to the nearest tree and try to chop it.
But wait! What's this? It seems he doesn't have a tool to chop the tree down. Try pressing spacebar (Whistle Mode) and clicking the workerbot. Then click Trade. Try giving your axe into his hands and see what happens. Ah! Now he's working! For now, we'll want to stop his program. The tree seeds will despawn pretty quickly and you'll run out of trees. Go into Whistle Mode again, click him, and click Stop.
Here are a few tips: change the program of your tree chopping bot. You may have noticed by now that tool eventually break. The same goes for when this guy is using it. Eventually his axe will break and he'll just stand there waiting for his hands to have an axe to use. To avoid this, open his program window, click Learn (the record button). Click Repeat. Now drag repeat to the program. Drag the other 3 commands into the repeat loop. Now click the white drop-down window on the repeat command and click "Until Hands Empty." Then click any stick and any stone on the map and make another Crude Axe. Click repeat in the lower corner. Great! Now we have a much better program where the bot will make a new crude axe whenever his current one breaks!
Right now, we have a robot to perform a single task repeatedly: To chop trees within his search radius. But we don't just need that. We need to plant the seeds so that new trees can grow, and we need to store those logs in an orderly place. We need to build an assembly line for logs!
To do that, we'll need a General Storage, a workerbot for digging holes, a workerbot to plant seeds, and a workerbot to carry the logs to the storage. Build a General Storage next to the trees and make 3 more workerbots. Good. Now put 1 log into the General Storage (right click while holding a log). Now the storage has become a log storage! It will stay a log storage until it is deleted. Now program each of the new robots to the 3 tasks mentioned earlier. Good. Now you should have a steady stream of logs!
If at any point these workerbots have a battery flashing over them, it means they're running out of energy. You need to wait until their energy empties completely, then manually rewind them. (Notice that these guys are windup robots.)
Now here's something important to the game. Try building a General Storage next to the Crude Bench Saw. Now take 1 log from the Log Storage and put it in the new storage. Ah, now this has also become a Log Storage. But look! This storage has the same number of logs as the first one, and it's increasing with the number of logs put into it. And, the capacity of both storage is now out of 200 instead of 100. Also, as you take logs out of the second one, the number in the first also decreases! See, in Autonauts, all similar storages are connected. This means if you put a log into a log storage, then you can take it out from any other log storage!
Another important tip: if your log production keeps running like this, then your robots will even chop down trees when the storage fills up. When it fills, the workerbot that puts logs into storage will wait until the storage is not full. You can try re-progamming them by changing the "Repeat Forever" to "Repeat Until ? Storage is Full" in the drop down menus. (You can only change this in Teach Mode.) Now click the small "?" box in the Repeat Command (expand the panel if necessary), and click the log storage. Now they'll stop once the Log Storage is full, so you won't have huge piles of logs just sitting there.
Now, let's move on from building a production line and move on to what that game (as of Alpha 14) has as an objective: making the local Folk happy! You may have noticed little sad guys around the map. They need a home. Open the building menu and build a Crude Hut. Now pick up a Folk and place him into his new home. Aw, he's happy now! But soon he's going to get hungry. You can feed him Apples, Milk, Watery Porridge, Milky Porridge, Crude Bread, or Apple Pie. You can even make little clothes for them using spinning wheels and rocking chairs! They won't make him happier, but darn, won't they look adorable!
Now that just about covers the basics. Now build big villages and rescue the Folk. Keep them happy with various foods. Try to make production lines for milk, crops, fleece, metal, component parts like gears, and all the other things you can make in the game. Time to automate everything!
Important tips:
Gears and Wheels are made using a Wood Router.
Some items like Gears use up 10 spaces in a storage, so you can only store 10 per storage placed.
There are currently 3 workerbots: Crude, which are slow and have shorter energy life but have larger inventory and carry more, Basic, which are much faster and last longer but have smaller inventories, and Steam, which are fast and have large inventory but need to be recharged using logs.
Using a Seedling Tray is recommended for a log production. If supplied 15 seeds and 5 fertilizer, you will instantly get 15 seedlings, which grow back much faster than just planting a seed.
When you give a "Find nearest" command to a robot, it will have a search radius where the center is where it first had picked up what it was looking for. You can use beacons to change the exact search area by clicking the "?" on the Find command and clicking a beacon. Moving a beacon will carry the range of the commands associated with them, too.
You might make multiple robots to do the same job, but instead of programming each, you can make Crude Data which can backup and restore a robot's program. As of Alpha 14, you just need it in your inventory or the inventory of the robot to back it up/restore it.
If you want to rename your robots, make a Badge from the Basic Workbench and put it into a robot's upgrades.
To write on Signs, press Z while holding them.
To make fertilizer, put Dung (which a cow sometimes makes while eating) into a Fertilizer Storage.
You need a bucket to milk a cow, remove milk from a Milk Storage and feed it to Folk. Similar with water and collecting from water bodies.
You can cut the local plants and plant them in flower pots.
Having a scooter in your inventory will let you use it.
To go to other islands, build a canoe, put the canoe in shallow water have a paddle in your hands, and use the canoe to travel. You can build a bridge to let bots cross quickly.
If you want to change a storage box's item, you can't directly. You have to delete it and place it again and it will be ? storage again. Remember, you rebuild deleted buildings instantly.
Know that stowing away items ("/") and cycling through your inventory ("<", ">") can be programmed.
Instruments have no practical purpose (as of Alpha 14), but you program robots to use them!
The totem pole has no practical purpose (as of Alpha 14).
The Shout command is used to communicate between robots in conjunction with the "Until Hear" command.
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If there's anything I missed, reply to this.
