It's been a bit more quiet than usual from our side, so I wanted to provide some insight on what we're working on and how our time is spent. Coding for 0.3 has already been finished a couple weeks ago, so we moved to plan and start working on update 0.4.

The art for 0.3 is almost done and new models have been added with the newest experimental version. There is one additional model (rail miner) missing and we hope we'll be able to upload a new version containing it within the current week. Also we're continuing on working to bring 0.3 to the stable branch and it should happen soon as there are currently no further known issues.

‍Minecarts

What will update 0.4 contain?

The next update will be slightly different than our previous bigger updates as 0.4 will be the foundation for our overarching game goals. Right now Foundry's core loop works very well but we're just researching and it's all a bit of a mystery why we're doing this. We are planning to give the game a little more meaning and have something else to create than just research. I can't tell anything right now because we're in the midst of working it out. However I want to state that nothing will change about our sandboxy and creative gameplay, we're not going to make this into something the game isn't. As of now we don't know yet if we're only finishing the concept phase for 0.4, or if it will already contain said new mechanics and content.

‍Since we're now spending a lot of time in brainstorming meetings and on drawing boards there are currently few features in active development, which in turn means that it's the ideal timing for doing a long-planned under-the-hood rework, which is mostly focused around moving large parts into our C++ core and away from the Unity frontend. This will give us massive performance improvements allowing us to achieve the scale Foundry is intended to have.

‍But we won't drop 0.4 as an empty shell, so there will be new things as well: We're already working on a blueprint system that lets you create blueprints of multiple machines. We think that comfort and accessibility are extremely important (and are aware that Foundry needs further improvements in that area), so a blueprint system will be a good start to build in larger scale quicker.

On top of that we're pretty sure 0.4 will contain some smaller additions as well.

‍I'm sure you'll want to know if there is a time frame for the 0.4 release and you might have guessed it: No, it's done when it's done :) However we hope that it's done quicker than 0.3, although this will mostly depend on how many of the planned features from our concept work will make it into this update and which go into 0.5.

‍Best regards, - mrmcd