Factory Game

The factory game is partially inspired by Minecraft and is in a part another concept I've been trying to work on for a while.

This is old, but I didn't want to erase it, see Factory Game 2 for a more refined idea.

Game Play

The player orders parts which are dumped and a specified square in the factory. The player can move the parts manually or use automatic to move the parts. Through various modifiers, low level parts are transformed into high level parts, including all equipment. For example a player may order iron ore and smelt it (using a furnace) into iron which can then be smelted into steel by adding carbon. Or a player could construct (in a constructor) a motor, belt and bearing to build a conveyer belt.

Each piece of equipment also uses energy which must be purchased or produced.

Markets

All parts can be bought and sold on markets. When a game is generated, all the base resources have a randomly generated price. All other prices are calculated off these, with some padding for energy and production costs. Prices will randomly float, but they will always try to return to their 'set price'. As the player sells products, those prices will temporarily deflate. The goal is to make it so that timing your sales is advantageous while encouraging the player to diversify.

Parts

Equipment

• Conveyer belt: Moved anything placed on it
• Density Sorter: Allows you to sort by density
• Magnetic Sorter: Separates anything with mostly iron
• Programmable sorter: Allows 4 directional output of any resource specified (plus a default direction)
• Small Furnace: Low heat smelter. Things have time they must be heated, anything that falls short will not change.
• Timer: Has a default state, when it receives a pulse, it switches state for a set period of time
• Inverter/power source: On by default, when it receives a signal, it turns off.
• Wire: Conveys a signal
• Bin: Holds anything - only stuff in bins can be sold
• Constructor: Builds simple objects
• Assembler: Builds medium complex objects
• Robotic Builder: Builds most complex objects (and can only be set to build one thing at a time)
• Dispenser: A bin that spits out something at random once a second when it's on.
• Button: Settable hold or not

Resources

• Iron ore: Converts to iron by smelting for 20 seconds
• Iron
• Copper ore
• copper
• copper wire: 1 wire => Constructor
• Rare magnet
• Rubber
• Aluminum Ore
• Aluminum
• Silicon
• Belt : 1 rubber => Constructor

Intermediaries

• Motor
• Microchips
• Magnetic iron => 1 Iron, 1 Rare magnet => Constructor (also produces a rare magnet)
• Hard drives => 1 aluminum, 1 magnetic iron, 1 rare magnet, 1 small circuit board => Assembler
• Glass 1 silicon => Furnace
• Plastic

Products

• Small Circuit board: 1 plastic, 1 microchip, 1 wire => Assembler
• Medium Circuit board: 1 plastic, 2 microchip, 4 wire => Assembler
• Large Circuit board: 2 plastic, 5 microchip, 15 wire => Assembler
• Computers : 1 Large circuit board, 3 small circuit board, 1 hard drive, 1 plastic, 1 wire => Robotic Builder
• Cars:
• Blenders: 1 glass, 1 motor, 1 aluminum

Factory Space

The player must either buy or rent a factory. The price determines the size of the factory. Some factories are also multi-floored allowing the player to remove the floor and drop things through to the layer below or use a vertical conveyer to move things up.

Control Signals

I want something similar to Redstone in Minecraft. There are 3 states on-generating, on-propagating and off. For each cycle, everything starts off or on-generating and the on-propagating signals are calculated.

Some tiles will have a WireWorld simulator in them taking and passing signals to surrounding cells and on-board components.

• Conveyer Belt, sorters: on/off
• Furnace: On/off, also acts similar to a conveyer in that it dumps everything on a square next to it when it's turned off or full (depending on orientation)

Order and Delivery

This is more of a late development feature. Initially when you buy something it just shows up all at once at the drop zone. Later, I want the player to be able to specified lettered drop zones and be able to specify where parts will go. Lastly, I want them to choose a shipping method - more expensive methods will show up quicker and in fewer groups, cheaper methods may take up to a few minutes and may come in several smaller shipments.

Motives

Minecraft creates a motive through Mobs, the basic game is to survive. From this tiny starting point, so much creativity comes until that starting objective is almost irrelevant. I need to find simple motivators. Leader-boards and rare items would be a good starting point. The ability to see other peoples factories would be good.