[Android] Assembly Line - Need feedback on game

Hi, i just release a new game on Play Store, called Assembly Line, and i was looking for feedback in all aspects store images, description, the game itself, etc.

Here is a quick description:
Assembly Line is a idle/tycoon incremental game where the player needs to build and manage a "flow" of resources using different machines.

Google Play Link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olympus.assemblyline

 

dude i love games like this. just one thing though to buy a spot of ground is really to high. maybe lower the multitude of it?

 

Hey man, been looking to see if you had a fb page or something to show off my assembly line so far.

The picture I have shown is the assembly line I built in 2 days. That is 2 days also of not really playing too much until the end to create as an efficient assembly line as I could imagine atm. The offline income along with 2x with adds gave me money quick once I could make processors and computers. I haven't unlocked the 2nd assembly room yet but as you can see I can easily afford it. So as of posting this in not entirely sure if there is more content there to unlock? So far the game has been extremely fun for me but from what I can tell a little too easy in my opinion. I see that you have notices this from the Google play reviews and your responses. If You don't mind I'd like to offer a few suggestions.

1. I noticed how from the glossary of different items and the blueprints unlocked some items compliment each other. Have you considered maybe limiting the first assembly room people enter to just one final item instead of offering them all. Say in the first room you can work up to unlock enough blue prints to finally make a engine or even a whole car. Then when you unlock the second room it can be dedicated to assembling computers.

2. I noticed while trying to reach efficincy parts stack up in crafters. I like this so I can know if I need to decrease and reroute certain items going into crafters. However, and this possibly could just be a personal problem, but it bothers me to see those items just sit in the crafter. I have one crafter with 1500 copper wires just sitting there. If there was a way to clean it up out of the crafter that would be awesome, whether it be rerouting excess, selling it, or even 'clean up option which just deletes the extra. I know I could just delete the crafter and put a new one there but, with some I haven't gotten fully efficint yet it just builds up again and also I tend to fumble around placing one back in a rush while items drop on the floor.

3. This maybe a big or issue with my device but I've noticed when trying to place or turn items the game will jump randomly across the screen sometimes even messing up other lines. Again maybe it's just my device, but it only does it when I'm on your game.

That's all I can think of right now. Again awesome game! Love it! Love to see how it develops and grows.

 

I played it since yesterday and it's amazing. I enjoy it so much. I ever tried to find the most profitable assembly line using Excel. The graphics really fit the theme and it gameplay is great.

Anyway, it is like others said fairly easy to reach a point that you've got enough resources to do whatever you want. I think that some blueprints are quite useless as you gain the same money. It is easy to skip a few and plan for the expensive ones.

I've got a few ideas which might help to extend the fun. Basically, it all sums up to unlocking. Here they are:

1. You can unlock achievements when your assembly lines creates certain products. Like, if the assembly line has 10 crafters that all build lightbulbs or create 10 lightbulbs a second you get the achievement 'Philips'. (Big lightbulb factory)
2. New assembly lines can be unlocked when you have certain achievements. You still gotta pay for the assembly lines.
3. You can have different sizes of assembly lines. Example: You start with a small one with maybe a max of 6 Starters. Like: Small 10k with 6 Starters, medium 30k with 10 Starters, large 50k with 25 Starters and so on... This might work great with point 2.
   1. (Addition to 3.) Once you unlock and buy a new assembly line, all the space is immediately available. It already takes quite a while to be able to buy a new one.
4. Other achievements might be:
   1. (Home Depot) Build all the furniture blueprints in one assembly line.
   2. Unlock all the upgrades for the machines.
   3. Make 15k/second profit with 3 assembly lines.
   
   
5. Edit: Maybe a pause button would be useful!

Anyway, you're doing great work! Thanks for this amazing app. Feel free to ask any question you have!

PS. I uploaded the Excel spreadsheet just for fun and I'm not sure, but it looks like the most profitable option with 36 Starters is to build a computer + radio.

 

DUDE! i was just tracking where my game (invasion - https://forum.unity.com/threads/game-invasion-android.503557/ )was in the rankings and look what appears in the MOST POPULAR RANKINGS (australia)


dead center of the page, congrats!

 

Yeah this may go somewhere. I just started and ive seemed to have dropped my other games for this one. What I think is you should keep making this game. Good luck! And 5 stars! -Emerson Munroe

 

I've been playing the game for a few days. It seems like a great game- only it plateaus at making a computer and radio with one starter remaining. I agree with the guy talking about tidying up crafters. And perhaps having orders come through will stop there being one route which makes the most money.

 

Day one, not sure if this is maximum efficiency or not. Making computers.

 

After the update this is the most efficient I've made, though it is only possible because of a glitch (I assume) allowing the newest 2 starter upgrades (+10 starters allowed upgrade) to be bought again after each time the app is freshly opened. The maximum should be 56 starters, but I have used 72.

 

Hey, great game. The update adds some welcome changes. I have some suggestions and questions.

1) Please take my money. I would gladly pay you for this game. I hope you can find a way to integrate paid users into your game design.

2) What are the influences on this game? Obviously there are idle clicker mechanics, but which games influenced the core gameplay? I see some similarities to Factorio and Big Pharma. Did those influence you? Are there others?

3) What's the point of robotic arms? They seem useless. Maybe I'm missing something important. Also, they don't scale with dispenser/processor speed.

4) The new material divider has awkward outputs which results in a lot of simple but repetitive and space consuming belts. Is this intentional. I find it so irritating that I simply avoid using it. Maybe I'm just dense and don't understand the right way to use it.

5) Again, please take my money. I want to support development of this game, but I hate ads. Also at this point I have extreme income and never really need to view ads anymore (which means no revenue for you).

6) Right now, progression is gated by clicker mechanics. I'd strongly prefer something active, like unlocking harder blueprints by building simpler ones. I realize that you're trying to mix clickers and builders, so maybe that's just something I have to deal with, but I'd prefer a straightforward approach that's not time gated. As I mentioned before, it's no longer a consideration for me, but it really shows down the new user experience.

Thanks for the great game. I look forward to future updates.

 

Including the OP there are 8 posts from people that have only made a single post to the forums, except the OP all appear to have registered just to post in this thread (having registered the same day)...

It's starting to seem a bit weird (EDIT: just to be clear I don't mean to call anyone out or imply anything... except I noticed the trend a few posts ago and it's still continuing, it's odd that it's drawing so many people to register and post here? Perhaps the game needs it's own forum?)

 

It appears that currently the only way to interact with the dev is to crawl through his Twitter feed.

That's a crap medium for nuanced bidirectional communication, in my opinion.

I wish they had a forum or something, but they don't.

To be clear, I've had a unity account for a long time. I've just never posted before.

 

Hmm my account does show me as a "new member"

But I'm not, because I had to reset the password on my account to log in. I suppose I never logged in to the Unity community using my Unity account before. So in that regard, your statement is completely accurate.

 

Haha all this for one oven. Someone help me make this more space saving plz

 

Second attempt... like someone said above, the splitter isn' really useful due to it taking too mich space, but managed to balance using them in places and not in others.

 

Weird, but cool. I guess I've just never played unity games and found this forum. I always like trying to help out the community, and figured "why not, it's only an email." Don't know what the other's reasons are.

 

I have 8 starters and cannot purchase more? Also, amount earned versus cost of blueprints and machinery is horrible. It takes forever to buy anything. What's the point of upgrades?? Cost of electricity isn't a factor anywhere in the game so how does upgrading help me?

 

PLEASE make it so that we can change the time and in the case of starters amount too, that items get spawned or processed.. ty very much, love the game by the way!

 

Very nice game overall, i like this kind of game and its quite hard to find some.

There are still some improvements you could make :
-When theres too much materials you could hide them by pressing a button

- The rooms are a little bit too small, maybe 18x18 would be better i think

-Since the update, you should add some settings on the starters to choose the time it takes to generate and the amount too.



Here's how i made a laser line. It requires the 1st amount upgrade on the starter.
I dont know if you can save more space but its hella hard to make

 

Fantastic game!
I would recommend adding a machine with the combined feautures of a "multi selector" and a "splitter"

Here is how i made an efficiant "super computer" assembly line.

 

Great app though through the pure efficientcy that I made my assembly line its lagging pretty hard running on a samsung edge 7 with only 5 or so fps. Not a huge problem but clicking things is sluggish.

This is my oven making machine with for moduals and 0 waste. All the crafters are balanced and the oven are purely profit with no build up of resources. No bug exploits either.

Working to make a super computer one next however it may not be as tight.

 

Great job! Very addicting game!

Suggestion:
Allow us to SAVE our current layout, but then let us be able to create a new layout with the items we have unlocked already. For example, have you played Clash of Clans before and seen how you are able to save a few different layouts for your base defenses?

 

Brilliant game I have enjoyed it the last few days, but the lag is so bad now it's unplayable building the super computer took way to long due to lag waiting 10-15 seconds each time I wanted to Rota machinery and move rollers etc etc.

All so setting challenges so you have something to work towards.

Also don't make it so easy to make money I have only had the game about 5 days and I have unlocked everything and have 5 assembly lines. I currently earn 150k and have 2 billion in the bank and nothing to do with it.

 

You should really get this game on Apple/iOS devices I feel like a lot of people would love this on the App Store.

 

Having a hard time finding any use for the robotic arms given that they are half the speed of everything else. I like the mechanic but, given their speed, one is better off replacing them with a creative arrangement of splitters.

 

Great game! Its super addicitve and is a lot of fun.. But if u build more complex machinery it starts laggin really hard but still great game.

Build 5 super compact drone productions

 

So far, I'm a huge fan of the game. I love that it's an idle game that requires skill! That's something I've seen very little of, personally. I love that you have a recipe list, rather than needing to mess around, combining random junk to "discover" recipes. What a time waster that is, right?

I do have a few suggestions that might improve your game, too. Keep in mind, I'm an engineer and a math dude, so while I haven't "crunched the numbers," the following is still how I feel.

1. Plates are too damn profitable. I spent the first few days manufacturing different low tier recipes and ultimately returning to a plate-only setup because it invariably was more profitable. This means that as a NEW PLAYER, I was incentivised to build a BORING assembly line. I was not incentivised to make multi-ingredient crafted goods, which is where the fun plant-layout and design comes from.

2. Changing your manufactured good is too damn tedious. When I want to change the manufactured product entirely, my process is always the same: move every block to one end of the map, build the new line starting at the other end of the map. In move mode, you can only select one block at a time. If instead you had a select multiple or all function, this wouldn't be as hard. Instead, and especially after a few days of playing, it takes significantly less time to simply sell everything in the plant and repurchase everything as you build the new line. This is so much faster that, although you lose 10% on everything, the time saved means production starts up sooner and earns that difference or more during the time saved. But, neither of these should be the necessary process. My ideal interface would allow me to create groups of blocks that I could move together, allow me to store blocks or groups of blocks in an inventory (per plant, with perhaps a fee to transfer blocks between plants?), and allow me to build saved block groups so long as their components are available in my inventory. One block group I use constantly is the circuit group. 2 by 3, starter gold pointing to crafter in the middle, copper pointing to wire drawer pointing to crafter on the ends. If I had a bunch of starters, wire drawers, and crafters in my inventory, I would love to be able to plop down those 6 blocks as a group from my saved configuration.

3. Starters and crafters show no indicator. When I start a new product, I reuse all of my starters and crafters. Going through and checking every starter three times to make sure they're all set right is a pain in the ass.

4. What's the end game? I see a lot of opportunity for your game to continue. Look at Burrito Bison. They built in a mechanism that allows you to start over the game and keep having fun, over and over. Consider allowing your players to start over from scratch with a few new unlocked recipes and lower profit margins. Maybe after starting over random blocks on the plant floor are blocked off and can't be used? Maybe after starting over you have the option to purchase an existing plant with some machines in place that can't be deleted, forcing the player to understand the existing material flow and integrate with it?

5. Do rollers use electricity? I couldn't find any info, but I could have sworn my plant efficiency (and profit) went up after doing nothing but reducing the number of rollers. At any rate, a message under the info tab specifying that it does or doesn't have a running cost would be nice.

6. If a stack of three material has one added to it, does it hold four? Or is that added material lost? I know I can experiment to see if this is the case, but I think the animation of showing a growing material stack makes this game mechanic ambiguous.

7. While in the unlock tile mode, if I select more tiles than I can afford and then without changing the selected tiles my money increases beyond that cost, I still cannot make the purchase. I have to deselect and then reselect one tile for the purchase to become possible

 

What's the completion rate on the laser here? As in, one laser per how many time units?

 

Love the game and I think I found a great way to make money when you first start. Unlock the hydrolic press then make it unlock all upgrades for then keep up grading you starters and then use spliner once you make 2 resources and I can make 20k per second on just one line mind you I have 3 lines now and could not the other 2 to stop which would be a nice feature to control each line separate. Anyway love the game and her is a screencap of my discovery.

 

I used the plate to basicly gain profile till I unlock everything

 

I really like your game. It satisfies my urge for programming and my OCD. I wish that I could reset an assembly line recovering some of the costs. And, I wish I could relock and refund some of the cost of unlocked tiles on an assembly line.

Your game rocks thank you,
Rafiki

 

Hi, i loved the game, is a 3 way split possible to be implemented?

This is my layout for super computer.

 

Love the game, but yea I got laggy issues after using up all my starters lol. Oh God I need to share my set up. Here's my line for 2 super computer every 30 seconds. I finally could make the good side out of my major (industrial engineering) lol

 

Wih the update that introduced the different types of splitters, it made everything a lot better. i love this game and would love to see more products to make. i was able to make a 10 second Super Computer factory becuase of the new updates.

 

I've been looking for somewhere I could comment to reach the developer of this game. First up, really impressed by agiliesma's layout... I spent all day building a 10-second supercomputer layout, but mine has no empty spaces at all, and is almost a solid block of splitters. Yours blows me away.

Anyway, one of the biggest problems I have is that when I press a button (usually the 'pause' or 'rotate' button) while zoomed in, it also brings up the information panel for the module underneath the button. Does anyone else have that issue? I find it really frustrating, and would appreciate if it could be fixed in an update soon.

I also notice that robot arms are rendered almost useless because they take 2 seconds per resource rather than 1. If they had a 1-second cycle (or could be configured to lift 2 resources; maybe after an upgrade like the starters) then they could be used as an easier but less space-efficient way to feed the various processing modules. So far, the only use for them I've found is duplicating resources (by having two arms pick up the same resource at the same time)

The lag is also a bit of a problem. As soon as I had starters making two resources, the frame rate starts to drop. Looking at the memory usage shooting up and down, I'm guessing you've got a simple object for each resource (coords and type?), and you're allocating memory for one every time it's created. I'm not a Unity developer, but I've started building my own version of this game in a language I'm more familiar with to test out the efficiency of various methods, and I found one that I think might reduce lag (as well as avoiding the issues I sometimes see when resuming the game after idle time: with some resources being stationary between two adjacent modules, and crafted resources getting stuck inside the crafter that made them).

Don't know if you'd be interested to see my methods; it would probably be quite a large change at this point. But I really think this game needs to be more efficient, because with it rendering less than one frame per second, it's impossible even to see if an assembly line is working like I intended.

 

This is my setup

 

Here is my lazermaking setup

 

And here is the most compact motor setup i know of 3x3

 

Great game, thanks

I've played around recreating this game in another language (I'm not a Unity developer); so including some suggestions here in case you find them useful.
In order to minimise the lag/slowdown with lots of components in play, I found that I could make a more efficient model by not representing individual resources internally. I used objects representing a 'flow', which is the motion of resources from one tile to a neighbouring one. A flow has a source X/Y, a direction, the timestamp at which it starts, the time it takes to repeat, and an array of individual resources and their times within the cycle. The output flow of a starter, for example, has a cycle time of 1 second. The output flow of a roller has a cycle time that is the lowest common multiple of all the flows feeding into it.
Once a module knows all the flows going into it, it can produce its new output flow, and pre-render a set of animation frames that can just repeat for that module. It also produces a new output flow with a future timestamp, because the output flow will change a half second after the input one. This allows you to build a queue of modules whose input flows are going to change, and allow the results to be precalculated.
A crafter or similar can easily calculate the net change in resources it contains with each cycle repetition. So when you tap one to see what it contains, it's simple arithmetic (and fast) to multiply that by the number of cycles since you last looked. And when it is calculating its output flow, it knows the net change in the module's contents. If that's negative (it's not being fed enough resources for what it's making), it can divide the difference by its current contents to determine when it will run out; and put that in the queue of required recalculations.
With this model, you only need to calculate where any resource is when the player changes something; and you have at least half a second leeway before the changes impact a module other than the one they changed. So you can consistently hit whatever framerate you want without taxing the CPU. While the player isn't actually tapping on anything, the game just displays a 16x16 grid of animated tiles, and adds a list of amounts it's already calculated onto the bank balance.

 

Thanks for the feedback, If you want to see more builds, let me know.

The glitch with the info button doesn't seem to happen to me though.

 

Very addicting game!!! Congrats!

 

Hello Olympusgames,

Thank you for posting here. I've been playing your game and spent many hours tinkering around with production layouts - I'm very impressed with how open it is.

As requested, just a few pointers on what I think could be improved upon:

1) A lot of the blueprints are currently unnecessary and should have to be unlocked in sequence - I'm pretty sure most of the ones in the middle are ignored for the higher-level blueprints because...
2) ...Money can be made a bit too easily in this game. Granted you've tried to balance this by making successive assembly lines cost more money (and the tiles within them) but after you reach 1B of credit, everything becomes a drop in the ocean really. You might want to look into balancing it a bit more.
3) Manipulating tiles takes too long (unlocking and moving line parts). This game would benefit greatly from a select area function, so tiles can be manipulated more easily as it would save so much tapping on the screen.
4) Lastly, even with the production line paused, placing new starters and then selecting their spawn item causes them to start.It means having to start/stop the production line again to get them to cease. Not a huge gripe - just unexpected behavour.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning - this is an excellently presented and you've done a great job of it so thank you so much. If you choose to monetize this in the future I will definitely be purchasing it again so you get something for your effort!

Regards,
Richy

 

Just to clarify, i did not make this game. it's @OlympusGames that made it.

 

Here are 4 of my lines. It's a good game but it gets to a point where you can't progress further very quickly. I think perhaps with the more expensive lines there could be more space or even different shapes.

 

How bout dat? Super computer factory .1 per 10s

 

Having a ton of fun with this. Here's my first profitable line, symmetrical computer production. Timing for all the alternating rollers is 1sec. Took me a bit to put together but I'm happy with the result. Already starting on my next!

 

Bro will be rly nice if you update the game

 

This game is so cool, i was kinda eager to see if i could replicate this in .net platform , if you don't mind i borrowed the machine texture a little bit (no intention to release this code!!!) it is using the GDI so no extreme results are really realistic to get with this project, but so far so good. I don't know what method you use to move the resource along the way in convoyers, i used 2d velocity and friction physics. It only has a few types of machine, conveyors, buyers, filters, recyclers and creator. Keep on the good work friendly regards from fellow coder and fan!

 

@Barret Looks amazing, I see you used a couple Minecraft textures as well.

@OlympusGames As for game improvement, Assembly Line could use a bit of optimization so that running several complex lines won't impact performance as much. Currently with 4 lines per factory it runs at a crawl on my phone, and only runs faster on my computer thru Bluestacks. Also, it doesn't support changing screen orientation, at least not on Bluestacks. Any chance that could get supported?

Also, I'd like to see the ability to backup our data to a cloud storage, so we can move the data from device to device. This would be a godsend for players like me, who want to play it on another device or on an emulator, but don't want to have to start over.

 

I Love this type of games, not a fan of the graphics, but great game overall