Devlog #13: Armour made from road signs, and workbenches that keep working

This round covers 16 October. It's in two halves: the first piece of scrap armour, and a big change to how crafting benches and furnaces work.

Scrap armour

The scrap chestplate, made from road signs bolted together

Armour in Beyond comes in tiers, and the first one is scrap: whatever you can pull off the side of the road. We tried a few looks first. Riot-police gear didn't fit the world and we dropped it. A first scrap pass with a stop sign on a strap looked too flat and we binned that too.

The one we kept is the scrap chestplate: a speed-limit sign, a yellow warning sign, a stop sign and a bent number plate, bolted together and held on with old straps. We built it from pieces of real sign models and fitted it over the long-sleeve shirt, so the shirt doesn't poke through when you move.

It goes in the vest slot and gives 30 armour.
You craft it at the normal workbench from scrap metal and leather.
It also turns up as loot: in armour spawns, as an uncommon find in big crates, and on bandits.

We also added a system that hides the bits of skin under fitted clothing, which stops skin showing through clothes at the joints. The rest of the scrap set (shoulders, forearms, legs) is next.

Every bench has its own queue

Until now, crafting was one personal queue that followed you around. Now each bench has its own queue:

Queue up to 5 items at a bench and walk away. It keeps working while you're gone, as long as it has power when it needs it.
Finished items wait on the bench in a 5-slot output. Click a slot to take what's in it.
If the output is full, the bench waits until you empty it.
Anyone who gets to your bench can take what's sitting in it. Raiders included.

The bench menu: queue, progress bar and output slots

The bench menu has a new section at the bottom right. It shows the queue (the item being made has a green outline), a progress bar in the same style as the health bar, a line saying what's being made and how long is left (or why it has stopped), and the output slots.

Furnaces that run on what you put in

A small base: the smelter, the barrel furnace and a workbench

Furnaces used to be just another queue. Now they work like a real furnace:

5 slots for fuel and raw materials, and 5 for output.
A Light button. While lit, the furnace smelts whatever its slots allow, one batch after another: iron ore into metal plates, copper ore and scrap into brass, gold ore into bullion, and so on.
The barrel furnace burns wood, and every piece of wood leaves charcoal behind. That's now the only way to make charcoal.
The smelter burns propane. One bottle lasts 5 minutes, and it can also run everything the barrel furnace can. It puts itself out when there's nothing left to smelt, so you don't waste a whole bottle.
The furnace window only lists items that furnace accepts. Click one to put the whole stack in, and click a slot to take it back.

The furnace window: slots, the Put Out button, smelting progress and output

Lit furnaces now look lit. We reused the fire and smoke from the forge in our earlier prototype, and placed them the same way: fire at the base of the smelter and smoke out the top. The barrel furnace is a closed barrel you can't see into, so its fire is a flickering orange glow behind the grate, with light spilling onto the ground. Everything goes out when the fuel runs out, and other players see the same thing.

Save and reload

Bench queues, bench output, furnace slots, whether a furnace is lit and how much fuel is left now all survive a save and reload. So do benches you placed yourself.

We tested this with a real save and reload:

A workbench saved part-way through a chestplate picked up from the same second and finished on time.
A furnace saved mid-smelt was still lit after loading and kept turning ore into plates.

Generators are saved the same way, but we haven't tested them yet. None of this has been tested in multiplayer.

Small fixes

Placed stations came out smaller than the see-through preview you aim with. They're now exactly the same size. Anything placed before the fix keeps the old size, so pick it up and place it again.
The main roads between towns are now walkable for AI. This sets up droid patrols outside towns.

What's next

Who can use a bench: whether it's open to anyone in your base, your team only, or code-locked.
The rest of the scrap armour set: shoulders, forearms and legs.
Code locks you can actually fit to boxes and doors, with a keypad screen.