Textorio

TRANSMISSION 006 - You Can Build a Memory Cell Out of Pipes

Textorio runs on pneumatics. Air moves through pipes, pipes have real pressure, and pressure takes time to travel across a network. That was already in the game because the fluid system needed it.

Then one day it occurred to me that pressure is a signal.

High pressure is a 1. Low pressure is a 0. A valve that opens only above a threshold is a comparator. Two lines meeting is an AND. A line that holds its own state after the input goes away is a latch. And once you have a latch, you have memory.

So i called it P.Logic. Pressure logic, bucause everything in my game runs on pneumatics :)

It is hardware, not a script

This is the part i want to be clear about, because most factory games that add logic add a text box.

P.Logic has no text box. There is no scripting window, no console, no language to learn in the usual sense. You build the logic the same way you build everything else, by placing things on the floor and connecting them with pipes. Sensors, gates, comparators, latches, timers, counters. They are machines. They take up space. They can be in the wrong place.

Which means your logic is visible. You can walk up to a circuit and read it, the same way you can walk up to a smelter line and see where it is backed up. In a text-based system the logic hides inside a window. Here it is just more factory.

The memory cell

The thing i keep coming back to is that you can build a working memory cell out of pipes.

Not a scripted "remember this value" block. An actual latch, made of physical components, that holds a bit because of how the pressure behaves. You set it, the pressure stays. You reset it, it drops. Nothing in the code says "this is a memory cell". It is a memory cell because of what it does.

The first time somebody builds one of those without me telling them it is possible, that is the whole game for me.

The honest part: maybe five percent

Now the doubt.

I spent a long time on this. Weeks. And there is a real chance that most people who play Textorio will never place a single logic component, because the game does not require it. You can beat the whole thing with belts and inserters and never think about pressure as a signal at all.

So i posted about exactly that on r/gamedev, and the title was the doubt itself: did i build a whole feature that maybe 5% of players will ever touch?

I expected sympathy. What i got was people telling me i had the question wrong.

What they said

One reply pointed out that redstone is used by well under 5% of Minecraft players, and that something like 95% of custom servers depend on it anyway. The 5% are not a small audience, they are the ones who build the things the other 95% show up for.

Another said they had bounced off Dyson Sphere Program specifically because it has no logic controls. Not "it would have been nice", they stopped playing.

A third one put it best: the 5% number is a trap. You are counting players when you should be thinking about who those players are and how long they stay. Technical players do not play a factory game for 20 hours, they play it for 200, and they are the ones who post the screenshots that bring everybody else in.

I do not know yet if they are right. But it changed what i am optimising for. I stopped asking how many people will use P.Logic and started asking what the people who do use it will be able to build.

So

If you have ever built something ridiculous out of a logic system that was never meant for it, redstone, Factorio combinators, ONI automation, a Zachtronics thing, i genuinely want to hear what it was. That is the entire reason this feature exists.

Comments are open, i read all of them.

Textorio is an ASCII factory automation game with simulated electricity, fluid pressure, steam and logic gates. Solo dev, Hyena Studios, Anykščiai, Lithuania.

Read the original announcement on Steam →

Imported from Textorio on Steam. Steam genres: Indie, Simulation, Strategy, Early Access.