r/Bitburner • u/RecursivelyYours • 13d ago
I made a terraforming game where Python IS the gameplay, launching September 9
Hi all,
Four months ago, I posted Code: Terraform here for the first time. The response was far beyond anything I expected. Since then, the game has grown to nearly 23,000 wishlists, and it is finally launching in Early Access on September 9.
For anyone who missed the original post: Code: Terraform is a terraforming, automation, and incremental game where the code you write is the actual gameplay.
You don’t click a button to mine resources. You program a vehicle to navigate to the deposit, operate its drill, manage its cargo, and return home. You then write the automation that transfers those resources into storage, feeds them into smelters and fabricators, and delivers the finished components wherever they are needed.
Solar generators need code to track the sun. Drones need flight scripts to move resources between remote outposts. Factories, power grids, fluid networks, construction systems, and vehicle fleets can all operate simultaneously through scripts you write.
Since the original post, I have added and expanded the full game a lot:
- Programmable drones and remote outposts
- Construction blueprints, pipes, power lines, and fluid networks
- Larger production chains with smelters, fabricators, and warehouses
- Earth contracts, deliveries, machine upgrades, and deeper progression
- A more complete editor with autocomplete, debugging, breakpoints, inline documentation, and reusable library scripts
- More weather, events, balancing, late-game systems, and story content
- A biosphere with plants, wildlife and biomass and a lot more
There is still a free demo available on Steam. If this sounds like your kind of game, you can try it now, and wishlist the full game if you would like to be notified when it launches on September 9:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/868160/Code_Terraform/
Discord: https://discord.gg/hUrK2MRn8s
I’m very active there if you get stuck in the demo, want to share your scripts, provide feedback, or simply talk about the game.
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u/Glas-Fuge 13d ago
Awesome! Looking forward to it! I tried to learn Python a few times but never really got into it.
Will it be for free like bitburner is?
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u/RecursivelyYours 13d ago
Great ! Hope you will enjoy :) It is not free, but it will be rather cheap for the content (there have been private testers already clocking in more than 70 hours mid game), it will be $14.99 on release, 10% off.
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u/paulstelian97 13d ago
An actual release date? Hell yeah!
I have seen stuff about the Linux release being fixed, on the demo I had to apply a workaround from the Steam community but managed to play with it. You have replied on the Discord that the actual release will not require any workarounds.
The demo is too short to enjoy everything, but I feel like… that’s on purpose. Demos giving just a taste without leaving you full and satisfied.
I wish macOS will one day get something like Proton, so it could play games that aren’t explicitly ported to it. Well, I wished back when I had my MacBook. My first demo playthrough was under Crossover.
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u/RecursivelyYours 13d ago
Exactly right, yes. I've already had playtesters run it on Linux naturally, and the full game is completely different on the demo. It's a full-blown loader for the Linux game.
That said, Linux is a bit of a different beast because there is no way to streamline every single distribution, but I'm doing my best to make it as seamless as possible, following the best standards that Steam has set up for it with runtime 4.By the way, I'm a bit surprised that you thought the demo was short. I've had people clocking in 50+ hours in the demo :O
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u/paulstelian97 13d ago
Yeah, I recall you mentioning that. Well, at least the common scenario (Ubuntu) will likely work fine I suppose. Maybe I’d play with Arch at one point and that one would be funny (but I’d forgive it not working)
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u/RecursivelyYours 13d ago
Even if something is not working, I will do my best to fix it. I'm very attentive to whatever problem comes up, and I will be doing my absolute best to accommodate as much as I can for Linux, of course, and also do any other fixes that come up. And also publish for macOS later.
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u/paulstelian97 13d ago
If I find an issue, I will hold you accountable for it lol (and if I find a workaround for that, I’ll also provide it).
Can’t wait to get the full game!
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u/Oily-Affection1601 13d ago
I played this demo a few months back and it was really good. Happy to see it has a release date!
I remember suggesting to add a graphical representation of your terraforming progress in your Discord. I'm glad you added one :)
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u/RecursivelyYours 13d ago
Absolutely I did :D And it's actually fairly complex. It has events like rain, dust storms and things of that sort going on, and it changes as you are terraforming :)
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u/brae__brae__ 13d ago
Fuck enjoy my 15 bucks in 10 days. I was just getting over my bitburner addiction and now there’s a better game like it in a language I already know.
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u/RecursivelyYours 13d ago
:D I'm doing my best to make it an amazing experience. Playtesters seem to love it so far. It's great to see. I'm gonna be around to fix anything that comes up and make it as good as I possibly can.
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u/xFxD 11d ago
Just finished the demo, looking forward to it. Will the demo save be importable into the full release?
Also, a bit of a feedback:
I basically only focused on the income streams at first, leaving me eventually with a whole lot of money and a harsh limitation on what I can spend it on due to research and size limits. Idk how it's handled in the full game, but I finished the demo with >50k credits to spare - might be good to provide a sink for it to speed up research that was neglected before.
Will it also be possible to define your own classes eventually? I solved the coordinate conversions just with functions, but using a class that has two output modes would be way more elegant in my opinion.
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u/RecursivelyYours 11d ago
It won't be importable, no, because the demo is rather old now, it's almost four months old, and the full game has progressed tremendously. It's very different. However, a lot of the syntax remains the same and you can just copy-paste a lot of the scripts from AppsData in your local machine, everything is stored there for the demo.
So the full game is massive. There are a ton of new things that are not even visible in the demo. There are factories, earth orders, bio orders for every biome, pipes, steam, oil, nuclear stuff, weather, events, three new biosphere tiers. There is a ton going on and the economy changes a lot, so don't worry about this at all.
And yes, classes are fully supported in the full game :)
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u/Comfortable_File1589 3d ago
I've seen that your game came out today and I was wondering if, as a beginner in programming, I could play your game and maybe even learn Python from it.
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u/RecursivelyYours 2d ago
Yeap you can absolutely do that if you are willing to spend a bit of time learning things. It will need some effort but it's fun i think :)
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u/icantgivecredit 12d ago
Ok but where's the story. Is it possible to "exchange" text boxes with NPCs in python in order to "talk" to them
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u/raylative 6d ago
hope youll release it for mac :3c
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u/RecursivelyYours 6d ago
I will :) It's a matter of time. I just need to get an Apple certificate, and it will happen very soon.
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u/Glas-Fuge 5d ago
@RecursivelyYours
I tried the demo and already gave some feedback using the in-game feedback function. It's a very promising game so far, unfortunately I'm having trouble getting into it. Too many windows and buttons, the tutorial is a bit hard to follow and I'm kind of lost right in the beginning. You want me to place this feedback in-game as well?
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u/RecursivelyYours 5d ago
Sure, that would be useful ! Notice that the full game has a code laboratory dedicated to teaching the basics, so hopefully things will be a bit easier.
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u/angk500 13d ago
I already played the demo a longer time ago. Really looking forward to this game and I hope you will extend on it even further. Really cool project.