It's Still Listening

Echoes of the Machine -- It’s Still Listening

You find an ancient machine, broken and long forgotten, half-buried in the ground. Its purpose is unclear, and its parts are damaged by time, yet something feels off.

The machine is not dead.

A faint energy hums inside it. It’s not active or stable, but it echoes. The power it once had hasn’t truly vanished; it just lost its way. This lingering energy interacts with its surroundings, subtly responding to nearby objects, structures, and even living beings.

Maybe this energy can be focused. Maybe it can be shaped. Maybe, with the right structures, it can be controlled.

This idea is central to Echoes of the Machine, fitting nicely into the mod jam theme. The machine doesn’t act on its own anymore. Its energy still connects with the world, reacting to how players choose to engage with it.

CONCEPT:

The machine can only be configured by changing its surroundings and letting it react to it. No UI or any other form of direct interaction.

By creating specific multiblock structures, you can influence how the machine’s echoing energy is focused and redirected. Different layouts, materials, and components produce various effects, turning leftover power into practical uses.

For this mod jam, I included two different applications of this system, but the design is open-ended. In theory, we could control the machine’s energy in infinitely many ways to achieve different results.

IMPLEMENTED FEATURES:

-Ancient Machine -Beacon Blueprint (5x5) -Ingot Gen Blueprint (6x6)

-Ingot Generator Structure By creating a tiered, pyramid-like structure under the machine and placing metal brick blocks on top, you can turn the machine’s echoing energy into material production.

Higher-tier structures stabilize the energy more effectively, leading to faster output.

Ingot Generator Tiers

Tier 1: 1 ingot every 16 ticks (about 2 ingots per second) Tier 2: 1 ingot every 8 ticks (about 4 ingots per second) Tier 3: 1 ingot every 2 ticks (about 15 ingots per second)

The generator produces ingots based on the metal bricks placed in the structure.

-Metal Brick Blocks There is a brick block for each ingot type in the game. These bricks serve as inputs for the ingot generator structure. Recipes follow the base game gold brick recipe: smelt two ingots in a furnace to get one brick.

-Beacon-Style Structure Another way to use the machine’s echo is through flowers and a more organic structure.

By placing flowers around the machine in a specific multiblock layout, it emits passive, stackable effects. Each flower type interacts differently with the lingering energy.

Flower Effects: -Daisy → Energy regeneration -Poppy → Health regeneration -Cyan Hibiscus → Oxygen regeneration -Dandelion → Stamina regeneration

Effects can be combined freely.

Effect Scaling

Each flower regenerates about 0.3% of the matching resource per second.

KNOWN BUG: If machine isn't doing anything just re-place