Aetherworks

How it works

Look around

Drag to turn the view, right-drag to pan, scroll to zoom — on a phone one finger turns, two pan, pinch zooms
Double-click a machine to fly in and orbit it · Camera: O orbit, I overview (true isometric)
Walk in the works (W, or Camera): on foot at eye height — W S or ↑ ↓ walk, A D step aside, ← → turn (with Shift, step aside), Shift hurries, Space jumps, drag to look, click a machine to run it; up a gallery stair onto the gallery; in the engine hall its walls close all round and a roof goes over · on a phone, the stick walks · esc leaves
Looks → Light: dawn, noon, golden hour, dusk, overcast, moonlit, lamplight, spotlight or storm (and the time of day for the Clock light: the sun, and the shafts through the windows, move with it) · Through the windows: what they look out on, their height and how much light comes through · Air: ground mist, and sparks & embers · Stage lights: theatre spotlights, a backlight, footlights, a colour split, a follow spot and a gobo projector, each with its own strength, any of them together; each card’s More sets it (gels, beam width, softness, motion and aim; colour, direction and height; warmth and flicker; the pair, balance and sides; size and what it follows; the gobo’s pattern (eight, four of them abstract), size, softness and turn), and House lights how much of the ordinary light stays up · Setting: the engine hall (and what its windows look out on), the open yard, the palm house, the cavern, the airship hangar, the harbour quay, the sky platform, the sea-bed dome, an island, a rooftop, a moon base or an ice shelf
Looks (top) opens a drawer with your looks above three tabs — Style, Light and Scene — whose sections open one at a time; a look is everything in the drawer (style, lighting, scene), saved with Save look and shared with Share code; the styles: sixteen solid presets, four linework styles and your own, and a preset’s colours, metal, edges, walls, floor and wear; the showcase: twenty-four looks after yours (Copy all yours to send your versions); the lighting: thirteen setups in two groups, sun and sky, lamps and stage: (Daylight, Golden, Cathedral, Dawn mist, Dusk, Blue hour, Moonlight, Night shift, Theatre, Noir, Fairground, Glasshouse, Storm) and your own, the mood and the light’s own hour; the sun from the side as you look, fixed on a dial, as high and as strong as you like; the pair of lights; the atmosphere — four presets (Clear, Natural, Foundry, Smoky), then a slider each for the haze (its height and colour too), dust, light pools, steam and smoke, a draught, the glow, vignette, film grain and the tilt-shift blur (to 200 %), each well past Foundry
S solid or linework · T the linework: dark, light, blueprint, ink · A atmosphere: Natural or yours · H hide everything

Run the machines

Click a machine: its controls come up, each with a “Try this”; hover its parts for their names and true numbers
Click again to work it (stoke the fire, strike a blow…) · its own keys are on its buttons
M sound · U music · the master clock keeps the works’ time and shifts

Build

Build (bottom, or B) asks what to build on: this works (a ready-made becomes your copy), an empty hall in three sizes, a starter line that already runs, or a guided first works in seven checked steps; on one of yours it goes straight to the library and the tools; Done puts them away
Pick a machine in the Library: its ports are named on the floor, it turns to face what they would join and lines up with a belt end, a pipe or a cable near it; R turns it yourself, Tab a variant, click to set it down
With a machine chosen (or just set down), Next for… at the top of the Library: what it is missing, and what takes what it makes
1 belts · 2 pipes · 3 cables: drag to lay (pipes and cables show their network) · 4 Connect: port to port, routed for you
Problems (bottom right, or !): most have a Fix that does it — hover to see the run first — and Fix all; Output above them says what the works makes a minute, and how a change did
Build view: true isometric in plain daylight, your look back when you leave · History on the tool bar goes back to any step
5 Move · X Erase · ⌘Z undo · ⌘C ⌘X ⌘V · P L J Y steam, line, goods, heat
A gallery: 6 Gallery — drag a rectangle to lay a cast-iron deck 9 m up (drag from the deck to take it up); the hall grows taller for it · Q (or Floor | Gallery on the tool bar) builds on it: every tool works there, and Move carries a piece up or down · light machines stand on it and low ones under it (4.6 m either way), never on a column · 7 Riser — steam (Tab: or the line) up through the deck, for a pipe on the floor to reach · goods go up by a Bucket elevator (on the line) and down by a Spiral chute, each set down under the deck’s edge with a port on each level; a fix or Next for offers one when what a machine wants is on the other level · a Gallery stair in the library, its top against the deck’s edge · building on the floor, the gallery shows as linework · Looks → Scene → Gallery: a grating or riveted plates

Watch

Take the tour on the works’ card, or G: Next stop or → skips on · Camera → Cinematic, or C: the director films the works
Click anything on a belt to follow it, or F for a whole journey: inside a machine the camera films the machine, then picks it up again; its passport tells its story
Tab camera modes: follow, onboard, orbit · esc lets go

Works

Works (top, or the works’ name): Yours, with their pictures, to open, rename, duplicate or delete; the ready-mades as pictures, each opening in its own look (unless you switch that off); and Surprise me — a new works, any theme or one, checked to work: in the look you have, or (Surprise me, new look) dressed in a look of its own, varied from one of the showcase’s and named after it, which Keep this look on the works’ card keeps with your looks; the Looks drawer’s Surprise look dresses the works you have the same way
Change any works and it is kept under Yours as you go, as your own copy: a ready-made itself never changes · the menu (☰) saves one to a file, opens one, or starts a new works
Works codes (at the foot of the Works window, or the menu’s Copy works code): this works and the look it is in, as text to paste into a message; paste one into Open a code to open it (as one of yours, if it was someone’s own)

Orders

Orders on the works’ card (or the menu): customers who want so much by a time — each ready-made’s three, two made up for any other works from what it makes, and eight works to mend; nothing asks you to take one
An order’s card (top right) counts what has come in against the time left, and says what you would have by then at this rate · As it stands the works makes it as it is · Tune it its machines’ controls will do it · Build more it wants another machine where the line is held up
Mend a works: a ready-made with three faults on its line, kept as one of yours; the problems list (!) says where, with no one-click fixes while it is on

Film and photographs

Camera → Capture · K record a video: live with sound, or rendered frame by frame (smooth at any size)
Make a trailer: pick what to feature, the light and the weather; titles at either end
E photograph: tilt-shift, a guide, Enter takes it (or at 2×) · ` performance

Let it film itself

View

Capture

Works

Yours change any works and it is kept here as your own copy

Ready-made each opens as it was made, and stays that way

Build

Orders

The engine hall

Aetherworks

Make a trailer

Feature in this order · ↑ ↓ to move

Your video

How it works

Look around

Run the machines

Build

Watch

Works

Orders

Film and photographs

Credits

Aetherworks