Clockwork Empires
ALPHA 49B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH ON STEAM
Changelog:
populated new biomes with terrain textures, game objects, biome transition definitions
added Desert Fox, Snow Fox, various Tortoises, Wooly Aurochs, Arctic Dodo
added wild grapevines that can foraged for grapes which can be made into wine
the "Hale & Hearty Recovery" event has been updated and is re-enabled
colonists will wait until they are hungrier before resorting to eating trade food
colonists will get better memories from eating trade food
added particles to stone charcoal kilns when in use
streamlined the following events to work with the new mini-event system: Bandit Corpses, Bandit Wants to Join Colony, Fishpeople Caravan, Fishpeople Patrol Beach, Fishpeople Send Raiders, Organized Citizen Finds Supplies, Ravenous Herd, Research Family Tree, Scholar Report
added code support for events that spawn items to list the items spawned in the text of the event.
added images for several "?" help screens that were missing them
added different day/night lighting sets per-biome
FIXED: people would be creeped out by their own creepy whispering
FIXED: people whispering creepily wouldn't animate
FIXED: issue with the "get up from doing pushups" animation
FIXED: cannot embark in 100% water
FIXED: embarks that would dump you in 100% water will now place you on land
FIXED: terrain side texture scaling now set to 100% universally
FIXED: gossip was not creating meaningful emotional reactions
FIXED: biome moisture/temp defs so all intended biomes appear on generated map
BIOMES!
-- GG
ALPHA 49A HOTFIX NOW PUSHED TO DEFAULT BRANCH OF CLOCKWORK EMPIRES
Anyhow, that's enough of that. Changelog below:
- FIXED: dead colonists will never try to set revolt icon on themselves
- FIXED: Bandit corpse scripterror
- FIXED: Republique invalid trade item
- FIXED: ForceDropEverything error due to invalid trade item spawn
- FIXED: Colonists denounce cowardice scripterror
- FIXED: mineral beacon tooltip
- FIXED: people thought they blamed themselves for the woes of the colony when someone else blamed them
- FIXED: all agents will now ignite correctly from environmental fire
- FIXED: military will no longer use invisible guns after training sessions
- FIXED: crash starting new game or creating world on UNICODE systems or systems with weird write permissions
- FIXED: agents not correctly having their hostile bit set, or having hostile bits reset
Tinkerty-tonk,
-- Gaslamp Games
Clockwork Empires March Update: "The Joy of Work" is now live!
The March update, "The Joy Of Work" is now live!
MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES
- A lot of UI work has been done. A LOT of UI work has been done.
- Completely overhauled farming system
- More economy development!
- Lacquered planks!
- Fixed the spelling of the word "chermistry"
The full change log overflowed the Steam character limit, so the full change log can be found here! We're not even going to try to post it here, it's so long and contains such terrible things that your eyes were not meant to witness. Here is a selection:
UI
- overhauled basically the entire main UI
- changed main window text ticker to have three sizes, default is middle size
- added confirmation dialog on changing work crew times (will add a “don’t show this again” option later
- reorganized colonist list to be more compact, have a bit more functionality, and be more of a “white pages” for colonists.
- alerts now batched by type to cut down on spam. When targets for zoom are batched into an alert, repeated clicks will cycle through zoom targets
left click and right clicks swapped on the alerts. this is intentional, and is going to be a little weird for the first bit, sorry! - alerts corresponding to player choices are now separate from those not. Pop-up events cut back to fall in line with future plans for content.
- alerts now have varying degrees of importance, with pop-out detail windows replacing the huge tooltips which vary in detail and size corresponding to the importance of the alert. more important alerts also have different button art.
- modified work shift box to sync visual refresh with processing of button click
- added more “?” box help windows for various buildings
- cleaned up some building UI styles
- added unique religious doctrine icons
- added skill level and tech modifier display to all workshops’ UI
- tooltips now flip position near screen edges
- moved version number slightly to not cover new UI arrangement
- added more tutorial definitions
- changed +/- in work crew UI to up/down chevrons
- repositioned and fixed tooltips for main menu alerts
- shorted some UI sounds slightly
- tweaked how portraits are handled in work crew UI (unsatisfied with this, more work to come)
- day/night widget now survives save/load, has reliable day count information on it (finally), shows name of current hour
- collapsed work crews now show working status of MC char by highlighting their name tag button
- expand All / Collapse All button now on work crew UI window. Work crews now start all expanded.
- added correct icon when office is complete to completion ticker message
- FIXED: more flickering tooltip issues
- FIXED: we were showing the wrong background size for expanded farms
- FIXED: “chermistry”
- FIXED: bug where shortening the interior pane of a scrollable window to the point where the scrollbar would disappear would not reset scroll position and instead cause elements to be permanently out of view.
Work Crews
- reworked character shift work tests to be less error prone and cut its code footprint significantly
- added floating alert for revolting workcrews
Farming
- overhauled farming system
- hooked up farms to the new UI system like some kind of cyborg. a plant cyborg.
- FIXED: perennial harvest stage calculation off by one
- FIXED: Fishpeople will not attack ungrown crops
Economy
- added Laquered Planks (made in the chemistry workshop and now required for some high end buildings/modules. You can get laquer from beetles, trade, and (temporarily) laquer trees, which will eventually be moved to another biome.)
- Pub no longer requires brewing devices to build (As you can acquired alcohol via trade now)
- balance: rebalanced costs for a number of buildings.
- balance: partial mining/ore rework (Surface nodes yield less ore and are less common. Removed Stone Charcoal Kiln and added iron requirement to Brick Charcoal Kiln. Mining will now always yield at least some coal. More ores are necessary to make metal bars. More bars necessary to make plates/pipes. Regular stone will occasionally produce ore. More ore added to traders. Added “ore trader mission” to stahlmark foreign office events. Rebalanced costs of all metal-costing modules.)
- balance: Quality Food and Premium Food now produce food at a 1:1 ingredients/output ratio.
- TEST: temp. removed flax and cloth from the game (until they tie into more interesting upcoming things)
- balance: trade values of large number of items updated to reflect reworking of ores/metals
- balance: lower-level kilns/ovens don’t require advanced metal parts to repair
- FIXED: many boxed modules took no time to assemble
Events
- added Foreign Relations Correction event
- added ability to attempt to intimidate bandits w/ trained military
- added a bunch of new foreign office options (3 per non-empire nation)
- all remaining instances of losing/gaining “Prestige” have been converted to faction standing
- when trader arrives at trade depot, an alert will be created
- added variant to Novorus Logging Moratorium to reflect conditions if you initiate it while hostile
Characters
- colonists will now flee from fire
- increased delay before colonist waiting for service alerts trigger again
- colonists will wait slightly longer before eating food not suited to their social class (the gross food consumed over time is the same)
- balance: did first revision pass on happiness from ALL memories
- balance: confession now takes less time
- FIXED: colonists would become stuck in graves forever while trying to bury the dead
... and we've run out of room already. Sheesh. You'll just have go to see for yourselves.
The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. There are, as always, still pictures of cute animals.
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums!
Beware the Ides of March! Or, if you were stabbed during the Ides of March, seek medical treatment immediately.
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 48D OF CLOCKWORK EMPIRES NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Why did we push it there? We do not know. It is simply the nature of things. One pushes, and one is pushed, and so it goes. Here are some changes:
- modified work shift box to sync visual refresh with processing of button click
- buttons now respect padding as if they were container buttons
- changed main window text ticker to have three sizes, default is middle size
- added confirmation dialog on changing work crew times (will add a "don't show this again" option later)
- modified config file code to write out changes to the file when a variable is changed rather than on exit to avoid the - issue where an unsafe exit would lose changes
- reorganized colonist list to be more compact, have a bit more functionality, and be more of a "white pages" for - colonists.
- alerts rewrite as part of ongoing UI organization to make way for Fun.
- alerts now batched by type to cut down on spam. When targets for zoom are batched into an alert, repeated clicks - will cycle through zoom targets
- left click and right clicks swapped on the alerts. this is intentional, and is going to be a little weird for the first bit, sorry!
- alerts corresponding to player choices are now separate from those not. Pop-up events cut back to fall in line with future plans for content.
- alerts now have varying degrees of importance, with pop-out detail windows replacing the huge tooltips which vary in detail and size corresponding to the importance of the alert. more important alerts also have different button art.
- added floating alert for revolting workcrews
- shorted some UI sounds slightly
- added "shoot bandits" command to bandits
- FIXED: construction materials dropped by re-assigned worker would sometimes be frozen in space
- FIXED (48C): farming work crew wouldn't increment overseer skill
- FIXED (48C): perennial crops
- FIXED: "chermistry"
- FIXED: perennial harvest stage calculation off by one
- FIXED: some event art had a missing edge
- FIXED: really, really explicit setting of when fire is ON or OFF
- FIXED: possible scripterror in foreign_invasion
- FIXED: Fishpeople will not attack ungrown crops
- FIXED: do_science.fsm now won't scripterror after save/load in certain circumstances
- FIXED: selection box not letting you select some objects
- FIXED: some more crashes
- FIXED: a couple of uninitialized variables doing Fun Things
Pip pip,
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 48C NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Changes:
lab optimization, take 1
clearables now use assignment beacons correctly in all cases
tweaked how portraits are handled in work crew UI (unsatisfied with this, more work to come)
day/night widget now survives save/load, has reliable day count information on it (finally), shows name of current hour
collapsed work crews now show working status of MC char by highlighting their name tag button
expand All / Collapse All button now on work crew UI window. Work crews now start all expanded (since you don't have enough crews for this to be an issue at - start)
added correct icon when office is complete to completion ticker message
when trader arrives at trade depot, an alert will be created
(48B): all crops re-added)
miners will now receive building quality memories for the mine they're working in
added variant to Novorus Logging Moratorium to reflect conditions if you initiate it while hostile
balance: trade values of large number of items updated to reflect reworking of ores/metals
balance: lower-level kilns/ovens don't require advanced metal parts to repair
balance: confession now takes less time
balance: building costs changes using new materials
FIXED: building Mineshaft Module crash
FIXED: "sucked up to" memory text
FIXED (48B): wheat harvest error
FIXED (48B): text errors in foreign_relations_correction
FIXED: many boxed modules took no time to assemble
FIXED: bug where shortening the interior pane of a scrollable window to the point where the scrollbar would disappear would not reset scroll position and instead cause elements to be permanently out of view.
FIXED: a couple of crash bugs
FIXED, probably: "run-time error" dialog message
FIXED: barbershop crash
FIXED: zones can now be deleted again
Everything is on fire,
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 48B of CLOCKWORK EMPIRES NOW ON EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
- Massive UI overhaul
- New farming system
- Major ore/metalworking rebalance
- Added Lacquer & Lacquered Planks as high quality wood material
- NOTE: flax plants, cloth industry, and the entire tropics have been temporarily removed. Do not be alarmed! Everything will be tip-top.
Full changelog:
overhauled farming system
added Laquered Planks (made in the chemistry workshop and now required for some high end buildings/modules. You can get laquer from beetles, trade, and (temporarily) laquer trees, which will eventually be moved to another biome.)
added more "?" box help windows for various buildings
added Foreign Relations Correction event
added ability to attempt to intimidate bandits w/ trained military
revised the farming system, first iteration
cleaned up some building UI styles
added unique religious doctrine icons
added skill level and tech modifier display to all workshops' UI
added military science category plus 3 military techs
colonists will now flee from fire
increased delay before colonist waiting for service alerts trigger again
all remaining instances of losing/gaining "Prestige" have been converted to faction standing
Pub no longer requires brewing devices to build (As you can acquired alcohol via trade now)
added a bunch of new foreign office options (3 per non-empire nation)
colonists will wait slightly longer before eating food not suited to their social class (the gross food consumed over time is the same)
added fixed-size zones (several crop tech unlocks temporarily deactivated)
tooltips now flip position near screen edges
moved version number slightly to not cover new UI arrangement
overhauled basically the entire main UI, the work crew UI, and the factions UI
reworked character shift work tests to be less error prone and cut its code footprint significantly
learned some things about finite number sets
hooked up farms to the new UI system like some kind of cyborg. a plant cyborg.
added more tutorial definitions
re-added jobs button (which was removed earlier in this build) because it still has unique and valuable functionality. needs to be reconsidered at some point.
changed +/- in work crew UI to up/down chevrons
repositioned and fixed tooltips for main menu alerts
balance: rebalanced cost types of a number of buildings.
balance: partial mining/ore rework (Surface nodes yield less ore and are less common. Removed Stone Charcoal Kiln and added iron requirement to Brick Charcoal Kiln. Mining will now always yield at least some coal. More ores are necessary to make metal bars. More bars necessary to make plates/pipes. Regular stone will occasionally produce ore. More ore added to traders. Added "ore trader mission" to stahlmark foreign office events. Rebalanced costs of all metal-costing modules.)
balance: Quality Food and Premium Food now produce food at a 1:1 ingredients/output ratio.
balance: did first revision pass on happiness from ALL memories
balance: ALL Obeliskians will start dormant
FIXED: colonists would become stuck in graves forever while trying to bury the dead
FIXED: Pubs can now handle multiple booze vats
FIXED: various typos
FIXED: scripterror in Laboratory (if points were maxed)
FIXED: burning objects could leave invisible hot spots that ignited stuff forever
FIXED: Obeliskians would sometimes attack dead humans and dead fishpeople
FIXED: Foreign Invasions will be called off if you manage to switch diplomatic state to non-hostile
FIXED: fishpeople won't interrupt fleeing people for intimidation
FIXED: more flickering tooltip issues
FIXED: we were showing the wrong background size for expanded farms
FIXED: flickering tooltips
FIXED: building crash
FIXED: all boxable modules should have tooltips explaining where they can be built now
FIXED: boxed pipes were used to build barometers and vice versa.
FIXED: could make windows out of glass bottles
FIXED: wall shrines' access point was really far away
TEST: temp. removed flax and cloth from the game (until they tie into more interesting upcoming things)
NOTE: start of overworld/biomes work is occurring, which is why the tropics are temporarily unavailable.
Pip pip,
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 48A OF CLOCKWORK EMPIRES NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
The main change here is that we fixed a number of crash bugs in Alpha 48 that crashed the game at random. As fixing these bugs required breaking people's saves, we didn't feel like it was appropriate to push this hotfix to the main branch. So, instead, it is an experimental branch patch.
CHANGELOG:
- things crash less
- added more random work crew names
Enjoy your weekend,
-- Gaslamp Games
February Update Now Live: "All According To Glorious Design"
The February update, "All According to Glorious Design" is now live!
MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES
- Building creator, module placer, zone creator rewritten! Building stuff is more accurate, more efficient, and all-around improved! 200% of the rich flavour you demand!
- Added happiness-to-workshift system: Now emotions matter. The happier your colonists are – well, your overseers anyway – the longer your work crews will work.
- Science!
- Chapel doctrines!
- Optimization!
The full change log overflowed the steam character limit, so below is everything we could fit, but the full change log can be found here!
Building Designation / Module Placement
- performed complete rewrite of module and building placer
- terrain flattening is now defined using a proper zone and widget, and not the awful old little yellow beacon system
- FIXED: zones are designated per-verte, not per-tile
- FIXED: module placement crash when SHIFT-clicking multiple modules or placing modules rapidly and in succession
- FIXED: various issues with snapping modules not working correctly at all
- FIXED: extruded blueprint for an exterior model extends one unit behind the actual module (or more, depending on the interior height)
- FIXED: right-clicking in the zone creator let you break things
- FIXED: zone creator max size reporting was off by 1
- FIXED: another case of the small mysterious colored square
- FIXED: saving in blueprint mode and reloading would cause invisible modules
- FIXED: barbershop and other exterior decor items create raised platforms
- FIXED: window height incorrect
- FIXED: pressing ENTER without having specified a correct blueprint would crash the game
Colonists / AI
- added new happiness-based workshift system
- balance: lowered desire to listen to sermons slightly
- balance: generally increased happiness from memories for new workshift system
- FIXED: civilians weren’t correctly dropping firearms
- FIXED: colonists will drop goods when retreating (fixes possible instances of objects attached to hands)
- FIXED: when colonists talk while holding very large items, they’ll no longer swing them around crazily while gesticulating
- FIXED: civilians were not fleeing with appropriate aplomb from hostile Fishpeople
- OPTIMIZED: pathing to object test
- OPTIMIZED: various slowdowns; large colonies should run more smoothly
Science
- added new Laboratory system
- Opium Poppy, Bamboo, and Coconut Palm are now locked by research at start of game
- added some generic agricultural labour upgrade technologies
- added first set of metallurgy/mining techs
- added warning when Lab Office points are maxed
- FIXED (probably): possible infinite loops when studying fishpeople/obeliskians
- FIXED: ghost chalkboard is not longer valid tool for performing research
Foreign Office / Factions
- added progress bar to Do Diplomatic Paperwork
- performed refactoring of Bandit events to fit revised faction code; you will notice that some events have slightly different options
- added “Bandits Visit Town” event
- added “Ministry Investigates Stolen Goods” event
- added “Bandit Ties Investigated” event
- added “Bandits Guard Town” foreign office missions & hook to foreign invasion event
- trade missions now spawn with guards
- fixed up faction descriptions on Foreign Office buttons
- added warning when Foreign Office points are maxed
- added some new foreign office events to foreign nations
- events: made relations changes due to events stated more explicitly
- trader groups now have more appropriate names
- FIXED: relations with various factions would be totally reset by incidental events that should have modified relations slightly
- FIXED: possible infinite loop in foreign_office.go
- FIXED: if your standing with bandits changes away from hostile in the middle of a raid, the bandits will stop attacking (but will still be jerks)
- FIXED: scripterror when attempting to do Foreign Office action on Bandits when none are on map
- FIXED: traders should no longer leave ‘ghost’ trade goods if things get weird
- FIXED 47B: Empire relations weren’t being changed by Foreign Office
Modules
- tables are now “Table and Chair Sets”. You can’t sit in them right now. This will be Improved.
- added boxed module recipes for the following: Chemistry Workbench, Fancy Bookshelf, Hanging pots, Stone Altar, Large Stone Altar, Wood Altar
- updated costs for constructing ceramics and chemistry workbenches
- re-enabled module animations and particle effects on a number of modules.
- re-enabled pickup_animation for modules. This may cause some visual oddness until a related bug is fixed.
- Mineshafts now use particle effects when in use
- module breakage now spawns rubbish
- FIXED: costs for a number of modules with incorrect costs
- FIXED: stained glass windows were not being built
- FIXED: Iron Smelting Crucible consumed one too few bricks
- FIXED: people no longer stick their heads into ovens/workbenches when dropping off materials. Usually.
- FIXED: clothes-lines were not built correctly
- FIXED: carpentry benches wouldn’t break properly
UI
- updated the following tutorials to match current art/gameplay: Cooking, Job Filters, Staying Alive, Using Military
- lessened bureaucrat warning spam
- added “?” box tutorials for the following windows: Foreign Office, Chapel, Laboratory, Mine, Trade Office.
- FIXED: Offices now use scroll bars in their jobs list displays, and display both their assigned colonists and the originating colonist for a job (where appropriate)
- FIXED: triggering frontier justice via ministry investigation events will now correctly place frontier justice icons on target
- FIXED: various typos
- TEST 47C: added more info to carpentry workshop UI (maybe will roll out to everything)
Military
- NCOs of higher skill will now train militia footsoldiers significantly faster
- balance: increased baseline training time of militia to redcoats to encourage use of skilled NCOs
- balance: assigning a soldier away from their barracks will reset their training points to zero; if you want trained soldiers, you must maintain a standing army
- FIXED: when soldiers are ordered to beat someone, they won’t be frontier justiced due to hurting another colonist
- FIXED: redcoats assigned away from a barracks can now be re-trained
- FIXED: Military patrol job will no longer conflict with “squish vermin”
---
The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. (David has started being very particular about which pet photos he allows to be a part of "his collection". He's begun openly discussing having them printed and framed in the office.)
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums!
Have a great February! :)
ALPHA 47D NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Major Changes:
Fixed chapel paralysis!
Doubled cooked food production!
Everyone is happier!
Things are more optimized!
The Changelog:
balance: lowered desire to listen to sermons slightly
rebalanced memory happiness for new workshifts system (upward, generally)
lessened bureaucrat warning spam
FIXED: if your standing with bandits changes away from hostile in the middle of a raid, the bandits will stop attacking (but will still be jerks)
FIXED: civilians were not fleeing with appropriate aplomb from hostile Fishpeople
FIXED: Military patrol job will no longer conflict with "squish vermin"
FIXED (for real): Muskets use correct materials
FIXED: vermin will no longer spawn inside buildings (which could cause Problems)
FIXED (47B): carpentry workshop displayed owner's skill 1 lower than it should be
FIXED: FSM index error when character aborted an office job that was accepted by another character
FIXED: some slowdowns in 47C
OPTIMIZED: pathing to object test
OPTIMIZED: deleting a job was very slow, and since we deleted jobs every time we evaluated one in the main loop it was just awful
TEST: doubled all cooked food output
CLOCKWORK EMPIRES ALPHA 47C NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Major Changes
added new happiness-based workshift system; if your colonists aren't happy, they will work shorter hours. It's very important to keep your colonists happy.
Full Changelog
added new happiness-based workshift system
re-enabled steel in the game (it currently isn't used for anything, though. Emphasis currently.)
re-enabled Chalk (used to make steel)
added some new foreign office events to foreign nations
Mineshafts now use particle effects when in use
added warning when Lab/Foreign Office points are maxed
events: made relations changes due to events stated more explicitly
trader groups now have more appropriate names
module breakage now spawns rubbish
terrain flattening is now defined using a proper zone and widget, and not the awful old little yellow beacon system
FIXED: some bandit related text
FIXED: clothes-lines were not built correctly
FIXED: muskets using incorrect resources
FIXED: workbenches could be built for free
FIXED: right-clicking in the zone creator let you break things
FIXED: zone creator max size reporting was off by 1
FIXED: saving in blueprint mode and reloading would cause invisible modules
FIXED: small mysterious colored square occasionally showing up on the terrain
FIXED: another case of the small mysterious colored square
FIXED: barbershop and other exterior decor items create raised platforms
FIXED: window height incorrect
FIXED: pressing ENTER without having specified a correct blueprint would crash the game
FIXED 47B: Terrain flattening is back
FIXED: carpentry benches wouldn't break properly
FIXED: traders should no longer leave 'ghost' trade goods if things get weird
FIXED 47B: Empire relations weren't being changed by Foreign Office
FIXED: Offices now use scroll bars in their jobs list displays, and display both their assigned colonists and the originating colonist for a job (where appropriate)
FIXED: if a colonist gets tired of waiting for confession/a drink/a barber they will correctly remove the job from the office (this fixes UI overflow and colonist paralysis)
FIXED: "Do Foreign Paperwork" and "Do Science!" jobs are now evaluated using office standing orders, not social jobs
TEST 47C: added more info to carpentry workshop UI (maybe will roll out to everything)
TEST 47C: crops no longer spoil (due to workshift system)
Nerve Stapling for Everyone,
-- Gaslamp Games