Clockwork Empires
ALPHA 44A NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
- Building Quality is now a thing that matters! This is determined by number of functional modules vs. decor modules in buildings and will affect the mood of colonists working or sleeping in buildings. We also added a bunch of new decor and fixed up all the descriptions.
- Point lights are now a thing, so lamps will give off light!
- We've increased madness levels, added new cult formation triggers, and added some more horrible occult events.
Changelog:
- added point lights
- added Building Quality system! You will now have to balance the ratio of work modules to decor in your buildings. Nicer buildings mean happier colonists!
- and added building quality display on UI for carpentry workshops, lower class houses (and maybe others; in-progress)
- lighting rewrite: the renderer now applies interior ambient lighting for objects inside buildings, and tracks it on the interior
- added one-time bailout event if you have more workers than you can allocate to all of your overseers
- added 14 new decor modules
- appropriate decor has been added to all buildings' default module lists
- stockpile UI edited for better usability.
- added Beetle Curse
- added Tree Curse
- added Occult Ritual Murder event
- increased transparency of semi-transparent building walls.
- many modules have been renamed
- many modules have new descriptions
- some events have been given more detailed descriptions for number of ai agents involved
- balance: build costs on all decor have been adjusted
- balance: many more experiences can now trigger "cult seed" depending on character traits
- balance: more strange/terrible events may now provoke cult formation
- balance: fishpeople made less likely to turn murderous when intimidated by soldiers
- balance: corpses will only spawn vermin after being left out for a day
- balance: reduced max bandits that major bandit attack can send
- balance: contact with Obeliskians made slightly more maddening & for longer (due to rarity)
- FIXED: footprint size on carpets
- FIXED: environmental light values now set correctly after save/load
- FIXED: aborting a "Gather Building Materials" job due to an explosive injury would put the job in the wrong assignment, causing it to be completed infinitely
- FIXED: various typos & grammar (farm text, immigration event)
- FIXED: scripterror in certain decision case of "Colonists Denounce Cowardice Vs Bandits"
- FIXED: murder due to hunger
- FIXED: commodity drops upon character death
- FIXED: cult leadership now transitions correctly when leader dies
- FIXED: some memories were not being triggered correctly
- FIXED: some leaking memory
Yours in Occult Ritual,
-- Gaslamp Games
October Update Now Live for Clockwork Empires: "The Memory of Infinite Terror & Malign Vastness"
Our October Update, "The Memory of Infinite Terror & Malign Vastness" is now on Steam! Notable changes include:
- A much improved colonist information panel that shows you what’s on the mind of your people and how it makes them feel — plus all the game mechanics to do with memories, emotion, madness, and character jobs that back it up.
- Pubs to serve brew, Barbers to heal your wounds (this is the Frontier, after all), and much tinkering with the buildings backend to make workshops & offices stronger, faster, better.
- More, better farming controls and food balancing!
- “Tip Top” exotic caviar!
- A lovely slathering of polish & tooltips all over the UI (and ongoing process)
- Newly re-invigorated stockpiles, again!
- (Continuing work on Secret Things, deep and dark.)
The full change log can be found here, but all of the content that we could fit into an announcement can be found below!
OFFICES
- added first iteration of Public House & associated jobs for workcrew operating the Pub
- added Barber (to heal afflictions) & associated jobs for workcrew operating Barber Shop
- added new step styles determined per-building
- Offices can now do internal “standing orders” to keep the office running when it is not performing an office service (for instance, putting drinks in the Booze Vat for safe-keeping.)
- Barbers, Vicars and Publicans now have “service hours” automatically assigned when they are assigned to the corresponding building, in order to allow better service for clients.
- “office” type buildings display a more descriptive title to text ticker now
BUILDINGS/ECONOMY/STOCKPILES
- “office” type buildings display a more descriptive title to text ticker now
- buildings now have grayed out icons if player doesn’t have minimum construction requirements, tooltips with red text indicate what is needed.
- workshop recipes can now be grayed out or hidden based on whether required modules are present in the workshop. Tooltip changes to reflect what is needed. (roll-out to other workshops in-progress)
- graveyards now have tooltips, as do farms without a selected crop
- balance: changed one overseer to a labourer in all loadouts
- FIXED: engine would draw building shadow when mousing over it during construction mode
- FIXED: modules placed in the corners of buildings such as ovens would cause problematic building geometry and geometry explosions
- FIXED: people will stop trying to find closer crops to haul to stockpiles once they check their first stockpile
- FIXED: issues with various job requirements (require_smart_object and require_container_object) causing various problems with stockpiles
- Rewrote stockpile handling code again to more thoroughly fix everything
FARMS & FOOD
- added “Basic Brew” recipe to breweries (this job ill auto-brew valid ingredients)
- merged Brewery into Kitchen. They have become one! Power overwhelming!
- Farms are now directly assigned work crews. A work crew can work on and operate multiple farms.
- disabled farming Workcrew filter buttons to reflect new assignment control for farms.
- added tooltip text to farm crop information icons
- balance: eating cooked food now totally resets hunger (so you don’t have to climb out of a huge hunger deficit as soon as you start cooking food – when a player started cooking food, colonists would consume more than expected to get their hunger down, so cooking appeared to be an inefficient solution to hunger)
- balance: farming made very slightly easier
- balance: made small tweaks to how long it takes to cook things
- balance: pumpkin is now a mechanically distinct crop from corn and has its own stats
COLONIST MEMORIES & RELATED UI
- performed visual cleanup of character information panel layout & implemented some pretty new UI art
- character ui: memories now have borders to show significance of memories relative to one another
- character ui: made emotion bars longer
- implemented “short term memory” functionality: the most recent memory will always contribute to overall emotional state even if less important than others. If another memory is created, it can push this memory outside of consideration if all other memories are more important.
- balance: performed significant rebalance to the values of most of the memories in the game (includes emotional and madness values)
- FIXED: some memory related bugs
- FIXED: missing memory case for when Fishy individual is attacked by Fishpeople
- FIXED: will no longer receive memories for “murdering” animals (TODO: unless vegan)
NIGHT-TIME, SOCIALIZATION & WORK SCHEDULING
- night has been made lighter (so you can actually see anything)
- sleeping people given smaller sight radius
- if objects are damaged near a sleeping colonist, the sound will wake them up
- balance: sleep time reduced by 25% to make nights more Interesting
- balance: characters now get 3 shifts off by default instead of 2 (to give them more time for non-work actions)
- balance: characters get upset for overwork at 1 fewer subsequent workshifts to reflect the rebalancing of workshifts
- balance: did review & rebalance pass on relative utility of all “social” jobs
CORPSES
- colonist corpses should no longer try to initiate burial job there are still hostiles nearby (note: if hostiles leave and come back, you’ve still got a problem)
- overriding auto-burial of a corpse with manual controls will make corpse will only respond to manual orders for burial/dumping from that point forward
- bandit corpse policy event can have “no answer” selected & will fire no more than once per day
- balance: (all) corpses no longer spawn infinite vermin
- FIXED: performed overhaul of handling of all jobs that affect the corpses of all types of characters (burial, dumping, butchery, dissection, etc)
- refactored details of death script for all agents so that common actions/tagging is all handled by base “agent” class; also cleaned up all searches/jobs looking for corpses to use consistent terminology
The list continues like this for some time, the letters gradually contorting into unpredictable, hazardous shapes, as you begin to utter them aloud. As the last of the incantation is read, you jolt awake from the strangest dream of eyes and mouths that vanishes from your memory so quickly you are left feeling nothing but a sense of unexplained dread. You proceed to the full change log here
---
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. We changed the format a bit this month to make it a bit more interesting if you wanted even more information than what is included in the post linked above.
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums!
ALPHA 43E NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
The main change here is that we have reworked (extensively!) the stockpile and logistics code. In the old code, we searched by stockpile, and it might end up happening that a far away good would end up in the closest stockpile to the colonist, causing colonists to put things in odd stockpiles. In the new system, we consider the closest good in each filter category to the colonist, and perform a breadth-first search versus all stockpiles looking for the hauling routine that minimizes total walking distance for the colonist (i.e. "distance from colonist to good" and then "distance from good to stockpile.") This means that, for instance, if you put a stockpile next to a pile of far away resources, and a stockpile in your home base, colonists will attempt to fill the far away stockpile with the far away resources before trying to lug them all home.
Other changes:
FIXED 43C: farm jobs could sometimes get ignored by the work crew working them if you have a lot of idle work crews
FIXED: apparently, require_gameobject never actually did a reachability test to see if we could reach the object.
FIXED: farms now disable/enable filters as crews are assigned to, or unassigned from, them
Various church, fishpeople fixes.
Cheers,
Gaslamp Games
PS. Dev tools will be removed shortly. Never release a patch, even an experimental one, on election night...
MINOR HOTFIX 43D LOOKS AT YOU, IMPATIENTLY
- various stockpile issues that got broken in 43C by our requirements rewrite
- citizens grateful that you have built them a church will tell you about it, forever, until your screen is covered in dialog boxes spawned by thankful citizens and you give up.
Please enjoy your Saturday Night responsibly,
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 43C OF CLOCKWORK EMPIRES NOW IN THE EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Major changes since 43B:
Farms are now assigned to work crews. A work crew can work on, and operate, multiple farms.
Pubs are now more efficient and give better feedback
services buildings (pub, barber, chapel) will automatically shift workcrew hours to be better able to service workcrews on default schedule.
Building icons will be grayed out if you do not possess the materials to build them. Tooltips will display what is needed.
the Kitchen and Brewery have been merged
FULL CHANGELOG:
Farms are now assigned to work crews. A work crew can work on, and operate, multiple farms.
added "Colonists want a chapel" event
added wall-mounted aurochs/beetle heads to decor
Lower class Immigration event has been entirely rewritten! Expect more variety.
balance: eating cooked food now totally resets hunger (so you don't have to climb out of a huge hunger deficit as soon as you start cooking food)
added tooltip text to farm crop information icons
custom character name length now limited to avoid Problems
the Pub UI now shows number of pints available
buildings now have grayed out icons if player doesn't have minimum construction requirements, tooltips with red text indicate what is needed.
disabled farming filter buttons to reflect new assignment control for farms.
graveyards now have tooltips, as do farms without a selected crop
Barbers, Vicars and Publicans now have "service hours" automatically assigned when they are assigned to the corresponding building, in order to allow better service for clients.
balance: sleep time reduced by 25% to make nights more Interesting
balance: rebalanced relative utility of a number of "social" jobs
balance: characters now get 3 shifts off by default instead of 2 (to give them more time for non-work actions)
balance: characters get upset for overwork at 1 fewer subsequent workshifts to reflect the rebalancing of workshifts
balance: pumpkin is now a mechanically distinct crop from corn and has its own stats
balance: lower class immigration now happens 20% more often
balance: Foreign Invasion event is now less soul-crushing (ministry will send landmines, allies will send troops)
balance: merged Brewery into Kitchen
FIXED: issues w/ "Colonists denounce cowardice" event
FIXED: will no longer receive memories for "murdering" animals (unless vegan)
FIXED: colonists overview occupation text
FIXED: scripterror when colonists denounce cowardice vs. bandits
FIXED: logs from chopped down coconut palms now properly set as owned by player
FIXED: doubly doubled entry for Bushel of Orange Cup Fungus would appear when it was foraged
Cheers,
-- Gaslamp Games
(PS. If you are Canadian, please remember to vote on Monday.)
ALPHA 43B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
- performed more cleanup of character information panel layout & implemented some new UI art
- added "Basic Brew" recipe to breweries (will auto-brew valid ingredients)
- added some more names
- added more response options to Fishperson Vandalism event
- fishpeople made much more likely to run when hassled by military, though there's a chance they will become enraged & attack
- added Fishpeople egg collection mission & event
- if Fishpeople see humans near their eggs, they will attempt to scare them away
- colonist choosing to commit murder decision making made more sophisticated
- added Egg Collection mission for Fishpeople
- added an alert the first time someone sleeps on the ground to inform you that you should build beds
- implemented "short term memory" functionality: most recent memory will always contribute to emotional state even if less important than others
- workshop recipes can now be grayed out or hidden based on whether required modules are present in the workshop. Tooltip changes to reflect what is needed. (roll-out to other workshops in-progress)
- made fishperson crisis events slightly more willing to pile up (to avoid lost crisis events)
- night has been made lighter (so you can actually see anything)
- bandit corpse policy event can have "no answer" selected & will fire no more than once per day
- colonist corpses should no longer try to initiate burial job there are still hostiles nearby (note: if hostiles leave and come back, you've still got a problem)
- overriding auto-burial of a corpse with manual controls will make corpse will only respond to manual orders for burial/dumping from that point forward
- balance: performed significant rebalance to the values of most of the memories in the game
- balance: made small tweaks to how long it takes to cook things
- balance: changed one overseer to a labourer in all loadouts
- balance: farming made very slightly easier
- FIXED: some memory related bugs
- FIXED: people will stop trying to find closer crops to haul to stockpiles once they check their first stockpile
- FIXED: selections in the quick menu sometimes not appearing after click-drag
- FIXED: characters with renamed names using old names in some events (and other bits of game logic)
- FIXED: enormously wide tooltips for workshop names
- FIXED: draw building shadow when mousing over it during the construction mode
- FIXED: dark and red portraits for characters (gamma correction)
- FIXED: people trying to shoo vermin beetles (again)
- FIXED: errors in a number of memories that caused them to display the wrong character name
- FIXED: performed overhaul of handling of all jobs that affect the corpses of all types of characters (burial, dumping, butchery, dissection, etc)
- FIXED: some desires were unfulfillable & used incorrect icons
- FIXED: corrected scripterrors in certain cases for Naturalist dissection of horror events
- FIXED: items dropped by non-colonist agents as part of mission should properly set ownership to player if dropped near your colony
- FIXED: dead and/or fleeing colonists can no longer raise objections to your policies concerning Fishpeople
- FIXED: soldiers should no longer hassle fishpeople who are already fleeing
- FIXED (43A): bread not being able to be baked
- FIXED (43A): crash when accepting bandit into colony
Please enjoy more sophisticated murder,
-- Gaslamp Games
September Update Now Live for Clockwork Empires! "The Terrible Truth"
Our September Update, "The Terrible Truth" is now on Steam! Notable changes include:
- Added workshifts & changing light throughout the day
- Overhauled memory, emotion, and madness
- redid character info UI (more to go)
- new office feature infrastructure
Lots of standout work here in the Character and Economics portions of the game, so I'll put the economics section of our full changelog here, but you should check out the full changelog below!
Economy & Logistics
- colonists now can be assigned workshifts, and players can now force them to work overnight, which makes them very unhappy
- stockpile logic adjustment: when a character is free to do a hauling job, they will first check all stockpiles for mismatched filter objects, removing them; then objects in the same stockpile which can be combined, combining them; then filling any empty space with an object that can fill the space which doesn't currently correspond to a stack in the stockpile space.
- stockpiles: characters now assess the closest stockpile to them at all times
- stockpiles: if a character can merge an incoming item with a container already in a stockpile, they will do so rather than dropping and doing it en route (as it were)
- added new “Basic Food” recipe to kitchens that merges stew, meat, and many other recipes into a single button (and removed recipes now made extraneous by Basic Food)
- crops will now reach their “mature” model one stage earlier so you can actually admire them for a bit
- crops will sparkle when harvestable
- workshops: a character will now do the next available workshop job to them at all times, rather than waiting for the current product type to complete; this also strictly obeys the workshop job order on the production list
- added warning when burial job cannot complete due to full graveyard (a common problem)
- balance: slowed down growth/spoilage rate of, and reduced labor required to grow, cabbages and chillies
- FIXED: containers would forget to go back in a stockpile after being removed from a stockpile
- FIXED: animal carcass meat output, when butchered by a player-owned colonist, is now reported as being owned by the player. (And is forbidden otherwise – player must manually ‘claim’ to have colonists stockpile the meat.)
- FIXED: you can click directly on a mine survey point OR drag a box around it to order a survey done (also gave the job a proper icon)
- FIXED: The Fleshcube is now a valid ingredient
- FIXED: optimized stockpile code when you have a lot of goods that need to be stockpiled
- FIXED: bricks will now be stacked
These and the rest of the full change log can be found over on our development blog!
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 was no cat picture this month because, well, we've run out of cats to add. We thought about getting some more just to keep it going, but we decided by committee that this was not a Smart Choice.
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, on or on our official forums!
ALPHA 42D NOW AVAILABLE ON STEAM EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
Changes:
game now remembers the game window location on restart
made a bunch of character info panel changes to expose more of the character state
character window: emotions and madness now shown on a scale
character window: mousing over a memory will show information about how that memory affects the character's state
character window: memories now shown with more detail, image fades as they are forgotten
(character window: lots to go still with this, but it's functional enough to push it to experimental)
colonists who are happy or drunk will occasionally dance
deer will now appear in the New Antipodia biome
colonists will generally be made happier by the presence of local military in the colony.
added new "Quick-start" loadout
added new "Basic Food" recipe to kitchens that merges stew, meat, and many other recipes into a single button
removed recipes now made extraneous by Basic Food
crops will now reach their "mature" model one stage earlier, so you can actually see it for a bit
crops will let out a sparkle when harvestable
scholar Praise Event will now show how much prestige you earned
colonists Denounce Bandit Cowardice event now has an additional possible response
upper class immigrants have been removed from regular immigration.
upper class immigrants will now emigrate at a rate of 1 per available upper class house.
prisoner overseers will now be identified as such
fixed grammar and typos in several events
fixed prestige cost for food favour
added new desire: "Kill some wild game"
added progress bars to workshop jobs
reduced madness from being attacked by fishpeople
added Fishperson dissection job for Naturalists
added Fishy Look Report
"Clear Stump" and "Clear Sapling" jobs are now part of "Clear Terrain"
gravestones are now randomized
prisoners given hats
added Fishpeople Organs
madness overhaul & rebalance performed (rather in-progress)
soldiers will now stow rather than drop their weapons to train
added holy book to some Vicar animations
hunting will no longer display character combat info panel
split buildings into "workshops", "offices" and "housing"; added support for subcategories to the module placer.
split military operations into commands and constructions
a great deal of office code was written to procedurally define offices, and their UI elements
added "office jobs" that will be done by the office crew assigned to an office
added office job UI display widget for chapels
supplicants will now show up looking for preaching if a chair is available for them to sit in at the church
supplicants will also look for confessions if a vicar is around to hear them (confession mechanism currently uses the Cult Deprogramming code.)
balance: removed 21-person start. Because it was just way too good.
balance: throttled back beginning time & strength various attack events (bandits, fishpeople, foreigners)
balance: Tweaked costs of several modules
balance: graveyards now pack in graves a little more efficiently
balance: increased starting exploration radius
FIXED: colonists should no longer get memories for killing vermin
FIXED: foreign troops will proper interrupt going to mission goals to fight enemies (or friends, if they're hostile)
FIXED: saskatoonberries & lingonberries counted as same item in commodities screen
FIXED: colonists will no longer attempt to interact in various ways with fishpeople meat as if it were a fishperson
FIXED: miners mining in mineshafts will no long leave a floating pickaxe by the door
FIXED: you can click directly on a mine survey point OR drag a box around it to order a survey done (also gave the job a proper icon)
FIXED: all factions will now properly update their UI description string to reflect whether you're shooting them or not
FIXED: Bandits will now fight back when attacked by rampaging Aurochs
FIXED: The Fleshcube is now a valid ingredient
FIXED: Foreigners won't die again from splash damage after already dead
FIXED: characters hunting an animal will attack it until it is killed rather than taking just one shot
FIXED: ranged attack would always send out a gunshot alert to sleeping characters upon completion even if a gun wasn't fired
FIXED: building name change spam when mad & overseer switched (but needs to be tested; can't 'til madness works again)
FIXED: Ominous Dreams event was never firing
FIXED: Broken memory icon for recruited bandits
FIXED: fishperson assault crisis scripterror
FIXED: added bounds checking for corePooledList (and warning messages instructing anybody encountering out of bounds list reads to e-mail us)
FIXED: optimized stockpile code when you have a lot of goods that need to be stockpiled
FIXED: characters occasionally being unable to do new work after they no longer belong to a workshop
FIXED: crash setting filters or information on a deleted work party
FIXED: various issues w/ retreat jobs getting stuck
FIXED: bricks will now be stacked
FIXED: Tooltips showing the wrong name for stacks after items had been removed from them
As always, we value your feedback - either here, or on the Gaslamp Games official forums.
-- Gaslamp Games
ALPHA 42C NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
FIXED (42B): foraging aurochs bones
FIXED (42B): cooking steak
FIXED (42B): spawning ore nodes
FIXED (42B): ore survey waypoint text output
FIXED (42B): mineshaft mining
FIXED (42B): a missing zinc ingot
FIXED (42B): fishpeople vandalism crisis scripterror
The Ministry denies all knowledge of Alpha 42B and anybody suggesting that there ever WAS an Alpha 42B shall be [REDACTED]. Please enjoy Alpha 42C.
-- GG.
ALPHA 42B NOW IN STEAM EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH
CHANGELOG:
colonists now can be assigned workshifts, and players can now force them to work overnight, which makes them very unhappy
rewrote day/night cycle code to allow for different lighting options throughout the day
stockpiles: characters now assess the closest stockpile to them at all times
stockpiles: if a character can merge an incoming item with a container already in a stockpile, they will do so rather than dropping and doing it en route (as it were)
workshops: a character will now do the next available workshop job to them at all times, rather than waiting for the current product type to complete; this also strictly obeys the workshop job order on the production list
clicking on a building under construction pulls up an assignment beacon; the building construction can be cancelled by clicking on that beacon
various typoes/grammatical inconsistencies/spelling errors fixed
civilians no longer pull out knives & sabres in melee combat
occult murder added for death cults
added Prisoner trait
added case for eating "starvation food" (to make a clear hierarchy of food colonists are willing to eat at various levels of hunger)
added warning when burial job cannot complete due to full graveyard
removed the Construction Crate that shows up when constructing a building
balance: Foreign Intervention event has slightly more stringent requirements (so you won't get attacked super early)
balance: slowed down growth/spoilage rate of, and reduced labor required to grow, cabbages and chillies
FIXED (42A): colonists no longer try to "Shoo" vermin
FIXED (42A): debug scripterror in bandit_plunder_major
FIXED: scripterror in some cases when an agent attempts to drop an item due to death
FIXED: if an assignment targeting an obeliskian is cancelled, it can be recreated
FIXED: ghost bandit (after bandit joins your colony)
FIXED: in some cases, non-colonist agents would be unable to path to edge of map
FIXED: error when a cult leader drinks laudanum and decides to leave their cult
FIXED: if starting NCO was assigned to a barracks, soldiers wouldn't train
FIXED: assignment beacons now disappear when an assignment is cancelled from the jobs menu
FIXED: assignment beacon "cancel assignment" X now works
FIXED: cancelling a building assignment now removes the blueprint
FIXED: error when Fishperson would attempt to talk to a piece of human flesh
-- Gaslamp Games