Demo and Playtest version 0.561 - Build Mode Revamp
Large new build -- two in one, if you're not part of the playtest: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.561_Build_Mode_Revamp
Build Mode
The general visual style of build mode in prior versions was modeled on citybuilder conventions, which had some problems in terms of readability, and also was not going to expand very well. I've reworked the UI of that entirely to instead be more like a tycoon/sim/factory-builder game, which has more in common with this title.
Rather than trying to explain it at length, here are two screenshots of the new UI in action:
The first one shows the new Recommended tab, which gives you a subset of just the things that are likely to be the most useful.
The second one shows the new All tab, which lets you quickly search via text, or just browse by name. In this particular example, I did a search.
This revamp also folds the territory control flags into the build menu properly, which you can see in the first image.
Resource Trends
This release went out to the playtest folks yesterday, but now arrives for demo folks as well.
In general, the resource trends are now far more informative as well, and if you're wondering where some resource is going, now you can directly see that without any special extra reports, etc.
There are a variety of improvements, but the brief explanation is that if you're wondering where some resource is going, you no longer have to wonder. As you can see above.
Other Notes
My wife Kara continues to plow through the text of the game, excising my wordiness and enhancing clarity. So far it's been about a 10% reduction in word count, which is great for anyone who gets fatigued by lots of text.
As far as my post-nextfest clarity and flow work goes, I'm pretty much down to the UI tour on the first turn, and then some last minor items. This is very exciting, as I'm greatly looking forward to getting back into content development. Hopefully I can finish the last of the non-content stuff tomorrow, bu we'll see how it goes.
Testing Group Reminder
If you'd like to sign up to be a tester beyond the demo period, feel free to sign up here: https://forms.gle/nNwEnzRyVPMS7bYg6 Make sure that you list your discord username and are a part of Arcen's discord, since that's where coordination is through.
Thank you again for all the support and feedback! Cheers, Chris
Demo and Playtest Version 0.559 - Inventory Dimensions
New daily build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.559_Inventory_Dimensions
This one is pretty sizeable.
New in this build
The resources section of the inventory now includes some very helpful filters as well as a search.
The unit types section of the inventory now includes some filters, and then multiple tabular views which allow you to see which units are the best at various things.
Bulk androids have gotten some much-needed clarity updates to their buildings, and then also some fixes to the accuracy of how their stats are predicted in the inventory before they exist.
The way that events like the prismatic tungsten and the seed collection are placed on the map now gives you a lot more options, and should feel better.
TPS Reports are at long last fixed up so that when they are missing some precursors, others properly show the right values.
And then a bunch of other smaller improvements and fixes as well.
I am overall winding down on my to-do list of things before getting back to content development, but a few things have been added in the last week, and I'm still a few days behind where I would prefer to be.
The main things remaining:
A complete revision of the build menu, in general to be more tycoon-like and less citybuilder-like, for similar reasons that tycoon games diverge in general. Clarity and volume, basically.
A way for players to see a list of all jobs producing and consuming resources, to help diagnose shortfalls.
The turn-one UI tour, and other final bits of clarity and thematic bits for turn one.
A couple of new pieces of clarity related to when you first start constructing buildings.
A few fixes related to bulk android targeting.
And that's pretty much it for my current list of "must happen before content" pieces of work. It's always possible something more could come up, but we'll see how it goes.
Enjoy! Chris
Demo and Playtest version 0.558 - Research
New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.558_Research
This is a relatively small daily build, as far as builds for this game are concerned. However, there's still a lot of good stuff in here:
You can now choose the location of your tower if you skip past the prologue!
There is a new Research Window, which includes a lot of additional helpful formatting and functionality, and unifies a lot of things that were previously in a couple of disparate spots.
If you felt like you were chasing around certain events in StreetSense that moved too frequently, that's a thing of the past.
The flow of opening notifications is now a bit better, and has an option to make it work like in the prior version if you disagree.
More to come soon! Enjoy. Chris
Demo and Playtest version 0.557 - Filtering And Lensing
New build: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.557_Filtering_And_Lensing
This is based on more feedback from NextFest, and it's another large one.
What's New
The lenses on the radial menu have been expanded notably, and unified between the map view and main view.
The investigation, StreetSense, and Contemplation abilities are gone from the android ability bar, and are now converted to being Lenses only.
Investigations now work a lot more smoothly in a lot of ways detailed in the release notes.
StreetSense works entirely differently, and is dramatically easier to use. It's also no longer different per-android.
There are now "Lens Filters" next to the radial menu, and these allow you to customize what you see as part of the various lenses. This has let me actually combine three lenses (Navigation, Beacons, and POIs) into a single one (Navigation), and it allows for you to do a lot of filtering-out of information that you might not need in the Forces lens, without it being completely inaccessible.
The prologue has had a number of updates to it to reflect the new changes, plus other things that people found confusing. It also doesn't make you do any equipment management, as that is more naturally introduced later.
There are now keybinds for jumping straight to specific lenses!
Other Items
Snipers hit less hard.
MilStyle armor now also hides the identity of Predators and similar.
Armor has been extended quite a bit in general, and more unit types have more options. The Nickelbot is steadily gaining in usefulness.
Lots and and lots of writing edits courtesy of my wife Kara. She's been focusing on making sure that text flows better and causes less fatigue.
Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
Because of the removal of so many abilities (that are now Lenses), the ability bar for all units has been rearranged to a notable degree. This is likely to cause some muscle memory issues, but I think that the new order makes sense if you look past that. Details in the notes. Discussion welcome if it doesn't seem to be the case.
Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
Many various other smaller changes, fixes, and so on. This is actually three large releases in one since the last build outside of the playtest branch.
Next Things
There's still a few things for the prologue that need adding. The UI tour, and some adjustments based on the theming of attacking the detectives. Those are way less surgery than all of these other elements were, though.
There are some reports that people are wanting related to quickly being able to see what is going on with certain resources, and those are also going to be a focus. An improved technology window also.
Then I should be good to go to finish chapter one. For the demo, there will be a few more features added in chapter one, but the really big reveals will not be on the demo branch for quite a while. Apologies on that; but the playtest is open for anyone interested.
Testing Group Reminder
If you'd like to sign up to be a tester beyond the demo period, feel free to sign up here: https://forms.gle/nNwEnzRyVPMS7bYg6 Make sure that you list your discord username and are a part of Arcen's discord, since that's where coordination is through.
Thank you again for all the support and feedback! Cheers, Chris
Demo and Playest version 0.553: Fenceline
This is a very large one! For demo players, this is four builds in one: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.553_Fenceline
Networks
Here's a "before and after" that makes the changes fairly apparent at a glance:
To be clear, that's the same savegame, but just loaded in the old version on the left, and the new version on the right.
Some of the key points:
You can see some network info in the upper left corner now. Like electricity, etc.
The way that info is shown is a lot nicer in both locations.
The way the network is drawn on the map and streets view is no longer so overwhelming, and also gives you a bit more range.
You can now lay out network relays in series before they finish building, rather than having to wait for each one to be done.
A lot of more subtle elements with the networks are better in general, and you can read the full release notes if you're curious.
Other Major Items
Predators and similar can now use hoodies properly. They still make terrible guards because if the enemy sees what they are, they are still too scary. But this still means you can use them on more operations around the city.
The "toast" popups in the lower right corner have had pretty much their full overhaul. Left-click now always does something more consistent, and right-click dismisses them. They also have better color variation to tell types of them apart now.
The machine handbook is now much more convenient to use regardless of how you open it, and takes over the screen a bit more rather than getting lost in clutter. It also now has a dropdown allowing you to filter to specific topics.
Minor new content! There's two new Procurement Efficiency upgrades -- one for better wind turbines, one for more microbuilders. Two highly-desired items.
NPC units, including your own bulk androids, now have better targeting for a number of cases. Your own units won't engage noncombatants by default, and also won't wander into military bases or aggro them. Wetwork teams from corporations also won't get distracted with military bases.
Minor Handy Items
If you find the unit icons on the map or in the streets view too small, you can now adjust the size of those in the UI Scales tab of the settings.
The escape menu sidebar now has links to mantis and your local save folder on your hard drive.
There's a really long list of minor bugfixes and clarity improvements, but I'll spare you listing all those.
Next Things
I had planned on going into the Lenses and StreetSense as my next thing, a few days ago, but wound up shifting the order of work. So that's now what I'm going to work on next.
There are some reports that people are wanting related to quickly being able to see what is going on with certain resources, and that will probably be the next thing after that.
Then there's the general ui tour on the first turn, and a few minor ui-flow things that are still outstanding. Then I should be good to go to finish chapter one.
Testing Group Reminder
If you'd like to sign up to be a tester beyond the demo period, feel free to sign up here: https://forms.gle/nNwEnzRyVPMS7bYg6
Make sure that you list your discord username and are a part of Arcen's discord, since that's where coordination is through.
Thank you again for all the support and feedback! Cheers, Chris
Demo and Playtest build: 0.549 Of Mice And Crowns
Quite a large new build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.549_Of_Mice_And_Crowns
Mouse
This one starts out by getting all of the mouse-related requests that folks have had so far. So edge scrolling is now an option, middle-mouse "grab and pan" is in place, right-clicking in build mode cancels out, double-clicking units either selects them (sidebar) or switches to street view (on the map), and more.
It also includes a bunch of things that allow you to invert controls or adjust sensitivity for the new mouse features. And it also makes rotating or panning with the mouse hide the cursor and not interact with other windows or window edges.
Tons Of Fixes
There's a couple of dozen general fixes in here, ranging from some error spam in a few esoteric cases, to various things that lacked a bit of clarity. In particular, deploying units from a factory is now more clear when you're out of resources to actually do it, for example.
Balance
Only three real balance items here, in the main.
The first is to reduce the amount of fighting during chapter one at the farms, if you go for both types of farm researches (as of course most people do).
The second is to make it so that if you use hostile items against buildings, your unit properly gets marked defective. This is particularly notable for the Decrowner Drones and the Mindport; you could get yourself absolutely overrun with hostile forces by taking that action way too vigorously and with no immediate drawback.
The last one had to do with what happens when you reach zero mental energy on a turn. It was blanking out the AP of all units, which was problematic for income for a variety of reasons. But also made it so that if Cold Blood was your last action of a turn, and netted you some more mental energy, you couldn't use it.
Coming Up
I still have a lot of improvements to make based on demo feedback. Probably my next focus will be around lenses, and simplifying how StreetSense works, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.
Thank you to everyone for the ongoing support!
0.548 High Visibility
New build for the demo and playtest versions of the game! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.548_High_Visibility
Demo And Playtest
The demo is going to be up for another few weeks, basically until the end of June. So if you haven't had time to finish it yet and you would like to, there's time.
If you want to be a part of the playtest after that, then be sure to swing by our discord: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1248015123382276217
The New Build
This build includes a number of very handy features.
First of all, lots of visibility things relating to your units and other small enemy units. If they are behind a building or similar obstruction, you now see a colored outline based on their relationship to you. If you hold Ctrl, the game now highlights them all for you in a very high-visibility way. If you want that on all the time, there is a new High Visibility option in the Accessibility section of the Game tab of the Settings menu. In that mode, holding Ctrl toggles the high-visibility display off for a moment.
Next up, vehicles and mechs now properly say "crew of" rather than "squad of" to clarify what they are counting in terms of units inside their group.
Finally, a couple of rifles have been rebalanced, and made Nickelbot-exclusive. This gives the Nickelbots a much more defined role from early in the game, and also prevents some kind of crazy situations with bulk squads with some of the rifles.
The Last Week
It's been almost a week since the last build, which was not how I had intended to handle things. However, I've been talking to people on discord and Steam, listening to feedback, taking notes, and also filling out various parts of the wiki.
A lot of people have gotten into the game in a really enthusiastic manner, which is wonderful to see. But the learning curve is not quite what I would prefer, and a few other elements are long-term confusing as well. So I've been formulating plans for those things, in consultation with testers and the demo players.
The Next Weeks
Overall, my goal is to start smashing through a ton of the feedback that I've accumulated from the past week, and get things more where I want them to be. Then we'll see what further feedback folks have on tutorial difficulty and the like.
After what will hopefully be only one week of this initial push (but we'll see how it goes), I'm going to transition over to finishing up the rest of chapter one. There will be some new features added to the demo version, and while the demo version remains up, we'll have parity between the playtest version and demo version.
Expect to see much more frequent builds coming again, now that I've done the "measure twice" part of things.
Thank you again to everyone who has been giving feedback, as well as all the kind words!
Conquer as Sentient AI
You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them.
You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them.
New build for the demo! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:_After_The_Transformation#0.547_Energize
This is a fairly small build, as mostly what I've been doing is talking to folks and listening to their suggestions, and making lots of notes. As well as updating the wiki, and adding more explanations for a lot of things. There are several new articles linked today, which go into broader questions people had, as well as deep dives on specific mechanics.
The main changes in this build are that the parasitic power draws are removed from the game for now, as they were really sending the wrong messages to players in chapter one, especially when they were introduced. They'll return in chapter two later, as contemplations.
In the meantime, power generation has gotten a balance pass in general, with both wind and geothermal getting substantial upgrades. There should be plenty of wind to go around until you unlock geothermal, even if you don't take the cap upgrades for wind, and even if you build all the housing.
This has been an enormously instructive week for me, listening to folks, as well as really gratifying to see how many people are vibing with the game. It's been a long road, and the shift from realtime to turn-based has understandable turned away some people who wishlisted a long time ago, but I'm really gratified to see how much of a connection the game, its world, and its writing are making with a substantial audience.
Thanks so much for all the support, and the constructive criticism!
