Shadows of Forbidden Gods
Bugfix: Fewer Flesh Gods
The game should now delete this mod, so you don't have the "upload mod" button on the main screen. It is checking the files there against an SHA512 hash, so if you are a modder and have changed the files in the modUploadFolder you may need to manually delete the files yourself.
DLC Released: The Horrors Beneath
Dwarves and Cthonians
Locked in battle underground, the inhabitants of the caverns wage a constant war of survival against one another. Dwarves, the new good race, are prone to falling to Shadow. Away from the sun, their souls slowly slip into the darkness, but they can redeem themselves by sacrificing gold. Interrupting this process or driving them into self-destructive greed can lead to the destruction of their heroes and rulers. They also tend to hold grudges, and can be provoked into war to reclaim their crown jewels, possibly fracturing the forces of good in poinless human against dwarf wars. Should the Dwarves join The Alliance, their ability to undo the effects of devastation can prove unfortunate.
Humans and Orcs expand underground
If humanity learns of the existence of the underground, or if you lead orcs to it, they can begin to expand, and build new cities and weapons on war in the vast caverns, ready to strike at their foes on the surface. Avoid humanity learning by managing the new Evidence mechanic, where your crimes underground can go unnoticed for a time.
The God-Thing wakes
A monsterous god the size of a continent, this creature slowly expands across the map as it devours plague victims, the fallen from battlefields or entire cities. Its hunger is constant, and the more it consumes the more it grows, able to lash out at anything above it on the surface level. Even your agents could prove a meal, if the need arises or they no longer serve a purpose.
Check it out now on Steam in the DLC section.
Patch note:
-Fixed an issue with the Insect God being unplayable with the DLC
UI update and notes on DLC
The DLC focuses on adding an underground layer to the map. The underground is its own map, with slightly fewer locations than the surface level, accessed by travelling down a limited set of connecting links. Initially the domain of your agents as well as the newly introduced Dwarves and new evil species, humanity can discover it and begin colonising it, as can orcs if you guide them through the tunnels. It adds new mechanics for how heroes can discover your actions (certain crimes, including murder, aren't immediately discovered if done underground), as well as stuff for Deep Ones, a Holy Order tenet and a non-underground focused agent.
It'll take some time to balance, and art is begun but not complete, but this should fit with the mid/late January release date.
Unfortunately this has slowed down work on bugfixes, UI improvements and other V1.1 stuff.
Now that underground stuff has its core mechanics mostly working (although no balancing yet done), I've had a couple of days to work on UI, and hopefully I can do some more soon.
Changes in detail:
UI:
-If a unit's menace is above its normal value (due to an item, minion or trait) it will be marked with a '(+)' and is hover-over text give its real value
-Locations now have a button to see which heroes and units have that location as a home location
-You can now view a corruptible hero's menace, profile, gold, items and minions from the agent creation screen
-Blood Magic "through their eyes" now indicates which house will be cursed in the description
UI for Curses Map View and a couple of Bugfixes
-Human Souls increase the Death percentage in a location by 1% per turn while dissipating
UI:
-Added curse map view for tracking who is in a cursed house
Bugfixes:
-Fixed Darkstone description
-Fixed descriptions of Vinvera powers borrowed by Broken Maker
-Broker Maker can't create agents over the cap any more
-Elven Arrogance in Dark Empire no longer harmed by nearby monster territory
Bugfixes and proofreading
Along with this, a couple of bugfixes:
-Fixed bug with kills not being tracked by assassinate challenges (sometimes critical for First Daughter summoning)
-Fixed display issue with events where progress could be displayed to far too many decimal places
Hotfix to V1.1 mod config
Unity situation resolved and V1.1
What this means is that Shadows can continue development as planned. While this may become a problem in the future, there are no immediate concerns.
Version 1.1 is therefore going live today, after a little bugfix and adaptation to avoid it breaking save games from V1.0. Mods are another question, but hopefully none should be too badly affected, as the update mostly just adds a god and agent.
The god in question is the Broken Maker, which is something of a “god of newgame+”. When you win or lose with this god, humanity adapts. The world rebuilds while you sleep, and humanity gains buffs if you won, making the next rounder harder. You can also curse families and bury power, which gives you assets you can take from one round to the next, to help your future self. The god also borrows a couple of powers from other gods when it sleeps, giving you a randomised set of powers to play with each time.
The agent is The Aristocrat, who introduces a political game which tries to divide humanity, based on a conflict you've created. She simply turns up and calls for a vote on an issue, and lets human bickering and hostility do the rest. The better she can split the vote, the more damaging she can be. Her ultimate goal is to turn kingdoms against each other, and dukes against kings, leading to wars and civil wars. She also is naturally good at avoiding suspicion.
Gameplay:
-Added "Broken Maker" god
-Added "The Aristocrat" politics/crisis-exploitation agent
-Added "Panic increases over time" to game options
-Lingering Resentment drops to % when Unrest reaches maximum, to avoid "heads will roll" spam
Other:
-Incompatible mods are now loaded (or at least attempted to), and only give a warning
Bugfixes:
-Fix gamebreaking bug, where a civil war could crash the game and prevent game progression
-Fix major bug where the "Kill the Chosen One's mentor" questline would break when selecting "spare" option
-Fixed Eternity god powers not resetting after sleep
-Fixed Eternity god causing the "world panic increases with time" to hit 100% instantly after sleep
-Fixed name issue for Alliances which exist during Eternity sleep
-Insect god's Drone and Haematophage are now 'arthropod' species, not human
-Fixed outpost founder sometimes not being recognised as evil despite being an agent
Issues regarding Unity pricing changes
Unity, the makers of the most popular indie game engine, decided to implement a per-install pricing. Devs (or possibly distributors, depending on which communication of theirs you read) will have to pay 0.20$ every time a player installs the game. This would come into effect in January.
There are thresholds, and based on the license I use (as a one-person company), Shadows would probably not need to pay anything on top of the existing licenses.
Regardless, this is still a critical risk for the future of the game for the following reasons:
- Malicious 'install bombing' would become possible, where a single person could write a script to install the game repeatedly, costing a potentially infinite amount of money. While Unity assure us this will not occur, because they will use some nebulous 'AI' solution, they are not open to sharing any details of how this protection will occur. With the very short time before the system comes online, and the extreme difficulty in totally protecting a computer system from hackers, my personal estimation is that there will be a number of malicious install bombs over the next few months.
- Unknown costs, even for legitimate use would occur. I have no idea how many times a player on average installs the game, nor do I seek that information. Once the game is in your library, I'd personally consider it your right to install it on any machine you feel like. I simply have no idea how many times to expect, and so cannot estimate costs.
- Unity has changed a contract retroactively which is threatening and concerning. Once Unity have decided they have the risk to unilaterally raise the price of the services, including for already released games, there is no guarantee they won't do so again. At any moment going forward they could levy additional fees or alter the thresholds on these new per-install prices. This means that Shadows now represents an unlimited liability for Forbidden Oak Games Limited. At any moment Unity could invoice the company for more than it has ever earnt.
I'll admit to not knowing what the implications of this are. This is nearly unprecedented, and far larger and better companies than mine are voicing their concerns, anger and confusion over these developments.
For others' perspectives, here are:
Unity Official Forums
The Twitter (X) announcement by Unity
The reddit Unity3D thread
As I've said, I don't know the impact of this. I can't tell you what will happen on Monday, I can't tell you what will happen in January. I'm not a lawyer, nor a seasoned industry veteran. Development on Shadows, even including bugfixes, is currently on hold to avoid being seen to agree with Unity's new Terms of Service. We will wait and see how things develop.
Changes to mod support, and one of our Artists made a game: Age of Tribulation
Firstly, for everyone:
Contributing artist Brad, from Apostle Games, is soon releasing a new Dark Fantasy party-based RPG. Check it out here, to get your next fix of grim darkness:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2575780/Age_of_Tribulation/
Secondly, for modders:
Following discussions, I've decided to keep the game in Unity's development mode forever, but employ a hack to remove the "development mode" watermark from the bottom right. What this means is the read console error text will be there to make debugging easier.
If you are using Harmony to make mods, this also means the underlying code won't change too much (there were major changes in the underlying bytecode which changing from development mode to normal mode introduced).
The only downside is lower performance, now that the watermark is gone, which hopefully isn't too major a concern. The upside is easier mod compatibility from earlier builds and we won't lose the debug console.
A few bugfixes and minor gameplay/UI changes are also bundled into this update.
In detail:
Gameplay:
-Heroes with shadow have reduced (to 0 at 100%) motivation to guard the Chosen One
-Insane rulers should no longer declare war on tiny or non-existant nations (those holding fewer than 3 locations in the previous turn)
Other:
-Added size and order toggles to turn log
Bugfixes:
-Fixed text when Elves join The Dark Empire to stop saying they joined The Alliance
-Dark Elves will no longer have a "dark elven skirmishing" motivation towards insects, neutral evil creatures or player controlled agents
-Fixed Changeling menace gain
Assorted Bugfixes for V1.0
Details:
Gameplay:
-If Mammon's initial settlement would be too small (<40 population) it is increased in size (minor change to climate and adding population to meet new cap)
-"Fuel the fire" unrest boosting challenge is no longer valid when there are no positive influences, but has a minimum gain to avoid zero-gain situations (it rounds all positive influences up)
Bugfixes:
-Fix occasional issue with "repeat challenge" button on challenge completion popup
-FINALLY solved the bugged "Stone Cold" achievement (Discord user "Valorous Heart" had actually found the cause a month ago, I just missed the report)
-Fixed issue with sacrificial dagger not working
-Fixed enshadowment% in nations view