From the mists emerges- an update to Clockwork Empires with a not-unreasonably lengthy title!

This update will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam!

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress report!

(Don’t own the game? Clockwork Empires can be purchased on ClockworkEmpires.com via Humble or from Steam.)

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Patch Notes:

Major Features

• fog of war (if your colonists can’t see it, it becomes shrouded in dark fog!)
• new building cost system (buildings cost much more and use a variety of materials)
• character-driven events
• job balance overhaul (especially social and combat jobs)
• start of new cult system

The Engine / Scripting

• CPU side optimization to render backend; removed unnecessary matrix calculations etc
• implemented brushfire search for moving characters into civilization
• added fog of war
• added internal Lua script debugging tool (for internal use only)
• FIXED: save games do not load correctly (or, amusingly, save correctly, even though they seem to) on machines with Unicode path names
• FIXED: various stockpile issues with load/save and replay
• FIXED: game crashes in credits menu on OS X
• FIXED: Crash when a job has a parent assignment, but the assignment doesn’t have a job as a child

Human Characters

• started implementing new madness/cult systems
• balance: hunger time / crop growth time doubled
• criminals immigrants have a chance to want to start a cult
• criminals sent to your colony may now be slightly mad
• colonists should no longer spawn in water at gamestart
• added “drink curative” for curing madness (colonist will drink Laudanum or Sulphur Tonic to relieve maddening thoughts)
• balance: reduced desire to drink booze across the board because it was impossible to maintain stocks
• UI: work crew display now really displays # of idle work parties, not # of active work parties
• drinking laudanum has a small chance of turning a character into a Laudanum Fiend
• cults will announce their name in ticker upon formation
• cults will announce new members to game ticker
• cults will do recruitment at night, and only one initiation per night max
• cultists who witness an occult ritual will be made happy
• added alert upon cult formation
• studying eldritch artifacts may increase madness and/or inspire cults
• people invited to a cult will decide whether to join or not based on traits, madness, and relationship w/ cult leader
• cultists who are invited to join another cult will become offended
• cultists who are invited to join a cult they’re not in will become offended
• Extremely long character family names shortened for legibility
• FIXED: adding/removing workers to/from workcrews with special uniforms now properly adds and removes said uniform as appropriate
• FIXED: sleeping inside on floor no longer creates memory for sleeping outside on ground
• airdrop crate falling on people will no longer cause memories for “witnessed combat”
• FIXED: Naturalists will show up and just do naturalist stuff rather than default workcrew stuff
• balance: made return to civilization requirements a little less steep (now that civ works better)
• FIXED: exploration beacons (were disappearing instantly)
• made “butcher fishperson corpse” have way less range and be a less desirable source of food
• beginning of rebalance of social jobs (gossip, emotive idles, etc)
• added of new memories which tend the characters toward positive moods to offset external effects.
• miscellaneous cleanup of memory database
• instances of “Fear” changed to “Fearful” because grammar
• added some more character names
• changes to feeling tired and hungry for balance
• changes to upper_class jobs to make them less… annoying, but just a little bit
• inspect painting converted to a “social” job and modified accordingly
• added memory for discovering a weird artifact
• shortened text on some food memories

Combat & Military

• guns now require reloading
• added ability to upgrade pistols to revolvers (which can fire more times before reloading)
• all combat code rewritten to use state machine tiers to determine combat operations
• FIXED: animals fighting animals will no longer trigger combat music
• FIXED: bandits and fishpeople have to reload guns now, for real
• characters will load their guns upon gamestart
• added reload sounds
• FIXED: ranged attacks will self-abort (then character will re-evaluate jobs) if target gets too far away (to stop endless retarget/follow cycle)
• balance: increased damage of ranged weapons due to need to reload

Non-Human Characters (Animals, Monsters, Vehicles)

• added beetles & scintillating beetles for real (and made them give only one beetle steak)
• fishpeople menacing should spam less alerts
• balance: pushed bandit and fish attacks back to day 2 (as they’d appear in night 1, which is a bit soon)
• FIXED: animal meat ownership (no more running into the woods to collect meat from animals killed by animals)
• FIXED: bandit corpses no longer turn crops into clawbulbs (they’re mundane beings)
• Foxes will now eat delicious, delicious gibs.
• Real simple first pass on burrowing beetles.
• FIXED: fishpeople using Wander (human) job

Buildings & Building Creation

• implemented real building material cost system
• added “upgrade pistol to revolver” job
• FIXED: standing orders of glass panes broken
• added coal icons to smelting job tooltips (because smelting takes a carbon source now)
• FIXED: an office w/ dead overseer displayed an alert with incorrect title text
• balance: added more building materials to gamestart
• added Stone/Brick/Iron Kilns for Charcoal & Ceramics, removed “Industrial Kiln”
• FIXED: make gunpowder job & arsenal jobs in general
• beds can be broken by overuse (but don’t explode)
• FIXED: farm tiles becoming unfarmable after being destroyed by animals / other damage
• added fuel requirement to smelting jobs (use charcoal, coal, or peat)
• FIXED: mineshafts should no longer eat workers when you unassign them from the mine
• FIXED: smelters should no longer play burning animation when not in use
• made sugarloaf a “preserved food”
• removing random nature objects (“clearables”) is now in the construction job category rather than the farming job category
• buildings will automatically remove nature objects they’re built over
• workshop jobs limited to range 100 & will use closest commodity rather than any (much improved efficiency, safety)
• made science and chapel jobs less desirable at night
• FIXED: crash when creating a stockpile and mousing over a building inadvertently when doing so
• FIXED: disappearing decor modules

Biomes & Terrain

• balance: made stone nodes provide more stone
• balance: made clay node clusters more numerous
• balance: made trees take longer to chop down but give more timber
• balance: made trees take way longer to chop (even longer!)
• FIXED: problems with giving orders to remove saplings (and tree commands in general * received cleanup)
• balance: adjusted tropical forest spawns slightly (more timber, fewer coconuts)
• FIXED: gray box trees

Events / Metagame / Overworld

• “call favour” event won’t appear unless you have enough prestige to do anything with it
• FIXED: calling construction materials via favour was broken
• FIXED: airdrop crates will no longer drop into buildings (and contents of airdrop crates won’t drop into buildings either)
• balance: made criminal vicars spawn less often
• tweaked event timing so events are more likely not to trigger at the same time
• balance: bandit attacks ramp up more slowly over time, won’t spawn armoured bandit in first few days, will never be more than one attack per day and they won’t spawn next to colony, will tend to attack from land
• balance: fishpeople attacks ramp up more slowly over time, won’t see major attack in first few days, will never be more than one attack per day and they won’t spawn next to colony, will tend to attack from sea

Multiplayer

• (a bunch of backend work got done but you can’t see it yet! Details are in the development report.)

Music & Sound

• FIXED: game immediately goes from battle music playing to pegging the discovery music and not moving
• Added looping audio emitters

UI/UX

• updated the starting tutorial slightly
• added the first few contextual tutorial events (these will appear if you do not prematurely end the starting tutorial)
• characters have nametags (can be toggled using button at top of screen)
• artifact discovery now gives discoverers name in ticker
• position of event window remembered between events
• FIXED: some zoom-to alerts didn’t zoom-to
• added madness/cult contextual tutorial
• cleaned up the starting tutorial infodump now that we have some contextual tutorials
• Colonists list now contains mood icons
• Useful Icons appear above buildings when they need overseers, or have run out of jobs to do.
• informative icons in Character Info window should update more often
• FIXED: player will no longer receive notification if a fishperson hurts a bandit
• added icon for dead fishperson, revolver; hooked up more variety to combat-related memories
• module placement code improved
• SHIFT-click now preserves module rotation
• Moving a wall placed module directly up to a building, without actually moving your mouse into the building, correctly attaches it
• Modules now display RED when not attached to a building and BLUE when they are. (This will be expanded upon later…)
• FIXED: rotating a module will occasionally get stuck for no good reason.
• minor edits to some alert strings for clarity.
• modules will now send a ticker message when completed
• FIXED: paragraph rendering UI widgets now support newlines
• “building materials to be dropped off now show in tooltip
• Crop Commodity Icon now displays in farm window
• Use better button art for event window, farm window

It’s okay little guy.

Have fun and let us know through our portal or forum if anything emerges from the mist which Should Not Emerge From The Mist!