Clockwork Empires April Update: THE STARS ARE QUITE NEARLY ALMOST RIGHT

At the bottom of a strange glowing crater we discovered that –

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

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress Report! It contains the voluminous annotated changelog.

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

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Major Changes

We added a variety of new biomes! Select your embarkation point on the map at the start of the game, then discover what challenges and Fun awaits you in your new settlement.
REDACTED
Enemies will now destroy your precious buildings. Protect them well!
Various UI improvements have been improved, and will improve more.

Full Changelog for Alpha 50

Biomes

added different day/night lighting sets per-biome
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
balance: massive farm rebalance; nearly all crops changed
added a bunch of new crops for new biomes
all crops are now restricted to respective biome sets.
added Pulque, Mezcal recipes
added Grapevine crop
added crops: Agave, Prickly Pear
added Mezcal, Agave Syrup, Prickly Pear Bushel
placed crops into proper climate zones
FIXED: player no logner allowed to 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: biome moisture/temp defs so all intended biomes appear on generated map
FIXED: random crash starting new game in biome loader
FIXED: Saguaro stumps ill-defined

Colonists

added ability for Vicar to perform last rites on bodies, buried or not. This comforts the living and ensures the dead rest peacefully.
balance: improved emotional effect of food eating memories
balance: colonists will wait until they are hungrier before resorting to eating trade food
balance: colonists will get better memories from eating trade food
FIXED: dead colonists will never try to set revolt icon on themselves
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: agents not correctly having their hostile bit set, or having hostile bits reset
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: gossip action was not creating meaningful emotional reactions
FIXED: hostility state of newly arrived colonists now updates correctly vs. foreign factions
FIXED: missing “Staunch Traditionalist” workcrew names added
FIXED: sleeping people would appear to stand up if crew/assignment is changed while they’re sleeping

Events / Trade / Factions

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.
the “Hale & Hearty Recovery” event has been updated and is re-enabled
significantly delayed the onset of the “Colonists want chapel” event.
added Strange Meteor event
added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Republique Mechanique
added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Novorus Imperiya
added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Grossherzoginnentum von Stahlmark
improved default placement of agent groups to account for new variation in map topography; moved logic to a central function for most cases
balance: bandit camp site selection made to ignore very center of map
simplified some over-complicated group mission events eg. fishpeople egg stuff, patrols
FIXED: Colonists denounce cowardice event scripterror
FIXED: Republique invalid trade item
FIXED: animal_repopulate event fixed to work with new climate zones (and placement function)
FIXED: fishpeople given explicit attack order could not be butchered
FIXED: bandits couldnt be ordered buried after ordered shot

Engine

optimized save game saving and loading
FIXED: crash starting new game or creating world on UNICODE systems or systems with weird write permissions
FIXED: crash loading a save game under really weird, gross circumstances
FIXED: “unable to find dependencyParentJob name MT: Shoot At Entity (first loop, reload)”
FIXED: crazy weirdo crash in rendTradeGoodUIManager::Update (usually manifesting as either a random crash or a crash when changing workcrew)

Science

a number of crops will now require researching before they can be planted
balance:increased cap on science points to 50
balance: some agriculture tech now requires previous tech before it will become available

NPCs

enemies can now attack buildings; no more walling your town off with very long bunkhouses!
FIXED: bandit combat w/ items in certain situations did not require dropping held commodity
FIXED: ForceDropEverything error due to invalid trade item spawn
FIXED: Bandit corpse scripterror
FIXED: traders stealing guns

UI/UX

added first implementation of minimap
added images for several “?” help screens that were missing them
crops you can’t currently plant (due to biome or research) will not be visible on the crop menu
FIXED: mineral beacon tooltip

Modules/Buildings

Combat

REDACTED

Assets

realigned all (30+) fence models to work nicely with the line placer, added rustic fences which were previously unused
added new pipe-IO commodity model mashed together from old models
updated REDACTED pounce animation
added particles to stone charcoal kilns when in use
fixed incorrect defs for all REDACTED animations

Want the full annotated changelog? Read it in the Development Report!

Have fun and let us know through our mysterious portal or forum if anything goes wrong.