Author Archives: David

The Aristocrats

We have adorable foxes hunting adorable dodos in adorable little packs.

Adorable murder.

Adorable murder.

There’s some neat stuff going on under the hood. A fox that first identifies a valid target for pack-hunting will tag itself as “calling the pack to hunt” which fulfills a requirement for other foxes to “join a pack to hunt”. This also tags the target of the hunt as a “pack-hunting target”. The pack “leader” and “followers” all get tagged into a hunting pack which enables the action of hunting down a targeted animal. The target is then either killed or the pack can be fought off – the moment one of the pack members chooses to flee, all of the pack members will flee and untag their (adorable) pack hunting behaviour. Lovely!

Pictured: A poetical aristocrat.  (As we all know, all poets are aristocrats because anyone who writes poetry can't possible have to do real work.)

Pictured: A poetical aristocrat.

As long as we’re implementing pack-hunting carnivores, why not do aristocrats as a two-for-one? Same thing.

So what, in fact, do aristocrats do?

The short answer is of course “nothing particularly useful” (to you). As any player of the classic Impressions city buildings knows, the upper class exist to make ridiculous infrastructure-expensive demands to create challenges and motivation to ascend the game’s building “tech”-tree and otherwise force the player to procure lots of fancy, extremely expensive stuff. It’s a good system.

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
24 Comments

Fight or Flight

Colonists are fickle creatures. You must take good care of them or they’ll starve to death. Or join a cult and start murdering for Quag’garoth (as one typically does when left without supervision).

What I’m getting at is that we’ve got quite a challenge in making colonists act like little virtual people. Part of how colonists end up acting is up to how the player manages then, as it should be in this business of interactive media. But the larger part of the iceberg (to our perspective) is making this possible to say nothing of engaging in the first place, and that’s up to how we hook up the pipes behind the scenes to enable colonists to express varied, interesting behaviour based on stimuli which can be observed and often manipulated by the player.

Fishpeople hate landmines.

Fishpeople hate landmines.

A sprawling example I’ve been dealing with lately is how to make colonists respond to danger. Fight or flight, easy, right? Well …

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
34 Comments

Clockwork Empires October Update: MIDNIGHT DEFENCE AT SKULLSWAMP ARSENAL

It is time once more for the monthly update to Clockwork Empires! We are now at v32, or as we like to call it, Midnight Defense at Skullswamp Arsenal.

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

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress report!unfortunately our web guy is lost somewhere in Vegas so the latest version isn’t online yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we find him. (Once it’s up it will provide a look into the high-level status of the project in excruciating detail. There are also pictures of cute animals.) Update: We found him! It’s all working now!

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

MacOS and Linux users: MacOS and Linux compatible versions of the game will be released before the end of October; we shall inform you post-haste when they are available via Steam!

 

Patch Notes:

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , ,
8 Comments

Keep Our Troops At The Front Firing!

In other words: Ammunition. (Because we know that everyone loves counting bullets.)

Herschel Boot knows what's important.

Herschel Boot knows what’s important. (Mind the Errant Viscera.)

But no, it isn’t about counting bullets and shouldn’t be. Let’s back up the discussion a step and deal with –

Why Ammunition?

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , , ,
33 Comments

Rally Point Whackamole

Daniel and I love arguing with each other about random design questions though somehow we generally end up agreeing on what to do, without agreeing on a conclusion to the original question. The result is, at least, a practical course of action. This is the story of an argument where I concede victory to Daniel.

This colony was barely holding by a pack of depressed militia. They had only a stockpile full of raw food, their guns, and some whisky. Then 30 Fishpeople raiders attacked.

This colony was barely holding together, the only survivors are a pack of utterly depressed militia soldiers. They have only a stockpile full of raw food, their guns, and some whisky. … then thirty Fishpeople raiders attacked and it was all over.

Rally Point Whackmole

Playing the latest build in the tropical biome, you may find that it is indeed crawling with random Fishpeople. When playing I found I had to send troops from one side of my colony to deal with a fishperson, then order them to run to the other side to deal with another one. Meanwhile, a third fishperson is trying to mess up my crops and, jeez, to re-select the military rally point I have to open Work Crews, scroll to the military squad (defaults to the bottom of the list), find the little rally button, then drop it off on the map each time I want to move the squad rally point. Tedious! Let’s break down the issues here:

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , , , , ,
10 Comments

The Diary of Millard Brazenwhistle, Naturalist

It’s been a busy week with the big September update – “Conscript Steelcog versus THE MURDERCULT” – launched yesterday. Let’s explore a little of the new tropical biome introduced in the update by reading some excerpts from The Diary of Millard Brazenwhistle, Naturalist.


Millard Brazenwhistle came to the Colonies seeking to build a new life on the frontier. He worships at the altar of celestial order. He has pledged allegiance to the Queen. He was born in the 47th year of the Reign of the Queen. Millard Brazenwhistle is a fine specimen with a stance neither above nor below that which is appropriate. Friends: Sadly, none.

Millard Brazenwhistle is an Enthusiastic Amateur who likes dabbling in things he’s not very good at. He is a Industrious, believing that idle hands do the work of terrifying eldritch powers. He is a Pioneering Spirit who is happiest outdoors and works well with animals, dead or alive. He had an unpleasant journey to the Colonies due to a fear of airship travel.


“It’s just so bloody far to the ground, I don’t see how everyone can just pretend that we might not go tumbling to our death at any second.”

millard1

“We were dropped off by airship in the middle of the jungle. The fishperson must have been as surprised as we were! Our brave soldiers gunned it down quickly before it could alert its fellows of our position. Mrs. Clucksworth is unsettled by this unknown biome and accompanies me everywhere.”

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
10 Comments

Clockwork Empires September Update: Conscript Steelcog versus THE MURDERCULT

It is time for the monthly update to Clockwork Empires! This month is v31, or as we like to call it, Conscript Steelcog versus THE MURDERCULT.

steelcog_vs_murdercult

This being a monthly update, the changes will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam.

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress report! Please check it out if you’re interested in the overall status of the Clockwork Empires project broken down into excruciating detail along with pictures of cats.

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

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires | Tagged , , , , ,
9 Comments

Cultivating Gameplay: Game Design in CE

Clockwork Empires is an exceedingly complex game. Each new system interacts with each existing system in ways we necessarily can’t predict. And unpredictable consequences are, to some degree, the goal of any sandbox game worth its cabbage. But there are failure states where the whole web of systems kinda slumps over to one side, repeating the same beeping noise. This isn’t interesting, so we have to poke and nudge the game back to where it does interesting things again. This is called “Game Design”.

Is that metaphor getting awkward? Let’s get to the specific example I had in mind: balancing food & farming gameplay in Clockwork Empires. This is going to go into Exciting exhaustive detail!

Farming, step one: kill anything that isn't human.

Farming, step one: kill anything that isn’t human.

(By the way, we’re doing the big monthly update of Clockwork Empires next week! The Development Progress page will be updated at that time. Details to be released soon.)

{ read this article }

Posted in Clockwork Empires, Game Design | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,
11 Comments