Since Gaslamp Games shut down regular operations at the end of 2016, and as PC gaming hardware and software has changed since Clockwork Empires release, we feel that we can no longer adequately support the game. Were going to cease the sale of Clockwork Empires on Steam or any other platform shortly. If you have purchased Clockwork Empires you will not lose access to the game or your files, this move will simply remove the ability for new customers to purchase the game. Thank you for your support over the years. Gaslamp Games

[ 2019-05-05 15:51:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've pushed the 1.0D experimental patch of Clockwork Empires live to the Experimental branch! To access this experimental patch, right-click on Clockwork Empires, select "properties", find the "BETAS" tab, and select "Experimental". Beware though, we will change this version of the game more often so if weird stuff happens or a new experimental is released, you may lose your progress. On the other hand, there's lots of cool stuff, like so: Full changelog for 1.0D:

• added REDACTED
• barracks will stock more ammo of a type if they have more weapons
• lockers for that ammo type
• incoming Steam Knights will have area around their arrival made visible even before they arrive
• added 10 new achievements (and fixed an old one)
• if you make peace with an enemy faction while an invasion is in-progress - but before enemy troops arrive - the invasion will be aborted
• added acknowledgement for various failure states for the Mad Carpenter event
• if a Steam Knight is stuck inside a building for more than 30 seconds, it will shove itself outside
• traders will place trade goods into Trade Office itself rather than on ground nearby
• made tooltip display for Brewed versus Distilled booze more clear about which will be served in Public House depending on mode selected
• animals will now shove themselves outside of structures if they get stuck inside
• added a timer to make Fishpeople less enthusiastic about intimidating your colonists
• added alert for first horror corpse disposal
• rewrote Mysterious Ore event to be more clear about its gameplay effects
• added "witnessed descent into madness"
• improved behaviour of fish cult
• improved behaviour of dominant foreign faction
• added the Steam Knight MK1, a more advanced steam knight that costs more to create (Removed gun from steam knight prototype. Massively buffed steam knight melee damage.)
• made slight improvement to chapel functionality; preaching will now only be done once per day (per chapel) and gives everyone in the colony positive memories
• added new event arc: Mystery Herb
• Arguing Rivals will now tell you if you have an NCO/Bartender/Vicar but can't use them in the event because they're one of said rivals
• Ominous Dreams event now has a number of additional possible endings/rewards
• Family Tree Research is now an event arc
• Fey Mood event arc will now tell you what item was made at the end did small fix to Empire Times event strings
• added Advanced Workbench to the chemistry workshop
• FIXED: Fancy Bookshelf and Vacuum Chamber recipes
• FIXED: Gun Lockers now have proper trade values
• FIXED: chicha and pulque recipe display
• FIXED: a large number of events will no longer consider dead people eligible to participate in them
• FIXED: crashes with leyden guns
• FIXED: farms/graveyards/roads/zones no longer have rendering issues after flatten terrain operations are performed
• FIXED: minimap no longer takes you to a location if you right click on it or mousewheel over it accidentally
• FIXED: various typos, grammatical errors, extraneous alerts
• FIXED: objects placed by "organized finds supplies" was swapped with "science assistance"
• FIXED: Lord Palmerstoke will give science rather than construction related rewards
• FIXED (1.0C): resupply tag fix affecting Public House & Naturalist's Office
• FIXED: more typos
• FIXED: dead arguing rivals
• FIXED: coffee
• FIXED: more overflowing memory names
• FIXED: more unclaimed REDACTED spores
• FIXED: error during Foreign Invasion event if player colony is near edge of map
• FIXED: mineshafts can only be occupied by one worker at a time
• FIXED: buildability not saved/loaded correctly (oops)
• FIXED: another really obscure error case in cult events

Enjoy! And please let us know if anything goes wrong. -- GG

[ 2016-11-19 01:46:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've just switched on Steam Trading Cards and all the little bits and bobs that come along with them for Clockwork Empires. So now you may find:

• fun badges to display your affection for colonial management
• emoticons for important concepts like fishpeople, cannibalism, and longpork
• peculiar steam backgrounds
• and of course cards to trade (presumably) with Foreign Nations

Enjoy!

[ 2016-10-28 20:27:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a few minor things to clean up before we get back to more substantial patch content!

• FIXED: some incorrect tooltip descriptions for ingredients required for producing certain modules
• FIXED: possible to get into a state where tutorial won't advance if too much time passes before conditions for advancement are met
• FIXED: removed mention of assigning overseers to stockpiles from tutorial (this can't be done)
• FIXED: gold reward bar now defaults drops at start position rather than map center
• FIXED: various text typos
• FIXED: a certain type of REDACTED will no longer get stuck inside buildings
• Cleaned up the embark screen a bit.
• FIXED: crash demolishing a house
• FIXED: some achievements

Thanks to everyone for letting us know about these issues so we could sort them out quickly.

[ 2016-10-28 18:51:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Clockwork Empires version 1.0 has emerged, glistening, from its development-spore and launched on Steam! We are out of Early Access and into the wild frontier that calls for Colonial Bureaucrats to manage bustling colonies and chop down all the trees and maybe start a cult maybe for Progress and Civilization! You can purchase Clockwork Empires through Steam for a 10% discount for the next week! The Development Progress Report has been updated with a full annotated changelog for version 55A to version 1.0. We’ll put the full changelog at the end of this post for those interested in seeing what the last month month of Early Access has brought to the game. This is not, of course, the end of work on Clockwork Empires. We shall be continuing support for game stability and bugfixes, and we have a list of additional content and some features we’d like to add post-release. Major player-facing additions this month:

• performed a huge UI improvement pass for release
• also a huge balance pass, including making the later biomes more difficult
• added the Steam Knight Manufactory!
• added Achievements
• much stability & polish
• oh yeah, we’ve released the game to 1.0 with all that entails!

As always, the full development progress report can be found here: https://clockworkempires.com/development.html and the full changelog is below. Thank you for your support during two years of Early Access! We hope you enjoy Clockwork Empires version 1.0, and please stay tuned for what's next... Full Changelog for Beta 55->Version 1.0B Below: Colonist Behaviour

• awkward hugging made less likely to cause errors
• “Drunkard” trait now additionally causes happier memories from drinking
• “Hale and Hearty” trait now additionally causes barbershop treatments to heal more
• “Mushroom Lover” trait now additionally gives happy memories when eating fungus-based foods
• when deciding initial feelings toward other colonists, Overseers will now consider Labourers beneath their notice for friendship/rivalry unless said Overseer has the Common Mingler trait
• made colonist auto-burial timer check itself more often (colonists are not given automatic burial orders if hostile enemies are nearby; this will now be checked upon every new workshift.)
• colonist traits now affect certain climate quality of life effects
• added booze vat pathing check to get drink / fill vat jobs
• vicars can now convince cultists to leave their cult
• “Made a friend/rival” memories will now have the name of said friend or rival
• balance: Steam Knight presence now affects safety QoL
• balance: added more despair and anger overall
• balance: made people slightly more upset in general
• balance: when your colonists die it will now decrease your empire standing a bit
• FIXED: scripterror when using Leyden weapons
• FIXED: military holding commodities while fighting
• FIXED: characters would occasionally get stuck and stop moving when the entity “thinklocking” them would disappear w/o releasing the thinklock (in particular, if a spectre talked to a colonist then disappeared due to sunlight, the lock would not be released.)
• FIXED: enraged characters will no longer build buildings
• FIXED: Safety quality of life calculation for colonists was incorrect on days 2 through 5
• FIXED: if a scientist is enhanced due to REDACTED their lab will properly update its skill display
• FIXED: murder
• FIXED: scripterror in military_interrogation_event.fsm
• FIXED: some eldritch memories didnt give (enough) despair
• FIXED: spectres should no longer freeze people in place forever under certain rare conditions
• FIXED: slightly incorrect string compilation in conversation memories
• FIXED: edge case error in ai_damage

Non-colonist characters

• doubled trader mission time
• Occult Inspector now inspects buildings more intelligently
• made dormant spores more Fun
• FIXED: steam knights freezing!
• FIXED: possible steamknight issues with placement /not/ into buildings
• FIXED: added safety check to fishpeople group deletion notification

General Gameplay Balance

• changed overseer workplace cap modifier to scale w/ number of overseers
• balance: adjusted incidence of bad guys in biomes according to difficulty scheme
• balance: made certain enemies send more dudes when you’re later in game
• balance: reduced Fishpeople incidence in desert biome
• balance: non-temperate biomes impose various and increasing QoL penalties from tropics, desert, to cold as most penalized
• balance: more vicious will spawn in non-temperate biomes
• balance: biomes with extreme weather may produce unpleasant memories
• balance: military interrogation has been made less effective by 50%
• balance: doubled trade crops value
• balance: added extra bandit spawning in desert + cold
• balance: bandits in more difficult biomes now get better gun loadouts
• balance: decor object trade value updated
• FIXED: overvalued steam radiator (and other decor items)
• FIXED: Bricabrac now has a trade value

Workshop/Buildings

• added the Steam Knight Manufactory. Have fun!
• more workshop interior textures changed
• optimized Laboratory science refresh function
• science has undergone a massive overhaul: The number of techs has roughly doubled. A number of advanced modules now require research before they can be built.
• balance: Overseer house has had the windows requirement moved to its 2nd bonus condition
• Assembly Workbench now has 2 access points (down from 4)
• added naturalist’s office info to module descriptions
• the Trade Office now has a module todo list that will determine how many traders arrive. Range is currently 4 – 14. (Traders will always use the best office in your colony to determine how many to send, rather than adding multiple offices together)
• added some new options for increasing standing to the Empire via the Foreign Office
• added more feedback to Foreign Office when changing standing
• FIXED: ammo recipes now all make 1 ammo as intended
• FIXED: a large number of incorrect recipe costs
• FIXED: that typo in the laboratory
• FIXED: house demolition crash
• FIXED: invisible buildings
• FIXED: airship masts work again
• FIXED: rare door scripterror when a door was built before its parent building (or something)
• FIXED: missing Steel Plates recipe
• FIXED: connected components would fail to be computed correctly when creating a building with weird shapes (the actual problem is more detailed than that, but let’s go with that one)
• FIXED: various path stutters related to the new connected component code, involving animals not correctly finding corrected components that ignored doors, various other issues with aquatic entities, etc.
• FIXED: building can no longer consist of two discontiguous blueprints
• FIXED: steam knight chassis recipe output is no longer world’s most expensive landmines
• FIXED: incorrect recipe ingredient info for various products
• FIXED: dismantle objects assignment beacon now works correctly

Events

• replaced Sunny Day event with much more varied “Unusual Weather” event w/ unique effects per-biome
• some events that spawned characters now properly allow clicking their event popups to zoom to those characters
• made major eldritch events more Fun
• re-added Ominous Dreams as event arc
• Novorous Logging moratorium now checks for larch/bamboo farming
• added Arguing Rivals event
• if your Empire standing gets low enough the Ministry will limit and eventually entirely halt immigration until you pull it back up
• balance: made Foreign Invasion redcoats not take > 7 days to despawn
• balance: removed revolver locker chance from ministry supplies in foreign invasion event
• balance: made disturbance points at slightly higher at low end of scale
• balance: made cults easier to trigger
• balance: adjusted weights of various events
• balance: doing airship crash research now gives standing reward
• FIXED: scriperrors in certain cases in “arguing rivals”
• FIXED (55J): scriperror in cult art, fishperson cult arc
• FIXED: scripterror with criminal work crew foreign office event
• FIXED: some buildings would say you didn’t have required modules when eventlocked
• FIXED: bureaucrat desk couldn’t be used for event arcs
• FIXED: rare crash when using Aerial Surveillance
• FIXED: order to kill all fishpeople now works correctly
• FIXED: grimoire event had ending error if researcher died
• FIXED: scripterror in Above 30 Population event
• FIXED: scripterror in certain cases in Arguing Rivals
• FIXED: possible scriperror in Mad Carpenter

UI / UX / Text

• performed a major overhaul of the Colonial Handbook; all pages have images and have been reformatted to be easier to read
• replaced many intrusive pop-ups with alerts
• tooltips for missions (in Foreign Office) are now minimum sized and shouldn’t overrun container
• added descriptions for sub commands (in bottom left menu)
• improved alert tooltips (for pop-up alerts on right side of screen)
• improved visibility of colonist traits via gameplay and fluff fields (ie. traits that affect workshop are highlighted)
• rewrote a bit of the “wrapped label widget” to make the constructors more sensible
• mineral survey waypoints now use assignment beacons (which is very nice)
• consistency: any string that says “Cheap Cabinet” has been set to “Simple Cabinet”
• Mine will give alert if assigned an owner and it has no supplies to operate
• Naturalist’s Office will give alert if set to a different mode w/o Overseer assigned
• Naturalist’s Office will give alert if set to a work mode w/o supplies for that mode
• all instances of “citizenry” changed to “colonists”
• adjusted Safety Quality of Life description so having a low rating doesn’t (necessarily) say that you have few soldiers (it’s possible to get a low rating due to other factors)
• exclusive windows (ie. history log) now make a noise when they close
• improved load screen UI
• overhauled Trade Office interface
• improved layout for character info panel
• edited embark screen to show biome difficulty of site selection
• added cancel button to the load screen
• added per-workshop backgrounds to Overseers window (makes it much easier to see which overseer is assigned to which workshop)
• made expression widget bgs round for thought/dialog
• added better tooltips to Workshop production menu
• polished up character info panel
• moved “Unassign Overseer” to the top of the overseer assignment element (in building panels)
• added detailed tooltips for terrain objects
• added informative tag icons to map objects
• did better tooltip requirement visualization for buildings
• added hitpoints, quality to building tooltips
• proposing and cancelling trades now work properly and update the UI on time
• removed zoom to worksite button for character panel (it did not really work)
• FIXED: shortened some more overflowing memory names
• FIXED (really this time): cancelling a gabion creation job no longer leaves ghosts
• FIXED: farms now display their farm type in the office creation menu
• FIXED: dead colonists will no longer display a job as if they were alive
• FIXED: changing the order of the workshop modules in the workshop didn’t work properly
• FIXED: some more memory name ui overflow
• FIXED: minor typos
• FIXED: some minor text overflow in the foreign office
• FIXED: work crew UI now uses disabled scrollbar thumb properly
• FIXED: the label for “sleep” wasn’t showing in the character info panel
• FIXED: crashing the game when viewing the credits
• FIXED: flashing character nametags
• FIXED: new tooltip code no longer crashes the game if a product has no explicit definitions in data files
• FIXED: overflow of recipe tooltip for product details in workshops
• FIXED: farm overseer assignment display updating
• FIXED: overflowing tooltip in house dialog
• FIXED: blank tooltip on overseer in overseers panel
• FIXED: embark icons flickering to incorrect states when switching between them
• FIXED: clicking on the minimap while zoom-to is selected will now correctly reset it

Biomes / Nature Objects

• adjusted ground textures in alpine terrain to look colder
• added some more difficult stuff to provide Fun / blood for the blood god in harder biomes
• renamed “Lacquer Tree” to “Lacquer Plant” (to imply that “Chop Tree” is not an appropriate tool to use with them)
• mine survey point visuals redone
• added informative tag icons to map objects
• balance: non-temperate crops made more difficult
• balance: increased vermin spawn and animal spawn timers (for less spam)
• balance: forage output and regrowth time increased
• FIXED: vermin will not spawn in invalid positions (caused pathing errors)

Engine/Tech/???

• optimized connected component code to fix stuttering when flattening/building
• FIXED: stutter when placing gabions, buildings, or flattening terrain
• FIXED: scaling issues on fullscreen for Windows if the aspect ratio of your monitor exactly matches your suggested resolution (unngh)
• FIXED: Longpork pie used incorrect model

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-10-26 17:18:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few small problems have been addressed in Beta 55A via your friend, and mine, the Hotfix. This has been pushed to the default branch, so you should not need to switch to the experimental branch on Steam. Changes:

• added disturbance tooltip
• balance: Bricabrac Prices of certain wall modules have increased in preparation for Things
• FIXED: bandits now make better decisions when placing tents
• FIXED: foreign_relations_correction would correct in wrong direction in certain cases
• FIXED: public house will correct booze count when drinks are used up
• FIXED: a few more bugs with flattening terrain not rebuilding everything correctly
• FIXED: regenerate all height map passability when loading a new game
• FIXED: a bunch of incorrect recipes including Vacuum Chamber
• FIXED: Wine Recipe + Made it available on Mechanical Brewing Vats
• FIXED: bug with emotion values in workshop QoL effects
• FIXED: upkeep display on airship mast
• FIXED: a bunch of typos
• FIXED: spice rack / hanging pots quality

I'm just a bill, I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting there on Capitol Hill, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-10-04 00:19:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 55 of Clockwork Empires, "ONWARD! FOR QUEEN AND EMPIRE", is now available on Steam. Major player-facing additions this month:

• implemented an Office Supply system to replace the upkeep system
• added biome unlocking
• redid guns & ammo (pew pew)
• added madness and enraged states
• and made enormous improvements to UI all over the place

Begin the full Beta 55 changelog! UI

text input boxes now have a caret

keybinding widget now works in Configuration screen

added Serpent Bell icon

UI for all offices has been given a polish

UI for all offices now has various alerts for reasons why work cannot be performed due to lack of overseer/modules/supplies

mine UI now displays more information

added visual cue to indicate that a module must be affixed to a wall

all recipes should now grey out correctly depending on your materials

all modules in the game now have sort IDs and will display in the Modules Menu in a much more logical order

added/improved tooltips on a large number of constructions and buildings

renamed some office UI to try and make it a bit more clear

added more info to character panel tooltips

fixed order strings so they now also work on the filter buttons on the module placer UI

added randomized start backgrounds

added command tooltip details

did polish changes to where tooltips show up

made improvement to tutorial controls image

did major update to all tutorial text

redid a number of building tutorial images

wrote all Colonial Handbook help files

removed a mysterious sound that played when nothing happened

workshop button now turns red when commodities are unavailable for a production that is set for a job

area designation stamps now highlight what objects can be selected

“Designate Building” dialog now attaches to blueprint for confirmation once it is drawn out

lack of booze for Public House will generate alerts

Fishperson-related alerts should have sounds more consistently now

added product listing to mine tooltip

failure states for workshop jobs now show properly

added parent container code for office UI buttons

Quality of Life is now a first class element in the character info panel

Combat tooltips pared down significantly

building quality display improved

can now add widgets to the front of a container’s stack

scrollbar track clicks are now more useful (sorry track clickers, i never do it, didn’t realize what a sorry state that was in)

improved nametag code, incorporated alert icons into nametags

made interactive objects like rocks and trees have tooltips that are anchored and show up instantly rather than being on the cursor and having a delay. Some new players weren’t seeing them at all, so this should improve their visibility.

all instances of “work crew” have been changed to “overseer” to make difference between LC/MC chars clearer

you will now be alerted if you build a building with no door

FIXED: static buttons for work crews

FIXED: finally fixed our scrollable vert boxes so they don’t do weird things with scrolling too far and their padding isn’t horrible. Finally. After i think 2 years of this bug.

FIXED: edge cases for the building confirmation window

FIXED: offset so that modules menu isn’t below the screen

FIXED: progress bars with “0” percent in them still showed some percent

FIXED: lock up in character screen when character had maxed out skill tree or zero skill

FIXED: bug where unassigning an overseer wouldn’t immediately update the window.

FIXED: Tutorial FYI text boxes can now expand properly.

FIXED: tooltips being basically everywhere.

FIXED: image buttons not pushing their size appropriately

FIXED: gameSimRequireGameObject not working correctly for requirements; various other graying behaviours not working correctly

FIXED: a bunch of bad button typecasting

FIXED: a number of bugs in production menu grey-outs

FIXED: loading bay door claiming to add -1 quality in tooltip

FIXED: scrollbars not sizing correctly on OS X

FIXED: a number of buildings that displayed the wrong cost in the buildings menu have been fixed

FIXED: long-standing issue with wrapped text

FIXED: janky scrollbar movement while the game is unpaused

FIXED: wacky QoL tooltip offset

FIXED: workplace limit display not being reset properly on save/load

FIXED: crash in stamp area designation mode when an interactive object in the area is deleted (such as, say, setting fire to a mushroom)

FIXED: discrepancy of carpentry icon in command button vs. module category Economy/Offices/Workshops

• upkeep removed as-such; it’s being replaced with Office Supplies!
• Naturalist’s Office now uses ammo for hunting, paper for surveying (scouting is free)
• Foreign Office now requires paper to do bureaucracy
• Foreign Office workers will prioritize use of modules that increase their work speed ie. Bureaucrat’s Desk
• Barbershop now requires Medical Supplies to do healing; if Sulphur Tonic is available, it will be used to make healing more effective and more pleasant
• Chapel now requires Iron Cogs as votive material to perform religious services
• Academy now requires paper to do training; if ink is supplied, it will double speed of training
• Mine now requires trusses to operate
• Laboratory now requires Science Materials to perform research
• added a number of new commodities and workshop recipes to support the new office overhaul
• added sugarloaf to traders
• added additional safety aborts to consume supply calls in fsms
• made artifacts tradeable
• added small vs. large stockpiles
• added a new mining tech
• clarified bric-a-brac display names
• “Workbench” is now “Assembly Workbench” and is used only to make modules, except in the kitchen
• added new module: Decor Workbench. Makes all relevant decor items for that workshop
• removed module recipes from ceramics/carpentry workbench
• removed decor recipes from all modules that aren’t Decor Workbench
• Mine now caps depth if you don’t have modules required to dig deeper
• removed basic brew, added back individual brewing recipes
• added Workplace system
• sulphur made more easily mined
• naturalist now requires musket locker to hunt
• “Explore” command now works (from Naturalist ui)
• Naturalist’s Office can now do targeted “Survey” and “Hunt” commands
• product of fishpeople butchering humans no longer (always) auto-claimed by player
• balance: Chemical Works has been moved earlier in the game progression (for ammo)
• balance: changed cost tiers of a vew buildings to streamline the early game
• balance: lowered quality bonus from rugs since they don’t block walkspace and are therefore superior to normal decor
• FIXED: incorrect Ceramics Workshop tech modifier display
• FIXED: you may now place the Lower Class Rug
• FIXED: foreign office error
• FIXED: trade bool on dormant spore
• FIXED: Boxed Macroscope constuction
• FIXED: increased range of Naturalist survey for minerals job so they wouldn’t get stuck in the middle of the map doing nothing
• FIXED: scientists will now only use equipment inside their own laboratory
• FIXED: added check so traders won’t leave and never come back, forever
• FIXED: Pub did not stock booze until ordered to
• FIXED: sometimes modules would suddenly stop working until demolished and rebuilt
• FIXED: Larch farms would grow orange cubes
• FIXED: various cost/quality display on various modules
• FIXED: Bureaucrat’s desks properly count as desks in the foreign office UI

Characters

• removed skill effects on tree chopping/foraging
• added better feedback to early safety Quality of Life rating
• made reactions to horrors more expressive
• foreign civilians will properly flee from horrors
• added “Cry over Body” job
• made Occult Inspectors slightly more expressive
• hunger emote now more expressive
• balance: QoL effects adjusted to have more effect but not be completely extreme
• balance: Immigration now takes longer between waves the later you are in the game (max immigrants increases as well, however)
• balance: Chapel effects now emphasize lowering despair
• balance: Pub effects now emphasize lowering anger
• FIXED: attempt_emote.fsm
• FIXED: scripterror in building name change
• FIXED: some food was tagged as both overseer and labourer-preferred
• FIXED: added check for scripterror when bandit group self-deletes

Jobs/Assignment

• construction assignments will now always be prioritized over other work assignments
• rewrote all flatten terrain code. flatten terrain jobs are now not listed in a giant bulky mess at the start of the assignment, but are assigned first-come-first-serve. this fixes lurching performance issues when a user has a lot of flatten terrain jobs selected, as well as… works…
• moved flatten terrain to assignment beacon, so it can be cancelled etc.
• Flatten terrain target height now displays in tooltip
• added a safety check for if you removed a worker from the academy while they were working
• removing forageables can be done via left-click, per object
• FIXED: assignment beacon drop zones now only show those beacons visible for the current selection mode
• FIXED: assignment beacons now correctly encompass all objects inside (Although it is a little conservative)

Biomes

• added new ore distribution – varies based on climatic zone
• added locking and unlocking of embark locations by biome type
• removed the Alone loadout
• added details for unlocking biomes
• balance: added more high ground in temperate swamp biome
• balance: added more guaranteed starting surface clay/stone

Military/Combat

• Barracks now displays weapon stats & otherwise has a useful UI
• Barracks now used to supply ammunition to soldiers; different weapons use different types of ammo. If ammo runs out, soldiers will default to using pistol
• weapon power/damage/range rebalanced
• military may now do “cull troublesome animal”
• Steam Knights made more reactive to threats
• gave better icons to most military techs
• updated/improved costs of all gun lockers (can now build “Improvised Muskets” in Carpentry Workshop, can build “Ceramic Tripistols” in Ceramics Workshop)
• “Rally” command now works (from Barracks ui)
• balance: fishpeople made weaker
• balance: bandits given worse weapons
• FIXED: obeliskian_melee error
• FIXED: military culling of bad animals
• FIXED: civilians will now only consider melee/ranged attacks if they are not within some distance (X) of a military character

Events

• balance: increased starting food amounts
• a huge number of events now trigger sounds on firing
• made significant improvements to Meteor Shower event arc
• fix to Event Arc-related science jobs
• fix to Event Arc-related selenian AI
• added airdropcrate pos test
• minor cosmetic improvement to Artist event arc
• added more cult stuff
• improved more cult stuff
• added additional safety checks to Rogue Stahlmarkian start
• supplies requested via the foreign office will now take a bit of time to arrive
• balance: changed arc point build + some arc mindays + costs
• FIXED: added safety check for scripterror in fishperson cult arc
• FIXED: added safety check for scripterror in rogue stahlmarkian
• FIXED: Mysterious Ore drop position
• FIXED: issue in tutorial that prevented it from progressing
• FIXED: player didn’t get ownership of bar of gold gift
• FIXED: incorrect action text on bandit spawn FYI alert
• FIXED: incorrect Novorusian text
• FIXED: bug where minimum number of immigrants could be 0
• FIXED: crashed airship event weirdness
• FIXED: dead cultists will no longer offer assassination services

Engine/Renderer

• crash DMP reporter now correctly reports crashes when triggering MSVC internal error or SIGABRT
• rewrote assignment beacon rendering code to fix floating outline ugliness
• added terrain decal scene graph to render assignment beacons and other “zone-like constructions” after terrain but before objects
• FIXED: crash deleting a stockpile
• FIXED: crash deleting a house
• FIXED: crash deleting a workshop
• FIXED: in the event that the game didn’t crash while deleting a thing, it would appear with a graphical artifact glitch
• FIXED: on rare maps, all characters and everything in the world will suddenly start sliding into the lower left corner of the screen
• FIXED: disappearing modules
• FIXED: crash deleting farm and building new farm
• FIXED: misc other crashes
• FIXED: crash deleting modules (again)

As always, the full development report is available on http://www.clockworkempires.com - feel free to give us feedback on our forums at http://www.gaslampgames.com/ or here on Steam. No Time for Love, Dr. Jones, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-09-30 21:12:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 54C of Clockwork Empires has now been posted to the experimental branch on Steam. Amongst other things, this fixes the bug where modules will mysteriously stop working in workshops, which I know has plagued many of you: we finally got a save game where this showed up and were able to puzzle it out. This also includes many fine improvements and bugfixes:

• construction assignments will always be prioritized over other work assignments
• scrollbar track clicks are now more useful (sorry track clickers, we never do it, didn't realize what a sorry state that was in)
• changed more incidences of the term "work crew" to overseer
• reduced thought icon size so at high populations they're not just basically everywhere.
• improved nametag code, incorporated alert icons into nametags
• made interactive objects like rocks and trees have tooltips that are anchored and show up instantly rather than being on the cursor and having a delay. Some new players weren't seeing them at all, so this should improve their visibility.
• all instances of "work crew" have been changed to "overseer" to make difference between LC/MC chars clearer
• updated/improved costs of all gun lockers (can now build "Improvised Muskets" in Carpentry Workshop, can build "Ceramic Tripistols" in Ceramics Workshop)
• you will now be alerted if you build a building with no door
• naturalist now requires musket locker to hunt
• added additional safety checks to Rogue Stahlmarkian start
• hunger emote now more expressive
• building quality display improved
• "Rally" command now works (from Barracks ui)
• "Explore" command now works (from Naturalist ui)
• Naturalist's Office can now do targeted "Survey" and "Hunt" commands
• FIXED: increased range of Naturalist survey for minerals job so they wouldn't get stuck in the middle of the map doing nothing
• FIXED: a number of buildings that displayed the wrong cost in the buildings menu have been fixed
• FIXED: long-standing issue with wrapped text
• FIXED: janky scrollbar movement while the game is unpaused
• FIXED: wacky QoL tooltip offset
• FIXED: workplace limit display not being reset properly on save/load
• FIXED: scientists will now only use equipment inside their own laboratory
• FIXED: added check so traders won't leave and never come back, forever
• FIXED: Pub did not stock booze until ordered to
• FIXED: added check for scripterror when bandit group self-deletes
• FIXED: modules would suddenly stop working until demolished and rebuilt
• FIXED: crash in stamp area designation mode when an interactive object in the area is deleted (such as, say, setting fire to a mushroom)
• FIXED: misc other crashes
• FIXED: discrepancy of carpentry icon in command button vs. module category
• FIXED: Larch farms would grow orange cubes

As always, please report feedback to us either here on Steam, or via our own forums at http://www.gaslampgames.com where there is also weekly blog reports and pie. Honestly, pie sounds really good right now, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-09-26 21:42:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Clockwork Empires Beta 54B has now been posted to the Experimental Branch on Steam. Major changes include the removal of repair trunks, and... well, honestly, a heck of a lot of things - we're not even sure where to summarize; however, it's a heck of a lot better. As always, experimental builds are opt-in on Steam. Changes below:

• text input boxes now have a caret
• keybinding widget now works in Configuration screen
• crash DMP reporter now correctly reports crashes when triggering MSVC internal error or SIGABRT
• upkeep removed as-such; it's being replaced with Office Supplies!
• Naturalist's Office now uses ammo for hunting, paper for surveying (scouting is free)
• Barracks now displays weapon stats & otherwise has a useful UI
• Barracks now used to supply ammunition to soldiers; different weapons use different types of ammo. If ammo runs out, soldiers will default to using pistol
• Foreign Office now requires paper to do bureaucracy
• Foreign Office workers will prioritize use of modules that increase their work speed ie. Bureaucrat's Desk
• Barbershop now requires Medical Supplies to do healing; if Sulphur Tonic is available, it will be used to make healing more effective and more pleasant
• Chapel now requires Iron Cogs as votive material to perform religious services
• Academy now requires paper to do training; if ink is supplied, it will double speed of training
• Mine now requires trusses to operate
• Laboratory now requires Science Materials to perform research
• UI for all offices has been given a polish
• UI for all offices now has various alerts for reasons why work cannot be performed due to lack of overseer/modules/supplies
• weapon power/damage/range rebalanced
• added Serpent Bell icon
• added new ore distribution - varies based on climatic zone
• added a new mining tech
• added a number of new commodities and workshop recipes to support the new office overhaul
• military may now do "cull troublesome animal"
• mine UI now displays more information
• rewrote assignment beacon rendering code to fix floating outline ugliness
• added terrain decal scene graph to render assignment beacons and other "zone-like constructions" after terrain but before objects
• added visual cue to indicate that a module must be affixed to a wall
• all recipes should now grey out correctly depending on your materials
• all modules in the game now have sort IDs and will display in the Modules Menu in a much more logical order
• a huge number of events now trigger sounds on firing
• made significant improvements to Meteor Shower event arc
• added/improved tooltips on a large number of constructions and buildings
• fix to Event Arc-related science jobs
• fix to Event Arc-related selenian AI
• renamed some office UI to try and make it a bit more clear
• removed skill effects on tree chopping/foraging
• added sugarloaf to traders
• more info for character info tooltips
• Ordering strings for commands and for buildings and modules.
• fixed order strings so they now also work on the filter buttons on the module placer UI
• added locking and unlocking of embark locations by biome type
• randomized start backgrounds
• added command tooltip details
• some small changes to where tooltips show up so that they look less like garbage
• added additional safety aborts to consume supply calls in fsms
• added better feedback to early safety rating
• added airdropcrate pos test
• made artifacts tradeable
• removed the Alone loadout
• added a safety check for if you removed a worker from the academy while they were working
• made improvement to tutorial controls image
• did major update to all tutorial text
• redid a number of building tutorial images
• wrote all Colonial Handbook help files
• removed a mysterious sound that played when nothing happened
• minor cosmetic improvement to Artist event arc
• workshop button now turns red when commodities are unavailable for a production that is set for a job
• added details for unlocking biomes
• added more tooltip stuff
• area designation stamps now highlight what objects can be selected
• rewrote all flatten terrain code. flatten terrain jobs are now not listed in a giant bulky mess at the start of the assignment, but are assigned first-come-first-serve. this fixes lurching performance issues when a user has a lot of flatten terrain jobs selected, as well as... works...
• moved flatten terrain to assignment beacon, so it can be cancelled etc.
• Flatten terrain target height now displays in tooltip
• "Designate Building" dialog now attaches to blueprint for confirmation once it is drawn out
• added more cult stuff
• improved more cult stuff
• Steam Knights made more reactive to threats
• made reactions to horrors more expressive
• foreign civilians will properly flee from horrors
• added "Cry over Body" job
• lack of booze for Public House will generate alerts
• removing forageables can be done via left-click, per object
• added small vs. large stockpiles
• clarified bric-a-brac display names
• made Occult Inspectors slightly more expressive
• "Workbench" is now "Assembly Workbench" and is used only to make modules, except in the kitchen
• added new module: Decor Workbench. Makes all relevant decor items for that workshop
• removed module recipes from ceramics/carpentry workbench
• removed decor recipes from all modules that aren't Decor Workbench
• Mine now caps depth if you don't have modules required to dig deeper
• removed basic brew, added back individual brewing recipes
• gave better icons to most military techs
• improved a bunch of tooltips
• Fishperson-related alerts should have sounds more consistently now
• changed all civilopedia references of "citizens" to "colonists"
• added product listing to mine tooltip
• added Workplace system
• failure states for workshop jobs now show properly.
• added parent container code for office UI buttons
• Quality of Life is now a first class element in the character info panel
• Combat tooltips pared down significantly
• can now add widgets to the front of a container's stack
• balance: QoL effects adjusted
• balance: fishpeople made weaker
• balance: increased starting food amounts
• balance: surface stratum of mine now includes sulphur
• balance: Chemical Works has been moved earlier in the game progression
• balance: bandits given worse weapons
• balance: changed cost tiers of a vew buildings to streamline the early game
• balance: lowered quality bonus from rugs since they don't block walkspace and are therefore superior to normal decor
• balance: Immigration now takes longer between waves the later you are in the game (max immigrants increases as well, however)
• balance: Chapel effects now emphasize lowering despair
• balance: Pub effects now emphasize lowering anger
• balance: added more high ground in temperate swamp biome
• balance: added more guaranteed starting surface clay/stone
• FIXED: static buttons for work crews
• FIXED: finally fixed our scrollable vert boxes so they don't do weird things with scrolling too far and their padding isn't horrible. Finally. After 2 years of this bug.
• FIXED: edge cases for the building confirmation window
• FIXED: offset so that modules menu isn't below the screen. My bad.
• FIXED: attempt_emote.fsm
• FIXED: added safety check for scripterror in fishperson cult arc
• FIXED: added safety check for scripterror in rogue stahlmarkian
• FIXED: obeliskian_melee error
• FIXED: incorrect Ceramics Workshop tech modifier display
• FIXED: crash deleting a stockpile
• FIXED: crash deleting a house
• FIXED: crash deleting a workshop
• FIXED: in the event that the game didn't crash while deleting a thing, it would appear with a graphical artifact glitch
• FIXED: progress bars with "0" percent in them still showed some percent
• FIXED: on rare maps, all characters and everything in the world will suddenly start sliding into the lower left corner of the screen
• FIXED: lock up in character screen when character had maxed out skill tree or zero skill
• FIXED: disappearing modules
• FIXED: bug where unassigning a work crew wouldn't immediately update the window.
• FIXED: Tutorial FYI text boxes can now expand properly.
• FIXED: tooltips being basically everywhere.
• FIXED: image buttons not pushing their size appropriately
• FIXED: crash deleting farm and building new farm
• FIXED: gameSimRequireGameObject not working correctly for requirements; various other graying behaviours not working correctly
• FIXED: a bunch of bad button typecasting
• FIXED: Mysterious Ore drop position
• FIXED: issue in tutorial that prevented it from progressing
• FIXED: a number of bugs in production menu grey-outs
• FIXED: scripterror in building name change
• FIXED: military culling of bad animals
• FIXED: you may now place the Lower Class Rug
• FIXED: player didn't get ownership of bar of gold gift
• FIXED: loading bay door claiming to add -1 quality in tooltip
• FIXED: military culling of bad animals
• FIXED: lc rug
• FIXED: incorrect action text on bandit spawn FYI alert
• FIXED: incorrect Novorusian text
• FIXED: foreign office error
• FIXED: trade bool on dormant spore
• FIXED: Boxed Macroscope constuction
• FIXED: bug where minimum number of immigrants could be 0
• FIXED: some food was tagged as both overseer and labourer-preferred
• FIXED: civilians will now only consider melee/ranged attacks if they are not within some distance (X) of a military character
• FIXED: crashed airship event weirdness
• FIXED: scrollbars not sizing correctly on OS X
• FIXED: assignment beacon drop zones now only show those beacons visible for the current selection mode
• FIXED: assignment beacons now correctly encompass all objects inside (Although it is a little conservative)

As always, feel free to report changes either here on our forums at www.gaslampgames.com! Cheers, -- GG

[ 2016-09-22 00:35:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta Build 54 of Clockwork Empires, "Yes, Inspector", is now available on Steam! MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES:

• added a new Mine system
• improved Naturalist’s Office
• improved Public House
• added a Training Academy
• lights!
• many UI improvements
• vast & sweeping Upkeep rebalancing
• Game Over stats
• The Larch

FULL CHANGELOG: Mining

• Mining interface completely overhauled; depth now unlocks deeper strata which the player may choose from when mining. Different stratum combine with nearby resource points to result in different sets of products when mining. Deep mines may find interesting things.
• added 3 new Mine modules: Dewatering Pump for mines, Ventilation Unit, and Steam Distributor
• rewrote ore vein distribution
• FIXED: button bug with mines
• FIXED: mine output bug in deeper stratum
• FIXED: infinite new ore veins in mine
• FIXED: horrifying infinite loop bug when acquiring 2nd bonus ore vein in mines

Offices

• added new office type: “Training Academy” (your overseers can learn skills here faster than normal)
• overhauled Public House (can select booze type to serve, booze type appearance is preserved when serving, colonists can self-serve, pub given larger effect on memories/QoL)
• Naturalists now can be set to various modes including: Scouting, Hunting, Mineral Surveying
• a Scouting Naturalist can see extremely far, modified by naturalism skill
• a Hunting Naturalist will hunt – and will attempt to find game if none is visible (only Naturalists & crew may hunt now)
• a Mineral Surveying Naturalist surveys minerals in a normal way
• Pubs will serve tea if they are out of everything else
• removed Cot from Barracks
• Naturalist’s Office given better tooltips
• Pub: Booze Vats now required to increase Pub drink stock capacity
• added Bureaucrat’s Desk: These can be built in the foreign office as an upgrade over Standing Desks to speed up your diplomacy point acquisition.
• FIXED: can no longer reset research in lab with fewer points than advertised
• FIXED: various incorrect utility caps in office jobs leading to unexpected behaviour with certain office workcrews
• FIXED: science skill display in Laboratory
• FIXED: header on Laboratory points filled alert
• FIXED: various issues with Foreign Office jobs not being carried out correctly under some circumstances
• FIXED: bug with mining techs
• FIXED: changing research category in Laboratory could mark projects as “already researched”
• FIXED: lab techs displayed “researched” after switching programs
• FIXED: error in controlling skill for Foreign Office work
• FIXED: Public House will no longer be stocked with booze you do not own
• FIXED: “you need a barracks” warning firing when you already have a barracks

Characters

• added unique icons to some of the new traits
• added tech to boost quality of life for outdoor workers
• foreigners who die inside your colony will now automatically receive burial
• despairing colonists will cure themselves using Laudanum distributed from the Pub
• balance: halved the maximum number of characters you can receive from a single immigration wave
• balance: beds now restricted by character social class
• balance: Cots and Lower Class Chairs no longer require upkeep
• balance: killing for the first time gives a harsher emotional impact
• balance: colonists with over 50 despair will start freaking out and cease to work until their despair is under 20 (If possible they will avail themselves of pub/chapel services to speed up recovery)
• FIXED: friendship scripterror
• FIXED: rare resetWeapon scripterror
• FIXED: scripterror in “get swole” if overseer job was changed rapidly and thus anim name was lost
• FIXED: eating fishperson pie is no longer considered cannibalism
• FIXED: added additional check during character damage calc due to scripterror after attempt to damage deleted character
• FIXED: a bug that was preventing colonists from getting memories sometimes
• FIXED: unified name of all the variables for despair
• FIXED: weird one-off script error with pathfinding not aborting correctly
• FIXED: military morale check was backwards
• FIXED: female armoured bandit did not have class-based anim defs leading to very rare errors that would freeze colonists in place forever under certain conditions
• FIXED: military will no longer butcher corpses unless exceptional circumstances prevail

Economy/Workshops

• new module: Advanced Workbench; allows creation of upkeep trunks, bricabrac, boxed modules in bulk
• characters picking up a stack of m things from a stack of n items no longer play their animation m times; they play the animation once and pick up the entire stack, all at once
• minor tag updates to a few commodities/foods
• animal butchery now returns stacks of meat, like other resource-exploitation jobs
• meat from when animals ‘butcher’ a corpse inside civilization will automatically be claimed by player
• added The Larch (to research and then grow for a source of timber)
• Workshop upkeep jobs are now handled by the workshop work crew, if a workshop work crew is available
• booze commodities are now crates when not being drunk
• balance: military modules now require upkeep
• balance: reduced upkeep costs across the board, but especially for low end modules
• balance: further upkeep nerfing (deal with it)
• balance: nerfed upkeep costs EVEN MORE
• balance: animal meat output increased
• balance: failed upkeep now makes work take ~8x as long rather than completely shutting down workshops
• FIXED: not saving/loading workshop module attached to a job between saves would cause production menu to occasionally not update when a job was complete
• FIXED: commodities disappearing from stockpile when two containers are merged (again!)
• FIXED: all instances of gathering materials for construction now require that you own said materials
• FIXED: uncommon scripterror upon shiftchange for unfinished building when left unfinished for a very long time
• FIXED: logic error in upkeep job creation causes building with exactly 1 upkeep cost to not perform upkeep correctly
• FIXED: weird occasional scripterror when creating something in a workshop
• FIXED: some module costs
• FIXED: can no longer hit demolition many times on a building and cause errors
• FIXED: beetles wouldn’t drop lacquer

Trade

• if traders are already in your colony, additional traders will no longer appear until the existing traders have left
• requesting traders via Foreign Office requires that no traders be on the map already
• balance: traders will now always have some repair trunks and basic materials on them
• balance: added opium to traders
• FIXED: you can un-designate trade goods and the green outline will disappear
• FIXED: Boxed rare paintings are now tradable
• FIXED: traders will no longer appear w/o trade goods in their hands
• FIXED: crash when opening trade office menu
• FIXED: trade goods in stacks now correctly un-designate too
• FIXED: subtle errors in Foreign Office to do with missions that involve requesting traders

Events

• added a first pass at game over screen
• added an Occult Inspector event
• added Rogue Artist event
• “singing terrain” event arc effect increased
• Sunny Day now starts during the day (because it’s weird to start this at night)
• made rogue stahlmarkian starting position more random
• event arcs made smarter about pushing information to ticker history
• Novorus Logging Moratorium and Stahlmark Smithing Prowess foreign office events are now tracked using the event arc system
• balance: cultist murderer option now easier to access
• FIXED: more instances of empty-handed traders
• FIXED: alert for angering bandits appearing when no bandit witnessed your desecration of their foul tents
• FIXED: bug in “Stahlmark Smithing Prowess” event where it failed to track how many iron bars you had made
• FIXED: scripterror in rogue artist event
• FIXED: scripterror in Rogue Stahlmarkian if rare conditions occur
• FIXED: broken icon in alert for favour_redcoats
• FIXED: broken fishperson job loop under certain circumstances
• FIXED: math error in disturbance points that made them higher than intended

UI/UX

• the building commands menu is now split into more subcategories
• assignment beacons are now grayed out when their assignments are disabled
• rewrote a number of building descriptions to make their usage more clear
• foreign relation state changes now handled as FYI-style alerts
• tooltips can now be anchored to screen position
• added wrapped text overload constructor to cut down on illusion code lines
• object tooltips now show how many of a thing are owned, show tags
• character tooltips are now anchored to bottom right, and are starting to show useful information
• upgraded some core building icons to be more visually distinct
• camera tutorial now mentions that spacebar pauses the game
• character tooltip info now visible in the work crew screen and the population list UI elements, because we all wanted them there in the first place
• added Quality of Life ratings from 1 to 5 (& more info in the pipe)
• added more functionality to the character tooltip (more to come): Will show more information about why a character is not doing something useful and what to do about it
• Quality of Life attributes for characters are more closely attached to specific emotional states in order to make it easier to provide clear solution steps via the UI for a character’s state
• added a little icon for whether characters are currently on-shift to the tooltip
• population list window has been edited to show more information, the filters have been temporarily removed
• FIXED: title of “aristocratic manor” command no longer says “A”
• FIXED: typography on j and other characters
• FIXED: tooltip info persists across save/load
• FIXED: an issue where for initial pause tooltips for characters were broken
• FIXED: Work crew panel now displays the name of a workshop/assigned zone if there is one (instead of “No Assignment”)
• FIXED: workcrew UI for farms no longer forgets that a work crew is assigned to a farm unless they’re currently farming.
• FIXED: some bad widget deletions causing Bad Things
• FIXED: some memory handling issue with UI elements

Engine & Others

• added ability to attach lights to static props (& tool support for this)
• added lights to a number of existing modules
• you can now build lampposts
• horror corpses can now be destroyed by damage
• steppe biome now uses lower hill generator
• added more terrain softening between alpine clearing and temperate swamp
• added new acceleration code for closest lambda queries (optimization!)
• FIXED: combat music cues should only fire for combat involving your colonists
• FIXED: depressingly complicated scene graph loading bug causing crashing on save games
• FIXED: another, different, save game crash
• FIXED: loading the save game you just saved causes colonists to re-appear twice in the colonists list
• FIXED: large, complicated race condition
• FIXED: game locks up suspending or closing a job where a job is being cancelled, but the FSM hasn’t picked it up yet
• FIXED: weird crash loading save games where you have a beacon with an interactive object with no message receiver, and no I don’t know how this happens either but we handle it now
• FIXED: crash when clicking on module button rapidly

The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. And pictures of our pets. You know you want to see cute animals. Let us know what you think! We may not respond to everything but we DO read everything. Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums! Always remember to cooperate with Local Purging Authorities, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-08-27 00:12:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 53C of Clockwork Empires is now on the experimental branch on Steam! On a... Thursday. Hmm. This is basically a release candidate for a Full Release tomorrow, so please bludgeon it to death and send us those bug reports. Changes:

• meat from when animals 'butcher' a corpse inside civilization will automatically be claimed by player
• Naturalist's Office given better tooltips
• event arcs made smarter about pushing information to ticker history
• added Quality of Life ratings (& more info in the pipe)
• added more functionality to the character tooltip (more to come): Will show more information about why a character is not doing something useful and what to do about it. This will be improved for the subsequent patch. Also shows some info about their Quality of Life, and this will be more quantified and clear in the next update.
• Quality of Life attributes for characters are more closely attached to specific emotional states in order to make it easier to provide clear solution steps via the UI for a character's state.
• added a little icon for whether characters are currently on-shift to the tooltip
• character tooltip info now visible in the work crew screen and the population list UI elements, because we all wanted them there in the first place.
• population list window has been edited to show more information, the filters have been temporarily removed (but will likely be back once we have some more testing of the default state).
• added Bureaucrat's Desk: These can be built in the foreign office as an upgrade over Standing Desks to speed up your diplomacy point acquisition. Novorus Logging Moratorium and Stahlmark Smithing Prowess foreign office
• events are now tracked using the event arc system
• added new acceleration code for closest lambda queries (optimization!)
• added more terrain softening between alpine clearing and temperate swamp
• balance: cultist murderer option now easier to access
• balance: halved the maximum number of characters you can receive from a single immigration wave
• balance: failed upkeep now makes work take ~8x as long rather than completely shutting down workshops
• FIXED: workcrew UI for farms no longer forgets that a work crew is assigned to a farm unless they're currently farming.
• FIXED: some bad widget deletions causing Bad Things.
• FIXED: military morale check was backwards
• FIXED: crash when clicking on module button rapidly
• FIXED: some memory handling issue with UI elements
• FIXED: some module costs
• FIXED: horrifying infinite loop bug when acquiring 2nd bonus ore vein in mines
• FIXED: scripterror in rogue artist event
• FIXED: female armoured bandit did not have class-based anim defs leading to very rare errors that would freeze colonists in place forever under certain conditions
• FIXED: scripterror in Rogue Stahlmarkian if rare conditions occur
• FIXED: can no longer hit demolition many times on a building and cause errors
• FIXED (53B): skill values (with strong practical applications to Laboratory)
• FIXED: stacks not un-trade designating
• FIXED: subtle errors in Foreign Office to do with missions that involve requesting traders
• FIXED: beetles wouldn't drop lacquer
• FIXED: broken icon in alert for favour_redcoats
• FIXED: broken fishperson job loop under certain circumstances
• FIXED: math error in disturbance points that made them higher than intended
• FIXED: military won't butcher corpses unless exceptional circumstances prevail

-- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-08-26 00:06:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 53B of Clockwork Empires is now on the Experimental Branch on Steam. Major Changes:

• added lights
• Naturalist's office overhauled (not quite done): Naturalists can be set to Scout, Hunt, or Survey Minerals. Related: ore vein distribution on map has been redone.
• colonists with high despair will now cease to work and do despairing things (there are various methods to alleviate this, esp. via Pub and Chapel)
• upkeep costs significantly reduced, various bugs fixed, and "Advanced Workbench" added which can produce upkeep trunks (and other things) en masse

Consolidated Changelog for Beta 53B:

• added ability to attach lights to static props (& tool support for this)
• added lights to a number of existing modules
• you can now build lampposts
• added a first pass at game over screen
• the building commands menu is now split into more subcategories
• added Rogue Artist event
• new module: Advanced Workbench; allows creation of upkeep trunks, bricabrac, boxed modules in bulk
• rewrote a number of building descriptions to make their usage clearer
• Naturalists now can be set to various modes including: Scouting, Hunting, Mineral Surveying
• a Scouting Naturalist can see extremely far, modified by naturalism skill
• a Hunting Naturalist will hunt - and will attempt to find game if none is visible (only Naturalists & crew may hunt now)
• a Mineral Surveying Naturalist surveys minerals in a normal way
• animal butchery now returns stacks of meat, like other resource-exploitation jobs
• removed Cot from Barracks
• updated some icons
• more traders won't show up if some traders are already visiting your colony
• requesting traders via Foreign Office requires that no traders be on the map already
• steppe biome now uses lower hill generator
• camera tutorial now mentions that spacebar pauses the game
• booze commodities are now crates when not being drunk
• Booze Vats now required to increase Pub drink stock capacity
• foreigners who die inside your colony will now automatically receive burial
• despairing colonists will cure themselves using Laudanum distributed from the Pub
• balance: added opium to traders
• balance: further upkeep nerfing (deal with it)
• balance: nerfed upkeep costs EVEN MORE
• balance: animal meat output increased
• balance: killing for the first time gives a harsher emotional impact
• balance: colonists with over 50 despair will start freaking out and cease to work until their despair is under 20 (If possible they will avail themselves of pub/chapel services to speed up recovery)
• FIXED: all instances of gathering materials for construction now require that you own said materials
• FIXED: error in controlling skill for Foreign Office work
• FIXED: you can un-designate trade goods and the green outline will disappear
• FIXED: Public House will no longer be stocked with booze you do not own
• FIXED: added additional check during character damage calc due to scripterror after attempt to damage deleted character
• FIXED: logic error in upkeep job creation causes building with exactly 1 upkeep cost to not perform upkeep correctly
• FIXED (53A): scripterror doing QoL string creation after drinking tea
• FIXED: traders will no longer appear w/o trade goods in their hands
• FIXED 53A: House UI wonkiness corrected
• FIXED 53A: upkeep tooltip displays brought in line with actual upkeep values
• FIXED: uncommon scripterror upon shiftchange for unfinished building when left unfinished for a very long time
• FIXED: trade goods now correctly un-designate
• FIXED: tooltip info persists across save/load
• FIXED: an issue where for initial pause tooltips for characters were broken
• FIXED: Work crew panel now displays the name of a workshop/assigned zone if there is one (instead of "No Assignment")
• FIXED: large, complicated race condition
• FIXED: game locks up suspending or closing a job where a job is being cancelled, but the FSM hasn't picked it up yet
• FIXED: weird crash loading save games where you have a beacon with an interactive object with no message receiver, and no I don't know how this happens either but we handle it now
• FIXED: a bug that was preventing colonists from getting memories sometimes
• FIXED: "you need a barracks" warning firing when you already have a barracks
• FIXED: button bug with mines
• FIXED: mine output bug in deeper stratum
• FIXED: infinite new ore veins in mine
• FIXED: weird occasional scripterror when creating something in a workshop
• FIXED: bug in "Stahlmark Smithing Prowess" event where it failed to track how many iron bars you had made
• FIXED: unified name of all the variables for despair
• FIXED: weird one-off script error with pathfinding not aborting correctly

Have a nice weekend, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-08-20 00:31:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta Build 53 of Clockwork Empires, "A Juncture Most Unnatural", is now available on Steam! MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES:

• added many event arcs, including REDACTED
• civilians will now fight to protect themselves (just not as well, or as long, as soldiers)
• added upkeep to buildings (& multitude of systems and balance changes to support this)
• changed UI for creating on-map assignments to “stamp” system
• many other UI improvements done to improve information available to player and improve control over game systems
• significant optimization of game speed, save size, save/load speed
• … which let us add a 2X game speed button
• housing and immigration systems much improved

This is our single largest changelog to date for a monthly patch. If you are prepared, step forth and read the FULL CHANGELOG: UI/UX

• added list of workshops/offices/houses to click on when the menu is open
• added new buttons for spawn points to embark screen
• added currently selected highlighting to lists of offices/housing, changed visual style slightly.
• new, improved emotion value display added to character window
• removed “chop down”, “mine surface node”, “forage”, “clear terrain” and replaced them with assignment stamping tools
• added Upkeep display to workshops (still TODO: Offices & Houses)
• did work crew selection box improvements (shows skill level, number of labourers assigned to crew)
• improved FYI alert UI style
• added disturbance counter.
• added current/max population widget to UI
• the population counter now correctly reflects your starting pop in all loadouts
• “I have altered the tooltips on population capacity. Pray I don’t alter them further.”
• “Delete Module” command renamed “Dismantle Module”
• new building construction command tooltips added
• disabled some empty UI containers
• updated tutorial to reference new immigration
• added production menu coloring feedback for stuff you don’t have the ingredients for
• fiddled about with a lots of UI (cleaning out extra elements, making standard tooltips and displays consistent between buildings)
• moved all workshops, offices, housing over to workshops, offices, housing panel
• swapped position of trade office and naturalist office in the offices submenu
• added alert for if traders attempt to visit but no trade office is built
• modules slated for dismantling will display an icon to show that they have been so designated
• text numbers for commodities in module placement tooltips turn red if that material requirement can’t be fulfilled
• module placement button grays out when material requirements can’t be fulfilled
• added “?” box tutorial for farms
• standard welcome event should overflow the text box less often
• made module menu glass buttons a bit more opaque
• added smarter tooltip anchoring code
• added anchored tooltips for emotion bars which should cause fewer issues.
• Graveyards are now use fixed zone size system (like farms)
• 2x button, workshops, offices, houses, and commodities buttons now highlight when in use
• the Barbershop now notifies you in its UI when it is nonfunctional because of a lack of chairs
• broken (due to lack of upkeep) module UI elements should no longer permit mouse events
• added confirmation windows on all exit without saving options
• FIXED: productionWindow not initialized after save/load and may contain garbage
• FIXED: house demolish button
• FIXED: when farms are removed they will be correctly deleted from Offices list
• FIXED: Cancel button works for building creator
• FIXED: explore waypoints can now be properly cancelled
• FIXED: module tooltips now persist across save/load
• FIXED: tutorial window sticks around when game is shut down, causing crashes
• FIXED: no longer allow player to click individual trees for harvesting (will fill this need via TODO improvement)
• FIXED: deleting null ptr when regenerating work crew selection box

Events/NPCs

• added a major cult crisis or two
• cleaned up various edge cases in Trader group behaviour
• removed trader item drop on flee (avoids weird edge cases)
• Bandits will become enraged (and an alert will appear) if you forage their tents when they’re nearby
• added sounds to a number of steam knight animations
• airships now crash in more varied locations
• non-player agents who get stuck on the map will self-despawn if they fail pathing too many times
• balance: immigration is more likely to give you lots of characters if you have significant excess capacity
• FIXED: crashed airship ending scripterror (in certain cases)
• FIXED 52D: grimoire scripterror when no vicar present
• FIXED: grammar error in the airship crash event
• FIXED: various typos
• FIXED: bandits could be set to double-plunder your settlement, which was confusing
• FIXED: error in certain cases during bandit plundering of goods relating to stacks and goods ownership
• FIXED: traders will abort trade mission if you demolish the trade office (and they will not consider a trade office in process of being demolished to be valid trade target)
• FIXED: Stahlmark special traders no longer use Novorusian flag
• FIXED: steam knights will now never land inside buildings or in water
• FIXED: in several cases, traders would not find a valid trade office
• FIXED: “You recieved 1 immigrants” grammar issues
• FIXED: Rogue Stahlmarkian could stay in your colony forever
• FIXED: various edge cases that would cause traders to be stuck in player’s colony
• FIXED: dormant obeliskian could attack people in very rare case where its dormancy sequence was interrupted by combat
• FIXED: “Suspicious Goods” event now uses the proper start position
• FIXED: foreign-office triggered traders were not showing up

Buildings/Economy

• added building upkeep
• Repair Trunks are now craftable (for upkeep)
• housing population cap increase system added: houses will now increase population cap per appropriate social class as you add amenities, look for details in the UI
• players cannot place modules into inappropriate buildings (Blueprints where you can place a module will show as blue. Blueprints where you cannot place a module will show up as red.)
• added Rare Painting module to game. Placing these in your houses increases their population capacity. (it can be acquired from various events and traders)
• farm harvests are now output in stacks rather than individually
• foraging collects stacks rather than single units (as applicable)
• “Chop Tree” job will place output stack into chopper’s hands & will return to stockpile if available
• “Mine Surface Node” jobs will place output of up to 3 items in miner’s hands & will return to stockpile if available (job time increased to compensate for faster extraction speed)
• doors can now be properly dismantled
• added support features for multi-item system being used by upkeep trunks
• added (deliberately) overdramatic particle effect to modules when they need upkeep. This may be toned down later.
• added unique gun locker models
• stockpiles can now be assigned to work crews (a work crew that is not busy and can haul will still attempt to haul, however)
• commodities used in the production of module goods are now stashed in the module using them, and will be released if the job is aborted (!!!)
• added some new techs to mining
• sugarcane can be brewed into booze
• buckets of agave syrup may now ignite if set on fire
• dissecting horrors now has a chance to increase science points in random lab
• modules will now return their materials when deconstructed
• buildings will return their construction materials when dismantled
• changed “Bricabrac” to “Bric-a-brac” upon order of the Dept. of Pedantry
• added unique model for moonshine
• Master/W-tier upkeep trunk commodities now show the actual number being produced in their recipe
• balance: starter crops all yield faster harvests (the proportion of crops over time is the same)
• balance: time it takes to chop tree and mine surface node have been changed
• balance: added one MC and one LC character to all loadouts
• balance: max science points for lab now determined by Overseer science skill level
• balance: added upkeep trunks to starting loadout supplies
• balance: added upkeep trunks to traders’ potential goods
• balance: inactive workshops/offices do not require upkeep
• FIXED: Scrap Iron can now be smelted into iron bars
• FIXED: players cannot place modules on top of other modules
• FIXED: construction jobs did not use closest materials
• FIXED: pickling a certain type of fungus could lead to problems (and not the Fun kind)
• FIXED: issue with healing afflictions in Barbershop
• FIXED: display cost of mechanical mixing tank
• FIXED: pickling chillies
• FIXED (52A): chilli stew in Iron Oven
• FIXED: did not actually delete commodities in a stack (this affects Make Stone Bricabrac etc.)
• FIXED: smelt gold ingots
• FIXED: label on bottle laudanum job
• FIXED: icon on brick charcoal kiln
• FIXED: brick charcoal kiln construction requirement
• FIXED: barber job weighting

Map/Biomes

• animals will now eat forest meat
• reduced # of points on world; optimized world gen a bit
• reduced map size and dealt with The Consequences Of These Actions (this has added benefit of provided great optimization to game speed, save/load time, save file size, etc.)
• added embarkation button icon biome detection code
• reduced animals spawned at start of game (they were crowding things)
• scaled the terrain generator parameters to altered map size
• added a new biome generator for alpine forests
• balance: added clay to Tropical Dry Forest
• balance: added clay to Boreal Forest
• balance: the area immediately surrounding the starting location is now guaranteed to be flat
• FIXED: removed some unpathable cliffs in temperate swamp

Characters

• overhauled the immigration system (Immigration is now based on your housing capacity. 2 workers per Lower Class House, 1 overseer per Middle Class House.)
• rebalanced off-shift social jobs to make things more interesting
• improved “shoo animal” job; it will work more effectively now
• added new event for reaching the 150 char population cap
• added new trait: Light Sleeper. Can only sleep in beds.
• added new trait: Heavy Sleeper. isn’t woken by preaching/gunfire/etc.
• traits: Adaptable trait now gives bonus to skillgain of best 3 skills
• traits: Brutish trait gives a bonus to melee damage
• traits: Materialistic colonists are harder to please with house quality
• traits: Reclusive colonists don’t make friends on spawn
• traits: Scholarly trait gives bonus to science skillgain and penalty to all others
• traits: Xenophobic overseers can cause diplomatic incidents if you assign them to a foreign office
• traits: Patriotic overseers give a bonus to empire diplomacy point gain
• traits: epiceureans learn cooking skill faster
• traits: removed Voracious trait
• traits: Hale and Hearty trait grants a bonus to HP
• added new trait: Jack of All Trades. Gets a bonus to leveling skills that are below lv3
• added new trait: Highly focused. Gets a bonus to learning their best skill and a penalty to all others
• added new trait: Woodtouch, Stonesense, Ironborn. Gives boni to Carpentry, Ceramics, Metalworking skillgain respectively. Ironborn grants a small melee damage bonus.
• added new trait: Oblivious Worker. Gains no benefit or penalty from workplace quality
• decreased priority of idling when off-shift
• added additional error checking in “vicar_take_confession” fsm
• “Ceramics” skill is now “Stoneworking” (In future builds its scope will be expanded to include mining)
• Steam Knights now contribute significantly to colonists’ feeling of safety
• the following jobs will now show progress bars: Finish Upkeep, Clear Object, Deconstruct Building, Deconstruct Module, Flatten Terrain
• added smarter abort case to carrying corpse job
• balance: made drinking booze make colonists slightly happier
• balance: made combat memories more fearful to civilians
• balance: colonists must drink booze in a pub. They may not drink booze outside the pub. To do so would be Uncivilized.
• balance: made some QoL bonus/malus changes (generally making these less forgiving as other game systems mature)
• balance: all starting characters start with “Pioneering Spirit” trait
• balance: civilian colonists will get more negative memories from combat
• balance: seeing eldritch horrors is now more terrifying
• FIXED: various jobs could be performed while carrying commodities now require they be dropped (eg. hunting, repairing buildings)
• FIXED: colonists will no longer drink booze that doesn’t belong to them
• FIXED 52D: items stuck to hands due to job interrupts
• FIXED: colonists no longer only wander into the woods when afraid
• FIXED:mining surface nodes took more than twice as long as intended
• FIXED: dipping into trade-food required only half the hunger it was supposed to
• FIXED: corrected more memories with non-player facing display names
• FIXED: fixed up “slapped_other” type memory names
• FIXED: “Repair Module” job now restriction to workcrews with “construction” enabled
• FIXED: sermon-giving issues

Combat/Military

• added civilian combat AI
• removed starting NCO and field promotions
• added a number of new military techs
• made people smarter about keeping guns loaded
• FIXED: attacking with a quill would freeze character

Engine & Etc.

• added 2x simulation button! HOLY VORPULON
• FIXED: save game crash after starting new game, quitting, starting new game again
• FIXED: replays not saving work orders for workshops, causing determinism break
• FIXED: Replays now work again! Yay. Please look forward to Reproducible Bugs Being Removed.
• FIXED: a couple of crashes switching in and out of building creation modes
• FIXED: highlighted region now corresponds to where your mouse is in full screen mode when game is run with a backbuffer that is larger than the display area
• FIXED: leftover jobs showing up in jobs menu after starting new game, quitting to main menu, starting new game again
• FIXED: crash bug with the work crew selection widget
• FIXED: beetles eating longpork will no longer transform it into charred meat
• FIXED 52D: gridAddItem error, for real
• FIXED: forest meat rides again

The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. And pictures of our pets. You know you want to see cute animals. Let us know what you think! We may not respond to everything but we DO read everything. Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums! Beware the [REDACTED], -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-07-27 19:04:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 52F of Clockwork Empires is now on the experimental branch on Steam. Consolidated changelog for Beta 52F

• added smarter tooltip anchoring code
• added anchored tooltips for emotion bars which should cause fewer issues.
• added a major event arc
• Graveyards are now use fixed zone size system (like farms)
• improved "shoo animal" job; it will work more effectively now
• airships now crash in more varied locations
• 2x button, workshops, offices, houses, and commodities buttons now highlight when in use
• "Ceramics" skill is now "Stoneworking" (In future builds its scope will be expanded to include mining)
• the following jobs will now show progress bars: Finish Upkeep, Clear Object, Deconstruct Building, Deconstruct Module, Flatten Terrain
• Master/W-tier upkeep trunk commodities now show the actual number being produced in their recipe
• balance: immigration is more likely to give you lots of characters if you have significant excess capacity
• balance: civilian colonists will get more negative memories from combat
• balance: seeing eldritch horrors is now more terrifying
• balance: inactive workshops/offices do not require upkeep
• FIXED: module tooltips now persist across save/load
• FIXED (52E): immigration count errors
• FIXED (52E): foreign office not resetting missions
• FIXED: Rogue Stahlmarkian would stay forever
• FIXED: tutorial window sticks around when game is shut down, causing crashes
• FIXED: leftover jobs showing up in jobs menu after starting new game, quitting to main menu, starting new game again

Enjoy your weekend, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-07-23 01:39:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 52E of Clockwork Empires is now on the Experimental Branch on Steam. As always, this is experimental so expect it to not be quite as stable as the "stable" branch. This patch is a doozy. Major Changes

• added 2x speed button (a thousand voices cheer out from the Steam Forums)
• added harvest stamp commands to collect resources from the map
• fixed module placement limits (can't place modules in invalid buildings or on top of one another)
• various UI and mechanics related to upkeep improved, bugs fixed, balancing done
• civilians can now fight

Full changelog for Beta 52E

• added new buttons for spawn points
• added currently selected highlighting to lists of offices/housing, changed visual style slightly.
• new emotion value display added to characters
• added 2x simulation button! HOLY VORPULON
• reduced # of points on world; optimized world gen a bit
• added embarkation button icon biome detection code
• players cannot place modules into inappropriate buildings (Blueprints where you can place a module will show as blue. Blueprints where you cannot place a module will show up as red.)
• removed "chop down", "mine surface node", "forage", "clear terrain" and replaced them with assignment stamping tools
• added Upkeep display to workshops
• modules disabled by lack of upkeep will no longer lose production queues
• housing population cap increase system added: houses will now increase population cap per appropriate social class as you add amenities, look for details in the UI
• various improvements added to ranged and melee attack logic
• did work crew selection box improvements (shows skill level, number of labourers assigned to crew)
• improved FYI alert UI style
• added disturbance counter. It counts disturbances. WHAT COULD THOSE BE
• removed starting NCO
• removed field promotions
• added civilian combat AI
• reduced animals spawned at start of game (they were crowding things)
• rebalanced off-shift social jobs to hopefully make things more interesting
• added new event for reaching the 150 char population cap
• added Rare Painting module to game. Placing these in your houses increases their population capacity. (it can be acquired from various events and traders)
• added new trait: Light Sleeper. Can only sleep in beds.
• added new trait: Heavy Sleeper. isn't woken by preaching/gunfire/etc.
• traits: Adaptable trait now gives bonus to skillgain of best 3 skills
• traits: Brutish trait gives a bonus to melee damage
• traits: Materialistic colonists are harder to please with house quality
• traits: Reclusive colonists don't make friends on spawn
• traits: Scholarly trait gives bonus to science skillgain and penalty to all others
• traits: Xenophobic overseers can cause diplomatic incidents if you assign them to a foreign office
• traits: Patriotic overseers give a bonus to empire diplomacy point gain
• traits: epiceureans learn cooking skill faster
• traits: removed Voracious trait
• traits: Hale and Hearty trait grants a bonus to HP
• added new trait: Jack of All Trades. Gets a bonus to leveling skills that are below lv3
• added new trait: Highly focused. Gets a bonus to learning their best skill and a penalty to all others
• added new trait: Woodtouch, Stonesense, Ironborn. Gives boni to Carpentry, Ceramics, Metalworking skillgain respectively. Ironborn grants a small melee damage bonus.
• added new trait: Oblivious Worker. Gains no benefit or penalty from workplace quality
• balance: added clay to Tropical Dry Forest
• balance: upkeep timers are tracker per-building rather than globally
• balance: Novice and Artisan upkeep trunk recipes now give 2 trunks for 1 resource
• FIXED: various jobs could be performed while carrying commodities now require they be dropped (eg. hunting, repairing buildings)
• FIXED: beetles eating longpork will no longer transform it into charred meat
• FIXED: colonists will no longer drink booze that doesn't belong to them
• FIXED: crashed airship ending scripterror (in certain cases)
• FIXED 52D: items stuck to hands due to job interrupts
• FIXED 52D: gridAddItem error, for real
• FIXED 52D: grimoire scripterror when no vicar present
• FIXED: grammar error in the airship crash event
• FIXED: Scrap Iron can now be smelted into iron bars
• FIXED: players cannot place modules on top of other modules
• FIXED: productionWindow not initialized after save/load and may contain garbage
• FIXED: various typos
• FIXED: house demolish button
• FIXED: colonists no longer only wander into the woods when afraid
• FIXED:mining surface nodes took more than twice as long as intended
• FIXED: removed some unpathable cliffs in temperate swamp

Go forth and Do Things Quickly, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-07-20 00:30:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 52D of Clockwork Empires is now available on the experimental branch on Steam. It primarily exists to fix bugs and add refinements to issues in betas 52B and 52C, which... didn't get announcements posted for them, clearly due to Novorusian saboteurs. Changelog for 52D:

• added a number of new military techs
• added weekly upkeep notification alert
• farm harvests are now output in stacks rather than individually
• foraging collects stacks rather than single units (as applicable)
• doors can now be properly dismantled
• can now send order to groups of surface nodes to mine just clay or just stone or just sand
• "Chop Tree" job will place output stack into chopper's hands & will return to stockpile if available
• "Mine Surface Node" jobs will place output of up to 3 items in miner's hands & will return to stockpile if available (job time increased to compensate for faster extraction speed)
• new experimental loadout, for funzies
• decreased priority of idling when off-shift
• the population counter now correctly reflects your starting pop in all loadouts
• reduced map size and dealt with The Consequences Of These Actions
• "I have altered the tooltips on population capacity. Pray I don't alter them further."
• balance: starter crops all yield faster harvests (the proportion of crops over time is the same)
• balance: time it takes to chop tree and mine surface node have been changed
• balance: added one MC and one LC character to all loadouts
• balance: max science points for lab now determined by Overseer science skill level
• balance: made some QoL bonus/malus changes
• FIXED: replays not saving work orders for workshops, causing determinism break
• FIXED: save game crash after starting new game, quitting, starting new game again
• FIXED: event arc director point gains
• FIXED: when farms are removed they will be correctly deleted from Offices list
• FIXED (52C): offices operating w/ unmet upkeep
• FIXED (52C): various edge cases involving Upkeep calculations

plus, of course, the new stuff from 52B and 52C that... didn't get posted here. The Patches Will Continue Until Morale Improves, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-07-14 01:10:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta Build 52 of Clockwork Empires, "Days of Bureaucracy and Knights of Steam", is now available on Steam! MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES THIS MONTH

• Steam Knights!
• Barracks control over military squad loadout
• Exciting Event Arcs!
• A Better Economy
• All sorts of UI bits and bobs!

Very long, detailed changelog: Military, Barracks, & Combat

• added Steam Knights (accessible via Foreign Office, an event arc, and a special experimental loadout)
• added some new Steam Knight animations
• the weapon loadout of a military squad is now controlled by its Barracks; default is pistols
• additional weapon loadouts in Barracks can be enabled by installing new weapons lockers
• civilian hunters no longer conflict with your military’s weapon use
• combat AI tweaked slightly so that soldiers will shoot non-fleeing enemies over fleeing enemies more commonly
• injured people will use injured walk (this affects combat massively)
• added Day/Night workshift control button to Barracks
• adjusted Bandit combat decision balance slightly
• balance: lowered bandit desire to smash buildings
• balance: bandits/foreigners no longer drop free weapons for you
• balance: made soldiers slightly less excited about chasing down fleeing enemies
• FIXED: bandits will no longer fire at people while holding bread
• FIXED: fishpeople won’t hit people with meat anymore
• FIXED: temporary military chars should no longer be assignable to buildings
• FIXED: foreign traders will now flee the map if their leader is attacked (at all); this should fix ‘stuck’ traders unable to arrive at depot due to their leader lacking trade goods

Jobs/Workshops/Offices/Economy

• moved “Clear Terrain” jobs into the building construction job if they are automatically spawned by building construction
• added “On-Shift/Off-Shift” status to the names of idle jobs
• added Grinder module and Grinder recipes
• “basic food” has been removed and replaced with a small number of 1-food recipes.
• added new barracks gun modules (with placeholder models)
• added more high-tier modules to the game
• removed “Roast Coffee Beans” from workbench (it’s still on the oven) (this prompted lengthy discussion about the process of coffee-making)
• added EVERY WORKSHOP RECIPE IN THE GAME to the new multi-item pickup code
• removed “make/assemble” etc from all workshop recipe names (to reduce text overflow)
• balance: roughly halved time to construct buildings
• balance: added cap (1/3 of a day) on time to construct a building
• balance: adjusted output of stone from surface nodes
• FIXED: “Make stone smelting crucible” now moved over to new multistack system
• FIXED: picking up a multistack from the stockpile now correctly decrements the stockpile counter
• FIXED: Distil Rum
• FIXED: an altar is now required for colonist to want to Attend Sermon (because it is required to give a sermon)
• FIXED: removing a module will now (immediately) push effects of its removal to parent building
• FIXED: Maize not being usable in vegetable recipes
• FIXED: some jobs that were missing job time data
• FIXED: commodity drop will always hide the object at the end of the merge container cycle
• FIXED: food and drinks were doubly consumed from the commodity menu when consumed, causing a discrepancy
• FIXED: if a workshop job is aborted, trash the job and don’t attempt to restart/yield it.
• FIXED: don’t let a workshop job start with a deleted module
• FIXED: some vegetables weren’t usable in vegetable related recipes
• FIXED: opium was impossible to research
• FIXED: kitchen workbench and metalworks workbench did not display some recipe commodity names
• FIXED: various typos and incorrect descriptions
• FIXED: “Harvest Coffee Beans” job renamed “Roast Coffee Beans”
• FIXED: smelting brass ingots wanted “timber” rather than “fuel”
• FIXED: plank output display was half of what it should be
• FIXED: cash crops as trade goods consistency
• FIXED: Rum distilling (was brewable)
• FIXED: Mezcal recipe
• FIXED: brewing and distilling jobs now add to cooking skill
• FIXED: long clothes line required 1 less bricabrac than advertised
• FIXED: “make tin exotic caviar” job for workbenches, removed from ovens
• FIXED: “make chemistry workbench” job
• FIXED: Moved brick kilns and iron smelting crucible to multiobject system (should fix build failure)
• FIXED: steel ingots looking for wrong object
• FIXED: Public House crash
• FIXED: perennial crops would only output harvest once
• FIXED: when merging containers, ensure that the dead container is correctly removed from the container manager (may have caused issues)
• FIXED: always set containers to visible when something is put into them in a stockpile (workaround for a mystery bug)
• FIXED: Sulphur Tonic job said it makes Fertilizer when it really makes Tonic
• FIXED: doing science now increments Science skill
• FIXED: player-ordered hunting jobs won’t be lost
• FIXED: chilli stew & molasses output corrected

UI

• blueprint design mode will now hide all assignment beacons; regular mode will now turn them back on again
• added # of chairs display to Barbershop
• changed commodity filter categories
• did more iteration on UI responsiveness
• added better UI input handling code for windows that have recently been redrawn (This was causing responsiveness issues with offices in 51C.)
• added optional code for FYI-style alerts to display images
• traders will send an alert when they leave the Trade Depot
• updated UI framework for minimized windows
• work shift panel now visible on all buildings (& removed old message code)
• added improvements to escape key sequencing (more work to do there)
• added more icons to hunger Quality of Life for greater expression of granularity
• added Grenade Launcher icon
• re-enabled chair/standing desk display on relevant offices
• optimized code from widget manager which greatly speeds up work crew menu
• FIXED: alert stubs not registering themselves with event arcs
• FIXED: minor bug when clicking the top pixel of a UI window
• FIXED: a bunch of minor tooltip style issues
• FIXED: memories will no longer blank out after save/load
• FIXED: mineshaft now displays its full name in UI
• FIXED: alert title for full Diplomatic Points was incorrect
• FIXED: scrollable elements now properly detect mouseover states
• FIXED: fence icons
• FIXED: typo in work quality of life description
• FIXED: mine products display is more readable
• FIXED: Foreign office wasn’t displaying building quality correctly
• FIXED: Pulque icon
• FIXED: ESC when entering module mode and then not selecting anything would incorrectly hide all tooltips.

Characters

workshop Quality of Life value updated when assigned/unassigned from workshop

food quality of life indicator will now update at the moment after food is eaten OR at midnight after a day in which no food is eaten that day

added “Hermit” and “Gregarious” traits

work shifts are now assigned per-building instead of directly controlled by the player. rest breaks are now more evenly spread out in most buildings’ schedules.

assignment of workcrew to service job should adjust their work schedule appropriately

balance: reduced sleep time

balance: adjusted relationship of happiness to work shifts

balance: slightly increased nighttime sight radius

FIXED: minor fix to naturalism surveying animation

FIXED: variable walk/run speeds among different entities

FIXED: Naturalists will now increment skill when performing naturalism work

FIXED: talking to fishperson could freeze colonist (temp. removed this job)

FIXED: workers will no longer try to walk to be near their overseer if their overseer is in an underground mine and therefore technically off-map

FIXED: characters would sometimes not work during the first shift of their workshift

FIXED: The posessive and objective forms of gender-neutral pronouns were reversed

FIXED: doing science now increments Science skill

FIXED: interactions on corpses now correctly reset after butchery by fishpeople Events

added some new event arcs

added ability for events to lock building for special work (& UI to support this)

increased range on animal_repopulate spawn (so they don’t get stuck on the edge of the map)

if a chapel is given a “special event project”, it will boot out anyone waiting for confession

added alerts for Foreign Intervention events

“Palmerstoke’s Choice” loadout now includes lacquered planks

balance: reduced incidence of bandit/fishperson attacks

FIXED: various minor scripterrors

FIXED: various typos in events, descriptions

FIXED: bandits_amnesty event error

FIXED: scripterror in dead overseer replacement event

FIXED: small issues w/ tutorial text and grammar

FIXED: various text re. “Mechanique” vs “Mecanique” and “L’Autodictatuer” consistency

FIXED: if you attempt to send Bandits false information but no bandits exist on-map, alert will inform you of this fact

FIXED: tutorial would appear after game start; it no longer does

FIXED: players should not be attacked before they finish the tutorial

FIXED: in certain rare cases items given to player by events would not be set as owned by player Engine / Scripting / Save & Load

• added “save and exit to main menu”, “exit to main menu without saving” buttons
• rewrote commodity tracking code
• FIXED: consume_food will no longer leave data in the game spatial dictionary. (In general, if bogus data IS in the Spatial Dictionary, we just clean it up and move on rather than screaming out a giant terrible script error.)
• FIXED: persistent events are now persistent enough to consistently persist through save/load.
• FIXED: several crash fixes
• FIXED: more cleanup of phantom objects
• FIXED (OSX): crash on embark screen whenever you generate an ocean biome
• FIXED (OSX): crash in rendAssignmentBeacon handler
• FIXED (OSX): some other misc. crashes

Other Stuff Generally Resulting From Having Too Many Beers At A Summer Barbecue And Leaving The Meat On Too Long

• improved aesthetics of REDACTED slightly via glow shader
• FIXED: Swamp Grass had no description
• FIXED: if you chopped down a burning tree, it would leave a fire in its place forever
• FIXED: charred meat ownership is set correctly

The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. And pictures of our pets. Let us know what you think! We may not respond to everything but we DO read everything. Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums! Enjoy your Tuesday! -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-06-21 23:34:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Beta 51F of Clockwork Empires is now available on the experimental branch on Steam. It turns out you probably didn't want it; it kind of crashed a bit. Beta 51G did nothing to resolve the crashing. The people wept. Beta 51H should, now, be the beta you want, and is hopefully full of that tangy, zippy, down-home taste that the growing street urchin craves, and also sawdust. CHANGES: - added Steam Knights (accessible via Foreign Office, an event arc, and a special experimental loadout) - added some new Steam Knight animations - added "On-Shift/Off-Shift" status to the names of idle jobs - added Grinder module and Grinder recipes - added # of chairs display to Barbershop - added some new event arcs - added "save and exit to main menu", "exit to main menu without saving" buttons - added ability for events to lock building for special work (& UI to support this) - rewrote commodity tracking code - changed commodity filter categories - did more iteration on UI responsiveness - added optional code for FYI-style alerts to display images - increased range on animal_repopulate spawn (so they don't get stuck on the edge of the map) - traders will send an alert when they leave the Trade Depot - if a chapel is given a "special project" it will boot out anyone waiting for confession - balance: reduced incidence of bandit/fishperson attacks - FIXED: charred meat ownership is set correctly - FIXED: Distil Rum - FIXED: various minor scripterrors - FIXED: various typos in events, descriptions - FIXED: an altar is now required for colonist to want to Attend Sermon (because it is required to give a sermon) - FIXED: fishpeople won't hit people with meat anymore - FIXED: bandits will no longer fire at people while holding bread - FIXED: bandits_amnesty event error - FIXED: removing a module will now (immediately) push effects of its removal to parent building - FIXED: Maize not being usable in vegetable recipes - FIXED: some jobs that were missing job time data - FIXED: scripterror dead overseer replacement event - FIXED: commodity drop will always hide the object at the end of the merge container cycle - FIXED: alert stubs not registering themselves with event arcs - FIXED: minor bug when clicking the top pixel of a UI window - FIXED: crashing introduced in 51F when flattening terrain. Well, that was a thing, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-06-19 03:33:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

As always, the Experimental Branch is NOT STABLE. If you'd rather have stability, please retreat to the safe confines of the Default Branch. It has lovely plush leather wingback chairs and ottomans, and customarily serves several fortified wines and cheeses before and after the meal. The experimental, on the other hand, is unrefined frontier living, and you may find yourself sleeping on the floor. Changelog 51E:

• added better UI input handling code for windows that have recently been redrawn. This was causing serious responsiveness issues with offices in 51D
• food quality of life indicator will now update at the moment after food is eaten OR at midnight after a day in which no food is eaten that day
• balance: made people slightly less excited about chasing down fleeing enemies
• FIXED: food and drinks were doubly consumed from the commodity menu when consumed, causing a discrepancy
• FIXED: if a workshop job is aborted, trash the job and don't attempt to restart/yield it.
• FIXED: don't let a workshop job start with a deleted module
• FIXED: some vegetables weren't usable in vegetable related recipes
• FIXED 51D: Error with Carbine recipe
• FIXED 51D: some types of low-level food were not counting as food
• FIXED 51D: offices not working nearly as much as they should
• FIXED 51D: hunger quality-of-life updates generally working for all possible food input
• FIXED 51D: iron smelting crucible tooltip said the job required too few inputs
• FIXED 51D: a number of small tutorial text issues
• FIXED 51D: scripterror with Stalwart loadout

(cheeses sold separately, fortified wines not included)

[ 2016-06-06 23:27:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new experimental build of Clockwork Empires, Beta 51D, has been posted to the experimental branch on Steam. Major changes: - 51C lockups fixed! - Military squad weapons are now assigned through their Barracks (additional weapon loadouts can be unlocked by placing weapons lockers in the Barracks) - Weapons are no longer individually constructed; you can produce a boxed weapons locker and place that in a barracks to equip a squad with a type of weapon - Combat improved in various, ongoing ways via various fixes/additions to animation logic and combat jobs - 'basic food' has been replaced by individual recipes - advanced machines have been added to the game Consolidated changelog for Beta 51D: - injured people will use injured walk (this affects combat massively) - improved aesthetics of REDACTED slightly - the weapon loadout of a military squad is now controlled by its Barracks; default is pistols - additional weapon loadouts in Barracks can be enabled by installing new weapons lockers - civilian hunters no longer conflict with your military's weapon use - combat AI tweaked slightly so that soldiers will shoot non-fleeing enemies over fleeing enemies more commonly - "basic food" has been removed and replaced with a small number of 1-food recipes. - added new barracks gun modules (with placeholder models) - added more high-tier modules to the game - updated UI framework for minimized windows - work shift panel now visible on all buildings (& removed old message code) - added framework for barracks changes - added improvements to escape key sequencing (more work to do there) - FIXED: a bunch of minor tooltip style issues - FIXED: temporary military chars should no longer be assignable to buildings - FIXED: small issues w/ tutorial text and grammar - FIXED: minor fix to naturalism surveying animation - FIXED: opium being impossible to research - FIXED: variable walk/run speeds among different entities - FIXED (51C): lock up after loading games from 51C - FIXED (51B): smelt brass ingots (and various issues in metalworks recipes) - FIXED (51C): bricabrac output amount incorrect, took zero time - FIXED (51B): research_family_tree scripterror This space at the bottom of the patch notes is available for rent at reasonable prices, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-06-04 06:38:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

A second hotfix for Beta 51 of Clockwork Empires, Beta 51B, has now been posted to the main and experimental branches on Steam. It fixes a number of issues found in Beta 51. It contains the following changes:

• blueprint design mode will now hide all assignment beacons; regular mode will now turn them back on again
• moved "Clear Terrain" jobs into the building construction job if they are automatically spawned by building construction
• assignment of workcrew to service job should adjust their work schedule appropriately
• optimized code from widget manager which greatly speeds up work crew menu
• balance: reduced sleep time
• balance: adjusted relationship of happiness to work shifts
• balance: adjusted output of stone from surface nodes
• balance: slightly increased nighttime sight radius
• FIXED: "Make stone smelting crucible" now moved over to new multistack system
• FIXED: picking up a multistack from the stockpile now correctly decrements the stockpile counter
• FIXED: more cleanup of phantom objects
• FIXED (OSX): crash on embark screen whenever you generate an ocean biome
• FIXED (OSX): crash in rendAssignmentBeacon handler
• FIXED (OSX): some other misc. crashes
• FIXED: talking to fishperson could freeze colonist (temp. removed this job)
• FIXED: long clothes line required 1 less bricabrac than advertised
• FIXED: tutorial would appear after game start; it no longer does
• FIXED: workers will no longer try to walk to be near their overseer if their overseer is in an underground mine and therefore technically off-map
• FIXED: fence icons
• FIXED: typo in work quality of life description
• FIXED: if you chopped down a burning tree, it would leave a fire in its place forever
• FIXED: mine products display is more readable
• FIXED: "make tin exotic caviar" job for workbenches, removed from ovens
• FIXED: players should not be attacked before they finish the tutorial
• FIXED: "make chemistry workbench" job
• FIXED: Moved brick kilns and iron smelting crucible to multiobject system (should fix build failure)
• FIXED: steel ingots looking for wrong object
• FIXED: Foreign office wasn't displaying building quality correctly
• FIXED: Public House crash
• FIXED: Pulque icon
• FIXED: in certain rare cases items given to player by events would not be set as owned by player
• FIXED: perennial crops would only output harvest once
• FIXED: characters would sometimes not work during the first shift of their workshift

By the way! Did you know we do jolly blogposts, once a week, on Wednesdays? Come check out this week's blogpost: https://www.gaslampgames.com/2016/05/25/im-really-awfully-glad-im-a-beta/ and make your Wednesdays better, or at least more interesting. Toodles, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-05-25 22:22:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey folks! The hotfix that we tested has passed inspection and has been pushed to the main branch. It resolves almost all of the instabilities that we've been running into for Beta 51, but we're going to take a bit of a break for the rest of the evening and catch our breath. As before, if you are having a crash on startup and have an AMD graphics card, please check to make sure your video card drivers are up to date! FIXED: Make Copper Plates job FIXED: Make Wooden Altar job FIXED: memories and emotions hanging midair, predominantly for people with multi-monitor setups FIXED: hitting esc to back out of a module recipe selection screen would leave the UI in a state of purgatory where literally anything you did next would crash the game. FIXED: clicking on the trade depot crashes the game FIXED (hopefully): phantom items occasionally left on the ground during stacking, building workshop transformation operations FIXED: q and e are now bound hotkeys for camera moving left and right, rather than hardcoded FIXED: Make chemistry workbench job added "-opengldebug" command flag to return additional OpenGL debug information; please use this and send us the results if you are experiencing crashes on startup! Thanks for all of your help, support and patience, we really appreciate it. If you still have issues other than those listed above, please tell us either here on Steam, on our forums at http://www.gaslampgames.com/ or by e-mail at contact 'at' gaslampgames dot com.

[ 2016-05-23 01:16:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcome, new users! With a new influx of new users has come a stream of new, exciting, strange and bizarre problems. Thank you for participating in our first beta release and giving us useful feedback; we are working to address it as fast as we can. If you are having a crash on startup, or after clicking the embark button on the embark screen, please check to make sure your video card drivers are up to date. This is a particular issue for AMD graphics cards, where older drivers will just flat out crash. Please download and install the latest Catalyst drivers immediately, and let us know if this does not fix the issue. A test hotfix for Beta 51, entitled Beta 51A, is now available in the experimental branch on Steam. Once we have made sure it doesn't introduce new problems, and correctly fixes the problems it is supposed to address, we will be pushing it to the main branch on Steam. A list of things that this hotfix fixes is below: FIXED: Make Copper Plates job FIXED: Make Wooden Altar job FIXED: memories and emotions hanging midair, predominantly for people with multi-monitor setups FIXED: hitting esc to back out of a module recipe selection screen would leave the UI in a state of purgatory where literally anything you did next would crash the game. FIXED: clicking on the trade depot crashes the game FIXED (hopefully): phantom items occasionally left on the ground during stacking, building workshop transformation operations FIXED: q and e are now bound hotkeys for camera moving left and right, rather than hardcoded FIXED: Make chemistry workbench job added "-opengldebug" command flag to return additional OpenGL debug information; please use this and send us the results if you are experiencing crashes on startup! Thanks again for your feedback and patience while we move into the next stage of development! As always, if you have problems, please let us know and we will do our best to fix things in as timely a manner as possible. We can be reached either here on Steam, on our forums at http://www.gaslampgames.com/, or by e-mail at contact 'at' gaslampgames dot com. Please send more coffee, -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-05-22 22:40:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Beta (aka Build 51) of Clockwork Empires, "Frontier Living in Interesting Times" is now available on Steam! This is our first official Beta build! We have now essentially finished all of the back-end code required to complete the game, so we can switch to integrating mechanics, UI/UX improvement, optimization, and stability. And we can finally say that the completed game is a matter of mere months away! MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES THIS MONTH

• New Workshop order system: jobs are queued per work module (it’s super easy!)
• New Event Arc system to chain interesting events together to produce Interesting Times
• Colonists can now carry stacks of ingredients to workshop jobs that require lots of materials – much more efficient!
• Tons of subtle UI usability improvements to make your life easier
• Colonist Quality of Life system: good colonies produce happy, productive overseers

And here we see the changelog in it's natural habitat. Clearly it has not seen us, for its poisonous barbs are currently sheathed, but no swift movements please! WORKSHOPS & OFFICES

• all workshop code rewritten to queue jobs per module rather than per workshop
• added carpet to recommended modules for carpentry workshop
• added building upgrade ability: create the required modules per building, and upgrade your building
• added ability to repair buildings
• FIXED: colonists will no longer attempt to use services of offices w/o assigned overseer or w/ off-shift overseer
• FIXED: pub wouldn’t serve booze
• FIXED: can’t spam missions in Foreign Office by mashing button

EVENTS

• added event director system
• added The Fishy Idol event arc
• added Foreign Invasion event arc
• added Meteor Shower event arc
• added Event Lighting system
• made new alert code framework for events and non-event alerts
• redid the entire tutorial from scratch using the Event Arc system, it should be MUCH more intuitive now
• did event_director scripting for office points accrual event arc mechanics (required so that ie. a Laboratory can do work to advance study of an eldritch artifact to trigger different event states based on how much study is done)
• made bandits far less likely to spawn directly in the middle of the player’s town
• added bricabrac as a potential reward in a few events
• replaced outdated/nonexistent Stone Charcoal Kiln in the smithing loadout with a mineshaft module
• FIXED: scripterror in immigration event
• FIXED: Planets Align event scripterror and re-enabled event
• FIXED: broken art in “find artifact” event
• FIXED: bandits_amnesty scripterror
• FIXED: report spectre scripterror
• FIXED: scripterror with food delivery from empire
• FIXED: scripterror in “Colonists denounce cowardice”

MODULES & DECOR

• module materials are also now handled as a multistack
• added note to stone ceramics kiln that brick ceramics kiln is required to produce glass
• added advanced machine modules to relevant buildings (costs/recipes are heavily WIP)
• added “Quality: X” tooltip to all relevant modules now that module quality is a variable number
• implemented the first pass on the bricbrac system: Bricabrac can be crafted in most workshops using different resources, and is used to make decor modules. Decor now contributes an amount of quality to buildings based on its bricabrac cost.
• changed name of “Decent Cabinet” to “Practical Cabinet”
• balance: removed building quality from all outdoor wall modules because it was exploitable and didn’t make a whole lot of sense
• FIXED: game crash manually switching to module placement mode after creating a building

ECONOMY

• added ability to pause and unpause assignments via the assignment beacons
• added ability for characters doing certain workshop jobs to pick up stacks of materials as opposed to dragging logs to their workshop one at a time (currently only Power Saw, Iron Charcoal Kiln)
• a bunch of workshop jobs can now haul stacks of things if they are being requested by a batching module
• building materials now are picked up as a multistack
• updated all building recipes to work with the new recipe system
• made grapes and prickly pears basic-cookable
• balance: made a few concessions for ease of food in the early game til we figure out how long it takes people to get through it in current version- improved yield from foraged food sources, and increased the food you get in the starter loadout
• balance: all mines will produce some stone
• FIXED: multistack code would occasionally not find available building materials
• FIXED: gameSimAssignment::CancelAssignmentInternal crash when assignment is already cancelled or invalid
• FIXED: grapes couldn’t be made into stew
• FIXED: mine in mineshaft item drop logic made great again
• FIXED: stone smelter assembly job took in infinite stone
• FIXED: ALL buildings should now accept bamboo as a timber source in addition to logs

UI / UX

• standardized job menu icons with work crew icons
• added icon for dark grimoire
• did first pass of UI for module based recipe selection
• character info panel now has images for skills and skill levels
• character health now represented in the character info panel as hearts because who doesn’t love hearts
• tooltips now have an actual style applied to them
• scroll speed controls exposed to the config file for internal testing reasons, but players can now mess with this too if they want (100 is default, 50 for half, 200 for 2x, etc.)
• removed redundant or unused code from lower class character info panels
• close alerts button, history button, both moved to appropriate places, ticker moved to history window
• hooked tooltips to stubs for a bit more info on those
• did changes to UI layout of emotion window
• added building fancy names to a few places in the UI
• clicking the minimap will now move the camera to that map position
• added render-side framework for Quality of Life system
• FIXED: skillup wouldn’t update skill level display in character info panel
• FIXED: combo box overflow in new workshop
• FIXED: afternoon icon was very slightly misaligned
• FIXED: expand buttons for individual work crews weren’t responsive when the entire work crew UI window was short enough that it wouldn’t scroll
• FIXED: FYI and choice alert windows inside event arcs wouldn’t expand properly
• FIXED: bug with choice windows spawning on the other side of the alert and thus out of the game window
• FIXED: various other typos

CHARACTERS

• added UI-side framework for Quality of Life system
• added sleep, crowdedness, safety, hunger, and working conditions to Quality of Life system
• madness state combined with sadness and renamed “despair” (this makes madness more clearly linked to an emotional state, and makes sadness not boring); character state calculations simplified
• refactored emotion names to separate emotion names “anger, fear”, from actual moods “angry, afraid” which was making writing things really awkward.
• balance: rebalanced sleep job requirements & effects
• balance: minor emotion balance edits
• balance: middle class characters now start with one level of a random skill because it’s just more fun.
• FIXED: corrected some typos in the new memory aggregator function
• FIXED: characters spawning in the colony did not have the ? alerts above their heads
• FIXED: “reverant” -> “reverent”
• FIXED: raw cabbage will no longer be treated as a cooked meal when eaten
• FIXED: several bugs with preaching
• FIXED: people getting stuck trying to talk to fishpeople
• FIXED: people will no longer pray at unbuilt wall shrines
• FIXED: rare error when agent attempts to drop stuff
• FIXED: added protections against scripterror in drop_item_for_trade_mission
• FIXED: in certain rare cases people would attempt to intimidate a fishperson who died while they were running over to the fishperson. Now they don’t.
• FIXED: building destruction would nerve-staple overseer (as far as being re-assigned to a new workshop was concerned)
• FIXED: starving colonists will no longer forage lacquer to eat

COMBAT

• military units will not immediately disband after the death of their NCO, but rather some other member of the crew will assume control.
• rather than beating hostiles to death with trade goods, traders will now flee from combat while their guards fight
• beatings handled slightly more elegantly, ie. tag is removed upon death
• FIXED: scripterror when bandits (or any agent) attacks buildings w/o a weapon
• FIXED: another rare error when selenians die
• FIXED: reloading guns is now essential to being able to fire them
• FIXED: guns now use reload times per gun type and reloading animations will loop if total reload time exceeds anim length
• FIXED: unbuilt building that is somehow destroyed will now unlock its building materials
• FIXED: enemies will no longer attack unfinished buildings
• FIXED: defeated enemies will no longer attack buildings

ENGINE/SCRIPTING

• FIXED: glow shader
• FIXED: a few crash bugs
• FIXED: some tiny memory leaks

MISCELLANEOUS

• added sand to the desert
• added charred meat
• cleaned up some “harvest” scripts on non-player human agents
• FIXED: embarking on an area near water will no longer have dramatically more water than indicated by the original map
• FIXED: faction relations now cannot exceed 100 on the scale of -100 to +100.
• FIXED: invisible cactus
• FIXED: spawning of NPC groups is now much more robust
• FIXED: starting clay and stone positions follow player start location correctly now
• FIXED: cleaned up despawn calls on non-player agents
• FIXED: All perennial crops required 2-3x the intended amount labor to grow
• FIXED: lingonberry crop scripterror
• FIXED: cabbage field had incorrect description

The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. And pictures of our pets. Let us know what you think! We may not respond to everything but we DO read everything. Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums! Have a great weekend, and go forth and colonize! -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-05-21 17:08:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today's Deal: Save 34% on Clockwork Empires!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2016-05-21 17:00:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alpha 50E of Clockwork Empires is now available on the experimental branch on Steam. Major changes include colonists picking up multiple items at once when constructing building, the abiltiy to pause assignments, and more. Oh, and we redid the entire tutorial - please let us know what you think. Changes: - building materials now are picked up as a multistack - module materials are also now handled as a multistack - standardized job menu icons with work crew icons - added ability to pause and unpause assignments via the assignment beacons - added carpet to recommended modules for carpentry workshop - redid the entire tutorial from scratch using the Event Arc system, it should be MUCH more intuitive now - balance: made a few concessions for ease of food in the early game til we figure out how long it takes people to get through it in current version- improved yield from foraged food sources, and increased the food you get in the starter loadout - (50D) added note to stone ceramics kiln that brick ceramics kiln is required to produce glass - FIXED (50D): scripterror in favour_criminal - FIXED (50D):"Smelt Copper Ingots" job error - FIXED (50D): bricabrac icon - FIXED (50D): scripterror in do_diplomacy_paperwork - FIXED (50D): crash when accepting bandit to join colony - FIXED (50D): cancelling building construction immediately crashes the game - FIXED: "reverant" -> "reverent" - FIXED: colonists will no longer attempt to use services of offices w/o assigned overseer or w/ off-shift overseer - FIXED: characters spawning in the colony no longer have their ? alerts above their heads - FIXED: combo box overflow in new workshop - FIXED: multistack code would occasionally not find available building materials - FIXED: gameSimAssignment::CancelAssignmentInternal crash when assignment is already cancelled or invalid By Grabthar's Hammer, it's... -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-05-19 02:10:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alpha 50D of Clockwork Empires has now been posted to the experimental test branch on Steam. Actually, we posted it last night and forgot to put up the Steam post. We are blaming this oversight on... uh, Eurovision. Major Changes for 50D: - workshop jobs are now queued per-module and are much more clear about what is going on - added first pass of advanced machines; these are useful - added event arcs; things can go Terrifically Wrong in fun new ways - added first take on Quality of Life emotion effects for characters - lots of UI improvements Consolidated 50D Changelog: - all workshop code rewritten to queue jobs per module rather than per workshop - did first pass of UI for module based recipe selection - added building upgrade ability: create the required modules per building, and upgrade your building - added ability for characters doing certain workshop jobs to pick up stacks of materials as opposed to dragging logs to their workshop one at a time (currently only Power Saw, Iron Charcoal Kiln) - character info panel now has images for skills and skill levels - added framework for Quality of Life system - added sleep, crowdedness to Quality of Life system - added event director system - added The Fishy Idol event arc - added Foreign Invasion event arc - added Meteor Shower event arc - added advanced machine modules to relevant buildings (costs/recipes are heavily WIP) - updated all building recipes to work with the new recipe system - replaced outdated/nonexistent Stone Charcoal Kiln in the smithing loadout with a mineshaft module - a bunch of workshop jobs can now haul stacks of things if they are being requested by a batching module - character health now represented in the character info panel as hearts because who doesn't love hearts - scroll speed controls exposed to the config file for internal testing reasons, but players can now mess with this too if they want (100 is default, 50 for half, 200 for 2x, etc.) - removed redundant or unused code from lower class character info panels - tooltips now have an actual style applied to them - balance: all mines will produce some stone - balance: rebalanced sleep job requirements & effects - balance: minor emotion balance edits - balance: middle class characters now start with one level of a random skill because it's just more fun. - FIXED: scripterror in immigration event - FIXED: raw cabbage will no longer be treated as a cooked meal when eaten - FIXED: several bugs with preaching - FIXED: lingonberry crop scripterror - FIXED: Planets Align event scripterror - FIXED: glow shader - FIXED: a few crash bugs - FIXED: game crash manually switching to module placement mode after creating a building - FIXED: afternoon icon was very slightly misaligned - FIXED: broken art in "find artifact" event - FIXED: people getting stuck trying to talk to fishpeople - FIXED: people will no longer pray at unbuilt wall shrines - FIXED: bandits_amnesty scripterror - FIXED: tooltip text on crop destruction alert - FIXED: grapes couldn't be made into stew - FIXED: scripterror when bandits (or any agent) attacks buildings w/o a weapon - FIXED: pub wouldn't serve booze - FIXED: rare error when agent attempts to drop stuff - FIXED: another rare error when selenians die - FIXED: report spectre scripterror - FIXED: mine in mineshaft item drop logic - FIXED: can't spam missions in Foreign Office by mashing button - FIXED: added protections against scripterror in drop_item_for_trade_mission - FIXED: expand buttons for individual work crews weren't responsive when the entire work crew UI window was short enough that it wouldn't scroll - FIXED: FYI and choice alert windows inside event arcs wouldn't expand properly -- Gaslamp Games

[ 2016-05-15 00:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Take on the role of a Junior Bureaucrat (Colonial Grade), sent forth to seek fame, promotions, and natural resources to feed the ravenous maw of Imperial Industry & Commerce. Build a prosperous colony, fill it with magnificent factories worked by oppressed labourers, and harness the awesome power of steam through fearsome machines invented by determined men and women of Science! History is yours to seize for fame and fortune, for Science, and for the Queen and the glory of the Clockwork Empires!

Features

• Colonists are simulated with individual personalities, memories, and will be happy or miserable depending on your management.
  
• Free-form building: Design your own floorplans & arrange machines, furniture, and decorations as you see fit. (Or stuff everyone into bunkhouses.)
  
• Mine ore, chop trees, farm cabbage, brew beer, tin weird caviar and try to keep your people from eating one another!
  
• Weird horrible things: Menacing Fishpeople, cults, cannibalism, and more await your colonists.