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 ]

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.