Last Thursday I released a significant update to Cultist Simulator and sat back, feeling pretty pleased with myself. Most of the work was under the hood - a near-total rewrite - but it included some long-requested QOL features that I thought people would like. I reckoned there were a few minor bugs to tidy up the following day (priority 5 on a scale where 1 is 'EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE' and 9 is 'is that even a thing') but it'd been in beta for several months so I was confident it was stable. I spent the evening watching the MLP movie with my kid and didn't think much of it.
The next morning I fired up my PC and found a Steam forum full of cross, bewildered players, about fifty support emails, and the orange text that puts the fear in every indie dev on Steam:
It wasn't even the bugs that were most upsetting people. It was the rework of the card placement UI, which worked, I rather suddenly realised, about as well as trying to fit ice cubes into a cat. And a 'minor' camera navigation issue that I'd long ago stopped noticing.
I'd fucked up royally and I'd never seen it coming.
How? I'd got complacent. Sure, it had been in beta for months, but there was no compelling reason to play a slightly janky beta. It seems plenty of players had seen the problems and assumed they'd be fixed before I went live. One player had written a heartfelt and articulate critique of the camera and UI issues, but it had ended up as one of six links in a bundle of four emails and I'd missed it.
More insidious still, I was getting pages and pages of high quality feedback from one particular modding group, funnelled through one helpful modding rep with screenshots and repro steps:
so since I'd fixed hundreds of bugs over months of testing, and the bugs had slowed to a trickle, it must be fine? Right?
Okay, it wasn't fine. What I really needed to do - what I should have done - is sit down and play the bloody game for a couple of days and take notes. And before that, I should have formalised the beta test, checked in with specific people, taken notes, like I did with the Exile DLC. If I'd done that, I'd have seen all this stuff and fixed it a week later in a much better state. Lesson learnt. Like I said, I got complacent.
SO let me apologise to all you loyal souls for foisting this nasty surprise on you, wrapped up like a Christmas present. And let me say that the community has actually been very nice about the whole thing. I've had some mildly grumpy mails but loads of supportive, helpful, detailed mails which take time out to say how much they love the game.
--
To business. I spent Friday and the weekend trying to sort out this nonsense, and fixed the worst issues and a bunch of nuisance ones. I'm staying on this next week. The card grid snap is going to get another round of love, and I still have a couple of dozen issues in my list.
If you'd still like to roll back to the old version, you can find instructions on doing that here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/718670/discussions/0/3182361055551113455/
I'm off to drink me tea. Have wildly coloured dreams, everyone.
AK
PS bonus content:
[previewyoutube=X3lMn6Jm2jI;full][/previewyoutube]
[ 2022-03-06 19:47:36 CET ] [ Original post ]
- Cultist Simulator Linux [299.36 M]
- Cultist Simulator: The Dancer
- Cultist Simulator: The Priest
- Cultist Simulator: The Ghoul
- Cultist Simulator: The Exile
- The Lady Afterwards - Digital Edition
Cultist Simulator is a game of apocalypse and yearning from Alexis Kennedy, creator of Fallen London and Sunless Sea. Play as a seeker after unholy mysteries, in a 1920s-themed setting of hidden gods and secret histories. Perhaps you're looking for knowledge, or power, or beauty, or revenge. Perhaps you just want the colours beneath the skin of the world.
In this roguelike narrative card game, what you find may transform you forever. Every choice you make, from moment to moment, doesn't just advance the narrative - it also shapes it.
Become a scholar of the unseen arts. Search your dreams for sanity-twisting rituals. Craft tools and summon spirits. Indoctrinate innocents. Seize your place as the herald of a new age.
Key features:
- Combine cards to tell your own story in a rich, Lovecraftian world of ambition, appetite and abomination. Corrupt your friends. Consume your enemies. There is never only one history.
- Found a cult, dedicated to the Red Grail, or the Witch-and-Sister, or the Forge of Days. Recruit Believers and promote them to Disciples to serve as burglars, researchers, cat's-paws. Use your disciples to keep you fed - or feed on your disciples.
- Unravel arcane, unacknowledged mysteries. Translate grimoires and glean their lore. Locate and pillage the Star Shattered Fane. Penetrate the realm of the Hours, and win a place in their service. Perhaps - if you are very cunning - you may even glimpse the Mansus.
- Outwit rivals, investigators and the increasingly suspicious Authorities. Your own altered Appetites may force you to act abominably, but your Cause must not be stopped.
- Transcend death with a story-driven legacy system. Perhaps your inheritors will complete the Rite of the Crucible Soul. Perhaps they'll find peace in a pleasing career. Perhaps they'll bring the Dawn.
- OS: 64-bit system; Ubuntu 20.04. Ubuntu 18.04. and CentOS 7
- Processor: 2GHz or betterMemory: 1 GB RAM
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1280x768 minimum resolution. OpenGL Core. post-2012 integrated graphics
- Storage: 500 MB available space
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