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 or the Humble Store (which provides a Steam key*) for a 10% discount for the next week!

* We will be setting up non-Steam distribution of Clockwork Empires via the Humble Store and possibly other online distributors in the near future.

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 small features we’d like to add post-release.

Oh, did you catch the launch trailer by the way? Here it is again:

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!

Begin Full Changelog for version BETA 55A to version 1.0 of Clockwork Empires

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

emoved zoom to worksite button for character panel (it did not really work)

FIXED: shortened some more overflowing memory names

FIXED (internally, 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 typosFIXED: 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

Wish to peruse the full annotated changelog? Read it in the Development Report!

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