Once more, a stack of Clockwork Empires updates appears in a neat pile. We present for you:

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

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress Report!

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

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Patch Notes:

Major Features

commodity stacking for maximum logistical efficiency!

new Fishpeople faction system + interaction events – make friends! make enemies! or just be confusing!

added a ton of social behaviours for colonists covering everything from hugging to throttling!

new hunger/tiredness system for colonists with distinct consequences

The Engine

autosaves are in, set to autosave every 10 minutes.

autosave now alternates between two files (stability improvement)

fixed some capitalization issues (linux compatibility)

removed water vertical motion (for now, ominously)

FIXED: buffer overflow crash in fog of war

FIXED: crashes when characters are deleted with emotions

FIXED: the invisible shadows of stacked objects will render after saving and loading a game

FIXED: construction costs for buildings do not increment after saving and loading a game

FIXED: cannot demolish buildings after saving and loading a game

FIXED: items occasionally turn blue

FIXED: crash bug when occasionally placing a module with SHIFT-CLICK mode

Human Characters

added first iteration of a new hunger system aka “the cascading cannibalism decision tree”

added new sleep system (day 1: sleep in bed, day 2: sleep on floor, day 3: sleep on ground)

balance: altered calculation of colonists’ willingness to take part in cannibalism

added new social jobs: “inspect food, inspect body, cower inside building”

social jobs have been rebalanced. (Many more are planned, as there is still a relatively small number of available options to characters until buildings are constructed & economy started.)

rewrote all friendship and rivalry-ship code to be stored in C++; added new requirements for checking if somebody is a friend or rival before doing something to them (enables lots of new (anti)social behaviours)

characters now use walk animations appropriate to their mood

added several new social jobs that allow characters to interact with each other (slap someone else, hug, etc)

characters can now punch each other and cause tantrum spirals of punching (and this is almost certainly under- or over-tuned)

fixed typos in laudanum-themed character history string

if really hungry, people will attack animals for their meat

if really hungry and mad/has certain traits, people will attack people for their meat

frontier justice is now only auto-applied AFTER a murderer hits someone with a weapon, not before

added terrible memories for very hungry/starving people

eating raw_meat now requires a higher level of hunger than other raw_foods

some traits are now restricted to certain social classes

fixed some cult prefix string typos

fixed minor typo in a hunger memory

added “Suck up to superior” job

added “Cower inside” job

added “Sleep due to sadness” job

added “Drink due to sadness” job

fixed lots of memory icons

minor fixes to Vicar jobs

colonists will now drop tools/guns when profession is switched (conscription/deconscription, assignment to laboratory, etc)

FIXED: labourers whose models changed cannot be selected (that is to say, they can now be selected)

FIXED: some memories not showing up correctly on bandits who joined your colony

FIXED some broken cult behaviour

FIXED: walk_to_nearest_position throwing a script error when the item being walked to is lost or destroyed

FIXED: minor nerve-stapling bug

FIXED: an insidious drop_item scripterror

FIXED: Corpses still wanted to be buried even after they were chopped up & eaten

FIXED: hunger/tiredness values in gossip topic calculation

Scripting System

(determinism stuff related to multiplayer, see that section instead)

Combat & Military

hooked up new ‘unskilled reload’ animation

fishpeople weapons now properly delete themselves when dropped

balance: greatly reduced gabion construction time

FIXED: long reload anim wasn’t properly set on militia

FIXED: a number of military stalling issues and incorrect behaviours

Non-Human Characters (Animals, Monsters, Vehicles)

implemented big Fishpeople overhaul + lots of new content for Fishpeople (in-progress)

official policy toward fishpeople can be set in response to interaction events/crises

fishpeople now spawn in groups with goals/missions that they will attempt to fulfill (lots of infrastructure done for this)

fishpeople & colonists can interact in various peaceful ways if policy is friendly (note: this is far from feature complete)

colonists can attempt to non-violently intimidate fishpeople (and vice versa)

added fishpeople scout mission/event

added fishpeople beach patrol mission/event

added fishpeople friendly envoy mission/event

added fishpeople property destruction policy event

added fishpeople hassling crisis event

added fishpeople vandalism crisis event

added fishpeople assault crisis event

fishpeople combat logic improved

balance: replaced fishpeople in tropics w/ Deathwurms (note: deathwurm attack anim needs tweaking)

balance: boosted hp and aggressiveness of Deathwurms

changed armoured hit sound on animals (so it doesn’t sound like metal)

Buildings & Building Creation

Added deletion of individual models

Moving a module to an invalid location (say, taking a door and dragging it off into space) will now snap the module back to its original location and parent and not move it.

FIXED: handful of memory corruption bugs when moving modules

FIXED: cannot demolish the same house multiple times

FIXED: script error on building demolition (multiple script errors, really)

FIXED painting scripterror

Economy & Logistics

containers and stacking: stacks can now be created, and colonists will attempt to move things into stacks and then organize their stacks in stockpiles. Colonists w ll now also produce stacks of goods as the output of some workshop processes

stacked commodities now respect stockpile filters

moved a bunch of container and stack code to C++ from Lua (perfomance should be improved)

containers and stacks can now be merged by characters

balance: doubled output for cooked food based on farmed or foraged ingredients

balance: tripled output for cooked food based on hunted ingredients

balance: brick-making should actually make a bunch of bricks because wow, did we ever need a lot of them.

surface mining jobs are now a single job that selects the correct tool rather than two jobs, one for each tool

rewrote the code for handling jobs in assignments: we now actually store the jobs that are being done on an assignment on the assignment object, rather than just trying to add or subtract them. Consequently, this means that the bookkeeping of such jobs is accurate. The hope is that this fixes the bug where people will get stuck in an assignment, but we’ll see. (At the very least, it should give us more information.)

FIXED: “remove spoiled crops” now correctly given lower priority than “tend crops”.

FIXED: crash saving game after aborting a job targeting a stockpile object or container due to item being lost or misplaced

Biomes & Terrain

Vexing plateaus should no longer cut off player’s colonists from the rest of the world. Usually.

Events, Metagame, and The Overworld

FIXED: Incredibly generous bandits have been taught how to be greedy and will no longer give you their stuff every 8 seconds

FIXED error in “bandit wants to join colony”

Communists are now upset by upper class sympathy

New Prestige Favor: “Airship overflight”

Fixed bug with “ominous dreams” event

fixed typos in Bandit spawn event & tutorial

Fixed bug with “ominous dreams” event fixed typos in Bandit spawn event & tutorial FIXED: memory leaks in events

FIXED: error in upper class sympathy event

FIXED: errors in ministry investigation event tree

accepting criminal goods may trigger an investigation

“Doomed” characters now much more doomed

added some defensive checks to avoid crashy bandit events if bandits are killed before the dialog is triggered by the player

Multiplayer

networking: restored engine determinism (with determinism safe script math)

networking: fixed cross platform world building (Mac and PC)

networking: fixed maximum message size problem when using Steam

networking: introduced command buffering to hide networking latency (and allowed clients that were behind to speed up slightly to catch up)

Music & Sound

day-night music transition will now start when the visual transition starts instead of when it ends

music now fades out Discovery/Productivity Tracks at night (Battle, Tragedy and Insanity are still things that can happen at night.)

UI/UX

FIXED: removal of factions from UI now works

UI: added highlight showing currently displayed faction to Factions Menu

Options menu is back, but the options which weren’t being used/tested properly have been removed. Currently only allows on/off for music and for autosaves.

emotes for conversations are back, but are now limited based on zoom level. (We’ll probably put in a keyboard command to disable all of these for screenshots)

FIXED: size of work crew portraits in work party UI now has no blank space

FIXED: selection of trees and other static props is now triangle-accurate

Clicking a module in the module placer mode now brings up a choice: move the module, or delete it. Modules that are built cannot be moved, and can only be deleted.

added “need_sleep” and “explosion” icons, redrew “propeller” icon.

selected objects in an assignment beacon now tint blue, highlight

mood icon now correctly displays character’s mood in character info panel

added “morale” and “sanity” icons to character info panel

(deep overhaul of fundamental UI system in-progress)

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