From the mists emerges- an update to Clockwork Empires with a not-unreasonably lengthy title!

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

fog of war (if your colonists can’t see it, it becomes shrouded in dark fog!)

new building cost system (buildings cost much more and use a variety of materials)

character-driven events

job balance overhaul (especially social and combat jobs)

start of new cult system

The Engine / Scripting

CPU side optimization to render backend; removed unnecessary matrix calculations etc

implemented brushfire search for moving characters into civilization

added fog of war

added internal Lua script debugging tool (for internal use only)

FIXED: save games do not load correctly (or, amusingly, save correctly, even though they seem to) on machines with Unicode path names

FIXED: various stockpile issues with load/save and replay

FIXED: game crashes in credits menu on OS X

FIXED: Crash when a job has a parent assignment, but the assignment doesn’t have a job as a child

Human Characters

started implementing new madness/cult systems

balance: hunger time / crop growth time doubled

criminals immigrants have a chance to want to start a cult

criminals sent to your colony may now be slightly mad

colonists should no longer spawn in water at gamestart

added “drink curative” for curing madness (colonist will drink Laudanum or Sulphur Tonic to relieve maddening thoughts)

balance: reduced desire to drink booze across the board because it was impossible to maintain stocks

UI: work crew display now really displays # of idle work parties, not # of active work parties

drinking laudanum has a small chance of turning a character into a Laudanum Fiend

cults will announce their name in ticker upon formation

cults will announce new members to game ticker

cults will do recruitment at night, and only one initiation per night max

cultists who witness an occult ritual will be made happy

added alert upon cult formation

studying eldritch artifacts may increase madness and/or inspire cults

people invited to a cult will decide whether to join or not based on traits, madness, and relationship w/ cult leader

cultists who are invited to join another cult will become offended

cultists who are invited to join a cult they’re not in will become offended

Extremely long character family names shortened for legibility

FIXED: adding/removing workers to/from workcrews with special uniforms now properly adds and removes said uniform as appropriate

FIXED: sleeping inside on floor no longer creates memory for sleeping outside on ground

airdrop crate falling on people will no longer cause memories for “witnessed combat”

FIXED: Naturalists will show up and just do naturalist stuff rather than default workcrew stuff

balance: made return to civilization requirements a little less steep (now that civ works better)

FIXED: exploration beacons (were disappearing instantly)

made “butcher fishperson corpse” have way less range and be a less desirable source of food

beginning of rebalance of social jobs (gossip, emotive idles, etc)

added of new memories which tend the characters toward positive moods to offset external effects.

miscellaneous cleanup of memory database

instances of “Fear” changed to “Fearful” because grammar

added some more character names

changes to feeling tired and hungry for balance

changes to upper_class jobs to make them less… annoying, but just a little bit

inspect painting converted to a “social” job and modified accordingly

added memory for discovering a weird artifact

shortened text on some food memories

Combat & Military

guns now require reloading

added ability to upgrade pistols to revolvers (which can fire more times before reloading)

all combat code rewritten to use state machine tiers to determine combat operations

FIXED: animals fighting animals will no longer trigger combat music

FIXED: bandits and fishpeople have to reload guns now, for real

characters will load their guns upon gamestart

added reload sounds

FIXED: ranged attacks will self-abort (then character will re-evaluate jobs) if target gets too far away (to stop endless retarget/follow cycle)

balance: increased damage of ranged weapons due to need to reload

Non-Human Characters (Animals, Monsters, Vehicles)

added beetles & scintillating beetles for real (and made them give only one beetle steak)

fishpeople menacing should spam less alerts

balance: pushed bandit and fish attacks back to day 2 (as they’d appear in night 1, which is a bit soon)

FIXED: animal meat ownership (no more running into the woods to collect meat from animals killed by animals)

FIXED: bandit corpses no longer turn crops into clawbulbs (they’re mundane beings)

Foxes will now eat delicious, delicious gibs.

Real simple first pass on burrowing beetles.

FIXED: fishpeople using Wander (human) job

Buildings & Building Creation

implemented real building material cost system

added “upgrade pistol to revolver” job

FIXED: standing orders of glass panes broken

added coal icons to smelting job tooltips (because smelting takes a carbon source now)

FIXED: an office w/ dead overseer displayed an alert with incorrect title text

balance: added more building materials to gamestart

added Stone/Brick/Iron Kilns for Charcoal & Ceramics, removed “Industrial Kiln”

FIXED: make gunpowder job & arsenal jobs in general

beds can be broken by overuse (but don’t explode)

FIXED: farm tiles becoming unfarmable after being destroyed by animals / other damage

added fuel requirement to smelting jobs (use charcoal, coal, or peat)

FIXED: mineshafts should no longer eat workers when you unassign them from the mine

FIXED: smelters should no longer play burning animation when not in use

made sugarloaf a “preserved food”

removing random nature objects (“clearables”) is now in the construction job category rather than the farming job category

buildings will automatically remove nature objects they’re built over

workshop jobs limited to range 100 & will use closest commodity rather than any (much improved efficiency, safety)

made science and chapel jobs less desirable at night

FIXED: crash when creating a stockpile and mousing over a building inadvertently when doing so

FIXED: disappearing decor modules

Biomes & Terrain

balance: made stone nodes provide more stone

balance: made clay node clusters more numerous

balance: made trees take longer to chop down but give more timber

balance: made trees take way longer to chop (even longer!)

FIXED: problems with giving orders to remove saplings (and tree commands in general * received cleanup)

balance: adjusted tropical forest spawns slightly (more timber, fewer coconuts)

FIXED: gray box trees

Events / Metagame / Overworld

“call favour” event won’t appear unless you have enough prestige to do anything with it

FIXED: calling construction materials via favour was broken

FIXED: airdrop crates will no longer drop into buildings (and contents of airdrop crates won’t drop into buildings either)

balance: made criminal vicars spawn less often

tweaked event timing so events are more likely not to trigger at the same time

balance: bandit attacks ramp up more slowly over time, won’t spawn armoured bandit in first few days, will never be more than one attack per day and they won’t spawn next to colony, will tend to attack from land

balance: fishpeople attacks ramp up more slowly over time, won’t see major attack in first few days, will never be more than one attack per day and they won’t spawn next to colony, will tend to attack from sea

Multiplayer

(a bunch of backend work got done but you can’t see it yet! Details are in the development report.)

Music & Sound

FIXED: game immediately goes from battle music playing to pegging the discovery music and not moving

Added looping audio emitters

UI/UX

updated the starting tutorial slightly

added the first few contextual tutorial events (these will appear if you do not prematurely end the starting tutorial)

characters have nametags (can be toggled using button at top of screen)

artifact discovery now gives discoverers name in ticker

position of event window remembered between events

FIXED: some zoom-to alerts didn’t zoom-to

added madness/cult contextual tutorial

cleaned up the starting tutorial infodump now that we have some contextual tutorials

Colonists list now contains mood icons

Useful Icons appear above buildings when they need overseers, or have run out of jobs to do.

informative icons in Character Info window should update more often

FIXED: player will no longer receive notification if a fishperson hurts a bandit

added icon for dead fishperson, revolver; hooked up more variety to combat-related memories

module placement code improved

SHIFT-click now preserves module rotation

Moving a wall placed module directly up to a building, without actually moving your mouse into the building, correctly attaches it

Modules now display RED when not attached to a building and BLUE when they are. (This will be expanded upon later…)

FIXED: rotating a module will occasionally get stuck for no good reason.

minor edits to some alert strings for clarity.

modules will now send a ticker message when completed

FIXED: paragraph rendering UI widgets now support newlines

“building materials to be dropped off now show in tooltip

Crop Commodity Icon now displays in farm window

Use better button art for event window, farm window

Have fun and let us know through our portal or forum if anything emerges from the mist which Should Not Emerge From The Mist!