ALPHA 44: THE MEMORY OF INFINITE TERROR OF MALIGN VASTNESS

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Nicholas, Oct 21, 2015.

  1. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Alpha 44 of Clockwork Empires is up. (And personally, it's my favourite one yet.)

    https://www.gaslampgames.com/2015/1...he-memory-of-infinite-terror-malign-vastness/

    Major Changes:
    • A much improved colonist information panel that shows you what’s on the mind of your people and how it makes them feel — plus all the game mechanics to do with memories, emotion, madness, and character jobs that back it up.
    • Pubs to serve brew, Barbers to heal your wounds (this is the Frontier, after all), and much tinkering with the buildings backend to make workshops & offices stronger, faster, better.
    • More, better farming controls and food balancing!
    • “Tip Top” exotic caviar!
    • A lovely slathering of polish & tooltips all over the UI (and ongoing process)
    • Newly re-invigorated stockpiles, again!
    • (Continuing work on Secret Things, deep and dark.)

    Enjoy! I'm going back to work on the Secret Things now.
     
  2. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Since people are probably about to ask me what changed between 43E and 44:

    • FIXED: bug in replay system meaning that replay determinism could (and would!) break when the game was paused
    • FIXED: replay system would break after switching job order types or cancelling a job from the workshop window
    • FIXED: colonists roused from their beds by gunfire would gain the ability to walk through walls
    • FIXED: colonists doing paperwork on any available surface
    • balance: increased corpse burial hostile detection radius by +50% so it's more sure that there aren't hostiles nearby
    • A bandit that joins your colony via event will receive a grace period so that they aren't immediately gunned down by their friends (this will end a certain amount of time later, or once they hurt a bandit)
    • FIXED: issues with aristocrat "jobs"
    • FIXED: 43E extra immigration now actually costs 3 prestige like it says
    • FIXED: small grammar issues in immigration screen
    • BUGFIXES: to colonists want a chapel event
    • FIXED: added event dialog for if bandits offer you a truce, but all died before you replied to their offer.
     
  3. Mikel

    Mikel Waiting On Paperwork From The Ministry. Forever.

    I was going to let it slide this time. :)
     
  4. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    A quickie 'what's new' summary is incredibly helpful for me, since I try to start my videos with, uh, a quick summary of what's new. But more generally, it's not always apparent what's changed between stable releases, and it's a bit confusing for those of us who have been keeping up with the Experimental branch.
     
  5. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Well, those are only the changes between 43E and 44. If I had to go with "what's new between 43 and 44"... gosh, I don't even know. A LOT.
     
  6. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    I'd have thought the merging of brewery and Kitchen would have made the list of 'Major Changes' with a explicit mention!
     
  7. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    My thinking when writing those up, at the time, was "new things that we put a lot of work into", but that's a good point. Will keep it in mind for future updates.
     
  8. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    Has been a rather interesting update looking back at the full list, and can understand wanting to draw attention more to the main development hoggers for the month over things that maybe took a couple of hours rather than days.

    From the players perspective it's often easy to forget how much is actually added into a single major revision update when it's slowly added in through experimentals, as you can kind of get comfortable with some changes and forget they're still technically 'new and only just released today' by the time the main branch update rolls out. :D

    Downside is, discerning the extent of the changes to some of the undocumented changes, such as madness/cult goings on and changes to those systems.

    Knowing how that behaviour stood as of 43C/D/E and then seeing hints of changes to that behaviour for the actual major revision release, often makes me wonder if MORE changes have been sneaked in quietly since then that are going undocumented to avoid spoilers or ruining surprises, or if the hints are referring to the changes I'm already familiar with from the experimentals. lol


    Edit: By the way, absolutely love the art piece for the update, especially the detail included into the smoke. Definitely conveys a very specific suggestion!

    And also somewhat resembles the kind of horrors Google's DeepDream sees when it sleeps. Like this output from a simple two colour gradient. :eek:

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2015
  9. BillyBabel

    BillyBabel Member

    are cultists stronger now? I won't feel excited until cultists can start being a threat again.
     
  10. Daniel

    Daniel CEO Staff Member

    I think we have all the framework we need to make cultists stronger again, but not yet. This update was UI support for noticing problems and economic framework for building solutions to problems. Now we get to make the problems.
     
  11. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    Well, technically cultists have certain Abilities that are Interesting depending on how out of hand they get and depending on what the cult in question has chosen as its object of worship. It's not really easy for them to get out of hand yet unless things get really bad, is the thing. But as Daniel implied, we've got some ideas for fun ways to make this happen.
     
  12. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    LET'S JUST TURN THAT CULT **** UP TO ELEVEN (is hauled off by other directors)
     
  13. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Pleeeeease bring cults back soon. I'm having serious cult withdrawal symptoms. I'm also hoping you'll get madness to last much longer, as now it just drains so fast on its own. There's never a need for alcohol. But I get it, it's a process.
     
    An Actual Englishman likes this.
  14. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    The key question is, has the initial 43x experimental happenings where colonists forming a cult literally NEVER happened no matter how much prolonged madness you had going on in your colony, changed since then and the release of 44?

    Or are the changes quietly hinted at in the 44 change notes the early 43x experimental changes that made insanity much easier to gain, but where nothing would ever really come of it, effectively meaning there are no cults in the game at present?

    Having cult impact on a colony dialled down is one thing. Having them non-existent and impossible for colonists to ever form even when you have 4 colonists with max insanity for 2-3 days running is something else altogether.

    There's some mixed signals between the two quoted posts regarding if cults being impossible to form in colonies no matter how insane everyone gets, is actually intended for now as part of the balancing work due to happen, or if we should actually be seeing cults form but their behaviours reduced.... as I've not seen a single cult form in over a month and a dozen or so colonies... to quote a example I posted to Nicholas on the Steam forums when someone was asking "where the crazy is?":

    At no point did anyone even attempt to initiate forming a cult, and that's a pretty extreme fringe example colony that was intentionally pushed to the brink of utter madness to try force it to happen.

    So is that the outcome you guys are expecting at the moment? Or is that more dialled back than even you guys had intended?

    Yes please! :D
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2015
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  15. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    (... Is no one dissecting the corpses of horrors? There are lots of Fun Science Rewards inside!)
     
  16. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    I've dissected countless fish corpses and accumulated much madness, but it drains away so fast, and they refuse to start cults.
     
  17. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    Dissecting and science are generally late in a colony for me... like in excess of 6 hours into a session as I don't rush build as part of my natural play style I tend to only push for large colony infrastructure when testing something very specific...(Edit: And to test something specific there needs to be clear indications of what to point attention towards)

    Otherwise I take my time and slowly build up as I would if the game as released, so I can better get a feel for any problems or suggestions of how everything is interacting with each other when adopting different approaches to the slower pace. ;)

    I also start a new colony with each build release to make sure there's no problems from saves from old versions.

    Result is I rarely ever get to a colony with science going on long term before the next experimental rolls out and I start a new colony.

    But if cult behaviour is now much more deeply tied to science, will give it a poke. Though that it's possible to NEVER see any implication of severe and prolonged insanity spread across 4 or more colonists for days at a time unless you dive into science should probably trigger quite a few red flags. :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2015
    Wolfram Hatlocke likes this.
  18. BillyBabel

    BillyBabel Member

    I had someone eat their best friend and study an eldritch artifact, and they went back to being quite normal very quickly.
     
  19. I played for a short while tonight and really enjoyed some of the new features. The stockpile overhaul makes a huge difference and now it seems like I don't need large stockpiles anymore since everything is efficiently stacked. Having buildings greyed out if you are missing materials is also very useful. It'd be great if this applied to modules too!

    Only thing I saw that might be considered weird is that the tooltips for bunkhouses say Lowerclass Bunkhouse twice in the header area. For workshops the top field is for the workcrew name and the bottom field is the actual workshop type and that doesn't apply to bunkhouses. Might not be that big of a deal if bunkhouses can be renamed in the future, but just a minor UI thing I noticed.
     
  20. advkow

    advkow Member

    I would love to see more cults. I'd want them to be more mysterious and secretive though. If I don't want cults, or think my colony wouldn't survive, the previous way I would just frontier justice them down and be done with it since I knew who was in the cult