ALPHA 49B ALPHA 49B: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE/TUNDRA/ALPINES/FRESHWATER LAKE

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Nicholas, Mar 30, 2016.

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  1. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Biomes are here! BIOMES ARE HERE.

    Major Changes
    Added a ton of new biomes and biome content. You can now select your starting position on the embark map - choose wisely.

    Changelog
    populated new biomes with terrain textures, game objects, biome transition definitions
    added Desert Fox, Snow Fox, various Tortoises, Wooly Aurochs, Arctic Dodo
    added wild grapevines that can foraged for grapes which can be made into wine
    the "Hale & Hearty Recovery" event has been updated and is re-enabled
    colonists will wait until they are hungrier before resorting to eating trade food
    colonists will get better memories from eating trade food
    added particles to stone charcoal kilns when in use
    streamlined the following events to work with the new mini-event system: Bandit Corpses, Bandit Wants to Join Colony, Fishpeople Caravan, Fishpeople Patrol Beach, Fishpeople Send Raiders, Organized Citizen Finds Supplies, Ravenous Herd, Research Family Tree, Scholar Report
    added code support for events that spawn items to list the items spawned in the text of the event.
    added images for several "?" help screens that were missing them
    added different day/night lighting sets per-biome
    FIXED: people would be creeped out by their own creepy whispering
    FIXED: people whispering creepily wouldn't animate
    FIXED: issue with the "get up from doing pushups" animation
    FIXED: cannot embark in 100% water
    FIXED: embarks that would dump you in 100% water will now place you on land
    FIXED: terrain side texture scaling now set to 100% universally
    FIXED: gossip was not creating meaningful emotional reactions
    FIXED: biome moisture/temp defs so all intended biomes appear on generated map
     
  2. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Oh yes, time to play some more.

    Hmm trade food is now like quality food huh, interesting tradeoff there...
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2016
  3. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    "We've got some neat stuff in the pipe to come."

    I'm 99% sure that means conduits are being worked on. So excited!
     
  4. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    [​IMG]

    Turrrrrrtles.

    Loving the new embark and area map generation stuff so far. Really solid change.

    A few visual tile chunk problems in one or two places, but sod that, it's purely cosmetic.

    First area map created already put forward how much of a change it can be and introducing kinds of regions that simply didn't exist before:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    I'm going to repost what I wrote elsewhere:

    I've been trying to build a viable colony deep in an exclusively desert biome. The lack of trees has affected my development profoundly - I am now extremely stingy with wood, given that the only timber I have is the dwindling pile of 40 logs I brought with me, and I am consequently expanding very slowly, to the extend that I'm considering refusing colonists (and would like a way to refuse Overseers). I'd like to grow my own bamboo so I can use it for construction, but my hopes for a Laboratory are remote, since the Lab requires expensive resources like lacquered planks and glass. I'm going to try establishing a Trade Depot early and trading corn for vital supplies. This particular biome also borders the ocean (although I haven't located it yet), which probably explains why I'm still encountering fishpeople.

    *edit* Oh thank God, I've stumbled across a stand of Joshua Trees (bottom right in the screenshot). Trying to run a colony without unlimited access to timber is brutal.

    joshuatree.jpg
     
  6. Clicking on the "?" icon in the farm window (for maize fields at least) yields the help pop-up for the Foreign Office, not for Farms.

    I've only gone through once thus far and haven't gotten all that far yet, but I had a 5 man bandit raid without any sort of warning that it was coming (I had received a pop-up that they had set up camp nearby, but never one that they were attacking me), followed immediately by a 5 man fishperson raiding party, which on Day 7 just entirely overpowered what military I'd been able to scrabble together. As I said, only once through so far, so maybe I got hit with some profoundly unfortunate RNG, but that was flat out brutal.
     
  7. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    With a Foreign office, you should be able to summon the Novorus special trader ("raw material trader"?) who carries a lot of logs and stone (with some variance of course)

    You shouldn't be able to trade corn though...
     
  8. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    As I hadn't fired up the game since R49 I don't know when this change happened exactly, but I'm finding with the event notifications appearing small and to the far bottom left I'm constantly not noticing them at all.

    And I keep going to left-click them to get the expanded explanation... except for some notifications that automatically dismisses the notification and the new 'cleaner' event window doesn't track the events the notifications relate to with the idea being everything is accessed by limited time duration tooltips on the notification icons. Which means I'll never know what I was trying to be told has happened in my colony... but even more annoying, sometimes left-click is actually necessary to open up a expanded explanation.

    So now something as simple as 'Find out what that notification is about' requires stopping what I'm doing just to find out what rule applies to this specific type of notification and if I need to be left clicking on it to find out more, or just hovering over it to read a tooltip.

    The notification behaviour really needs to be consistent, not swapping and changing its rules because of attempts to try cram all the available types of messages into the one system, but make sure the player doesn't automatically dismiss important stuff.... maybe important notifications appears one side and are left clicked to open, others appear on the other side and are 'hover over to read'.... or maybe incorporate some kind of message/notification window for actual decision events are stored and drop them out of the notification system completely, which come to think of it I vaguely recall there being mention of once... so if that's the plan and this is just a stop gap, fair enough. :)

    And secondly, regardless to if the inconsistent rules are a temporary measure or not, the event window really should be tracking and reporting all events, at least then it could provide a easier to notice prod to check the hidden off to the corner area for any new notifications. ;)
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2016
  9. Palindrome

    Palindrome Member

    Traders have some weird behaviour now (aside from being aquatic).[​IMG]

    My first group turned up, traded and went away as they are supposed to. The second group however arrived with no trade goods at all, stole most of my pistols (in what looked like a suspicious nocturnal ceremony) and then refused to leave. I had a second group of traders pop while the first group were still malingering but they stayed at the edge of the map and refused to move (while being underwater).
    [​IMG]

    I have also had a bandit camp spawn virtually in my town
    [​IMG]

    I have had some instances of invisible food in my stock pile (basic stew). Aside from that I haven't noticed anything particular odd.

    I have never seen the big Obesilkians activate before. I no longer have a colony.
     
  10. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    I made a thing!

     
    KillerKidClever and Unforked like this.
  11. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    The new biomes are wonderful, the maps feel far more organic now and exploring is a joy,

    One thing I've noticed when starting a bunch of new games just to see biomes: Good Cog, the chance of landing in the middle of a bunch of hills/plateaus/cliffs/steppes (whatever you want to call them) is incredibly high, making it a bit tricky to squeeze a decent-sized colony between them without doing some major excavation work.

    I'm curious if there's going to be any gameplay advantages to these hills? I mean, if you can manage to build military defenses on top of one, could you get some kind of tactical high ground bonus?
     
  12. Wolg

    Wolg Member

    I'm seeing half-second walk-in-place lags again on this version; previously when these have been reported I haven't noticed them much, as my system's reasonably powered.

    Also, is it possible that reassigning a worker between crews can lead to permanently locked goods if they were carrying something? Asking because there's a set of logs in my carpentry workshop that the work crew has ignored ever since it was built, preferring to grab others from the other side of the colony.
     
  13. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    This is probably due to some pathing problems on the new terrain. It's definitely something we're working on smoothing out.

    Likewise, if you get a game where everything froze, it's probably attempting to spawn a group but failing forever. I added fail cases to most of those, but it's possible I missed something, so we def. want to hear if this happens.

    Same if you get NPCs on a mission and they just freeze up - we want to hear about this. I added some stuff that should make them deal with repathing much better, but it's possible that no all cases are covered so I anticipate a little work will need to be done there.
     
  14. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Since it was built? It might be that bug where items used in building construction (or even modules) are not removed when they are "used".

    You should be able to trade it though
     
  15. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    (Small hotfix up for a lock when creating animals.)

    If you have a set of logs that isn't being used, send me the save! Easiest, simplest, best thing.
     
  16. Loving the Alpine biome - The cows look right at home.
     
  17. I started three games last night where I landed in the middle of box canyons, which was quite frustrating.
     
  18. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    "Box Canyon"? You'll have to send me a screenshot.
     
  19. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    (re. box canyons: subbiome clustering and ratios will help a ton of those.)
     
  20. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    (yeah, yeah....)
     
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