REVISION 36B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Nicholas, Mar 8, 2015.

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  1. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    And it's a doozy. Edited highlights:

    - a whole bunch of engine code got rewritten; the game should be faster and less laggier, although this is an ongoing work in progress
    - characters now have skills
    - zone removal for farms + stockpiles (graveyards are waiting on "better body handling")
    - start of line placer, which now works for "high gabions" (fences are coming!)
    - starting to build some better ways to manage assignments, you can see the WIP version so far by chopping trees

    Full changelog below:

    OPTIMIZATION: Rewrote all code for handling of static props to use flat arrays for cache efficiency
    Added line placer for clicking and dragging out gabions and other rows of elements
    FIXED: zone decals (farms, graveyards, roads, ???) now correctly render in screen space as volumetric decals, fixing the notorious "this farm is drawing incorrectly" error
    FIXED: people already in cults will no longer try to start even more cults even if inspired to do so
    fixed cloth production! (and flax straw icon in the make cloth job)
    cults will really build shrines again.
    cults will select their most hardcore member to be a new leader if their old leader dies
    a cult will end if all members are dead
    made fishguns unusable by humans (because they're terrible)
    allowing too many cult shrines to be built may trigger an investigation
    cultists will attempt to worship at cult shrines each night
    non-cultists witnessing cult worship will become upset
    cultists witnessing cult worship will become happy
    colonist's religion description string will update if they join a cult (as minion or leader)
    occult murder re-activated
    occult murderers won't flee from justice (they serve a higher law)
    eldritch transformations re-activated (in two flavours)
    cultists will be angered if their shrine is destroyed (by any means)
    shrines know what cult built them now
    shrines can be destroyed by damage sources
    too many cult shrines may trigger ministry investigation
    soldiers will destroy cult shrines if policy is set to persecute cults
    fixed mispelling of "fibrous" in Flax Straw description
    made cultists irrationally happy if they do cult things
    cults will request permission to build a shrine, allowing player to set cult policy (or not)
    added more character names
    added "how to use a workshop" contextual tutorial
    FIXED: non-firing events will now fire (the ones we want firing, anyway)
    FIXED: events w/o consequences (ie. many new memories made in response to player decisions)
    FIXED: macroscope alignment
    Added middle-class character skills:
    resource collection
    carpentry
    smithing,
    cooking
    science
    farming
    construction & repair
    skill-up system implemented on everything (but job time reduction based on skill not yet fully implemented - it's on workshop jobs, resource collection, and construction & repair so far.)
    added feedback for building demolition orders (clicking the button now closes the UI, reopening it shows an alert that it's slated for removal)
     
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  2. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    [r36b]

    A couple quick reactions:

    - the line placer seems to work, for the most part, although I'd like to see it cancel a line in progress if I hit the ESC key
    - optimization has made things subtley smoother
    - the new individual character skills are an awesome addition

    A bug:
    -farms and graveyards disappear after loading a save (although functionality is not affected), illustrated below:

    shot050.jpg

    Perhaps my farmers need some Colonial Incentivization:

    zardoz_clip.gif

    Zardoz. Zardoz! I made this .gif myself!
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2015
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  3. Wolg

    Wolg Member

    Well, it crashed just after an urchin grenade was set off (attached).

    Other thoughts:
    • Released Criminals from the prestige favour should probably be described as such in their bio text; perhaps using a separate list of causes (so rather than escaping the Poet Laureate's attentions being the prompt for joining the colonies, said Poet might have accused them of theft, etc).
    • Overseers still idle through flatten terrain commands picked up by their work party... yet they will pick up a shovel to clear terrain.
    • Can policies that have been set be altered (eg. revoke former tolerance of cult behaviour) or is this Still To Come?
    • Redcoats doing pushups have an understanding of personal space that may not be in accordance with the Ministry Field Manual.
      unlocked-pushups.png
      (Yep, that's all three of the starting soldiers in that shot.)
    • The new farm rendering looks much better.
     

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  4. Not really managed to have a full test of the new features yet although I like the fact that skills have been implemented. It will be a sad day for the ministry when Bollox Ironsworth, the most experienced and reliable of all the colony's oversees meets his demise to a poorly timed fishperson raid!

    Oh and I have a repeatable crash - it happens when I build a farm after loading.
    DMP files attached.
     

    Attached Files:

  5. Daniel

    Daniel CEO Staff Member

    Thanks for the reports everyone, we'll get to work on these today/tomorrow. Super happy to finally start getting the skills in - we'll be looking into ways to help you protect your skillful overseers, though implementation might be a little ways off.

    We'll be looking into all of this in detail, just thought I'd respond to what I can just now:

    Haha oh god.


    We actually saw this one too, must have sneaked into the build somehow regardless - thanks for letting us know!


    Good idea! Plus writing criminal back-stories is pretty fun :)

    Still to come.

    HMMMM.
     
    Viion likes this.
  6. Fritz

    Fritz Member

    Ahh, Patch day... O'my Bug's, Squash them Fast, with the Rolled up Bug List!

    Soldiers:

    No longer find Hauling goods useful to their survival.
    When food is scare and my fine (non-hauling) solders are hungry, they desert faster the Sultan at Sundown and march out into the BLACK, Walking miles into unknown territory looking for a piece of steak, killed by some Fish-MOB at the other end of the map.
    Have way to much time on their hands, standing around admiring one another, all this while doing push-ups! (I have a hauling job for you!)

    Buildings:

    Kitchen – If you place cooking ovens on the corners of your kitchen structure, the floor appears as grass and you cannot click on the building to bring up the building options, unless you click on the outside of the building foundation.
    Metal works – “same as above"

    Farms: (Help!)

    Confirmed – after reload the farm will be below ground.
    My 1st game after the patch, when building on terrain that had just been raised trying to build a farm would cause a CTD.
    Consent crashing to desktop when trying to build a farm after the 1st farms are placed.
    After reloading and trying to build a farm, better the a 50% chance of causing a CTD.

    Bugs

    Kitchen – Make a can of corned beef and get this error = fsm_building_transform_item_being disabled.
    A can of corned beef will show up on the workbench but you cannot pick it up and the workers will repeatedly bring more steak to can, fail, and then bring the steak back to the stockpile and repeat until you cancel the order. Weird game play may follow.

    Uploaded files:Replay.cer / .DMP no file exisits / console.txt
    This replay does not have the wandering solders or the building glitches - this replay is for the farming CTD.

    Good Luck with your Bug Squashing

    Fritz
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Mar 9, 2015
  7. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    Solders are not set to take hauling jobs by default. Are they not hauling after you toggle hauling jobs on?

    Yeah, modules on corners messing up buildings is a known problem. I'd avoid putting modules on corners for now.

    Logged as *OC-2979*.

    Oh, the stupid tinned beef! Logged as *OC-2976*.

    Thanks for the reports!
     
  8. Fritz

    Fritz Member

    No Sir they are not hauling after I toggle the jobs on.

    My pleasure, thanks for the updates.

    Fritz
     
  9. FIbinachi

    FIbinachi Member

    Heh, yeah. Something is a bit off with the Redcoats this update. I think they've been accidentally kicked out of any job-loop? Even when allowed, they don't haul or anything else. They can only do "jobs" that are non-toggable and general, like eat, gossip, idle and wander. They also do the soldier only tasks of patroling, responding to alarms, rallying and so on.

    But they do do a truly staggering amount of push-ups. I tend to take a break every 30-45 minutes of pc work to do a set of 30, so I'm not exactly a stranger to pushups or anything but yikes. The fitness standards in the Clockwork Battalions must be something extra. Shoot? Pushups! Idle? Pushups! Gossip? Pushups! Eat something? How about some post dinner pushups? Walk a bit? PUSH UPS.

    It's inspiring and a bit scary.

    Other than that my only comments is that the optimization is also just as staggering. Smoother, better, fluid animation, no jitter, responsiveness. Whatever odd magic you worked in this update at the very least affected my PC by turning everything up 1000% or so. It's difficult to explain exactly what's changed, but it sure is nice. (Such useful feedback)
    -----

    Random:

    No one seems to haul much. Farm products are left lying in neat lines as new plants are planted, mined ore is left on the ground and only used when a specific job like construction or smelting calls for it, so on. This could be because as soldiers don't haul, everyone else is too busy to do so with other jobs.

    Bone-meal harvested from Auroch Bones hover midair, suspended against gravity and at an angle, casting a shadow nicely displaced the difference it actually is from the ground. Not sure why auroch bone meal has anti-gravity attributes, but I think this might be an avenue for SCIENCE. Probably a bug.

    Very much like the criminal favour change, gettting random assortment of criminals is better than 3. Also I got one (Cogs Bronze) who arrived angry, responded with anger, and got more angry. His entire "emotion" track was filled with angry red faces. Every single one. Maybe a little too much, there? He seemed to kind of bounce of himself, stuck in a loop, being angry because he was angry.
    ------

    Side-note: The new implementation of ressource-costs for buildings is good. But I've been wondering if it might not be a bit high for two basic buildings? The Carpentry Workshop and the Lower Class Bunkhouse? Cots take up 3 spaces and require 2 available spaces on either side, so actually using the 6 bolts of cloth you start with means designing some fairly large buildings. This rapidly gets prohibitively expensive, even if you build nothing but lower class bunk housing. A lower class house that can hold your cots is a big investment in stone and wood. Either you have to spread cots out to every building you build, putting one and two in each one, which seems a bit odd or invest quite a bit of your wood and a lot of stone in building a place that can hold them.
     
  10. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe crop harvests were doubled on an experimental basis since r36a. I imagine what you're seeing is the 'second harvest', after the first crop gets hauled away.
     
  11. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Reporting on the cult side of things:

    Existing cultists are still forming brand new cults. I've had a lot of games with many cults, but never more than two members each.

    I'm pretty sure shrines still can't be built. I did get a message requesting the building of shrines, which I approved, but several days later there was still no sign of them--even with plenty of wood and stone available.
     
  12. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    Oh, heck. Might have fixed this yesterday by swapping around how becoming a cult leader sets tags, but will test it again to be sure.

    It is possible for the shrine construction job to be interrupted after the request is made, and shrine construction is only attempted once per night so it may be a slow process.
     
  13. Issue #1

    1) Create a game.
    2) Save & quit. No interaction with the actual game is necessary.
    3) Load that game.
    4) Place a farm
    5) Note crash.

    Issue #2

    Why are the buttons so laggy? I notice this mostly in relation to crews. I get a few new colonists that I want to distribute around, so I scroll down and down and down, and back up, then I click on appropriate plus. It depresses. It clicked. The crew doesn't change. the unassigned colonist remains unassigned. I click and hold. Same thing. I pause the game, then I click and hold, and it works.
    I have similar issues with the soldier beacons

    #3
    Can I please for Cog's sake have a button on the main menu that will create a master rally point for all soldiers? I would like this in addition to, not instead of, the individual soldier beacons.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2015
  14. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    I can confirm this crash.
     
  15. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Fixed issue #1 this afternoon.
     
  16. Excellent. Can I have it?
     
  17. Kiojan

    Kiojan Member

    The game is extremely smooth and for the first time, it doesn't immediately feel like an alpha/early release. The problem is that it pretty regularly crashes after 4-5 days now.
     
  18. Le Manticore

    Le Manticore Member

    I am also having the farms disappearing bug. Not sure if any one added this, but I also have the issue where crops are harvested and taken to the stockpile but a basket of the crops also remains in the spot where the plant used to be.

    Other than that - huge issues with items, particularly food sticking to colonist's hands. I know this is an ongoing issue but I mention it because I'm not sure it is entirely cosmetic. I think I've seen colonist's with stuck items pick up cooked items and have the new item disappear on the way to the stockpile. I have to admit I'm not entirely certain about this.

    Still no cult activity to speak of on my end. I'm starting to miss the earlier murder rampages

    Couple of crashes, will eventually post files...
     
  19. I believe a crash also happens when a Graveyard is placed in a game that has been loaded. Don't know if you caught it with the farm bug.
     
  20. Wolg

    Wolg Member

    Not an issue, this is expected behaviour. Farm output was intentionally doubled recently; as colonists can only haul one item at a time, this means they haul one away at harvest while the second remains on the spot until retrieved by another hauling/workshop task.
     
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