This is another build on the smaller end of things, but lots of pieces are coming together soon, and many are now on the beta branch.
This build mostly is about polish, and I also wanted to highlight a few things you might have missed from recent hotfix builds that were also pretty notable improvements. Some folks don't notice the hotfix build notes.
As for upcoming things:
Civil Spycraft, which I've been talking about for what feels like forever, is finishing up localization and will be ready to release to the main branch in the next week. There's also some other bits there that are currently in beta and will be a cool surprise for folks.
New to the beta branch, there's also a new Tier 1 goal (Lower Levels Of Survival) that is an alternative post-apocalypse scenario that happens if certain conditions are met. It's not possible to trigger this without doing Civil Spycraft at least once in the past, at least for now. This will be something that heads to the main branch in a week or two, after localization is done.
I have still been working on Stars Beyond Reach as a Tier 3 goal, but I realized that there was enough overlap in code with a different Tier 3 goal -- Peace After Brutality -- that it made more sense to slow down and work on both at once. Once you see those two goals, you may wonder why there's any code overlap at all, but it's to do with the fact that both use custom maps -- the space scene for SBR, and the regional map for PAB.
The start of Peace After Brutality can be played in the beta branch in this build, but bear in mind that you will get killed in an inescapable way if you go too far into it right now. That's simply still in progress, so when you move to do the things that would save you, they're not there yet. I didn't mean to leave that live in the beta, but some folks might enjoy seeing the first part of it, so... hopefully nobody gets a nasty surprise. I'm expecting that scenario to be finished on the beta branch in the next week, so it won't be a huge window where this is the case.
If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.
Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.
Thanks for reading and for playing.
Show details
Update 48 Changelog
General
- Homing Shot Circling Fix: Fixed some issues with homing shots not properly hitting targets quickly enough. There's now a customizable proximity sensor, at which time the shots detonate rather than circling endlessly due to steering angle limitations.
- "Lock Movement" Preview: There is a new "lock movement mode" that is available on a new vehicle in the beta branch. This is a feature that, once localized, will come to all the vehicles and mechs. I think it brings together the strengths of the old and new vehicle movement systems, without having the exclusive weaknesses of either one.
- Side Goal Identifier Fix: Observe Spaceport no longer claims to alter the Slice of Inferno goal. That was incorrect.
- Irradiated Trees No Longer Wander Off: Fixed an issue where after loading a savegame, any burned or irradiated trees would not be loaded back in at the site of explosions or chemical attacks. They now load in properly mangled.
- City And Settlement Sanity: Fixed up the number of major cities and small settlements noted for all of the MegaCorps to make more sense with the actual populations that they have. Their population and military numbers were already good, but they had way too many cities and settlements to the point it made no sense.
- Post-Apocalyptic VR: Fixed an issue where "Establish a VR environment" was wrongly showing in the post-apocalypse.
- Post-Apocalyptic Torpor: Android Torpor can no longer be used after the final doom, as that's not useful there.
- Post-Apocalyptic Strays: If you get jumped to the final doom early, it now does a better job of making sure that any units leave who are from dooms that are now past.
- Engineer Nickelbot Improvements: "Make Engineers Of Your Nickelbots" has been rebalanced so that it now takes half as many actions to complete. Additionally, it no longer factors the power of your additional CPUs, so that you have to make the direct upgrades regardless of what sort of upgrades you've made in the past in your timeline.
- Emergency Network Health: Fixed an issue where emergency network sources were being constructed at 1 health rather than at full health.
Notable Items From Recent Hotfixes
- Increased Zoom: The amount of zoom you can use in the main map view is now 50% more than it used to be. This is something players have been asking for for a while, and I wasn't thinking it was a good idea, but it turns out to be needed, especially with the new scenario that I'm working on for T3s.
- Defogger: The default fog intensity is now Reduced rather than Normal. I would set it to be even more reduced by default, but that wouldn't work well on older machines.
- Fog Glow-Up: The fogs associated with all the weathers for the lowest three fog types (out of four) have been all re-hand-tuned to account for the additional zoom capabilities of the streets view.
Beta Branch Previews
- Peace After Death: You can play the start of this, but once you get a certain amount in, you're going to get stuck and killed, just fair warning.
- Lower Levels Of Survival: This is fully playable on the beta branch, although it's tricky to find. You need to meet STATION after already knowing LAKE from another timeline, and then get nuked by Vorsiber.
Full notes here.
Connect with the Machine
Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:
💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.