Clockwork Empires version 1.0 has emerged, glistening, from its development-spore and launched on Steam! We are out of Early Access and into the wild frontier that calls for Colonial Bureaucrats to manage bustling colonies and chop down all the trees and maybe start a cult maybe for Progress and Civilization! You can purchase Clockwork Empires through Steam for a 10% discount for the next week!

The Development Progress Report has been updated with a full annotated changelog for version 55A to version 1.0. We’ll put the full changelog at the end of this post for those interested in seeing what the last month month of Early Access has brought to the game.

This is not, of course, the end of work on Clockwork Empires. We shall be continuing support for game stability and bugfixes, and we have a list of additional content and some features we’d like to add post-release.

Major player-facing additions this month:

• performed a huge UI improvement pass for release
• also a huge balance pass, including making the later biomes more difficult
• added the Steam Knight Manufactory!
• added Achievements
• much stability & polish
• oh yeah, we’ve released the game to 1.0 with all that entails!

As always, the full development progress report can be found here: https://clockworkempires.com/development.html and the full changelog is below.

Thank you for your support during two years of Early Access! We hope you enjoy Clockwork Empires version 1.0, and please stay tuned for what's next...

Full Changelog for Beta 55->Version 1.0B Below:

Colonist Behaviour

• awkward hugging made less likely to cause errors
• “Drunkard” trait now additionally causes happier memories from drinking
• “Hale and Hearty” trait now additionally causes barbershop treatments to heal more
• “Mushroom Lover” trait now additionally gives happy memories when eating fungus-based foods
• when deciding initial feelings toward other colonists, Overseers will now consider Labourers beneath their notice for friendship/rivalry unless said Overseer has the Common Mingler trait
• made colonist auto-burial timer check itself more often (colonists are not given automatic burial orders if hostile enemies are nearby; this will now be checked upon every new workshift.)
• colonist traits now affect certain climate quality of life effects
• added booze vat pathing check to get drink / fill vat jobs
• vicars can now convince cultists to leave their cult
• “Made a friend/rival” memories will now have the name of said friend or rival
• balance: Steam Knight presence now affects safety QoL
• balance: added more despair and anger overall
• balance: made people slightly more upset in general
• balance: when your colonists die it will now decrease your empire standing a bit
• FIXED: scripterror when using Leyden weapons
• FIXED: military holding commodities while fighting
• FIXED: characters would occasionally get stuck and stop moving when the entity “thinklocking” them would disappear w/o releasing the thinklock (in particular, if a spectre talked to a colonist then disappeared due to sunlight, the lock would not be released.)
• FIXED: enraged characters will no longer build buildings
• FIXED: Safety quality of life calculation for colonists was incorrect on days 2 through 5
• FIXED: if a scientist is enhanced due to REDACTED their lab will properly update its skill display
• FIXED: murder
• FIXED: scripterror in military_interrogation_event.fsm
• FIXED: some eldritch memories didnt give (enough) despair
• FIXED: spectres should no longer freeze people in place forever under certain rare conditions
• FIXED: slightly incorrect string compilation in conversation memories
• FIXED: edge case error in ai_damage

Non-colonist characters

• doubled trader mission time
• Occult Inspector now inspects buildings more intelligently
• made dormant spores more Fun
• FIXED: steam knights freezing!
• FIXED: possible steamknight issues with placement /not/ into buildings
• FIXED: added safety check to fishpeople group deletion notification

General Gameplay Balance

• changed overseer workplace cap modifier to scale w/ number of overseers
• balance: adjusted incidence of bad guys in biomes according to difficulty scheme
• balance: made certain enemies send more dudes when you’re later in game
• balance: reduced Fishpeople incidence in desert biome
• balance: non-temperate biomes impose various and increasing QoL penalties from tropics, desert, to cold as most penalized
• balance: more vicious will spawn in non-temperate biomes
• balance: biomes with extreme weather may produce unpleasant memories
• balance: military interrogation has been made less effective by 50%
• balance: doubled trade crops value
• balance: added extra bandit spawning in desert + cold
• balance: bandits in more difficult biomes now get better gun loadouts
• balance: decor object trade value updated
• FIXED: overvalued steam radiator (and other decor items)
• FIXED: Bricabrac now has a trade value

Workshop/Buildings

• added the Steam Knight Manufactory. Have fun!
• more workshop interior textures changed
• optimized Laboratory science refresh function
• science has undergone a massive overhaul: The number of techs has roughly doubled. A number of advanced modules now require research before they can be built.
• balance: Overseer house has had the windows requirement moved to its 2nd bonus condition
• Assembly Workbench now has 2 access points (down from 4)
• added naturalist’s office info to module descriptions
• the Trade Office now has a module todo list that will determine how many traders arrive. Range is currently 4 – 14. (Traders will always use the best office in your colony to determine how many to send, rather than adding multiple offices together)
• added some new options for increasing standing to the Empire via the Foreign Office
• added more feedback to Foreign Office when changing standing
• FIXED: ammo recipes now all make 1 ammo as intended
• FIXED: a large number of incorrect recipe costs
• FIXED: that typo in the laboratory
• FIXED: house demolition crash
• FIXED: invisible buildings
• FIXED: airship masts work again
• FIXED: rare door scripterror when a door was built before its parent building (or something)
• FIXED: missing Steel Plates recipe
• FIXED: connected components would fail to be computed correctly when creating a building with weird shapes (the actual problem is more detailed than that, but let’s go with that one)
• FIXED: various path stutters related to the new connected component code, involving animals not correctly finding corrected components that ignored doors, various other issues with aquatic entities, etc.
• FIXED: building can no longer consist of two discontiguous blueprints
• FIXED: steam knight chassis recipe output is no longer world’s most expensive landmines
• FIXED: incorrect recipe ingredient info for various products
• FIXED: dismantle objects assignment beacon now works correctly

Events

• replaced Sunny Day event with much more varied “Unusual Weather” event w/ unique effects per-biome
• some events that spawned characters now properly allow clicking their event popups to zoom to those characters
• made major eldritch events more Fun
• re-added Ominous Dreams as event arc
• Novorous Logging moratorium now checks for larch/bamboo farming
• added Arguing Rivals event
• if your Empire standing gets low enough the Ministry will limit and eventually entirely halt immigration until you pull it back up
• balance: made Foreign Invasion redcoats not take > 7 days to despawn
• balance: removed revolver locker chance from ministry supplies in foreign invasion event
• balance: made disturbance points at slightly higher at low end of scale
• balance: made cults easier to trigger
• balance: adjusted weights of various events
• balance: doing airship crash research now gives standing reward
• FIXED: scriperrors in certain cases in “arguing rivals”
• FIXED (55J): scriperror in cult art, fishperson cult arc
• FIXED: scripterror with criminal work crew foreign office event
• FIXED: some buildings would say you didn’t have required modules when eventlocked
• FIXED: bureaucrat desk couldn’t be used for event arcs
• FIXED: rare crash when using Aerial Surveillance
• FIXED: order to kill all fishpeople now works correctly
• FIXED: grimoire event had ending error if researcher died
• FIXED: scripterror in Above 30 Population event
• FIXED: scripterror in certain cases in Arguing Rivals
• FIXED: possible scriperror in Mad Carpenter

UI / UX / Text

• performed a major overhaul of the Colonial Handbook; all pages have images and have been reformatted to be easier to read
• replaced many intrusive pop-ups with alerts
• tooltips for missions (in Foreign Office) are now minimum sized and shouldn’t overrun container
• added descriptions for sub commands (in bottom left menu)
• improved alert tooltips (for pop-up alerts on right side of screen)
• improved visibility of colonist traits via gameplay and fluff fields (ie. traits that affect workshop are highlighted)
• rewrote a bit of the “wrapped label widget” to make the constructors more sensible
• mineral survey waypoints now use assignment beacons (which is very nice)
• consistency: any string that says “Cheap Cabinet” has been set to “Simple Cabinet”
• Mine will give alert if assigned an owner and it has no supplies to operate
• Naturalist’s Office will give alert if set to a different mode w/o Overseer assigned
• Naturalist’s Office will give alert if set to a work mode w/o supplies for that mode
• all instances of “citizenry” changed to “colonists”
• adjusted Safety Quality of Life description so having a low rating doesn’t (necessarily) say that you have few soldiers (it’s possible to get a low rating due to other factors)
• exclusive windows (ie. history log) now make a noise when they close
• improved load screen UI
• overhauled Trade Office interface
• improved layout for character info panel
• edited embark screen to show biome difficulty of site selection
• added cancel button to the load screen
• added per-workshop backgrounds to Overseers window (makes it much easier to see which overseer is assigned to which workshop)
• made expression widget bgs round for thought/dialog
• added better tooltips to Workshop production menu
• polished up character info panel
• moved “Unassign Overseer” to the top of the overseer assignment element (in building panels)
• added detailed tooltips for terrain objects
• added informative tag icons to map objects
• did better tooltip requirement visualization for buildings
• added hitpoints, quality to building tooltips
• proposing and cancelling trades now work properly and update the UI on time
• removed zoom to worksite button for character panel (it did not really work)
• FIXED: shortened some more overflowing memory names
• FIXED (really this time): cancelling a gabion creation job no longer leaves ghosts
• FIXED: farms now display their farm type in the office creation menu
• FIXED: dead colonists will no longer display a job as if they were alive
• FIXED: changing the order of the workshop modules in the workshop didn’t work properly
• FIXED: some more memory name ui overflow
• FIXED: minor typos
• FIXED: some minor text overflow in the foreign office
• FIXED: work crew UI now uses disabled scrollbar thumb properly
• FIXED: the label for “sleep” wasn’t showing in the character info panel
• FIXED: crashing the game when viewing the credits
• FIXED: flashing character nametags
• FIXED: new tooltip code no longer crashes the game if a product has no explicit definitions in data files
• FIXED: overflow of recipe tooltip for product details in workshops
• FIXED: farm overseer assignment display updating
• FIXED: overflowing tooltip in house dialog
• FIXED: blank tooltip on overseer in overseers panel
• FIXED: embark icons flickering to incorrect states when switching between them
• FIXED: clicking on the minimap while zoom-to is selected will now correctly reset it

Biomes / Nature Objects

• adjusted ground textures in alpine terrain to look colder
• added some more difficult stuff to provide Fun / blood for the blood god in harder biomes
• renamed “Lacquer Tree” to “Lacquer Plant” (to imply that “Chop Tree” is not an appropriate tool to use with them)
• mine survey point visuals redone
• added informative tag icons to map objects
• balance: non-temperate crops made more difficult
• balance: increased vermin spawn and animal spawn timers (for less spam)
• balance: forage output and regrowth time increased
• FIXED: vermin will not spawn in invalid positions (caused pathing errors)

Engine/Tech/???

• optimized connected component code to fix stuttering when flattening/building
• FIXED: stutter when placing gabions, buildings, or flattening terrain
• FIXED: scaling issues on fullscreen for Windows if the aspect ratio of your monitor exactly matches your suggested resolution (unngh)
• FIXED: Longpork pie used incorrect model

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

-- Gaslamp Games