Alpha 50 of Clockwork Empires, "The Stars Are Quite Nearly, Almost Right" is now available on Steam for public consumption.
MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES
- We added a variety of new biomes! Select your embarkation point on the map at the start of the game, then discover what challenges and Fun awaits you in your new settlement.
- REDACTED
- Enemies will now destroy your precious buildings. Protect them well!
- Various UI improvements have been improved, and will improve more.
The full changelog is so enormous that Steam cannot contain its majesty. Instead, we have placed it here for your consumption. Gaze upon its unearthly splendor and know the sacred words, which shall burn in your brain forevermore and cannot be unread.
Like that famous play, The King In Yellow, we present the First Act of Boring Changes here so that your brain is primed for the true horror within:
BIOMES
- added different day/night lighting sets per-biome
- 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
- balance: massive farm rebalance; nearly all crops changed
- added a bunch of new crops for new biomes
- all crops are now restricted to respective biome sets.
- added Pulque, Mezcal recipes
- added Grapevine crop
- added crops: Agave, Prickly Pear
- added Mezcal, Agave Syrup, Prickly Pear Bushel
- placed crops into proper climate zones
- FIXED: player no logner allowed to 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: biome moisture/temp defs so all intended biomes appear on generated map
- FIXED: random crash starting new game in biome loader
- FIXED: Saguaro stumps ill-defined
COLONISTS
- added ability for Vicar to perform last rites on bodies, buried or not. This comforts the living and ensures the dead rest peacefully.
- balance: improved emotional effect of food eating memories
- balance: colonists will wait until they are hungrier before resorting to eating trade food
- balance: colonists will get better memories from eating trade food
- FIXED: dead colonists will never try to set revolt icon on themselves
- FIXED: people thought they blamed themselves for the woes of the colony when someone else blamed them
- FIXED: all agents will now ignite correctly from environmental fire
- FIXED: military will no longer use invisible guns after training sessions
- FIXED: agents not correctly having their hostile bit set, or having hostile bits reset
- 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: gossip action was not creating meaningful emotional reactions
- FIXED: hostility state of newly arrived colonists now updates correctly vs. foreign factions
- FIXED: missing “Staunch Traditionalist” workcrew names added
- FIXED: sleeping people would appear to stand up if crew/assignment is changed while they’re sleeping
EVENTS/TRADES/FACTIONS
- 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.
- the “Hale & Hearty Recovery” event has been updated and is re-enabled
- significantly delayed the onset of the “Colonists want chapel” event.
- added Strange Meteor event
- added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Republique Mechanique
- added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Novorus Imperiya
- added event and special benefit for reaching maximum reputation with the Grossherzoginnentum von Stahlmark
- improved default placement of agent groups to account for new variation in map topography; moved logic to a central function for most cases
- balance: bandit camp site selection made to ignore very center of map
- simplified some over-complicated group mission events eg. fishpeople egg stuff, patrols
- FIXED: Colonists denounce cowardice event scripterror
- FIXED: Republique invalid trade item
- FIXED: animal_repopulate event fixed to work with new climate zones (and placement function)
- FIXED: fishpeople given explicit attack order could not be butchered
- FIXED: bandits couldnt be ordered buried after ordered shot
ENGINE
- optimized save game saving and loading
- FIXED: crash starting new game or creating world on UNICODE systems or systems with weird write permissions
- FIXED: crash loading a save game under really weird, gross circumstances
- FIXED: “unable to find dependencyParentJob name MT: Shoot At Entity (first loop, reload)”
- FIXED: crazy weirdo crash in rendTradeGoodUIManager::Update (usually manifesting as either a random crash or a crash when changing workcrew)
There are yet more changes, which cannot be contained in this mortal form. Please review our full changelog on our website to know the full meaning of the Doom-Sigils, and their true and terrible power.
The development progress page has also been updated, with exhaustive notes on the status of the project, as well as even more details on the stuff we included above. Also, cute animal pictures.
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums!
Can you believe this is Alpha 50? In all fairness, the first public release of Clockwork Empires was Alpha 26 or something, but it's been a long time. SOON YOU WILL ALL KNOW THE UNSPEAKABLE HORROR... I mean, uh, have a good... weekend?
-- Gaslamp Games