Our December update, "The Bureaucracy Must Go On" is now live! Notable changes include:
MAJOR PLAYER-FACING CHANGES
- Foreign Office : added a means to perform bureaucracy to influence faction relations & trigger events
- Boxed Modules : most building modules are now constructed in workshops rather than in-place
- Fire : fire!!
The full change log can be found here, but all of the content that we could fit into an announcement can be found below!
Engine
- OPTIMIZATION: several AI side performance issues with > 50 characters
- OPTIMIZATION: implemented various memory efficiency operations for loading very long, very large save games with an unreasonable number of goods lying around
- OPTIMIZATION: slowdown by characters constantly checking if the thing they are holding in their hands is a bandit and if they should run away from it
- OPTIMIZATION: colonists will no longer spend ~40% of their AI compute time considering if they should eat other colonists
Fire
- added infrastructure for fire (heatmap, ignition system)
- added Fire!!
- updated object damage scripts to handle fire & added it to many objects
- updated agent damage scripts to handle fire damage
- (corpses set to not ignite because don’t wanna deal w/ that right now)
Boxed Module System
- (added flatpackCrate.upm – aka boxed module – for Chris to use)
- (added variations on boxed module crate w/ different icons)
- added Boxed Module production/construction: (most) modules are now constructed in workshops rather than in-place. Most non-decor modules now work with this system.
- then added all decor to the boxed module system
- (added ability to default some stuff in job_times.edb to avoid some data entry tedium; done in response to the thought of having to define 50+ module assembly jobs)
- (added generic “Assemble Module” case to building_transform_item.fsm & to job_times.edb)
- FIXED: materials costs for several decor modules
Foreign Office & Related Events
- added first implementation of foreign office, connected prestige system to empire faction interaction within foreign office. (work still to do includes: exposing current standing data with each faction, exposing data for how each mission affects faction standing, reworking bandit events and foreign faction events to be based on faction standing, and populating periodic passive and choice-based events for each faction related to current faction standing instead of using graph traversal (whew, yeah, there’s a lot still to go here))
- Foreign Office faction standing for the Empire hooked up to current faction standing
- Bandits now hooked up to foreign office! you’ll have to choose who to focus diplomatic efforts on
- Foreign Office “missions” now hooked to custom event scripts!
- did more UI work differentiating diplomacy points from faction standing, as well as disabling faction options if they aren’t in the area) added various UI assets in support of foreign office info display & hooked them up
Banditry
- added new Bandit events: bombing run, propaganda drop, insult drop, false info, bandit guard town (and overhauled others to play nice in new system)
- (attached bandit hostility state changes to foreign office plus certain events)
- (updated bandit spawn, plunder, major plunder to work w/ new foreign office systems)
- (disabled some old bandit events that didn’t work w/ new foreign office systems)
- (friendly bandits can share sight radius w/ player now)
- (changed banditFavour -> banditStanding for vocabulary consistency)
- FIXED: goods stolen by bandits will be subtracted from colony commodity counts
“Office” UI & Scripts
- added progress bar to mining in mineshaft job
- Mines will display their outputs & mine depth in their UI window (and not crash the game)
- (removed “mk1” from mineshaft module name)
- (increased time between notifications for missing office workers when people do wait_for_X fsms)
The Trade System
- started work on Trade Depots and trader events
- added ability to register an object as being, or not being, a trade good. (preparation for trade depot system)
- (added trade mission for agent groups)
- (added trade depot)
- (implemented most of trade UI)
Skills
- adding skillup thought bubble + memory
- changed “gathering” skill name to “naturalism” in prep for future skill overhaul
- balance: set new skill levelup values appropriate for each profession
- improved the interface for requesting specific job progress bars
- (fixed foraging and skill use therein)
- (overhauled part of building_transform_item.fsm to fix some rather broken stuff to do w/ skill inheritance from overseer and building quality memory creation)
- FIXED: skill bar asset def oversight that caused display of incorrect skill levels!)
- FIXED: some weird bugs with progress bars
- FIXED: skill progression bar variations were not being displayed correctly
Other UI
- UI: expanded workshop UI code to allow for more recipes since we have boxed modules now
- Small icons will now hover above modules indicating when a required commodity for completing the module construction (i.e. a flatpack, or logs, or whatever) is missing.
- removed a lot of unnecessary ticker text
- (refreshed commodities.xml to fix broken icons)
- added Building Quality tutorial
- FIXED: haywire scrollbar issue
- FIXED: Added/fixed a number of icons (generally to do w/ boxed module system)
- FIXED: some typos in events
- FIXED: manually cancelling burial will stop automatic burial (again)
- FIXED: module repair alerts will reference material name required rather than internal tag string
Character Brain Surgery
- (hearExclamation no longer becomes upset when it tries to query the name of non-agent damagers)
- (removed a ton of unused thinkLock cruft)
- (removed some old, unused script hooks)
- (replaced all use of “sawActivity” with “hearExclamation” for simplification)
- (cleaned up a bunch of possible minor problems w/ dead agent order handling)
- FIXED: Soldiers ordered to beat colonists
- #JustEldritchThings
- colonists who are maddened or cultists will enjoy creepy dancing rather than be upset
- airdrop crates now love doomed characters
- FIXED: dissecting fishpeople could freeze game
- FIXED: various minor issues w/ dissecting horrors
- FIXED: Naturalist examination of rocks could result in spawning of infinite
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.
Feel free to discuss the update right here, over on the Steam discussion page, or on our official forums!
Happy December everyone :)