REVISION 38A NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Quick impressions from a ten day game:

Love everything so far!

-The stacking seems to be working well, sometimes I don't even realize it's happening until I hover over a commodity and it shows the number of items in a stack. Much less clutter.

-Those walk animations are hilarious and wonderful. The Happy Strut is my personal favorite.

-I'm getting quite a bit more lag than usual when colonists are attacked. They freeze in place then teleport a few squares away.

 

("Lagaporting" in combat was evident in r38 vanilla, rather than new to 38A.)

 

True, but it feels more frequent to me in 38A. I haven't played it much yet, it could just be in my head.

 

Paintings throw an error upon completion:

 

Just wanted to add that 38A looks good overall.

Attacking Fishpeople ran into town in a line, although they did then split up.

Stacks are great, but will they look any different than a single item? Hopefully we'll see them get bigger as they grow.

Also, are colonists supposed to be able to lift stacks? I had a guy carry a stack of three logs to a stockpile, and then a builder carried them to a shop under construction, but one at a time. If it's planned at all, this would be a good time to introduce a weight system for items.

As always, thanks for plugging away at the new build.

Files attached in case they're of any help.

 

I paused the game, made a stockpile, disabled Food, unpaused. Colonists immediately carry a 3Stack of raw Dodo and a 2stack of raw Black Fungus to the stockpile. Do the filters not affect stacks? Occasionally I will see *one* wrong item in a stockpile.

Also had a fishman chasing a colonist, soldier shot fishman twice and pulled aggro, then stopped shooting to pick up a stack of Fungus and carry it around while getting melee'd to death <_<

 

I have a question about containers and stacking - they appear to be working reasonably well - stuff gets stored in stacks, which means stockpiles can occupy less surface area, which is nice. My question is this: can things be transported in container form? e.g. a Lower Class House requires 10 logs, are colonists able to carry an entire stack of logs (say, 4) in one trip? Either I haven't been observing closely enough, or it's not happening.

 

Okay. Love the new changes, especially to food. But I do have a couple issues. One is that the cults are throwing up script errors all over the place. Especially when the leader dies, theres one for that. Then something about Rumors throwing up an error having to do with cults. Also... I am OVERRUN with Cabbage now. One farm, over 100 bowls of cabbage stew and over 500 cabbage in stockpiles. I now have 3 stockpiles going just to keep up with the amount. Meanwhile, I cant keep wheat long to save my life cause beer and bread making are insatiable. The other thing is LAG. LAG LAG LAG. I have over 100 people in my little colony and they are stumbling over each other. Also, the sleeping arrangements tend to drive me batty. When I build a new building, they all sleep in there no matter where they are located. They all pile into the kitchen if I build a kitchen, and then if I build another building, they pile into that one. And on it goes. I have yet to have a crash and Im just at day 41 so thats a plus. The worst thing I have to say is the burial orders. I cant cancel them and when the fishpeople slaughter the corpses, the job stays there forever. I think that contributes to the lag a bit. Hope thats enough of my whining. lol On to see how far I can push this til the game dies on me. I believe these are the right files you need.

 

Overall great improvements with this build but on Mac OSX, it seems to get crashy around day 10-12, so I start saving every few minutes. I don't notice any specific actions that are triggering the crashes - sometimes I'll get through a rampaging pack of 12 fishpeople and then it'll crap out when nothing much at all is going on.

Also having the sleeping issue - I build a few buildings first, then a low class bunkhouse and then a middle class house. The bunkhouse gets finished and NO ONE goes in, even though it's start of nighttime and at least half the colony are LC. Instead they all gather around the food stockpile and their job status is 'sleep (indoors)' even though they are standing up. As soon as the MC house was finished they ALL piled into it and went to sleep.

 

As i cant seem to screenshot, i had to take these with my phone to show what i mean. My poor people are so lost in the world. Lol Also, to note that thats not even halfway down the job list and the rest are literally just a few hunt jobs and a TON of burial ones. O_O Phew! lol

 

I think I have the fix for this one.

In painting.go, for line 21, change

receive ModuleSetCreator (gameObjectHandle creator, string firstName, string lastName )

to

receive ModuleSetCreator (gameObjectHandle creator, string name )

and in line 60, change

state.paintingDescription = "This is " .. possiblePaintingDescriptions[rand(1,#possiblePaintingDescriptions)] .. " by " .. firstName .. " " .. lastName .. "."

to

state.paintingDescription = "This is " .. possiblePaintingDescriptions[rand(1,#possiblePaintingDescriptions)] .. " by " .. name .. "."

I haven't gone back through a fresh game from scratch to confirm, but I resumed my earlier saved game after making these changes, and a second painting that had yet to be completed was built successfully (see screenshot).

 

When you take an in-game screenshot with CTRL-G, the .bmp file gets stored in the install directory of Steam. Mine is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Clockwork Empires\shots

 

[r38a]

I had enough time to play 38a and reflect on changes and balance and stuff. I got up to Day 29 with 62 colonists (save files attached), and almost everything built.

• stacks of things save a bunch of storage space, but this is balanced by the increased production of every workshop
• net result is approximately the same area devoted to storage, containing many more resources that previously
• the different walk animations are great; a very useful way to determine a colonist's emotional state
• two full-size farm plots and a kitchen are sufficient to feed a colony of 50-60 colonists now; I'd struggled to feed 40 colonists with 5 farms in the previous revision
• I saw no hints whatsoever of cult activity or clawbulb growth (granted, everyone was very happy)
• after the early game, increased production means that most of the favour options feel superfluous
• clicking on an airship mast to de-activate / dismantle it spawns the command wheel back at the initial landing site, which might be off-screen or very far away
• fishman 'reverse clown car' behaviour is still evident
• 'Burial Duties' conga line of death still occasionally manifest
• retreating behaviour seems to break when fishmen are adjacent, causing colonists to stand motionless while they're killed

Conga!



Overview

 

Breaking news: an upper class colonist did something useful.





In other news, perhaps further Education will persuade Villainous Individuals to give up lives of Perfidious Banditry, once their grammar achieves socially acceptable levels.



Bureaucrats take note: the efficacy of laudanum at helping your colonists forget their troubles, if over-applied, can similarly affect sentence construction:

 

I have a vague memory of having a colonist who was stuck in one spot and starving and it said "They is hungry" or something to that effect. I thought it was a little funny.