Let's talk about Revision 32!

I didn't try it again, but I'll give it a shot next time I run a game. This time I had to shut it down because my colony got raided by 20 fishmen and during the scrum I got a pop up notification that I could not close. Or I could close it but it would pop up again. Read something like "Error 202: Herd animal path something something."

Tried to take a screenshot but I screwed it up. I'll be sure to post any of these things to the bugs forum next time I come across it.

 

Hmmm... errors with saves? I have one. Pretty weird one at that as well. There IS no save in my game. I've tried quite a few times to save and there seems to be no issues. Save and quit saves and then quits, save saves. I get the messages and everything seems to be in order. The issue is when I go back and try to load a save then there is no save to load. There is nothing on the list. I wondered if it could be some issue with windows not allowing the game to write in that directory, but there is about a million replays I can watch and there hasn't been any difficulty creating the directories so there shouldn't be a problem for the game to create a save file. And yet.... there is no spoon...eh... Save.

 

I'm assuming they are there. There are some files in the /save dir that I believe to be saves (filename structured like this ClockworkEmpires-00000.zip) and they are between 3.5 and 4.5 MB in size. Then there is the /save/replay dir where the replay files get stashed (gameReplay-00000.CER).

So it seems the game is saving in the correct location but then for some reason are unable to find them again.

And yes, do pass me along as a nice brew

Edit: My first impression was that there were no save game files, but after looking at the zip'ed files there I realised it wasn't the old zip'ed console files after all. There were no trouble opening the zip'ed files and there are 3 dir's and about a gazillion lua and xml files in there. Testing the archive shows "there are no errors". So that's not it.

 

After a bit more playtime I have to revise my opinion of the military changes slightly; the threshold for soldiers fleeing melee combat seems way too low, and results in the familiar "pushed across the map then killed" behaviour.

The trouble seems to be that a soldier fleeing melee will stop, but the fishperson pursuing them will close the gap and hit them again before they can shoot, triggering the flee behaviour again.

This gets hidden a lot when soldiers have comrades nearby, as while one is fleeing the others are shooting still. But having watched a squad of four, separated on hauling jobs when the fins arrived, with no evident morale difficulties from bad memories, all die far from the settlement to lone opponents they could have defeated easily had they fought back at all, I think a tweak may be in order.

 

As wolg says, soldiers often end up fleeing from fights they can win. Running away to try and shoot rather than melee only makes sense when there are other soldiers around. When its 1v1 they should bayonet that sucker.

Maybe their morale should be influenced by their own health and the fish person's so that they only try to run when their health is lower than the fishperson's.

Also, fleeing towards the nearest building rather than into the jungle/sea would save countless lives.

 

It's one thing for colonists to pick up and use the occasional spiky club or sharp piece of bone the Fishpeople leave lying around, but my guess is fish don't usually shoot bullets, and the only in-game reason they do so is they've been blessed by the fish gods to slay Dry Ones. It doesn't make much sense that they would work for colonists at all.

Perhaps an exception could be made for colonists with the Fishy Behavior trait. If that's the case, it shouldn't use human bullets at all (the Fishpeople never seem to reload), the scripting for ranged attacks needs to be tweaked so that attackers don't attempt to fire until they're at slightly less than maximum range (instead of maximum), and every time it's used, they should get some madness (or add a memory that adds madness). Soldiers using these things should be on a ride to Fishpersontown.

 

At present Fish Guns accept human bullets, and soldiers will pick up and use them. This does diminish the value of the Guns n' Ammo resupply somewhat, but it's mitigated by the fact that the Fish Pistols are all short-ranged, and there are no Fish Rifles.

In-game reasoning suggests that of course you'd use an enemy's dropped weapons against him, including guns, spiky clubs, and blades.

Another consideration is that the prevalence of free pistols means that soldiers are increasingly less likely to equip rifles. This is a self-reinforcing problem: as more Fishmen attack and die, there's an increasing probability that a given soldier will equip a pistol the next time he straps a weapon on. Pistols vs. pistols is a much more even fight than Rifles vs. Pistols. That's an interesting dynamic, actually.

 

Overall, quite an improvement! You guys are making big strides quickly.

Things I love about the new build (don't be discouraged by the relatively small amount of text... when things work well, there's often not much to say!):

- colonist jobs do work much better in terms of prioritizing tasks overall
- military seems to be more responsive
- module placing and renovation seem to works great
- world generation gives so much more variety; it's starting to get pretty cool!
- the new music added is fantastic
- flatten terrain! been on my wishlist since the first build.


Show-stopping bugs:

- overseers seem to glitch out and get stuck on "no job" status. sometimes it seems to be related to their assigned workshops, and a workaround is to unassign the shop and reassign it, and they'll pick up foraging or some other task. i noticed one overseer on a loop 'admiring fine machinery', haha.
- scripting errors such as "FSM harvest disabled" which cause the crops to just sit there and spoil instead of getting harvest
- when adding two or three kinds of kitchen jobs, it gets quite buggy. the overseer seems to get stuck on the first one and will continue to spit out, say, lingonberry preserve, long after you've run out of lingonberries, while ignoring new jobs. you'll get 22/3 'make lingonberry preserve', and deleting the job does not work. if you start a new lingonberry preserve job, it continues with the looped count.


Things that I would like to see changed:

- if you're placing a stockpile and it overlaps an existing one, they should merge into the same pile
- if you're placing a new building or farm, it should encounter a boundary if its margins overlap a stockpile rather than erasing the overlapped stockpile squares
- flatten terrain is a great new feature but seems buggy; often the flattened terrain isn't quite flat and pokes up through farms, etc; also, when the job is finished, the job beacon does not consistently disappear and the 'cancel job' command doesn't work on it (much like the 'explore' beacon). great first iteration, though!
- certain saplings etc still can't be selected for removal and the 'nuture sapling' command still does nothing
- soldiers should drop what they're doing when a threat occurs nearby, instead of completing a hauling job, etc. also, military alarms don't wake up sleeping soldiers... I've had them sleep through an attack while fishpeople ran off my other colonists
- raw wheat should have a lower food value (as who really eats flour? it's starvation food. another tier to add to the food 'tech' tree!)
- supply drops for guns: i would recommend balancing more towards fewer guns/more ammo
- colonists still stand around and yak too much for my liking. can i get someone to blackjack my peons? you guys are gonna starve, after all.
- <spoiler>that boxy eldritch horror thing? wayyyy too many hit points and it's faster than your military, so it chases and kills everything</spoiler>
- trained military maybe running slightly faster so they can catch up to fleeing colonists and their pursuers? (or maybe a 'forced march' command on a cooldown?).
- colonist fleeing *can* become a very interesting mechanic -- one idea for illustration: smart colonists should look for cover; dumb colonists should run screaming into the woods towards their inevitable demise, muhahahaha. perhaps towards an ominous shrine? where a cultist may or may not be waiting for a sacrificial victim? man, I'm twisted.



Great work, guys! Looking forward to seeing how the game continues to evolve.

 

Hey there! Loving the game despite all the obvious quirks!

I have played the game for a few days now and so far I have run into these issues that are either bugs or atleast behaviour that seems undesireable, that I have put down in a sticky note whenever I ran into them. Hope it can help, even though I'm sure some of them are you already well aware of:


- Often crashes when trying to save (all times except one actually - that would be about 6/7). I cannot find any pattern per se. System specs can be given if you think it might be related to that.

- Areas where different ground textures are next to each other, seem to have some sort of "white stuff" along the edges. It's not that noticeble, but it looks kinda weird once you see it and reminds me of a quilt which is a bit immersion breaking.

- Fishmen getting stuck when attacked doing nothing. Atleast until they flee after some shots from my soldiers. Again no pattern per se.

_ Colonists running over the hills and far far away chased by a fishman... it makes it nigh impossible to save them often and also seems silly (oh the soldiers and my friends are here and I'm getting attacked - let's run into the middle of nowhere!!). IT's obviously standard behaviour, but it is quite silly

- Villagers still standing up while trying to sleep (they are sleeping it seems so probably Animation problem)

- Had a bug where some sort of debug/console window came up and told me "FSM harvest disabled" (or there about - forgot to copy precisely before I closed window)". I just closed it but soon realised it meant that my colonists could/would no longer harvest from my fields. No replay for this one as I don't know which game it happened in - happened before I realized there was a replay file anywhere.

- Sometimes resources will not dissappear after being harvested/removed. You can still highlight them and everything, however you cannot create a colonist job on them


_ Had a soldier chase a fishman that was chasing one of those guys that ran into the middle of nowhere.AT some point during the chase the soldier got stuck with job "shooting at entity", but just standing there doing nothing and eventually died of hunger even though I tried to rally his squad. The fishman running on an eventually killed the villager that was running in the first place. Again no replay sorry.

- The icons that pop up when a job is issued will go over the text in the message board/ticker.

- Tin _of_ exotic caviar I presume? (lacking an "of" in kitchen description.. yeah I know this is nitpicking)

- Conscripted colonists will often choose to do something like farming while fishmen are attacking, loosing me games a few times simply because they cannot be arsed to not be utterly retarded (now that I think of it I did not try to disable all jobs. Maybe that would help atleast as a band aid?)

- Error: [String "FSM Support"]:204: bad input building_position for job Gather Building Materials [Update | citizen].
I'm not sure what exactly it is, keeps popping up and makes me unable to play the game. I can close it however much I want.. about 50 times or so. Then it will dissappear for a few seconds... probably until the idle colonist wants to get those materials again. It is in replay with the number 14 - disregard the other one.


Also can you speed up replays somehow? Then I could probably look through my replays to find the Harvest scripting error and maybe the stuck soldier... right now it does not seem very feasible to look through so many hours.

 

Okay, so I havent seen this (and if it was mentioned, I missed it) but I keep getting a harvest error, where the Harvest is "disabled" and I can no longer get my people to farm. The items mature, then die, and they replant to have this happen again and again while the people all starve or go cannibal. Also happens with drop tool, butcher fishpeople and sometimes even planting. Havent had nearly as many crashes though. Saving does well but I would love a "quit to menu" option when things go wonky instead of having to close out and restart. Also a load saved game option.

I have seen similar graphic errors when stockpiling and then placing a farm nearby. Flattening terrain works technically, but not visually. Buildings placed in cleared areas have flooring missing and terrain visible.

Also, HOLY COW FISH PEOPLE... less than 40 people in my little village and we got face punched by 82 fishpeople. Not even close to enough military (even if everyone was in the same work group) to make a dent in these guys. They would surround, beat and kill each villager one at a time until I got frustrated and restarted.

I tried to go to the jungle area, but that proved damn near impossible to get passed day 4 because I had fishpeople standing in the middle of my building areas right from the start. Going to need some serious work on military to be able to do that one (for me at least)

Also, I found in a recent game that was closer to day 20 that the people got lazier. Had food and beds but just didnt seem to want to work. Milled about while at least 10-15 jobs were waiting to be done. Only one work group would work at a time, and they were harvesting. Really disappointing, especially when I had come so far (42 people, all the stuff to make ammunition and a recent victory over a 20 fishpeople raid).

As a question, Ive noticed more fishpeople after a few cultists show up. Correlation or coincidence?

As always, loving all the revisions! Cant wait for the next update!

 

I've been testing out some edits to jobs.xml for Rev32.

The biggest change is to Retreat. Now that defenders don't get an automatic counterattack in melee, retreating is deadly. Unless a nearby soldier guns down their attacker, anyone who starts retreating is almost guaranteed to end up running out towards the edge of the map and getting killed. It has to be made less common, so I'm reducing Retreat's utility from 2000 to 1400.

Other changes include:

Rally (Run) Lowered utility from 1000 to 750. Added weight (3) for distance. Reversed utility weight for morale from positive to negative (so lower morale adds utility).

Rally (Idle) Ditto.

Pick up Bullets (Military) Raised utility to from 500 to 1600, quadrupled bullet utility weight to -80 so it will exceed Rally when bullets are low.

Assemble Gabion (Half) Lowered utility from 1000 to 400 (same as Full Gabion and Landmine).

Shoot at Entity (spontaneous target) Raised range from 15 to 20.

Shoot at Entity (spontaneous target, allies nearby) Raised range from 18 to 20. Raised utility from 2000 to 2100; removed random 10-100 utility bonus.

Melee Counterattack (soldier) Raised utility from 2000 to 2100; removed random 10-100 utility bonus.

Melee Attack Entity (spontaneous target) Raised utility from 1900 to 2000; removed random 10-100 utility bonus.

Melee Attack Entity (spontaneous target, allies nearby) Raised utility from 2000 to 2100; removed random 10-100 utility bonus.

Respond to Alarm Raised range from 50 to 60. Added utility weight of 10 for bullets.

Flee From Hostile Enemy Reversed utility weight for morale from positive to negative (so lower morale adds utility).

Melee Counterattack (civilian) Raised utility from 1500 to 1600; removed random 10-100 utility bonus.

I also rewrote my Withdraw Indoors job for soldiers, to make it more common than retreating.

Spoiler: Withdraw Indoors

<job name="Withdraw Indoors" display_name="Prudently Withdrawing Indoors" mandatory_eval="1" icon_skin="ui\thoughtIcons.xml" icon="afraid" interruptee_type="4" interrupter_type="3">
<require_gameobject input="enemy" tag="hostile_agent" range="10" must_lock="0" failure_reason="Fleeing requires something horrible to flee from."/>
<require_wield_tool tag="weapon" failure_reason="No point going inside without a weapon."/>
<require_building input="building" range="150" must_lock="0" failure_reason="Requires available building"/>
<require_not_sitting/>
<require_not_attending_party/>
<utility>
<base_job_utility weight="1750"/>
<character_personal_stat name="morale" weight="-5"/>
<character_personal_stat name="health" weight="-10"/>
<character_personal_stat name="numAfflictions" weight="100"/>
<trait name="Patriotic" weight="-100"/>
<trait name="Military Training" weight="100"/>
<trait name="Foolishly Brave" weight="-200"/>
<trait name="Doomed" weight="-50"/>
<trait name="Craven" weight="200"/>
<distance_from input="building" weight="-5"/> <!-- Assuming average building range of 20. -->
<has_tag input="enemy" tag="fleeing" weight="-250"/>
<distance_from input="enemy" weight="-10" />
</utility>
<fsm>
<see_horror input="enemy"/>
<walk_to_building input="building" name="run"/>
</fsm>
</job>

 

Another one: Gabions are not built where the "shadow" gabion is in "build gabion mode", but rather were the cursor is. Confused me for a few minutes until I realized this was a completely standard error and then proceeded to build gabions.

Edit: sorry for posting bugs here. Next time ill make sure to get them all in the appropriate thread

 

This is something I'm finding, too, though sometimes as early as around day 10/12. My work groups are listed as "No Job" even when there are jobs in the queue. When I open the "Jobs" tab there are often things already completed still in there (e.g. Flatten Terrain). I'm also unable to cancel or reprioritize any jobs - the "x" and "arrow" buttons don't seem to do anything. At first, it's just frustrating because the Workgroup assigned to the kitchen wouldn't cook anything. After the colonists ate all the raw food, they're standing around idle until they starve to death despite foraging being in the job queue.

People that are farming will seem to continue to do so, though.

 

I'm not quite sure what you information you need. As soon as I get that information I'll send it. Btw just for the heck of it I unpacked one of the (I'm assuming) save files and started the game client to see if it detected he new directories as a save. No joy there either, but again a confirmation that the zip wasn't damaged.

 

Just to follow up: tried to flatten land to cancel out a graveyard (the way you'd do with a stockpile) and no crash this time. Game eventually did crash but I think it was because there was just too much going on in the game at the time (cultist rampage plus fishpeople attack).

 

System Specs for Rahbek23:

Windows 7 64 bit (home premium)
Intel I5 3450 3.10 Ghz
Nvidia GTX 570
8 gb DDR3 RAM (Gskil ripjaws)