Day-To-Day Work Logs and Woot! Engine Stuff!

Can there be an amusing digging reference explaining why No. Digging. Is. Allowed.

 

Semi-related idea: It might be interesting if the Crown simply makes certain areas of activity Off Limits in a given scenario. Not that you can't do these things, just that it would get you in some kind of Trouble if you did.

Like on one mission you can't research digging tech, or engage in any mining. In another, you can't have airships, which causes trouble when the Mind Controlling Jellyfish Gods come and start making colonists kill each other. That kind of thing, forcing players to improvise, or loose prestige or just rack up disciplinary counters until they are quietly removed from office and called back for a stern talking to.

 

I like this so much that I need to make it clear that I like it more than a 'like'.

 

That's what I assumed, but then there was this story which was mostly about digging with an oversize drill (and finding a symbiotic obleskian coffin underneath), hence I was confused.

So if such a drill were present in game, it would just be some kind of building producing ores, junk, and occasionally some mysterious artefacts, but you wouldn't get to see what happen underneath, basically ?

 

So. Who else is trying to throw money at their monitor every time a Clockwork Empires scenario/story is posted? Seriously, I think they rival StarkRavingMad's episodes of Boatmurdered, and I felt guilty enough getting that for free.

I realize this game is still in like, pre-pre-pre-alpha, but if you can nail even a little bit of the "losing is fun!" and "these elements combined to do what!?" in the actual game, it's going to be next Dungeon Keeper and I (and many others) are going to love it pieces.

 

Dungeon keeper ?

Nah.

 

Well, that's the vibe I get from this game. Obviously it's going to be different, but the genres and sense of humour are - to me, at least - similar.

 

Clockwork seems to be more sophisticated dark humor than "hohoho we are the evil guys doing the evil things", I mean no disrespect to DK, after all it was a good game, but i don't find many similirities with CWE in the spirit.

 

Not sure why you're arguing with me over this. I'm hoping that it'll give me, personally, a DKII vibe, since that game is still one of the best I've ever played (even if the GoG version crashes constantly and irritates the hell out of me).

Your mileage will vary.

 

Arguing for arguing's sake, there not so much activity around here

 

Hmm, Im intrigued by the possibilities of various eldritch artifacts that may be found, such as the ominus coffin of shiveringhopes.

Im kinda curious as to how they will be generated.
Best idea ive came up with as to how it might work is that certain activities have a chance of discovering strange objects, as well as sometimes being present somewhere on the map.
The object can be studied, revealing various properties about it.
So stuff like- Upon attaching to a building, it will do X if conditions Y are met
So Will produce steam power but slow down function of building provided people are present in the building for the sanatorium obelisk in one of the posts.

But there will be hidden properties, such as increased accident chance, people caught in steam can become cultists or possesed, etc.
These properties will not be revealed by the initial examination, and will only manifest after a period of time has elapsed.

 

So I finally got around to reading the monstrous blog of doom about Shiveringhope. Good read and good storytelling.
It did leave me mentally in a place that I seem to come across alot when it comes to Clockwork Empire.... a place where my conceptions of the game don't match what is being described in the least.

This time it has to do with scale and character density. The shiveringhope mine had 20 people mining in it. In my minds eye, that seems like a TON considering each character has a huge list of characteristics the engine tracks to produce interesting interactions. While 20 alone isn't absurd, that is just the mine. How many people are working in a 'factory' I sure hope it is more than 1-2 per factory. How many factories are in a developed town? Given the size of the characters in the screenshots vs the size of the buildings it doesn't look like you could fit many characters into these buildings, but there was that blog post about how the door frames weren't matching character size. Don't take this as a complaint. I am happy that things don't fit. Very few video games that have the isometric view have properly sized buildings.

But I guess what I am getting at, how big would be the 'ideal' size community? How big was it in Dwarf Fortress (where you didn't have to animate each individual? How many people fit/use buildings like factories? Is it going to be small, like say, 4-6 or more like our modern (or even industrial age) factories that would have hundreds?

 

After about 8 in-game years you can expect a good +200 dwarves in the current version of Dwarf Fortress, even though each industry will only require a handful of dwarves dedicated to it. I imagine colonies in CE will at least get up to 100 colony members, and likely more than that.

 

Just a random question on class mobility: Will we have to handle our urchins carefully to guard against the possibility that they will become best-selling authors, move to the upper class and make our lives a living hell? Or will people pretty much be stuck in one class for the whole scenario?

 

Any devlogs this week, or is the office busy voting today?

 

They are in Candada...

 

Pshaw! Canada has elections to, silly.