Author Archives: David

And in the darkness bind them: The Event Director

The scripting capacity of Clockwork Empires is a funny thing. It gives us immense power, the ability to do amazing things. But it’s very easy to get lost in a mess of complexity. So, yes, we can script an event that essentially holds in itself an entire Twine-like narrative dialog sequence that pushes commands to the game world simulation, waits, then reads states from the game world simulation and thereby lets you interact with the world in abounding narrative scintillation.

bombs_away

But be warned: you may lose yourself in this power, and give in, and be plagued forever by spectral script errors.

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Clockwork Empires April Update: THE STARS ARE QUITE NEARLY ALMOST RIGHT

 At the bottom of a strange glowing crater we discovered that –

ce_2016_apr_promo_illustration_small

This update will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam!

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress Report! It contains the voluminous annotated changelog.

(Don’t own the game? Clockwork Empires can be purchased on ClockworkEmpires.com via Humble or from Steam.)

Want to hear about all sorts of updates via email plus receive silly images from development? Sign up for the newsletter here.


Major 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.

Full Changelog for Alpha 50

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Thatched Roof Cottages

Back in the day I used to play Warcraft 2 over Kali. A popular strategy was developed called the “wall-in”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps in a more recent game? To execute a wall in, you’d build farms to close the gap between your town – and it’s precious, vulnerable line of gold-mining peasants – and the outside world so that if some punk tried to pull a grunt-rush, you’d be safe and they’d have wasted their time. When you were ready, you just had a peasant chop a tree next to your farm to open it back up to access the outside world to expand.

A partially executed wall-in.

A partially executed wall-in.

A similar move has existed in Clockwork Empires for quite some time now. It is possible to build absurdly long, skinny buildings at very low cost due. And enemy AI treated them as untouchable, impassible barriers. So you see the problem here: cheap, invincible walls. At least back in Warcraft 2 the walls were legitimate buildings that would be attacked automatically.

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The Arctic Dodo and the Desert Fox

In new climates, there are new opportunities and new challenges. And these involve a heck of a lot of little things that need to be attached properly to other similarly little things, or (at the very least) given slight variation between varied biomes. The Arctic Dodo for instance:

dodo_walkby

Look at ‘im go!

Take farming, for another example. What can you grow where? Wait no – it’s not that simple. Wrong question. As a developer, I’m not playing the game, I’m making the game. Try again: How do we control the unlocking of the crop field placement buttons and what feedback do we give if they are locked due to some condition? Then we must handle the same question for cooking recipes which are also locked or unlocked per-biome. Turns out the latter is essentially done and required only minor data entry while the former required a slight expansion to how we define field locking/unlocking.

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What’s That Red Stuff?

Do you see it, right there? That’s the problem. Herein it shall be explained why and then how it is solved.

terrain_colored_w_red

So we’ve had some talk about the overworld lately and the old post about world map generation still stands. Now we’re dealing with the details of living in it, of filling each biome with appropriate textures and objects. This is proceeding rapidly.

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Clockwork Empires March Update: The Joy Of Work

We were digging around in the dirt somewhere and discovered –

ce_2016_mar_promo_illustration_small

This update will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam!

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress Report! It contains the voluminous annotated changelog.

(Don’t own the game? Clockwork Empires can be purchased on ClockworkEmpires.com via Humble or from Steam.)

Want to hear about all sorts of updates via email plus receive silly images from development? Sign up for the newsletter here.


Major Changes

  • Enormous UI improvements
  • Overhauled Farming system
  • The Economy Subtly Grows

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The Clockwork Razor: Purging Agriculture

Workin' the farm.

Workin’ the farm.

Food and farming have been a bit of what one might call a “sticky issue” in Clockwork Empires. New players have a heck of a time figuring out how to grow enough food to feed their colony. They have an intuition that one is meant to feed people, that food is grown in farms and cooked in a kitchen, but  how much do you need, and when? And what factors control these qualities? Hardcore players have created detailed charts out of data collected obsessively over hours of experimental play. They’ve cracked the system and learned how to optimize production.

There are two problems here. One, farm mechanics are effectively in a state of incomprehensible over-simulation. Two, the logistics of moving the food objects into the kitchen to be cooked is really the biggest time sink in food production.

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Clockwork Empires February Update: All According To Glorious Design

We gathered some Vicars together to discuss the latest patch & they decided that everything was going –

ce_2016_feb_promo_illustration_small

This update will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam!

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress Report! It contains the wondrous annotated changelog.

(Don’t own the game? Clockwork Empires can be purchased on ClockworkEmpires.com via Humble or from Steam.)

Want to hear about all sorts of updates via email plus receive silly images from development? Sign up for the newsletter here.


Major Changes

  • Building creator, module placer, zone creator rewritten! Building stuff is more accurate, more efficient, and all-around improved! 200% of the rich flavour you demand!
  • Added happiness-to-workshift system: Now emotions matter. The happier your colonists are – well, your overseers anyway – the longer your work crews will work.
  • Science!
  • Chapel doctrines!
  • Optimization!

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