Category Archives: Clockwork Empires

Of Hidden Things

My quest for the last several months to improve the visibility of information that players care about through our UI has been a really interesting process. There’s a lot going on under the hood of Clockwork Empires, and we simply didn’t have the tools to show it to you before. But our UI has been getting steadily better at presenting data (and I’ve become less and less terrible at UI design) so I keep getting cool opportunities to show you what you actually want to see when you’re looking at various parts of the game.

At this point I think there’s only one system that we haven’t shown at all but is pretty central to the way the game functions, and we actually had to avoid taking advantage of it because if we couldn’t show it to you, it got confusing. But now we can! And this system is tags.

Tags!

Every object in the game has a set of tags (attributes, if you will) that are generated when we first create an item, and can change over time as an object interacts with the world. Tags such as “timber” or “food” are straightforward examples.

2016-8-3

The common log. Flammable, timber, what more could anyone ask for in a log? Perhaps for a message, but only if you’re ready to listen.

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Clockwork Empires July Update: A Juncture Most Unnatural

ce_2016_july_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!

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 player-facing additions this month:

  • added many event arcs, including REDACTED
  • civilians will now fight to protect themselves (just not as well, or as long, as soldiers)
  • added upkeep to buildings (& multitude of systems and balance changes to support this)
  • changed UI for creating on-map assignments to “stamp” system
  • many other UI improvements done to improve information available to player and improve control over game systems
  • significant optimization of game speed, save size, save/load speed
  • … which let us add a 2X game speed button
  • housing and immigration systems much improved

If you’re in a hurry, that should cover it. But if you find yourself with the inexplicable urge for more, you’re in luck, we’ve got the full changelog posted below — or the extra special annotated changelog in the Clockwork Empires Development Report.

Begin Full Beta 53 Changelog

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Technical Director Vining versus the Haxx of Planet Playsteevee

Most of what I’ve been doing these days is support code for various other people: adding missing functions, fixing bugs, adding new UI code when it’s needed, and just keeping the airship sailing. I’ve also been dealing with mysterious issues on user machines, which is always fun for a game developer. The process is simple: a user complains that the game mysteriously doesn’t work, and it becomes a game of trying to deduce what the problem is because, after all, you have no way of getting the user’s computer into the office. To give you an idea of the fun involved, here’s a recent example, as well as a few notes for other developers who might run into this particular fun problem.

nicholas_work

The story starts with a user noting that “when I start a new game, it crashes.” Well, that’s interesting. Does it crash when starting a new game, or when creating the world? “Starting a new game. No, creating a world. No, both.” We get a crash dump, and it’s crashing in a completely random place in the renderer which it shouldn’t be able to reach during world creation. Neat. So I ask for a copy of the user’s console, and I get that too.

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Popping the Real Estate Bubble

Having talked about one major system change last week in the form of upkeep, let’s talk about another one this week: immigration.

Ironically, it was almost exactly a year ago the last time we had a blog on immigration – my first blog post, in fact. Things have changed a lot since then – personally speaking, it’s amazing to think about how much the game has improved in a year’s time – and it’s about time for another look at how you gain characters over the course of the game.

Hi. I'm the friendly alt text. You can hang here with me. It's cool.

Remember this? No? Good.

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Let Slip the Trunks of Repair

On the resource end of things, Clockwork Empires is largely a game about production – What resources can you get? How many? How quickly? Progression through the game is largely governed by a flat rate of what modules you can afford to build. Our module design, however, centers around an increasing economy of scale – this calls for the player to be using commodities constantly, not merely when they want to build something new.

A long while back, as a sort of nod to this philosophy we implemented a repair system where modules break after a certain amount of uses and must be repaired. This wasn’t ever made a focus, however – it had no real dedicated UI and what items were necessary to repair modules was not explained. However, as economy balance begins to come more into focus we decided it was time to revisit the repair/breakage system. So, coming in the next experimental: Upkeep!

UK1

Buildings will require weekly upkeep in order to keep functioning. Each module has an upkeep type and cost associated with it, and these add together to create a Building Upkeep that must be paid weekly. (Note that all figures here are subject to change as we get feedback on this feature). How do you pay this upkeep? Must you keep tons of spare building materials laying around? No! Instead you will use… Repair Trunks:

Chests

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Mo Commodities Mo Problems

In Clockwork Empires you have a few fundamental game-pieces: agents that do stuff for you (colonists), places on the map they do stuff at (buildings/modules), and things produced by and consumed to build or upkeep the former categories: commodities. In other words, commodities are the food, planks, bricks, and so-on your colony needs to survive and grow. As such, commodities are very important to everything. So it is, by extension, very important indeed that a player knows how many of each commodity they have, what the commodities are good for, and how to make any commodity they don’t have but would quite like to have, thank you very much.

Glorious commodities everywhere just awaiting glorious logistical organization!

Glorious commodities everywhere just awaiting glorious logistical organization!

We’ve been working on tightening up these systems, both in the backend code and in the frontend code for expressing what’s happening in-game to the player. Let’s visit some of the work done toward these ends.

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Lord Palmerstoke’s Cranial Parachute (Or: Enter The Steam Knight)

It’s been a while since we talked about animations, so with the Steam Knight released, why not?

As a bit of a Big Deal, we didn’t want Steam Knights to just ‘manifest’ in your colony. They should have an entrance! And ideally one that makes a bit of sense in the context of your colony. Walking in from the borders is a bit troublesome – the chance of running into hostiles is pretty high, and Steam Knights aren’t exactly fast. Perhaps they could come… from above?

Lord Palmerstoke's Cranial Parachute was a bold idea, but ultimately failed to catch on due to an unfortunate spate of Coronal Ruptures.

Lord Palmerstoke’s Cranial Parachute was a bold idea, but ultimately failed to catch on due to an unfortunate spate of Coronal Ruptures.

We’ve had stuff drop from airships in the game before – supplies and such, using a parachute. But what parachute would be worthy of such a noble monolith of steel? None, I say! It was decided that the Steam Knight has no need of parachutes – The Steam Knight will fall to the ground unaided!

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Clockwork Empires June Update: Knights of Steam

ce_2016_june_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!

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 player-facing additions this month

  • Steam Knights!
  • Barracks control over military squad loadout
  • Exciting Event Arcs!
  • A Better Economy
  • All sorts of UI bits and bobs!

If you’re in a hurry, that should cover it. But if you find yourself with the inexplicable urge for more, you’re in luck, we’ve got the full changelog posted below — or the extra special annotated changelog in the Clockwork Empires Development Report.

Begin the full Beta 52 changelog!

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