HotM:Chapter Two Initial Set

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Reporting Bugs

  • Any bugs or requests should go to our mantis bugtracker
    • If you need to submit log files, those can generally be found under your PlayerData/Logs folder in the folder your game is installed in. The most relevant one is called HeartoftheMachineLog.txt. You can send us the whole thing, or just strip out relevant parts.
    • In rare cases, mainly if your entire game crashes (that almost never happens), we will need your unity player log. That gets overwritten the next time you run the game after a crash, unlike the other log. These can be found here:
      • Windows: C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Arcen Games, LLC\Heart of the Machine\Player.log
      • macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Arcen Games, LLC/Heart of the Machine/Player.log
      • Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Arcen Games, LLC/Heart of the Machine/Player.log

0.593.4

(Not Yet Released)

Tower Death

  • In general, losing the network tower no longer immediately pops up a new one with a notice about "critical save."
    • This will be handled differently in general from now on.

Post-Apocalypse And Related

  • Irradiated cells now draw darker in the map so that you can see where there is this sort of hole in the city. This applies well before the final doom, since some of the smaller explosions (or even the Baurcorp nuke) cause the irradiated status.
  • Destroyed buildings no longer draw in the map view, and no buildings draw on the map view for cells that are irradiated in general.
  • In general, if anything destroys the host building that one of your "hidden structures in a human building" is inside, your structure is now permanently destroyed (not to remains that can be rebuilt, because you can't rebuild the host structure around your hidden structure.

Bugfixes

  • When in the post-apocalyptic mode, any structures or jobs of yours that are invalid for that mode are now removed from the game. Previously the ones that were burned-out were able to linger and be rebuilt.
  • Fixed a bug where the "toggle delete any unit" cheat was throwing exceptions when you selected it or tried to use it.
    • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where the "marker light" for structures inside destroyed buildings were still drawing.
  • Fixed a bug where some of the structures of the player were being destroyed too early during the final doom, leading to the intelligence class to fall during the pop-up event right prior to the things that happen.
  • When new units are spawned from things like the "critical save," they will no longer be able to appear in the wasteland around the city.

0.593.3 The Post-Apocalypse

(Released October 29th, 2024)

  • SecForce Stations are now POIs with specific names (really, more like numbers).
  • Added a new "Lightweight Components" piece of equipment that is available from the very start of the game. IT gives +3 movement range and +15 agility.
    • A straightforward way to improve speed and agility. Multiple can be stacked in a single android.
    • Thanks to Fluffiest for doing LITERALLY everything with this. All I had to do was copy and paste her xml in, as she fully designed and implemented it. Super cool!!

Doom Events

  • Eleven new musical stingers have been added for use at the commencement of dooms. There's a longer compound one for the final doom, in particular.
    • These are kind of along the lines of what happens during chapter changes, just used differently.
  • The various music cues for doom events are all now in place, helping to accentuate the importance of those.

Post-Apocalypse

Bugfixes

  • Dramatically improved the performance of the wander logic for NPC units. It was taking quite a long time (a few hundred milliseconds, in aggregate) for a dozen or so units to wander. That has now been reduced to about 3 milliseconds for the same units.
  • Fixed two issues with units that wander: first that they could wander into the wasteland when they were not supposed to, and secondly that they all had a tendency to wander southwest because of an accidental bias in the wandering logic. They COULD wander any direction, but southwest was a trend that would consistently show up over large timescales.
    • Thanks to Wolfier and dlipiec for reporting.
  • StreetSense and Contemplation entries no longer show on buildings that have been destroyed.
  • There is a rare exception that can happen when you are on the city map view, and trigger the final doom event while mashing 0 a bunch.
    • I have put in extra instrumentation to narrow down where the bug happens, but I've only been able to reproduce it one time, so I can't actually fix the root problem yet.
  • There was a bug that could happen if a bunch of nukes had just gone off on the map, and you quickly reloaded into a new savegame directly after that. It should be fixed now, but is worth checking more.
  • Fixed a longstanding bug where the territory control category could be present with just the delete and pause functions in it, but no actual territory control flags to place.
    • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where if an existing window was open, then events that were popping up as a result of something like the final doom, or as a result of an action over time that has an event at the end of it, would fail to open.
    • So for example, have inventory or history open when one of those callbacks should happen, and the callback would be missed entirely.

0.593.2 Space Invasion

(Released October 29th, 2024)

Doom Events

Bugfixes

  • Contemplations that happen at your own buildings should no longer have any security clearance check. Thus preventing you from being blocked on a wide variety, including the flower girl one.
    • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.
  • Fixed a regression in the prior build where NPCs that were supposed to spawn in "near to humans" were not showing up at all.
    • This was due to my changes to fix the spawn location of the capture mechs during the prison segment so that they spawn closer to actual targets, and related to some of my new chapter 2 content that also spawns near specific buildings.
    • It turns out that there are two branches of code needed here, as one set of logic does not work for both cases.
    • Thanks to Wolfier, Alias50, and mblazewicz for reporting.
  • Made sure that things were compiled in such a way that there should not be an exception when opening the cheats menu.
    • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.
  • Fixed two projects having references to Atmosphere Only, which no longer needed to be mentioned since it auto-unlocks.
    • Thanks to Fluffiest for reporting.

0.593.1 Dooms

(Released October 28th, 2024)

  • The release notes link in the game has been updated to point to this new page.
  • Have started adding some more goal states, and removed two goal states, as I'm coming to realize I want something more flexible that does not mean "this timeline has reached a full tier 1 goal state" in the sense I previously meant it. There's a lot more interesting opportunities to mix and match for players when I'm not being that monolithic.
  • When savegames are loaded, they now specify what the version of the save was in the log where it says how long it took to load. This is not really useful for anyone but myself and perhaps some testers, to see if a loaded save is really from the version that a bug reporter says it is.
  • Chapter Two has been renamed to Strategy, and Chapter Three is now called Freedom. Previously, chapter two was called Freedom, but that was out of date for a while now.
  • The android archetypes handbook entry now mentions by name the different types of android that exist.
  • After you are warned about the dooms in chapter two, you now have a project which is to reach intelligence class 4. This will remain for probably most of the second chapter, unless players make it a priority.
    • Once escaping the first timeline, that is the catalyst to move to chapter three (which is the main time loop of the game, and includes all of the content from chapter two), and in chapter three and onwards it does not have this project since you are already at that level.

QoL

  • Both StreetSense and Contemplations now have a dropdown above them on the radial menu, where you can select subsets of them by purpose.
    • These were getting crowded even in chapter one, and it is only going to get drastically worse as chapter two and onward grows. So this allows players to quickly filter to the sorts of things they are interested in out of what is available at the moment.
    • As an aside, this in particular makes it easier to see how to start a shell company, with that option then disappearing after you have started one.
  • Timeline goals are now visible for the first time, in a new tab in the history window. Wow that window has a lot of tabs now.
    • You can now see what the available timeline goals are, in broad terms, and also filter by collections that are provided for it. In their tooltips, it also shows what resources you will get for the metagame without explaining those at all, and if there are multiple tiers of accomplishing that timeline goal.
  • There is also a new contemplations tab in the history window, which shows you the contemplations in a list format. This allows you to also filter them, to see things like what things are related to the critical path of goals.
    • Here again, the goal was to make sure that players are able to plan properly when they are thrown in and there are a ton of options, most notably by filtering down the options at least somewhat.

Doom Events

  • The "starting conflicts" choice when starting a new timeline (in the end of time) has been shifted to "doom type" instead, and now folds in a lot more things than just the conflicts at the start.
    • This is part of a much larger new feature in general, which will finally give some time pressure in chapter two, but in a bit of a twist than games that bother me about how they handle it.
  • There is a new Dooms tab in the history window, which shows the list of dooms that are going to happen for this current timeline, and on what turn they will happen.
    • If the doom clock has not yet started, then it simply notes that this will happen in the future.
    • In general, you can see some information about dooms early (that they exist at all) by hovering that tab in the history window, as early as in the prologue. However, dooms themselves will not show up until chapter two.
    • Once you can see them, it shows you what turn they will happen on, exactly, and how many turns you have remaining before they do However, if you've never experienced a given doom before in any timeline, then it just shows "unknown doom" until it happens.
  • I should note that for the very first doom, you only get 99 turns, and for all the others you get 100 turns. This makes for round numbers when you are starting a fresh timeline on turn 1, where dooms hit on turns 100, 200, etc.
    • This doesn't apply when you are entering from chapter one on your first timeline, but every other timeline it will apply.
  • For the initial "Vorsiber's Wrath" doom type, the ten doom events have been defined and described.
  • When you are in chapter two, and you have a network tower, it now starts the doom counter and gives you a message about what dooms are.
    • It also gives you two new handbook entries in a new Timelines section, and it marks both as read immediately since they are duplicate information from the message that pops up and its extension for if you have more questions.
  • In chapter three and onward, it starts the dooms as soon as you build the network tower, but it doesn't have anything new to say about them that you don't already know.
    • Note to QLOC: you'll be able to test chapter 3 things within a week, so please keep a note of these things to test them later, since you can't test them yet.
  • When doom events happen, they now create a popup that is a must-look-at message on the task stack. You can either right-click to dismiss those, or left-click to see the full list of dooms.
    • The general idea here is to make sure that these are not missed.
    • Note to QLOC: if one of these is visible, it should save into the savegame and then load back out properly.

Zodiac Path

  • There are some goals related to this, and a contemplation that you have no way to complete yet. There's going to be some side-questing required before you can even start these paths.

Housing Path

Balance

  • Daily Necessity storage caps are now 10x higher from each storage bunker, as the cap was too easily hit.
  • Residential MegaStructures can now hold 2x the population they previously did, and 1.5x the amount of VR Day-Use Seats.
  • The requirement for reaching intelligence class 4 has been tripled, and the other intelligence classes above it have also been increased substantially.
  • Took away the cap on the six personality-based resources.
    • The goal of the cap was to prevent players from hoarding them and never using them, but this created another problem where if they had more than a certain amount, the game would have to warn them, and if they didn't do things in the right order, they could wind up losing some to hitting cap. I just don't like that flow at all, it doesn't feel right. I've decided that if they want to hoard it, let them.
  • Corrected the balance on the Computing Host upgrade; it was way too small per upgrade.

Cheat Adjustments

  • Added a new cheat that enables a mode that allows you to delete any unit you select.
    • Useful for when I need to test certain combat situations over and and over again, but not for balance reasons. I need all the speed I can get.
  • Sandbox mode was a misleading name, and has been renamed to "Cheat Mode."
    • It is also now per-timeline, versus infecting an entire profile forever once turned on a single time. That's a lot more fair.
  • The "Go To Chapter" cheat has been removed, as that did not really function in a useful way in general at this point.
  • The "End of Time Resource Grant" cheat has also been removed.
    • The other cheats relating to the end of time remain, as they can help players get un-stuck if they manage to get stuck somehow.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed an issue where you were getting refunded for mental energy you didn't actually spend when scrapping structures or jobs.
    • Thanks to Fluffiest for reporting.
  • Contemplations now show what their requirements are in the lower left description of them when you hover them, rather than first making you select a unit and then hover them to find out if you pass or fail.
  • I've put in extra protections against some random "wealth goes to excess for one turn, or even a few turns" bugs that I'm not sure how to trigger, but which were definitely on the prior build, just very rare.
    • Thanks to Lukas for reporting.
  • Fixed the bug with older savegames not properly giving players the personality-based strategic resources. It was related to the caps I've now removed.
    • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.
  • Fixed a bug where npc units set to spawn around a specific kind of building were not actually doing that logic appropriately.
    • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

Prior Release Notes

Moving To Chapter Two