Vapourware Clockwork Empires, now in Earliest Access.

[Alienman]

I don't want to be as cynical as you... but yeah, you are right. EA has shown to be a terrible practice, for consumers. Probably for dev-teams as well, since the incentive to actually finish the game to the best of your abilities is gone. Kickstarter seems to have a better "success" rate though.
Xenonauts is only the game I can come up with that I bought EA that has been released and was solid.

 

[Norfleet]

A desire not to be cynical is a desire to bury your head in the sand. Embrace it. The gift of clear observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it.

 

[Metro]

These guys are a small studio. Two people made Dredmor. I think they might have hired another three or four guys for this game. Not excusing slow development cycles but people should know what they're getting into before they put their money down on EA titles. Yeah yeah... I got burned by Starbound... NEVER AGAIN!

 

[Matalarata]

Sad... I was interested.

Oh, well... Since the only EA game I have ever bought is underrail

 

[Stokowski]

I don't want to be as cynical as you...

Actually, I rather think this is a case where the - now seemingly acceptable - industry practices are more cynical than Norfleet 's criticism of them, which takes some doing.

I also agree this appears to be a case of wanting to polish the game too much as it develops, distracting effort from feature building. I suspect it is easier for an 'amateur' dev to get worn down trying to make some basic aspects perfect, than the ongoing inspiration of making new features. Dunno. It is a shame though; the system requirements listed on Steam suggested that those behind it actually did care about the world they wanted to build at some point.

 

[Hellraiser]

I know Z-level construction likely won't be in, but anyone knows if freeform construction will be? like building walls and such like, instead of spamming gabions

also, do they plan on including water as an actual necessity for doing stuff?

Boats were mentioned at one point, probably for fishing/whaling. Besides that? Don't know.

Also new update is out. Mining and maintenance is added.

 

[Hellraiser]

Well, they're finally adding some FUN to the game other than more raids, character events:

Ok, this one adds more raids.

Do approve.

 

[Ulminati]

The crate can never contain too much science for us!

 

[Torrasque01]

How is this turning up?

 

[Hellraiser]

How is this turning up?

Decent but still needs more work. A lot more stable than it was and runs faster.

My main beef is the slow pace at this point and no time warp, which is why I have not played this much this year.

They just added more FUN in the form of foreign military troops, obeliskians and deathwurms. Also they're building upon the (CK2/Victoria/HoI/EU style) event system with policies towards factions and similar that they have been implementing for the past 3 months. They also added colonist skills recently and the general colonist simulation is pretty solid.

The last year in development was pretty good but there is still more stuff that is needed. Like, you know, more biomes (which are supposedly partially done but not included in the builds) and some kind of regional scarcity.

 

[Hellraiser]

Played the latest main build released last week, here are some impressions and progress report info.

- They fixed the infinite AI loop crash that fucked my colonies earlier last week. Overall the game is quite stable now, although the 30 FPS I get is still laughable. But people can easily reach 100+ population colonies which is good.
- Events, particularly policies towards cults, fishpeople and bandists, are really good. Waiting patiently for diplomatic events to affect your relationship with other colonial powers.
- Settlers 2 style geological surveys. Naturalist may inspect some sites for ore. Mine shafts can give multiple types of ore, which the game informs you of when you finish constructing or placing one. For instance one of my mines gives "haematite,haematite, coal, sand, cube of clay, coal, haematite, coal" which also shows what are your odds of getting what when a miner exists a mineshaft with geological loot.
- Just as foreign powers are getting implemented so is a randomly generated world map with different biomes, foreign power proximity and what not. They just begun developing this but the focus is now on the metagame. For instance you can finally select different colonial loadouts. There's a hardcore nearly no supplies just people loadout, there's the baby's first colony, there's one more geared towards bunkering up and killing the native wildlife before it kills you, there's one oriented on rushing a metalworks and another one allowing you to build a lab at the start, there's one with 21 colonists and just minor food, one with experienced overseers getting a skill bonus and one with more advanced building materials instead of food.
- stockpiling works properly, finally. Well actually some items are still flagged oddly and end up in the wrong one but it mostly works as do item stacks.
- colonist AI mostly works correctly. There are few cases of Job assignment dead end loops, I mostly saw these with some soldiers derping around but other than that I have not encountered any issues.
- module/building construction is working so adding more modules to existing buildings has few issues.
- colonists now have, in addition to skills, desires and possessions. Desire include both material possessions (middle class bed, cabinet etc.) and spiritual (like the urge to kill a a man as they are the most dangerous game or join an enjoyable social group for occult rituals and the study of things man was not meant to know).
- various UI improvements
- reworked immigration, it seems to be based on your colony size now, you can spend prestige to either skip on receiving a migrant wave or to increase its size

Focus for the near future, besides events for foreign powers, will be the world map, biomes and multiplayer (because implementing the world map or multiplayer later in development would be problematic).

A proper SCIENCE system needs implementation to develop better machinery and weapons, in addition to actually being able to upgrade existing modules to more efficient ones, such as the power saw or steam oven.

Economy is going in the right direction, especially in regards to maintenance and upkeep (to repair broken modules, feed colonists, supply the military), the industrial chain development is a bit railroaded, but if and when a trade system is implemented that will stop being an issue. At the same time map generation should be tweaked to stop generating "region has it all" maps so importing some stuff would be necessary.

Colonist simulation is really solid. I neglected booze and building sleeping barracks and half of my colony was walking around angrily and eager to form cults. Besides some more character-based events, the only thing this needs is an implementation of communist ideology and revolution spreading amongst the colonists.

Warfare needs more toys, trenches and machine guns or some good old artillery to shell bandits and bloody mecharepublicain minions of the l'auto dictateur.

 

[Metro]

This game brings new meaning to the word Snail's Pace. Okay, maybe it's not Cleve territory but... man oh man.

 

[Hellraiser]

This game brings new meaning to the word Snail's Pace. Okay, maybe it's not Cleve territory but... man oh man.

I think KSP's development went slower than this. Considering how CE looked a year ago there's noticeable progress, it was an unoptimized mess with no save games and later save games that half of the time crashed the game and failed to load, plus other bugs. Luckily it seems they're past the stage of buggy alpha and approaching something that could be called a beta. The basics are polished and the new systems have no noticeable issues.

But I give it another year before it is anywhere near being complete.

 

[Renegen]

patiently waiting for this one.

 

[Makabb]

This game brings new meaning to the word Snail's Pace. Okay, maybe it's not Cleve territory but... man oh man.

prison architect, project zomboid, starlancer (aka starfarer)

 

[ArchAngel]

I been playing Gnomoria recently, another DF clone. Can anyone that played both that and this game do a little comparison?

 

[almondblight]

prison architect, project zomboid, starlancer (aka starfarer)

Also Overgrowth, it's been in alpha funding for over 6 years now.

 

[Martyrized Dinosaur]

Hellraiser, thank you for the feedback, have you attempted to play the game recently? Is it getting close to acceptable completion?

 

[Hellraiser]

Hellraiser, thank you for the feedback, have you attempted to play the game recently? Is it getting close to acceptable completion?

You can look at the LP linked below, done over my Christmas Vacation, I plan on finishing it this New Year's weekend.

It can be summarized as it needs another year of development. Here's the gist of what has happened in last 6 months or so:

- diplomacy mechanic introduced, you have a foreign office, assign a crew to it. It produces points with a selected faction (currently bandists and the empire). Point can be used to do one of three misions (choices are rolled randomly daily), like requesting aid, bombing bandits, giving one of them amnesty or writing propaganda about the great progress your colony made). You can accumulate points with foreign powers but there are no missions or reputation bars for them yet.
- office code framework introduced (use by the foreign office, chapel, pub, barracks, barber and mine), it works but is buggy at the moment.
- back end for the trading depot done (possibly to be added in the new update).
- fire added (it spreads, it burns different items)
- improved cult mechanics, [redacted fun]
- added barracks and barber's
- ghosts can haunt colonists

What it needs:
- diplomacy for foreign powers
- trade (probably in the next update)
- strange moods and outstanding items? (I don't remember if it was this or RimWorld's devblog that mentioned those being implemented)
- communism
- industrial conduits (steam pipes, axels and power lines, roads, the sort) and industrial modules (power saws, steam ovens etc.)
- vehicles (some assets are done, just lack code and gameplay mechanics to make those work and fit in)
- worldmap to region (game) map generation, see below, actual worldmap generation is implemented but does not affect anything so far
- working other biomes (assets done in some part, coding/design/balance on those not finished)
- light world simulation and meta game mechanics (persistent bureaucrat career across multiple colonies in same world)
- some extra horrifying Fun
- multiplayer
- bug squashing and some more optimization work (works a lot better than in the past though)

verdict: optimistic but patient, these guy really seem to know what they are doing design-wise, especially after the event system and diplomacy systems. I give it 18 months tops before they hit 1.0 but I believe a year to achieve that is also a plausible but not certain timeframe.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...arkness-err-sogwood-clockwork-empires.105906/

 

[Burning Bridges]

I agree with all posters who previously wrote that EA is shit. It has become a scheme for lazy hipsters to get money for half assed shit based on empty promises.
However there are also a few titles that justify it. The Long Dark for example, while going into its 3rd year, is already giving me more pleasure (already 500 hours or so) than a finished title.
So if 100s of EA titles are shit, and 1 is gold, the challenge is only to pick the good ones. I think we need to have good gaming magazines again, like we had in the 80s and 90s.

 

[Metro]

Won't happen. What you get today is Twitch/YouTube personalities hyping all these shitty EA titles because their livelihood depends on it.

 

[Makabb]

What you get today is Twitch/YouTube personalities hyping all these shitty EA titles because their livelihood depends on it.

that's hilarious

 

[Martyrized Dinosaur]

What it needs:
- diplomacy for foreign powers
- trade (probably in the next update)
- strange moods and outstanding items? (I don't remember if it was this or RimWorld's devblog that mentioned those being implemented)
- communism
- industrial conduits (steam pipes, axels and power lines, roads, the sort) and industrial modules (power saws, steam ovens etc.)
- vehicles (some assets are done, just lack code and gameplay mechanics to make those work and fit in)
- worldmap to region (game) map generation, see below, actual worldmap generation is implemented but does not affect anything so far
- working other biomes (assets done in some part, coding/design/balance on those not finished)
- light world simulation and meta game mechanics (persistent bureaucrat career across multiple colonies in same world)
- some extra horrifying Fun
- multiplayer
- bug squashing and some more optimization work (works a lot better than in the past though)

Those are fairly major points wouldn't you say? It looks like it still has a long way ahead.

 

[Hellraiser]

What it needs:
- diplomacy for foreign powers
- trade (probably in the next update)
- strange moods and outstanding items? (I don't remember if it was this or RimWorld's devblog that mentioned those being implemented)
- communism
- industrial conduits (steam pipes, axels and power lines, roads, the sort) and industrial modules (power saws, steam ovens etc.)
- vehicles (some assets are done, just lack code and gameplay mechanics to make those work and fit in)
- worldmap to region (game) map generation, see below, actual worldmap generation is implemented but does not affect anything so far
- working other biomes (assets done in some part, coding/design/balance on those not finished)
- light world simulation and meta game mechanics (persistent bureaucrat career across multiple colonies in same world)
- some extra horrifying Fun
- multiplayer
- bug squashing and some more optimization work (works a lot better than in the past though)

Those are fairly major points wouldn't you say? It looks like it still has a long way ahead.

The first two have already been added in this week's experimental build. Although granted the game is obviously still far from done, but it is past the halfway point IMO.

 

[LESS T_T]

1.0 will be out in October 26th: https://www.gaslampgames.com/2016/10/06/launch-date-the-stars-are-aligned/

The official 1.0 build of Clockwork Empires will be launched October 26th!



We first released the game for purchase in “Earliest Access” over 2 years ago, and we’re proud of just how far the game has come, in part thanks to our dedicated early-access players. Clockwork Empires has changed quite a bit but, the central concept has stayed the same: manage the growth of a colony of settlers on the steampunk frontier, as they learn to deal with the horrors of the unknown.

We’re putting a hold on the “Experimental” builds leading up to the launch date so we can surprise you with some more stuff when the time comes, but expect new events, more cults and monsters, along with all the other polish that you would expect as the doomsday clock ticks ominously forwards to midnight and version 1.0.

This will, of course, not be the last update for Clockwork Empires, but we have reached the point where we feel that the important elements are all here (or will be before The Time). We will of course continue to find and fix bugs as they appear, add content and adjust the balance of the game beyond version 1.0 – while the game won’t see support forever, just like our previous title Dungeons of Dredmor, the journey doesn’t end on release.

If you’re interested in the road that we traveled to get to this point, I would invite you to take a look at the Development Progress report that we have kept up-to-date every month since August 2014. (And if you’d like to check out the game in the weeks before release – or just wishlist it – the steam store page can be found Here.)

We want to thank everyone who has been a part of this journey with us: supporting us by buying Clockwork Empires, talking with us about your experiences, pointing us at new (and sometimes old) bugs, sending us saves and crash dumps, and giving us suggestions to improve it. I can, without any reservation, say that we could not have done this without you. We are grateful to be able to create games for you, and doing it with you has been an amazing experience.

Long live the Clockwork Empire!