Shadows of Forbidden Gods News

A quick fix to an issue which some people were having with mod configurations, following the V1.1 update

After a couple of weeks of confusion, it seems the Unity situation has been resolved. They have changed their plans to only apply to the 2024 build of Unity (Shadows is built off the 2021 version), and have promised to cap the maximum invoice to a percentage of revenue. This fixes all the issues other than the somewhat concerning lack of warning about contractual changes.

What this means is that Shadows can continue development as planned. While this may become a problem in the future, there are no immediate concerns.

Version 1.1 is therefore going live today, after a little bugfix and adaptation to avoid it breaking save games from V1.0. Mods are another question, but hopefully none should be too badly affected, as the update mostly just adds a god and agent.

The god in question is the Broken Maker, which is something of a “god of newgame+”. When you win or lose with this god, humanity adapts. The world rebuilds while you sleep, and humanity gains buffs if you won, making the next rounder harder. You can also curse families and bury power, which gives you assets you can take from one round to the next, to help your future self. The god also borrows a couple of powers from other gods when it sleeps, giving you a randomised set of powers to play with each time.

The agent is The Aristocrat, who introduces a political game which tries to divide humanity, based on a conflict you've created. She simply turns up and calls for a vote on an issue, and lets human bickering and hostility do the rest. The better she can split the vote, the more damaging she can be. Her ultimate goal is to turn kingdoms against each other, and dukes against kings, leading to wars and civil wars. She also is naturally good at avoiding suspicion.

Gameplay:
-Added "Broken Maker" god
-Added "The Aristocrat" politics/crisis-exploitation agent
-Added "Panic increases over time" to game options
-Lingering Resentment drops to % when Unrest reaches maximum, to avoid "heads will roll" spam

Other:
-Incompatible mods are now loaded (or at least attempted to), and only give a warning

Bugfixes:
-Fix gamebreaking bug, where a civil war could crash the game and prevent game progression
-Fix major bug where the "Kill the Chosen One's mentor" questline would break when selecting "spare" option
-Fixed Eternity god powers not resetting after sleep
-Fixed Eternity god causing the "world panic increases with time" to hit 100% instantly after sleep
-Fixed name issue for Alliances which exist during Eternity sleep
-Insect god's Drone and Haematophage are now 'arthropod' species, not human
-Fixed outpost founder sometimes not being recognised as evil despite being an agent

As you may or may not have heard, the indie game dev industry was thrown into chaos this week.

Unity, the makers of the most popular indie game engine, decided to implement a per-install pricing. Devs (or possibly distributors, depending on which communication of theirs you read) will have to pay 0.20$ every time a player installs the game. This would come into effect in January.

There are thresholds, and based on the license I use (as a one-person company), Shadows would probably not need to pay anything on top of the existing licenses.

Regardless, this is still a critical risk for the future of the game for the following reasons:

• Malicious 'install bombing' would become possible, where a single person could write a script to install the game repeatedly, costing a potentially infinite amount of money. While Unity assure us this will not occur, because they will use some nebulous 'AI' solution, they are not open to sharing any details of how this protection will occur. With the very short time before the system comes online, and the extreme difficulty in totally protecting a computer system from hackers, my personal estimation is that there will be a number of malicious install bombs over the next few months.
  
• Unknown costs, even for legitimate use would occur. I have no idea how many times a player on average installs the game, nor do I seek that information. Once the game is in your library, I'd personally consider it your right to install it on any machine you feel like. I simply have no idea how many times to expect, and so cannot estimate costs.
  
• Unity has changed a contract retroactively which is threatening and concerning. Once Unity have decided they have the risk to unilaterally raise the price of the services, including for already released games, there is no guarantee they won't do so again. At any moment going forward they could levy additional fees or alter the thresholds on these new per-install prices. This means that Shadows now represents an unlimited liability for Forbidden Oak Games Limited. At any moment Unity could invoice the company for more than it has ever earnt.
  

I'll admit to not knowing what the implications of this are. This is nearly unprecedented, and far larger and better companies than mine are voicing their concerns, anger and confusion over these developments.

For others' perspectives, here are:

Unity Official Forums

The Twitter (X) announcement by Unity

The reddit Unity3D thread

As I've said, I don't know the impact of this. I can't tell you what will happen on Monday, I can't tell you what will happen in January. I'm not a lawyer, nor a seasoned industry veteran. Development on Shadows, even including bugfixes, is currently on hold to avoid being seen to agree with Unity's new Terms of Service. We will wait and see how things develop.

Two items today, one for everyone in the community, and one for modders.

Firstly, for everyone:
Contributing artist Brad, from Apostle Games, is soon releasing a new Dark Fantasy party-based RPG. Check it out here, to get your next fix of grim darkness:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2575780/Age_of_Tribulation/

Secondly, for modders:
Following discussions, I've decided to keep the game in Unity's development mode forever, but employ a hack to remove the "development mode" watermark from the bottom right. What this means is the read console error text will be there to make debugging easier.

If you are using Harmony to make mods, this also means the underlying code won't change too much (there were major changes in the underlying bytecode which changing from development mode to normal mode introduced).

The only downside is lower performance, now that the watermark is gone, which hopefully isn't too major a concern. The upside is easier mod compatibility from earlier builds and we won't lose the debug console.

A few bugfixes and minor gameplay/UI changes are also bundled into this update.

In detail:

Gameplay:
-Heroes with shadow have reduced (to 0 at 100%) motivation to guard the Chosen One
-Insane rulers should no longer declare war on tiny or non-existant nations (those holding fewer than 3 locations in the previous turn)

Other:
-Added size and order toggles to turn log

Bugfixes:
-Fixed text when Elves join The Dark Empire to stop saying they joined The Alliance
-Dark Elves will no longer have a "dark elven skirmishing" motivation towards insects, neutral evil creatures or player controlled agents
-Fixed Changeling menace gain

A few bugfixes, with more to come. Crucially fixes the long-standing achievement bug for "Stone Cold". Bug fixes will be merged onto the beta-branch in the next patch (as well as sent over to the Itch build).

Details:
Gameplay:
-If Mammon's initial settlement would be too small (-"Fuel the fire" unrest boosting challenge is no longer valid when there are no positive influences, but has a minimum gain to avoid zero-gain situations (it rounds all positive influences up)

Bugfixes:
-Fix occasional issue with "repeat challenge" button on challenge completion popup
-FINALLY solved the bugged "Stone Cold" achievement (Discord user "Valorous Heart" had actually found the cause a month ago, I just missed the report)
-Fixed issue with sacrificial dagger not working
-Fixed enshadowment% in nations view