Update 62: Cloud Clarity
[p]This build has various improvements based on player feedback, and some fixes specifically for the content currently on the beta branch, too. More to come in soon in this vein!
If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.[/p][p]Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.[/p][p]Thanks for reading and for playing.
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[expand]
[h2]Update 62 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]
[/expand][p]Full notes here.
[/p][h3]Connect with the Machine[/h3][hr][/hr][p]Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:
💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.[/p]
If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.[/p][p]Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.[/p][p]Thanks for reading and for playing.
[/p]
[expand]
[h2]Update 62 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]
- Young Beancounters: In the very early game, when you're recruiting androids via StreetSense, it now shows you what capacity is required out of what capacity you have.
- Making Mention Of Far Zoom: At the point where the camera would previously stop you from zooming out any further, it now swaps to a "far zoom" mode that is kind of a hybrid of the map view and the streets view.I'll Be Watching Me: StreetSense has been adjusted to show your units by default rather than hiding them. I always felt like this lens was a bit borderline for that to go either way, and you can still adjust this in the filter for that lens -- all I've adjusted is the default.Making Mention Of Focus Mode: There is a new handbook entry which explains about using the Ctrl key to focus your view and either see or hide units in certain lenses. This pops up automatically the first time you are in a lens that defaults to having units hidden. For most people, they will see it when they are reaching the Contemplation lens for the first time. This is expected to be particularly useful for players who are returning after a break, but honestly for everyone.
- Cloud Transitions: There were at least three people who were confused by the transition between regular streets view and the far zoom, and it was a jarring transition in general. So I've added a visual smoke/fog effect that plays really quickly across the entire screen when you make that transition now, and also a very slight sound cue at the same time.
- More-Expansive Wasteland Ruins: Added more variance to the height of the ruins surrounding the city, and also made it so that in the far zoom, the ruins stretch a lot further but get a lot shorter. This now feels like a slice out of a larger map that contains the city, rather than an arbitrarily small amount of ruins directly surrounding the city. This is a thing that has been running around my mind for literally months, so I'm glad it performs well.
- Key NPC Glow-Ups: Revised the visuals a bit for the titan, station, and spyhounds. Basically just making it so that they all three show up nicer when in a conversation view.
- More-Numerous Time Adventure Juice: A number of the side goals now give Aetagest in addition to Daring. People were overall coming up more short of Aetagest than desired in recent builds since I shifted things to give more Daring.
- International Scrutiny Was 3x Too Miserable: Completely revised the doom counter for misery mode. It is now about 83% of the extreme mode values, the same as Vorsiber's Wrath, rather than being like 30% of extreme like it previously was. That was insanely too fast!
- Accidentally Inverted Wizardry: Fixed the achievement for "Dark Arts" being backwards -- it was triggering on regular physical attacks, rather than system damage ones.
- Down In Front!: Fixed an issue where if normally a lens would hide units by default, but you toggle that off in the settings, then holding ctrl would no longer let you hide the units. It now works as expected.
- Filthy Typo: Fixed a typo in the "filth and furniture" handbook entry.
- Nukes Held Back For Science: Vorsiber is slightly less impatient if you're doing specific things in CCA.
- I Swear I Won: Fixed an issue where the timeline was not actually marked as victorious if you won Cybercratic Ambitions on the beta branch. It will retroactively mark the timeline as won for any timelines that were completed in that way.
- People Stop Being Unhappy When Dead/Trapped-In-Torment: At least in a way that is tracked, I mean.
- It's Amazing People Still Immigrate: Immigrants coming to the city no longer cause the city to not register as "everyone" being in the torment vessels, since it takes a bit to process new people in with the rest.
- Electricity Relief: People living off-grid outside of your arcologies no longer need so dang much electricity. Protip: move them into arcologies and they won't need any at all, beyond what the arcologies use. But this keeps people from having to pave over their city with electrical distribution lines before their arcologies are up.
[/expand][p]Full notes here.
[/p][h3]Connect with the Machine[/h3][hr][/hr][p]Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:
💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.[/p]