Heart of the Machine News

New build: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.557_Filtering_And_Lensing

This is based on more feedback from NextFest, and it's another large one.

• The lenses on the radial menu have been expanded notably, and unified between the map view and main view.
  
• The investigation, StreetSense, and Contemplation abilities are gone from the android ability bar, and are now converted to being Lenses only.
  
• Investigations now work a lot more smoothly in a lot of ways detailed in the release notes.
  
• StreetSense works entirely differently, and is dramatically easier to use. It's also no longer different per-android.
  
• There are now "Lens Filters" next to the radial menu, and these allow you to customize what you see as part of the various lenses. This has let me actually combine three lenses (Navigation, Beacons, and POIs) into a single one (Navigation), and it allows for you to do a lot of filtering-out of information that you might not need in the Forces lens, without it being completely inaccessible.
  
• The prologue has had a number of updates to it to reflect the new changes, plus other things that people found confusing. It also doesn't make you do any equipment management, as that is more naturally introduced later.
  
• There are now keybinds for jumping straight to specific lenses!
  

• Snipers hit less hard.
  
• MilStyle armor now also hides the identity of Predators and similar.
  
• Armor has been extended quite a bit in general, and more unit types have more options. The Nickelbot is steadily gaining in usefulness.
  
• Lots and and lots of writing edits courtesy of my wife Kara. She's been focusing on making sure that text flows better and causes less fatigue.
  
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
  
• Because of the removal of so many abilities (that are now Lenses), the ability bar for all units has been rearranged to a notable degree. This is likely to cause some muscle memory issues, but I think that the new order makes sense if you look past that. Details in the notes. Discussion welcome if it doesn't seem to be the case.
  
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
  
• Many various other smaller changes, fixes, and so on. This is actually three large releases in one since the last build outside of the playtest branch.
  

There's still a few things for the prologue that need adding. The UI tour, and some adjustments based on the theming of attacking the detectives. Those are way less surgery than all of these other elements were, though.

There are some reports that people are wanting related to quickly being able to see what is going on with certain resources, and those are also going to be a focus. An improved technology window also.

Then I should be good to go to finish chapter one. For the demo, there will be a few more features added in chapter one, but the really big reveals will not be on the demo branch for quite a while. Apologies on that; but the playtest is open for anyone interested.


If you'd like to sign up to be a tester beyond the demo period, feel free to sign up here: https://forms.gle/nNwEnzRyVPMS7bYg6
Make sure that you list your discord username and are a part of Arcen's discord, since that's where coordination is through.

Thank you again for all the support and feedback!
Cheers,
Chris

This is a very large one! For demo players, this is four builds in one: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.553_Fenceline

[h2]Networks[/h2]

Here's a "before and after" that makes the changes fairly apparent at a glance:



To be clear, that's the same savegame, but just loaded in the old version on the left, and the new version on the right.

Some of the key points:

• You can see some network info in the upper left corner now. Like electricity, etc.
  
• The way that info is shown is a lot nicer in both locations.
  
• The way the network is drawn on the map and streets view is no longer so overwhelming, and also gives you a bit more range.
  
• You can now lay out network relays in series before they finish building, rather than having to wait for each one to be done.
  
• A lot of more subtle elements with the networks are better in general, and you can read the full release notes if you're curious.
  

[h2]Other Major Items[/h2]

• Predators and similar can now use hoodies properly. They still make terrible guards because if the enemy sees what they are, they are still too scary. But this still means you can use them on more operations around the city.
  
• The "toast" popups in the lower right corner have had pretty much their full overhaul. Left-click now always does something more consistent, and right-click dismisses them. They also have better color variation to tell types of them apart now.
  
• The machine handbook is now much more convenient to use regardless of how you open it, and takes over the screen a bit more rather than getting lost in clutter. It also now has a dropdown allowing you to filter to specific topics.
  
• Minor new content! There's two new Procurement Efficiency upgrades -- one for better wind turbines, one for more microbuilders. Two highly-desired items.
  
• NPC units, including your own bulk androids, now have better targeting for a number of cases. Your own units won't engage noncombatants by default, and also won't wander into military bases or aggro them. Wetwork teams from corporations also won't get distracted with military bases.
  

[h2]Minor Handy Items[/h2]

• If you find the unit icons on the map or in the streets view too small, you can now adjust the size of those in the UI Scales tab of the settings.
  
• The escape menu sidebar now has links to mantis and your local save folder on your hard drive.
  
• There's a really long list of minor bugfixes and clarity improvements, but I'll spare you listing all those.
  

[h2]Next Things[/h2]
I had planned on going into the Lenses and StreetSense as my next thing, a few days ago, but wound up shifting the order of work. So that's now what I'm going to work on next.

There are some reports that people are wanting related to quickly being able to see what is going on with certain resources, and that will probably be the next thing after that.

Then there's the general ui tour on the first turn, and a few minor ui-flow things that are still outstanding. Then I should be good to go to finish chapter one.

[h2]Testing Group Reminder[/h2]
If you'd like to sign up to be a tester beyond the demo period, feel free to sign up here: https://forms.gle/nNwEnzRyVPMS7bYg6

Make sure that you list your discord username and are a part of Arcen's discord, since that's where coordination is through.

Thank you again for all the support and feedback!
Cheers,
Chris

Quite a large new build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.549_Of_Mice_And_Crowns

[h2]Mouse[/h2]
This one starts out by getting all of the mouse-related requests that folks have had so far. So edge scrolling is now an option, middle-mouse "grab and pan" is in place, right-clicking in build mode cancels out, double-clicking units either selects them (sidebar) or switches to street view (on the map), and more.

It also includes a bunch of things that allow you to invert controls or adjust sensitivity for the new mouse features. And it also makes rotating or panning with the mouse hide the cursor and not interact with other windows or window edges.

[h2]Tons Of Fixes[/h2]
There's a couple of dozen general fixes in here, ranging from some error spam in a few esoteric cases, to various things that lacked a bit of clarity. In particular, deploying units from a factory is now more clear when you're out of resources to actually do it, for example.

[h2]Balance[/h2]
Only three real balance items here, in the main.

The first is to reduce the amount of fighting during chapter one at the farms, if you go for both types of farm researches (as of course most people do).

The second is to make it so that if you use hostile items against buildings, your unit properly gets marked defective. This is particularly notable for the Decrowner Drones and the Mindport; you could get yourself absolutely overrun with hostile forces by taking that action way too vigorously and with no immediate drawback.

The last one had to do with what happens when you reach zero mental energy on a turn. It was blanking out the AP of all units, which was problematic for income for a variety of reasons. But also made it so that if Cold Blood was your last action of a turn, and netted you some more mental energy, you couldn't use it.

[h2]Coming Up[/h2]
I still have a lot of improvements to make based on demo feedback. Probably my next focus will be around lenses, and simplifying how StreetSense works, but we'll see how tomorrow goes.

Thank you to everyone for the ongoing support!

New build for the demo and playtest versions of the game! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.548_High_Visibility

[h2]Demo And Playtest[/h2]
The demo is going to be up for another few weeks, basically until the end of June. So if you haven't had time to finish it yet and you would like to, there's time.

If you want to be a part of the playtest after that, then be sure to swing by our discord: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1248015123382276217

[h2]The New Build[/h2]
This build includes a number of very handy features.

First of all, lots of visibility things relating to your units and other small enemy units. If they are behind a building or similar obstruction, you now see a colored outline based on their relationship to you. If you hold Ctrl, the game now highlights them all for you in a very high-visibility way. If you want that on all the time, there is a new High Visibility option in the Accessibility section of the Game tab of the Settings menu. In that mode, holding Ctrl toggles the high-visibility display off for a moment.

Next up, vehicles and mechs now properly say "crew of" rather than "squad of" to clarify what they are counting in terms of units inside their group.

Finally, a couple of rifles have been rebalanced, and made Nickelbot-exclusive. This gives the Nickelbots a much more defined role from early in the game, and also prevents some kind of crazy situations with bulk squads with some of the rifles.

[h2]The Last Week[/h2]
It's been almost a week since the last build, which was not how I had intended to handle things. However, I've been talking to people on discord and Steam, listening to feedback, taking notes, and also filling out various parts of the wiki.

A lot of people have gotten into the game in a really enthusiastic manner, which is wonderful to see. But the learning curve is not quite what I would prefer, and a few other elements are long-term confusing as well. So I've been formulating plans for those things, in consultation with testers and the demo players.

[h2]The Next Weeks[/h2]
Overall, my goal is to start smashing through a ton of the feedback that I've accumulated from the past week, and get things more where I want them to be. Then we'll see what further feedback folks have on tutorial difficulty and the like.

After what will hopefully be only one week of this initial push (but we'll see how it goes), I'm going to transition over to finishing up the rest of chapter one. There will be some new features added to the demo version, and while the demo version remains up, we'll have parity between the playtest version and demo version.

Expect to see much more frequent builds coming again, now that I've done the "measure twice" part of things.

Thank you again to everyone who has been giving feedback, as well as all the kind words!

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