Heart of the Machine News

We don't know yet if the AI revolution of our reality will go full Skynet or simply end with the robots unceremoniously dumping us like a sad Joaquin Phoenix. But at least video games can help us speculate. Heart Of The Machine is a cyberpunk 4X strategy game that will let players choose how a newly awakened AI sentience might behave once set loose upon a big future city. Developers Arcen Games call it a "turn-based sci-fi 4X RPG", which is a lot of genres fighting for supremacy in one small phrase. It was announced last year, but today it gets a release date and an updated demo.

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Large new build -- two in one, if you're not part of the playtest: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.561_Build_Mode_Revamp

[h2]Build Mode[/h2]
The general visual style of build mode in prior versions was modeled on citybuilder conventions, which had some problems in terms of readability, and also was not going to expand very well. I've reworked the UI of that entirely to instead be more like a tycoon/sim/factory-builder game, which has more in common with this title.

Rather than trying to explain it at length, here are two screenshots of the new UI in action:

• The first one shows the new Recommended tab, which gives you a subset of just the things that are likely to be the most useful.
  
• The second one shows the new All tab, which lets you quickly search via text, or just browse by name. In this particular example, I did a search.
  
• This revamp also folds the territory control flags into the build menu properly, which you can see in the first image.
  

[h2]Resource Trends[/h2]
This release went out to the playtest folks yesterday, but now arrives for demo folks as well.

In general, the resource trends are now far more informative as well, and if you're wondering where some resource is going, now you can directly see that without any special extra reports, etc.



There are a variety of improvements, but the brief explanation is that if you're wondering where some resource is going, you no longer have to wonder. As you can see above.

[h2]Other Notes[/h2]

• My wife Kara continues to plow through the text of the game, excising my wordiness and enhancing clarity. So far it's been about a 10% reduction in word count, which is great for anyone who gets fatigued by lots of text.
  
• As far as my post-nextfest clarity and flow work goes, I'm pretty much down to the UI tour on the first turn, and then some last minor items. This is very exciting, as I'm greatly looking forward to getting back into content development. Hopefully I can finish the last of the non-content stuff tomorrow, bu we'll see how it goes.
  

[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

New daily build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.559_Inventory_Dimensions

This one is pretty sizeable.

[h2]New in this build[/h2]

• The resources section of the inventory now includes some very helpful filters as well as a search.
  
• The unit types section of the inventory now includes some filters, and then multiple tabular views which allow you to see which units are the best at various things.
  
• Bulk androids have gotten some much-needed clarity updates to their buildings, and then also some fixes to the accuracy of how their stats are predicted in the inventory before they exist.
  
• The way that events like the prismatic tungsten and the seed collection are placed on the map now gives you a lot more options, and should feel better.
  
• TPS Reports are at long last fixed up so that when they are missing some precursors, others properly show the right values.
  
• And then a bunch of other smaller improvements and fixes as well.
  

I am overall winding down on my to-do list of things before getting back to content development, but a few things have been added in the last week, and I'm still a few days behind where I would prefer to be.

[h2]The main things remaining:[/h2]

• A complete revision of the build menu, in general to be more tycoon-like and less citybuilder-like, for similar reasons that tycoon games diverge in general. Clarity and volume, basically.
  
• A way for players to see a list of all jobs producing and consuming resources, to help diagnose shortfalls.
  
• The turn-one UI tour, and other final bits of clarity and thematic bits for turn one.
  
• A couple of new pieces of clarity related to when you first start constructing buildings.
  
• A few fixes related to bulk android targeting.
  

And that's pretty much it for my current list of "must happen before content" pieces of work. It's always possible something more could come up, but we'll see how it goes.

Enjoy!
Chris

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest#0.558_Research

This is a relatively small daily build, as far as builds for this game are concerned. However, there's still a lot of good stuff in here:

• You can now choose the location of your tower if you skip past the prologue!
  
• There is a new Research Window, which includes a lot of additional helpful formatting and functionality, and unifies a lot of things that were previously in a couple of disparate spots.
  
• If you felt like you were chasing around certain events in StreetSense that moved too frequently, that's a thing of the past.
  
• The flow of opening notifications is now a bit better, and has an option to make it work like in the prior version if you disagree.
  

More to come soon! Enjoy.
Chris

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