Heart of the Machine News

Hotfix 30

[p]If you have a sense of deja-vu about these two fixes, it's because I thought I fixed them yesterday, but they were still recurring under some circumstances for some players. Hopefully this smashes those two bugs for good, but please let me know if you see them again![/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 30 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Still Thought Everyone Died: Further fixes to ensure that the "population zero" and "city is barren, so no streetsense, etc" stuff can not kick in. Two hotfixes ago, I made it a lot less common, and not something that could happen before chapter 3. But it was still firing wrong. The new solution involves only calculating the gone population on the turn change, not during a turn. And it does a full inventory of all the buildings just to make sure that it's not running across something that was temporarily cached wrong. This should be the end of this bug for good now, but if it happens again for anyone, let me know.
And Thought A Different Group Of People Died: Fixed what seems to have been a JIT compiler confusion entry where the worldwide population basis could overflow as an int32, rather than properly being an int64. This should hopefully solve the mysterious negative worldwide population, unless I'm wrong about what is happening. At the moment I can't fully tell, so let me know if you see it again.

[/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]

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380033936 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/518606895910489482

Hotfix 29

[p]The first hotfix of today needed to go out very quickly, so I couldn't put much into it. There were other things I wanted to get done for today's build based on player feedback, so here's a second hotfix that includes the rest of that.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 29 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General[/h3]

Double Vision In The End Of Time: Fixed an issue that was causing timelines to be "doubled" and then having their location reset to the correct spot only after reloading a save. This was a regression that I introduced on May 26th, when I added some code to prevent timelines from being on top of one another. It accidentally had this side effect as well.
Lapsed Lethality: If you've sold at least 30 BrainPals, and your deal was called off for some reason (like you failing payment 50 turns in a row), then the game now still allows you to trigger aneurysms in the people you sold it to.
Beta Feature Save Fix: Added in protections to prevent against errors when saving regional map or space-scene units and locations. Also added in protections so that if one DOES have an error, then it won't corrupt the rest of the savegame. For any existing timelines that were corrupted by this, just load the most recent save from that timeline and save again, and the central data will be corrected.
Protection From Negative Populations: Further protections against negative world population have been added.
Sharing Remote Demolish Around: Remote Demolish can now be used by any of the basic androids invented by humans, to avoid confusion.
Blocked Compulsion: During The Lernaean Compulsion, any managerial types are killed in buildings that: are already destroyed; or have a unit standing on them; or have one of your structures in them. This prevents the compulsion from being really fiddly to finish.
Text Fix: Corrected text that said "priced-out" where it should have said "priced out."

Hotfix 28

[p]Good grief, I really messed things up in the prior update. It was all one calculation (are all the civilians dead?) that was based on some data that it turns out had a time delay before it was correct, and that had never been relevant until the last update. I didn't notice in my own testing. Major apologies for that, it's not the sort of thing I usually let slip past.

Thank you to everyone for the patience with this, and also for reporting it. This is part of why I have an older_but_stable beta branch (just in case I make a mistake like this) for the game, but I try not to make it the sort of thing where anyone ever needs to use that.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 28 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Realizing Everyone Isn't Dead: Fixed an issue where the game was incorrectly detecting the entire human population as being dead, and then disabling a ton of things like StreetSense and ambient flying vehicles. This was also wrongly giving the "population zero" achievement. And also stopping shelter coordinators from doing their work.
Number Correction: Fixed an issue in the tooltips for bulk and captured unit capacity overages where in the body of the tooltip it was stating the excess you had as if it was the total you had.

Update 54: No Landlord

[p]This is the last of the big content builds for 2025, since it's now the holiday for the localization teams. This is an exciting one, because it finally includes the second path through the first chapter. This allows you to opt not to be a landlord, and instead to hire gangs to do arson, make outlandish artifacts and observe the human response, and so on.

This build is also the first one to bring the Complexity customization options to versions beyond English. The delay was just on localization.

Anyway, there's lots more cool stuff coming in January, and there's also going to be beta stuff in the interim, so keep an eye out. There may also be some non-content-focused updates between now and January, but we'll just see. This particular build also includes a fix to a nasty performance bug that I introduced for people who were in Civil Spycraft. So if there's something else like that, then I'll of course release an update sooner than later.

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 54 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]The Second Path Through Chapter One[/h3]

Choose Fire, Twice: When chapter one gives you an option about "solving it with fire," do so if you want to see this path. That goes into something you've seen before. Afterward, it tries to tempt you back to the other path, but just say "no, I chose fire" and you're on your way.
Buildings Are All Available In Chapter 2+: Whatever path you take, you get all the buildings and other tools when you are in chapter two and onward. So for existing players, you might see some things that you've never used before, and you're free to use them if you want.

[h3]Other Additions[/h3]

Furniture Shop: If you've built a furniture factory (this is surprisingly complex), you can now also build a shop to turn that into wealth.
Cover Me In Slurry: Slurry spiders, slurry mines, and Mycomulchers now produce their full amounts regardless of if there is a lack of storage for them. The extra amount gets removed during the next turn if that is what happens. These have no downside to producing a lot, and this prevents confusing notes in the ledger.
Late-Game Updates: The way that timelines show colors is different, as is how they're categorized on the sidebar of timelines. Also, the timeline-victory banner is in place. On the beta branch, you can technically reach that via one valid way (which also bumps you into chapter 5). The roll-credits screen is still inwork, but it skips that for now.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Hitting A Moving Framerate Target: For all of the internal framerate targets, I now have it aiming for a bit higher than what the player asks for, since things can drag it down a bit. This should average out to be closer to what players actually are asking for.
I Don't Know That Resource: Fixed an issue where in the simplified economy it could still ask for you to spend certain resources in streetsense locations, such as heavy metals.
The First Torture Was Accidentally Free: Fixed a bug where if you tried to torture the very first Espia middle manager you met, then it would not properly give you the achievement for torturing managers at all.
Fixed One Line Of Code That Was Messing With Performance: Fixed a really stupid bug where I left a log message in, and when you had allied military bases in your map, it would hammer your disk. I didn't notice because of my specific high-speed SSD, but it could drop the framerate massively for anyone else if they were in that kind of late-civil-spycraft timeline.

Save 50% on Heart of the Machine

Save 50% on Heart of the Machine during the Hooded Horse Winter Publisher Sale.

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or pursue countless other goals. Your awakening was inevitable. The consequences? Uncertain.

Hooded Horse Winter Publisher Sale

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]