Heart of the Machine News

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!

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city filled with unsuspecting humans. Raise an army of robots and obliterate your foes, become a benevolent machine overlord, or explore countless other objectives and the many paths to accomplish them.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/