Cultist Simulator News

- Fixed intermittent Exile crash around halting verbs.
- Changing high contrast setting no longer crashes game
- Returning from Mansus no longer requires a restart to unpause
- Elements shown correctly in status bar in Exile.
- Reckoners no longer send an inexplicable corpse to your next destination when you leave.
- Fixed issue where it was sometimes possible to start recipes with the hotkey but not a button click.
- Likely fix for crash codename 'Gryla'
- Likely fix for crash codename 'Gluggagegir'
- Likely fix for crash codename 'Stekkjarstaur'
- Started naming cause-undetermined crashes after the Yule Lads so I can keep track

Last Thursday I released a significant update to Cultist Simulator and sat back, feeling pretty pleased with myself. Most of the work was under the hood - a near-total rewrite - but it included some long-requested QOL features that I thought people would like. I reckoned there were a few minor bugs to tidy up the following day (priority 5 on a scale where 1 is 'EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE' and 9 is 'is that even a thing') but it'd been in beta for several months so I was confident it was stable. I spent the evening watching the MLP movie with my kid and didn't think much of it.

The next morning I fired up my PC and found a Steam forum full of cross, bewildered players, about fifty support emails, and the orange text that puts the fear in every indie dev on Steam:



It wasn't even the bugs that were most upsetting people. It was the rework of the card placement UI, which worked, I rather suddenly realised, about as well as trying to fit ice cubes into a cat. And a 'minor' camera navigation issue that I'd long ago stopped noticing.

I'd fucked up royally and I'd never seen it coming.

How? I'd got complacent. Sure, it had been in beta for months, but there was no compelling reason to play a slightly janky beta. It seems plenty of players had seen the problems and assumed they'd be fixed before I went live. One player had written a heartfelt and articulate critique of the camera and UI issues, but it had ended up as one of six links in a bundle of four emails and I'd missed it.

More insidious still, I was getting pages and pages of high quality feedback from one particular modding group, funnelled through one helpful modding rep with screenshots and repro steps:



so since I'd fixed hundreds of bugs over months of testing, and the bugs had slowed to a trickle, it must be fine? Right?

Okay, it wasn't fine. What I really needed to do - what I should have done - is sit down and play the bloody game for a couple of days and take notes. And before that, I should have formalised the beta test, checked in with specific people, taken notes, like I did with the Exile DLC. If I'd done that, I'd have seen all this stuff and fixed it a week later in a much better state. Lesson learnt. Like I said, I got complacent.

SO let me apologise to all you loyal souls for foisting this nasty surprise on you, wrapped up like a Christmas present. And let me say that the community has actually been very nice about the whole thing. I've had some mildly grumpy mails but loads of supportive, helpful, detailed mails which take time out to say how much they love the game.

--

To business. I spent Friday and the weekend trying to sort out this nonsense, and fixed the worst issues and a bunch of nuisance ones. I'm staying on this next week. The card grid snap is going to get another round of love, and I still have a couple of dozen issues in my list.

If you'd still like to roll back to the old version, you can find instructions on doing that here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/718670/discussions/0/3182361055551113455/

I'm off to drink me tea. Have wildly coloured dreams, everyone.

AK

PS bonus content:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

CARD PLACEMENT FIXES!

- Much more user freedom on card placement. Sorry about the earlier trouble.
- 1/8 gridsnap by default. This is as close to no gridsnap as makes no diff, but I may yet add that too. Watching feedback.",

Sorry all! The Metamorphosed Edition broke more than I realised. I'm working on fixes, but if you want to roll back to the old version in the meantime, instructions are here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/718670/discussions/0/3182361055551113455/

Fixes in this patch:

- Camera feels smoother (I haven't added the old drift effect back - but I might yet)
- Force-set gridsnap to 1/4. This will address a lot of perceived card placement probs. You can change it back tho.
- Game no longer crashes when scouting a city in Exile immediately after travelling to that city
- Fixed Chinese & Japanese loc
- Leaving at Mansus, then reloading, no longer crashes game
- Slowed down token travel time for greedy slots and click-to-send, rapid speed was alarming erryone

I'm going to post this for a third and final time, because people always seem to like it:

"As you know, holometabolous metamorphosis is one of the most ghastly things in nature. The larva is driven by chemical imperatives to entomb itself alive in its own final skin. Then the absence of a protective juvenile hormone permits the activation of the imaginal discs embedded in its infant flesh. These spew forth a torrent of enzymes which tear apart most of its cells in a sort of quasi-digestive self-immolation, leaving it as basically a shiny bulging sac of goo in which the discs float, spinning new parts and organs round themselves out of the dissolved ex-caterpillar. When they’ve finished, the imago will explode out of its old skin like a John Carpenter special effect. Its wings at this point are still soft and soggy, with the consistency of used kitchen paper, so it’ll have to hang upside down, dry off and pump hemolymph into its wing-veins before it can take off and make innocent humans coo over its beautiful colours.

Anyway, so the point we’re at is that I’ve spun a cocoon round Cultist Simulator and I’ve pumped enough liquefying enzymes into it that it’s more goo than game at this point. This is progress."

The last paragraph, I'm pleased to report, is now out of date. Cultist Simulator has emerged from its cocoon after its rewrite. After a long period of what I would love to call spectacular buggery, if that didn't mean something else that had nothing to do with bugs, but 'Spectacular Buggery' sounds like a band name or a minor David Foster Wallace novel or perhaps an exhibition at the ICA c.1985, right? Where was I? I've lost my glasses. Here they are. Oh Lottie's bringing me a cup of tea, that's nice. I'm fifty years old now, you know.



It's live. To be clear, 'Metamorphosed Edition' means 'free update', not another thing you need to buy.
Yes, this does mean we're still supporting the game four years after launch. Steam Deck version at some point soon.

Some highlights:

(1) more stable save format.
(2) better modding support.
(3) A lovely glow to show you where the card's going.
(4) Verbs no longer shoulder cards out of the way. I should put exclamation marks after this, shouldn't I, to show how exciting all this is, because that's how people do on Steam updates.
(5) Hey folks, welcome to the latest update, I'm excited to announce we've got a dropzone for verbs!
(6) Some mildly interesting extra behaviour for when things get consumed!!
(7) better font support for Central and Eastern European languages!!!
(8) You can combine DECAYING CARDS in a SINGLE STACK under some circumstances!!!!!
(9) ***RIGHT-CLICK TO SEND A CARD TO A VERB SLOT***!!!!!!!!!!!
(10) An incredibly arcane fix which may resolve a highly specific RNG quirk where the Stag Door wasn't quite random. I can't bring myself to put an exclamation mark after that though.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who's provided patient and detailed feedback over the last few months, and a wry but also heartfelt thank you to everyone who's provided grumpy or vague feedback.

[h2]FAQ[/h2]

Q. Something's broken what I do
A. Mail us at [email protected]. Although if you have a bunch of mods try uninstalling them first, because otherwise my response after a week when I've caught up with all my email may be 'try uninstalling those mods I can see in the player.log'

Q. Where are player.log
A. If something breaks, you'll probably get the notorious Helpful Kitten Screen. Hit the Log FIles button on that. Or mail us, I have autoreplies for 'where to find log files' on various OSs

Q. New Cultist content pls
A. All new content has to be localised into four languages now, so there's not likely to be any new Cultist content. On the other hand I am now writing this:


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1028310/BOOK_OF_HOURS/

Q. BOOK OF HOURS WHEN!!!!
A. It still says 2022, it might be 2023. There's been all kinds of fuckery, as some of you know. BUT we'll be announcing a closed alpha soon.

Q. Can I have a plug for your books
A. No, it's Steam, they frown on that

Q. Oh go on
A. Oh okay
https://secrethistories.net/provocations https://secrethistories.net/snare

If you don't like Amazon, or want the funky Suppression Bureau embossed edition, try this: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/weatherfactory

Q. What's with those dice in the cover image?
A. They're made out of people. Retired medical skeletons, to be precise. Surprisingly beautiful. If you're looking for a Winter-aspected item, that's them, and if you're looking for a reference to end a blog post, Winter's always good. Or 'like and subscribe', I guess.

AK