Cultist Simulator News

Nother week, another patch. My routine at the moment is to push a patch, work on Book of Hours and other things for a few days, and then come back, assess feedback and tweak. I'll keep doing this until I stop seeing any significant complaints about the UI. (At least no significant *reasonable* complaints - there'll always be someone who wants it to be a hexagonal grid or to run on a smart fridge or something.)

BUT this patch is on the beta branch for now, because there've been some significant changes behind the scenes, and there's also an experimental feature in there. I think it's pretty stable now but I bet there'll be some weirdness I've missed.



Ugh, those colours! I'm not sure how that happens, but I usually do it in grayscale now. SHIFT + CLICK selects the extra cards.

There's another experimental feature coming in the next patch or three. This is something that I built for Book of Hours but am considering backporting into Cultist if people find it interesting. Ignore that horrible button, it's super temporary.



While I'm here, how do people feel about a Steam Deck verified version of Cultist? I don't think it needs much work, but it does need some, and it'll sit at the bottom of my priority pile unless Lottie and I think people are really enthusiastic.

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v2022.3.q.1 QUIETPLACE

EXPERIMENTAL: Hold SHIFT and click multiple cards to drag them at once.
You can now drop cards in drop zones directly. I didn't think anyone would want to, but you do! You mad fools! So now you can!
Restored some visual flair to newly spawned verb tiles.
A little bit more proofing against one save-corruption scenario.
Tweaked zoom factors.
Fixed Sanskrit Text icon

- card ghosts more appropriately spectral
- cursor key pan works again
- edge scrolling (again) only works when you're holding a token.
- added more flexibility to card placing, again
- greedy slots will no longer try to double-grab at the end of their cycle
- fixed embarrassingly long-standing but with Dancing for Heart Scars
- releasing mouse button after a dragged card has been grabbed should no longer cause weirdness
- slightly more robustness when mods are removed (no promises)

- Fix to prevent exhausted cards trying to stack with their unexhausted cousins\n
- Fix to prevent cards returning to the same spot when another card is now there.\n
- Basic fix for edge scrolling (I'll refine)\n
- Fix (I hope) for Mansus cards getting stuck on return to the waking world.\n
- Fix for very old bug in Priest DLC where a useless Refiring card appeared\n",

Cards at start of new game no longer annoyingly unaligned with grid.
Magnet slots now grab from tabletop->outputs->slots, in that order.
Cards you're dragging count as 'on the tabletop' for that priority :)
When a card decays at the exact moment it reaches a greedy slot, it no longer causes a confusing info popup.
Teeny border on elements in situation.
Fixes for some obscure save state problems

It's ten days since that nasty business with the big update, and I've just released, counting on my fingers since that can't be right, yes it is, the twelfth patch. More if you count hotfixes. There were a lot of bugs. Sorry, all.

I think the vast majority of save-eating evening-ruining bugs are fixed. Maybe even all, though I won't count on it yet. I'm tracking thirty-five remaining issues ranging from 'that really annoying thing where the magnet snatches a card from a slot' through 'DOA on Mac Monterey, sometimes' to 'wrong influence upgrade text in rare circumstance'.

So I'm going back down to yellow alert, bugs-wise. I think that'll last until middle of next week. But you want to know about the snap-to-grid fixes. I'm not done with these, I'll revisit, but we're in a better place. Let me talk about that now.


Okay, this is why everyone was so unhappy. When I was staring at this sort of thing for hours and fixing subtle recipe logic bugs, it didn't really register. The moment I look at it out of context, right, ugh, it's like being punched in the brain. I'm thinking of adding a HORRIBLE option to the gridsnap besides 1, 1/2, 1/4 so people who really want to do hardcore speedruns can do it on boards that look like this.




And this is what it looks like now. The biggest problem was that the cards and the tiles both lived on separate grids. This made sense to me when I was coding it but obviously they should live on the same grid so they can line up with some friendly space around them. Now they do. My thanks to the folks who helped me grok this.

It wasn't the only problem. Here's another thing that attracted what you might call disenthusiasm:



Funds card really, really gets attached to those spots. The fix here was just 'recalculate card ghost position while moving over other tokens, not just over tabletop':



I've tweaked a bunch of other stuff and I'm going to step back and watch the feedback channels. It's not perfect yet. I noticed that the card ghost, at some resolutions/config settings, displays a sort of prankish, playful attitude:



I think it's actually quite charming, like having a tiny goat ambling over your board, but I suspect most will disagree. So I'll fix it, but as ever the main problem will likely be something that didn't occur to me at all, which might make the whole thing irrelevant.

THE DOWNSIDE: if you've got a board setup aligned to the old grid, there'll be some fiddling to tidy it all up. Sorry: the alternative was some sort of automated realignment, which would almost certainly have ruined someone's whole day.

To make it easier, I do have a small surprise in the pipeline that'll make card org easier:





but it's not stable yet, and the last thing I want to do is unleash another wave of bugs.

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The last ten days have been exhausting but also surprisingly positive. I've been in a bit of a shell since the whole cancellation thing. This has forced me to engage with the community more than I have in years, and by and large you're a good bunch. Apologies again for fscking up the game, and thanks for bearing with me.

Q. Did you post any more of those videos?
A. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvfr83sBAefP3I9hWVfmdrJOD1epq66ay

Q. Hey, you never answered...
A. I've got 50 tickets on the back burner that I'll work through gradually. The answer is usually 'fixed in last patch' but not always.

Q. Didn't you post an influences list about Where You Get Your Ideas?
A. yup, here: http://weatherfactory.biz/influences

Q. Do you want to shill your book again like you did at the big update?
A. That sold a surprising number of copies, and I was tempted to do it again but it looks a bit tacky right now so I'm settling for this casual drive-by. I'll probably put it in the game menu like Tynan does when things have calmed down.

Q. Who is the cat in the error page?
A. His name is Chi and he's frankly a disgrace.