Cultist Simulator News

A quick update for y'all from today's sprint round-up.





We're pushing Steam Workshop from beta to the main branch next week, on Thursday 10th September. Hold on to your modded hats, everyone!

We're also finally ready to release EXILE in simplified Chinese and Russian. That'll go live on Thursday 1st October.

Annnnnnd, we're also rolling out full-game Japanese and German. We're going to run a beta first to catch as many loc bugs as possible - that'll launch on Thursday 8th October. If you know anyone who speaks Japanese or German, please encourage them to pick up the game in October and help us make Cultist's translations top notch!

We'll then release full, shiny Japanese and German on Thursday 29th October, just in time for some other Halloweeny fun. 👻





They're now all designed and ready to go - just waiting on a test deck. Here are some final mock-ups, and a teaser for how the 100% definitely accurate system for predicting the future with them actually works!





They'll be up on the Church o' Merch ASAP, and I'll let you know the release date as soon as I know it.





Next sprint is the Weather Factory cats' birthday, so that's obviously the most important thing. Sulo and Chi will be TWO which is the same age as Cultist Simulator. What non-Euclidean coincidence is that?

Thanks for everyone who submitted bug reports to our old friend [email protected]. It's been enormously helpful. Issues addressed in this patch:


- images weren't working in some mod /images subfolders. They should now.
- merge-overwriting entities didn't quite work as advertised (property operations failed when merge-overwriting). This is fixed.
- fixed a subtle and horrible bug with expulsion filers, which now work again.

I've also done a lot more in the way of under-the-hood rewriting. The ideal situation is that you won't notice the difference at all. The likely situation is that I've introduced a handful of extra bugs (e.g., I just noticed the end game animation isn't firing properly). Why am I bothering, then?

Because back when I started building Cultist, I hadn't done any real coding for at least five years, and I was learning Unity from scratch. So there's a lot of nonsense in there at the foundations. Then I got four different freelancers in at various stages to write code- all of them extremely competent, but all with their own styles and quirks and all working independently.

So the effect right now is that of a big house built in the architectural styles of five different eras, mostly by one novice in a tearing hurry who's only read about houses in books, who's had seasoned craftsmen dropping by to help him with the windows and the plumbing and the electrics. The kind of place you'd love to go round with a knowledgeable guide who can explain why the builder saw fit to leave a hole in the ceiling above the kitchen table ('so guests can pass down mugs for washing') and put the front door on upside down ('just too much trouble to change back'). But not the kind of place you'd want to live in, in case you visit the bathroom in the small hours and plummet through a hole to crash into the kitchen table.

And definitely not the kind of place you'd want to use as a basis for a larger, more ambitious house... a library, for example.

So I'm taking some time to tidy it up. Bear with me. It'll stay on the beta branch until I'm fairly confident I'm not going to put a pickaxe through the wrong wall and release a gush of undesired spiders.

Alexis has been updating Cultist's modding framework, so there's new loc options, better UI and a better loading system overall. Full deets here!

We now have 22 mods (!), even if one of them is just about taking off Laidlaw's shirt. 🙄





Our long-awaited Travelling at Night case is now live on the Church o' Merch! It fits almost all branded 6" / 7" Kindles, eReaders and tablets and will make its author, Christopher Illopoly, very proud. 😭





Alexis waxes lyrical about 'art' and why he gets so cross about the term 'world-building'. If you're interested in Cultist's narrative design or the world of the Hours, this is a good ep to listen to!



Finally, in case you enjoy seeing the merch process live, an update on our fortune-telling playing cards...



More on mods, BOOK OF HOURS and those cards soon!

In case you missed it, as of 7th August we now have an improved modding framework and also STEAM WORKSHOP INTEGRATION - on the beta branch only.

It's on the beta branch because I'm still adding features and fixing bugs. There have been a couple more patches since the 7th, mostly to improve localisation support. There's a couple of other bits, though...

v2020.8.a.3; 'The Bottled Ink'

- available languages are now specified by the 'culture' entity in /core/cultures - which you can mod by adding a culture entity to your json.
- 'culture' also specifies UI labels, so you can add them for a given localisation
- you can also specify which base font script a mod will use - Latin, cyrillic, or 'cjk' for a font which should support Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. This is pretty primitive and you're out of luck if you want to localise into e.g. Arabic. I'll update if there's any demand for that.
- in response to modder pleas: it is now possible to have the same entity id specified twice in two different mods (or in the same mod, if you're being weird). Specifying an entity id in a mod for an existing entity will merge-overwrite the two, with the mod values taking precedence. This is also how mods will now affect existing entities. NB, then
(a) if you want to remove existing values from a core entity, specify an empty string or dictionary [I'm much happier with this, because it makes altered behaviour explicit]
(b) you no longer want or need to use 'extends' to build on an entity with the same id - just merge-overwrite it.

v2020.8.a.2; 'The Correspondence of Origin'

- updated to latest major version of Unity
- /images/ui added to modding framework. You can now use tablecoverimage:, tablesurfaceimage:, and tableedgeimage: on Legacies to customise table appearance.
- Fixed Chinese loc
- Fixed Chinese and Russian slot labels, which were showing in English
- loc files renamed to loc_[culture]
- loc files are now loaded *after* mods - so if you've extended an entity in your mod, any relevant loc will still apply to it
- you can now add loc files to a mod (or create a mod consisting only of loc files) - just add loc json files to loc/loc_[culture]

v2020.8.a.1; 'The Solution of Memory'
- substantial code rewrite; there may be odd bugs.
- mod framework rework and upgrade
- Steam Workshop integration, styled as 'The Invisible Serapeum'. (GOG players: the mods will work if you install them locally.)",

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More on modding Cultist:

https://weatherfactory.biz/daybreak-in-the-invisible-serapeum/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/718670/discussions/1/2800629075194099834/

If you couldn't tell, Cultist Simulator is heavily influenced by weird fiction, and weird fiction by H. P. Lovecraft. He turns 130 next Thursday, so we're running a week-long merch giveaway to say YAY to his ghost.

You could win any of the following...



All you need to enter are any social media account on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Pick your poison, then check out the relevant post!

• Twitter - retweet this tweet and follow @factoryweather
  
• Facebook - like the Cultist Simulator page and comment on this post
• Instagram - tag a friend on this post and follow @weatherfactory
  

There's a full FAQ on the blog about how it all works. Winners will be announced on 20th August - good luck!