Cultist Simulator News

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

Our next game is BOOK OF HOURS, a spiritual successor to Cultist Sim. We've just started a BoH closed beta, and figured some Cultist Sim players might a) not have heard of it and b) want to join in!

(Anyone who enjoys Cultist Sim is likely to enjoy BOOK OF HOURS. AK will probably not approve of my saying this, but It's sort of a holiday for stressed out CS players - it's the same Lovecraftian world, but with new lore and fewer stressors. No dying suddenly of Dread!)

If you'd like to get an early look at BOOK OF HOURS and help us make it great, register your interest in being a beta player. We're picking a bunch of people to join each month, so you might not get in. But perhaps the Watchman will favour you...

This is the least interesting patch ever, folks. I've literally just put the beta link for BOOK OF HOURS in the title menu, and moved some stuff about.

There is never only one History. We've used the mechanics and the world of Cultist Simulator for our next game, BOOK OF HOURS - but we've added more graphics, more lore and, well, more everything: we think BOOK OF HOURS is going to be about five times the size of Cultist Sim when it's finished.

We're releasing the first playable demo next week as part of Steam Next Fest. It'll be available from Monday 6th Feb at 6PM GMT / 10AM PDT, so now's a great time to play the demo and see what you think!

We'll also be live streaming the game next Thursday, if anyone wants to drop in and say hi. The chat'll be open, the questions'll be flowing, and hopefully we won't find a really embarrassing bug while we're playing. If you'd like to see behind the game dev curtain and hear AK talk about the world, join us on Thursday 9th Feb at 6PM GMT / 10AM PDT.

Hope to see you there!

♥ Alexis & Lottie

Welcome to the first charming flower pic of 2023. As regulars will know, we're currently naming all our updates after flowers, occult or otherwise. This is the Danish Flag cultivar of nemesia strumosa:



(What would you call that colour? Dark fuchsia? Bloody burgundy? Clarified vermilion? Peaceful Grail?)

Now! here's is the reason I've marked this as a Major Update. It's only relevant if you use mods:

[h3]- To work, DLL mods now require the GHIRBI, THE GATEKEEPER core mod installed and enabled. The mod can be found in Steam Workshop, or on Cultist Simulator GOG discussions page.
- To avoid confusion, DLL mods can't be enabled at all without GHIRBI, THE GATEKEEPER. Disabling GHIRBI automatically disables all enabled DLL mods.[/h3]

I talked about this here, but the short version: we're putting some an extra confirmation layer to protect against the _remote but theoretically possible_ risk of malicious mods. If you use any significant mods, you may need to install and enable GHIRBI.

On to the other fixes. As usual, Chelnoque's notes, my exegesis:

- Ally recruitment action in Exile didn't display its end description properly.

Exile continues to be the wild borderlands of Cultist Simulator

- Wounded cultists turned into Risen lacked Follower aspect.

I think poor Neville should be allowed to rest in dubious peace, bt since everyone's _going_ to drag him from the grave...

- Display of verb window is slightly more resilient against lower frame rates.

We all want to be more resilient against lower frame rates.

- Removed secret stray tech text from ascension rite.

So secret that even I don't know what it was. This means either Chel is embarrassed or he is preserving me from embarrassment.

- THE INVISIBLE SERAPEUM is renamed THE SIXTH HISTORY.

Because of the Sixth History Community license! Last year we opened our IP for wider use (with some caveats and limits, natch). It would be possible now to turn a mod into a complete game in its own right and sell it, if that 's your bag.

- Various enhancements in the mod panel display.

"AK's logging code had a silly performance bug that actually started to matter in edge cases."

- Debug console now opens on ctrl + ~ (instead of just ~). People are now safe from opening it on accident and ruining their playthrough in all kinds of ways.

This was always super on-theme - you accidentally find a key combination that allows you to PIERCE THE VEIL OF THE MUNDANE - but it was one of the few remaining frequent causes of support tickets. Anyway the VEIL OF THE MUNDANE is now a bit more robust.

Incidentally Subnautica introduced the same feature on the same day that we put NEMESIA on the beta branch. Coincidence or conjunction? The Hours know.

- Debug console now can be opened in the main menu, allowing to see the log without starting the game.
- Other various small console improvements.
- Clear console button now works.
- achievements.json file had an incorrect path on Linux.
- MODDING: Levers (cards that are transferred between playthroughs) can now be defined and modified by JSONs.
- MODDING: 'description_long' in mod synopsis can now be left empty in order to preserve current Workshop mod's description. The game no longer crashes if this property isn't set.


Lottie wants me to say 'wishlist Book of Hours', though if you like Cultist Simulator enough to read all the way down you've probably already wishlisted the sequel. It's an open question whether we'll get a short demo in Next Fest - I lean no, cos there are distractions - but there will be a closed beta in the next coupla months. So let's end as we began with flowers:


(Book of Hours: the Physic Garden at Hush House)


- AK

There are now a hundred and forty mods on the Cultist Simulator Steam workshop. The number’s exploded since we enabled DLL modding – that is to say, we allowed modders to run their own code as part of a mod, changing fundamental game behaviour rather than just adding new narrative content and images. Four of the top five mods are DLL mods.

Any time you run someone else’s code on your machine, there’s a risk. In theory, a modder could include malicious code in a DLL mod. The risk is very low – AV programs may notice it, Steam will block malicious modders – and the same applies to games anyway – there’s nothing in principle to stop a game developer from putting malicious functionality in their work.

But there was an incident earlier this year where a modder did include malicious code in a Cities: Skylines mod. It was trivial – it just interfered with other mods as part of some sort of community drama, it wasn’t ransomware or anything. It was spotted within days. And it only affected about fifty people. But it did happen. (A few months later we got an email from a security researcher pointing this out.)



So from the beginning of next year, we’re making it slightly harder to enable DLL mods. All you’ll need to do is install a gatekeeper mod, Ghirbi, and all Ghirbi does is show you a notice making you aware of the theoretical risk. This is basically the same as making the user tick a box to say ‘I am OK with this’ – but most people tick most checkboxes without reading the notice, especially when they’re playing games.

[You won’t need to download or install Ghirbi to use DLL mods until after our next patch, NEMESIA, but you can install him now to save hassle. If you don’t use Steam, you can download Ghirbi here.]

Honestly I think the risk here isn’t traffic-accident low, it’s hit-by-a-meteorite low. But if someone was hit by a meteorite because they’d installed our game, then even if it was a bizarre accident, we’d feel bad about it. So we’re adding a meteorite warning it’s impossible to ignore. Happy Christmas.