v0.21 - Evil Cult [3/5?]

TLDR:

• You can now buy equipment and trail skills for followers in BazaarNet

• Six new combat profane ordeals and combat missions targeted for "me and my cultist buddies" party

• Two new communal ordeals to lower region alertness and group interference

• New area generators/tilesets for sewers and underground lab with colored lighting and shadows

• Targeting mode and commands for your cultists

• AI rework for enemy pursuit, spawning

Greetings. This update took about three weeks more than I intended because of this: Steam post imageSteam post image

Yes, the game now has colored lighting and simple, but effective shadows (that took me three tries to get right). Not only that, but the walls in these two areas are different tiles with decoration, and not single tile repeats like before. The additions to the mood are undeniable so, of course, I'd like to upgrade the game's visual look to that point in all locations. How long will that take, I've no idea but hopefully, this will happen before the ever-closer release.

Moving on, the main goal of the update was to finish level 1 cult work with combat missions. There are now six of them, each unique in some neat little way. They are intended for a full "party" of cultists, not solo murderhoboing. Playtesting quickly revealed two things: that basic cultists aren't much in the way of combat and die quite fast, and moreover can't be controlled. To mitigate that, there is now targeting in the game. You enter targeting mode by pressing T (or selecting the action menu option), then pick target with arrow keys. When target is set, you can command your followers to focus attacks on that target while you stay safe in the distance.

The second large thing that was added is called BazaarNet (I wonder if anyone gets the reference, hehe). Here you can purchase all sorts of equipment for your cultists and train them in skills using cult resources. To streamline this task, there are three inventory slots for each one: melee weapon, ranged weapon and armor. Note that better weapons will not only require money, but combat resources to purchase. When the cultist gains a weapon, they can be trained in its use by spending more money. Fully equipped and trained cultists hold themselves well against most mission targets. Excluding blackops but, strictly speaking, they're not mission targets. During the playtesting, I've noticed that even a level 1 team wipes the summoned help pretty thoroughly (usually 2 out of 4 agents are left standing). I guess we'll have to make some fortifications and add body organs, hmm? Enemy cults will attack the base (which is what habitat will be) so some additional habitat growths will have to be devised.

One important note before we into other things. It turns out, the game had a serious bug where saving and then loading the game removed the armor from inventory. This wasn't obvious before because getting the armor was impossible for players (armor improvement doesn't have this problem) but now fully armored cultists were dying real fast and I noticed the problem in the extended info logs. I fixed this.

Someone reported a bug that cops were beelining towards the player after killing thugs, so I investigated. It turns out the logic was simple: when picking new targets, AI didn't take LOS and AI vision distance into account (I think I did that because otherwise all combat tended to break suddenly including cultists). So this started a full rework of that part. Now these rules are taken into account so you can pretty safely watch combat from a distance. If aggressive AI sees the player and then loses them, they will move to last seen spot and start patrolling for some time before calming down. Please tell me if it makes evading the law and street ambushers TOO easy (we wouldn't want that, do we?). Law spawning was reworked too so they won't spawn in the middle of the street now.

Since habitat now uses new sewers tileset which has stairs exits, I've modified the ambush rules as well. Firstly, now you have to exit habitats via exits. Secondly, the ambush "three turns before you can leave" timer is now gone in new habitats (it was there because you can leave from any point in old habitats). You can leave immediately once you get to the exit. Except for the ambushers that spawn on it, hehe. Not to worry, all habitats will have two exits so you might be lucky. AI was also taught to hate cultists in habitats so summons can help. But I repeat, even level 1 team has awesome firepower to deal with them. Again, please give me some feedback with this behavior. I recall a pretty long discussion about the previous state, and technically, it's still not in the final intended phase of "base full of death traps, attack growths and patrolling cultists".

Okay, now it's time to see about level 2 cults. But feel free to read the full changelog below, there's plenty more there 👇

Full changelog:

• ai: AI combat abilities (some of the combat mission targets are now basic AI + separate special combat ability. have fun)

• ai: Illiterate trait. Thugs can be illiterate (cannot read documents).

• AddedaiMultiple effects icon (check out the effects in new AI tooltip)
• AddedaiNew AI logic for enemy selection and pursuit:

• — On killing last enemy aggressive AI will look for new ones using AI vision rules (before that they magically knew where nearest enemy/player was)

• — If AI loses sight of the enemy, they will move to last seen spot and patrol the area for some time

• — "Searching" AI state will use a new red magnifier icon instead of alert exclamation mark

• — Relentless AI (blackops) will move into alert state after searching and stay like that. Normal aggressive AI will calm down and despawn

• AddedaiNew enemy for one of the missions. It's called - REDACTED - and it has a real nice ability to - REDACTED - everyone around it. Have fun.

• ai: Blood color for - REDACTED - and multiple colors of splats: red, black, yellow and green.

• area:

  • REDACTED
  • object for sewers combat mission

• area: Dropped objects or bodies will block doors closing

• area: Enemy list propagation - all law will hate AI who attacks any law, same with cult followers

• area: Large double doors, elevator and large 2x3 - REDACTED - objects for underground lab

• area: Large weapons are now visible to AI which results in faster alerts

• area: Some doors will now block LOS when closed (these large double ones). Refactoring and caching canSeeThrough tile values

• area: Splats won't spawn on doors

• area: Summoned cultists and law backup will now spawn on nearest exit (stairs or eleavator in corpo areas)

• area: isWalkable flag for tileset decoration layers

• area: isWalkable() API to make some objects unpassable (before that I used a special unpassable tile underneath which made me have two floor tiles in labs and corpo offices - passable and unpassable). Refactoring to have isWalkable tile values cache

• AddedareaNew habitat rules:

• — Now uses sewers generator with sewers exits

• — Player can only leave via exit now

• — Blackops ambushers and summoned cultists will spawn near the exits in habitat

• — New style habitats do not have a "cannot leave" timer rule during ambush but player has to get to the exit

• — All cultists that ambushers see will be added to their enemy list

• — Old habitats are unchanged and ambush/leaving rules are the same

• art/generator: Underground lab tileset and generator

• art:

  • REDACTED
  • icons for target AI in sewers mission

• chat: Analyze in chat will now state target job and job level if psychology is high enough

• RemovedcultAll cult actions are disabled in mission area except summoning

• cult: Anthropomancy will now have a guaranteed scenario goal reveal after some tries which cuts down late cult game in scenario A from "unpredictably long and boring" to "pretty short"

• cult: Bazaarnet UI for buying cultist equipment and training skills. better items require spending combat power in addition to money

• cult: Communal ordeal for group interference (same name, Group interference)

• cult: Communal ordeal to lower region awareness (Placate the realm)

• cult: Communal ordeals in UI will have price hints after the name

• cult: Follower command - attack, leave

• cult: Followers with large weapons will now alert other AI

• AddedcultGaining new follower will make their inventory known to player

• cult: Languages for mission targets

• cult: Mission targets are not allowed to call for help

• cult: Six combat profane ordeals and related combat missions

• cult: When followers are made to leave by command, they will look for nearest exit in interior locations

• Addedcultnew pedia articles

• debug: Hypothetical FPS/frame render time for region/area (dg command)

• AdjusteditemArmor value increased

• item: Curved knife and bleeding effect

• item: Smash drug and its effects (melee damage bonus).

• scene/generator: Sewers tileset and generator (used both for sewers mission and player habitat)

• scene/generator: multi-tile decoration objects for underground lab

• AddedsceneAdded particles for all organ projectiles: Gastrict hypersecretion, mucilagenous fluid and neurotoxin (acid, slime and needles)

• scene: Clamp camera on map edges in area, region modes

• AddedsceneDynamic colored lighting with shadows (currently supported in the new sewers and underground lab areas)

• scene: Huge decoration refactoring:

• — Street debris moved into new "tile decoration" array so as not interfere with area objects.

• — Debris/splats and other decoration can now cross tile boundaries to look more natural.

• — Tile rendering now has two passes: tile, then decoration

• — Decoration in saves is stored more efficiently reducing the save game size (2.8mb instead of 10mb in test playthroughs)

• — Tile IDs in saves are now RLE-encoded

• scene: Wall and floor decoration support in tilesets

• scene: Will now show full room in interior areas when player enters it

• ui: AI info tooltip window (press and hold CTRL, the mouse cursor changes to magnifier, move mouse on top of AI to see what you know about it. Useful for examining multiple effects)

• ui: Attack target keyboard shortcut (A)

• ui: Difficulty selection buttons are colored now

• ui: Targeting mode (T) with keys or mouse to pick a target for shooting/organ projectiles/melee/cultist commands

Bugfixes:

• IMPORTANT: ai: clothing fix (save and then load destroyed AI/host armor!)

• Check for evolution improvement duplicates on difficulty selection

• On loading the game go over all AIData/AI storage to get proper max AI ID to avoid duplicates (new cult members could have duplicate IDs with old ones)

• Rebirth fully reworked to fix related bugs

• area: Bodies will leave their inventory on the ground after despawn

• area: Bodies won't despawn when player sees them

• area: Exception on invading attached host under attack

• area: Law backup will try not to spawn in the air, instead opting for close out of sight tiles

• area: pathfinding fixes

• cult: Anthropomancy now works only in scenario A

• cult: Check for duplicate profane ordeals on creation

• cult: Could still leave mission area by some means

• cult: Exception when cult leader died in habitat

• cult: Followers no longer ignore LOS when attacking

• cult: Redraw HUD after finishing ordeal to update resources/money counts

• cult: Summoned cultists and mission targets will not count towards max area AI count

• generator: Fix for tables spawning near doors sometimes

• scene: Force redraw after loading game