The Tenants - Patch 0.8e

General

- Fixed being able to sample and buy furniture even when you couldn't afford it.
- Fixed an issue with the boat being available for purchase before completing the first Elite Contract.
- Fixed an issue with auctions sometimes failing after being completed.
- Fixed incorrect Workshop floor mapping in one of the Suburbs properties.
- Fixed an issue with the two piles of garbage stacked on each other in one of the Suburbs properties.
- Fixed a couple issues with the cockroach event tutorial hard locking the game.
- Fixed two jobs that required non-workshop type floors in workshop type rooms.
- Fixed an issue with ghost UI markers in some tenant events.
- Fixed a host of issues in the new tenant events related to starting and ending them.
- Fixed an issue with the proximity bonus detection range calculation sometimes being incorrect.
- Tweaked one of the speakers to be placeable on various surfaces and not only on the floor.

Balance

- Cleaned up tax behavior with auctions. Apartment sales will not count towards taxable income anymore to avoid double taxation. All apartment transactions after selling are now grouped together and carried over to maintain finance history integrity.
- Slightly increased profit margins for sell auctions.

v1.31

Patch notes:
-Adjusted bad endings
-Savegames will NOT break.

More explicitly:
We created a small update to the game today. Choosing a "bad" ending no longer results in an instant game over. The game will auto-load an autosave which takes you back to before the Big Decision and let you try again.

This "game over" has been in the game for almost four years, so why change it now? I shall explain, although be warned the explaination is a tiny bit spoilery.

A large number of players went into the "bad endings" without realizing that they could make a different choice, and got understandably angry and upset when horrible things happened to their character. This is a definite design fail on my part, and after long deliberation I have decided to rectify it. If you encountered one of these endings and assumed it was canon, then I can only apologize and say it wasn't my intention. Thanks!

-Dave et al

4.003 A Bit Too Chromatic Horrifying
New build! [url=https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.003_A_Bit_Too_Chromatic_Horrifying]https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.003_A_Bit_Too_Chromatic_Horrifying[/url]

More bugfixes, in the main, and some more progress towards having minor faction beacons again (but this time with better performance and more features, and mod-friendly, and etc).

This version also includes an option for the Chromatic Horror that prevents it from scrambling your buildings and turrets around; that kind of takes the whole point of the Horror out of that guy, and may make the game much easier in general, but the Chromatic Horror is definitely a rage-generating machine when it wanders into your territory, so Badger took pity. I was a bit more inclined to leave it, since it's doing what it says on the tin, but I wasn't trying to be meanspirited about it. I think it's a valid option to have, because sometimes you don't realize just how disruptive it's going to be if it takes a long time to wander your way.

Bugfix-wise, there's several good ones for multiplayer, plus a number of ones for multi-AI scenarios, plus some general exception dampening.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

4.002 Macrophage Live!
New build! [url=https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.002_Macrophage_Live.21]https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.002_Macrophage_Live.21[/url]

This one is on the main branch and the beta branch. If you have any issues, you can always go back to most_recent_stable, or most_recent_stable_beta to get the prior build.

The macrophage have been essentially braindead on the beta branch since September, and nobody noticed it until we came out of beta. Poor unpopular phages! They are all fixed back up now, so that's nice.

There are a number of various bugfixes in this one, and one of those is related to how gamecommands were seemingly getting corrupted on MP clients some of the time. The fix to the flicker in the hacking sidebar items is also really nice.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

4.001 Autobuild Automation
New build! [url=https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.001_Autobuild_Automation]https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:The_Final_Cycle#4.001_Autobuild_Automation[/url]

This one is on the main branch and the beta branch. If you have any issues, you can always go back to most_recent_stable, or most_recent_stable_beta to get the prior build.

This one has a number of bugfixes that came up over the weekend (it's inevitable with such a larger group of players coming in, much as we try to avoid that issue).

This also includes automation options for the automation game settings thanks to NR SirLimbo. Basically, any mod can now much more easily add settings to auto-build units of specific types at planets without having to go in and add special code for each one.

Marauders now use a lot fewer drones, but their drones are more powerful, so they should perform better and still be just as powerful. Big thanks to CRCGamer for getting those worked out.

Lots of new DLC3 things to test and play with thanks to Badger and StarKelp in particular.

The Macrophage Histiocytes mod by StarKelp is also back in action, which is exciting to see!

I wound up creating a lot of the framework today that is required for getting beacon factions back into the game (the old way those worked was super inefficient and not extensible, so I had to take those out during the refactor, and it's been on my todo list to add them back in in a better way that can work with any faction without custom code; in the meantime we have the new roguelike features in the base game, like random faction additions). This was in service of a fix to nomad galaxy having a few issues if you didn't already have nomads directly added, but it wound up doing double duty for getting through the trickier half of the beacon code.

Several other bugs were also fixed, among the various other tweaks and typo fixes.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

Hello, Detectives!

We're happy to announce that the latest characters have log-in to the gamedecverse. Unveil the story once again; you can now play as Izmael Krostov, a veteran mariner with vast technical knowledge, or Dafne Bennet, who's fascinated with strange worlds. Each character has her own unique story, immersing themselves in the Gamedec world with unique attributes.

https://www.gog.com/game/gamedec_izmael_krostov_new_character

https://www.gog.com/game/gamedec_dafne_bennet_new_character

Let's move to the bug fixing part. the latest Hotfix 1.4.2 is also live in the stores. Along with all the slightest changes, we're adding the option you've asked for – A second dialogue layout. Since today you can choose whether you wish to have a Dialogue List or Dialogue Wheel. We can guarantee that this isn't the latest word from us. The next update with major changes is currently warming up in the starting box. We can't wait to release it in the upcoming weeks, finally!

All the minor changes you can find below are separated between the locations where you reported the issues. Please join the existing threads on the forum or create a new one if you have any thoughts.

Hotfix 1.4.2 Changelist:

General:

- The second dialogue widget layout was added: Dialogue List (visible on a screenshot above)
- Fixed a misspelled button's name in the tutorial
- Fixed one of the Options - "Interaction Size" is now properly assigned and less confusing
- The 4: 3 resolution is now supported by letterboxing, which improved overall UI appearance in this resolution
- Text scaling options were improved
- The list in Save Menu was improved – the automatical order of saves was improved
- Dialogue tooltips were improved
- Buttons 1, 3, Q, and E are switching tabs in Codex again
- The double loading of Credits was fixed
- Mashing the "Save" button won't create multiple saves anymore
- Issues with the game crashing after attempting to load a save or start a new game were fixed
- Font in Deduction, Codex, and Professions was improved – it's clearer and works better with scaling options
- It won't be possible to buy twice the V-Ghost program
- Some typos and misspelled gender tags and links were fixed
- Footsteps sounds were fixed
- The achievements descriptions were improved. The Traditional Chinese descriptions were added
- New pop-ups about saving the progress were added

Like Father Like Son:

- The voice mail now has some visual feedback when interacting to
- Valedictorian Achievement will now again appear as it should be
- Loading an older save shouldn't crash the game in the Theatre anymore
- The quest with Bob and Rhonda was improved
- Deduction in the Street was improved
- The Unicorn won't have a unicorn avatar after becoming a human
- Bliss's sounds were added
- The minigame with the floppy disc was fixed
- Gamedec won't spawn out of the Theatre after re-loading a save made in it
- Gamedec won't go through Rhonda's model anymore
- Ken won't be able to go into the Theatre with Gamedec anymore

Harvest Time:

- All avatars of Ken were improved to match his current appearance depending on a moment in the case
- The issue with the Cow quest not ending satisfyingly was fixed
- Gamedec will now go back to the apartment at the end of the case if this option is chosen
- End case dialogue with Ken was improved
- Wild Poppy won't get stuck in the City after interacting with the Chapel
- The fence will appear on the Farm if it's bought
- Saving game on the Farm was improved

Fallen Hero:

- The issue with the game crashing after approximately 15 minutes in the Bar was fixed
- Completing a quest from the Trolls will now give access to the top floor
- Cam Grozny's subquest will now appear under the right main quest
- The changed posters will remain after re-loading the game
- Cohh won't sink in his chair anymore

Knight’s Code:

- The Eagle's behavior events after the interaction was improved
- The Quest Log in the Jail was fixed. It now shows the correct amount of bells
- "Pick up the stone" dialogue option won't be multiplied anymore
- An additional NPC will now appear when talking to Eagle
- Some general audio improvements were made
- The Jail minigame now works better with a gamepad
- Umbra won't go away while talking to Gamedec anymore
- Collision near Lord's house was fixed
- The inventory on UI was improved

Axis Mundi:

- The issue with blocking the game after interacting with Jester on his platform was fixed
- General sound improvements were made
- Gamedec won't comment as if he had visited the other platforms when he's on the first one anymore
- The computer won't have tree's interaction anymore
- Saving the game on the bridge won't cause a blocker anymore
- Codebreaker won't appear in the NPC's body anymore
- Jester won't appear in the Gamedec's body anymore
- Handy Joe won't be described as Wild Poppy anymore

Paradise Lost:

- The game won't be blocked anymore after choosing to kill a certain character
- Dialogue options in conversation with Gallo Maar won't be multiplied anymore

Have a great day!

Team Gamedec

Update 1.200.5 - first major update of 2022

CHANGES
ADDED: Two new additional world maps: Sierra and Wrapped island
ADDED: New 4 buildings: Prison, Embassy, Farm center and Tax office
ADDED: New 5 decorations; Squares and Courtyards
ADDED: New Tower bridge object
ADDED: New iron fence object
ADDED: New system to place and expand plazas
ADDED: New 3 visual types of plazas
ADDED: New 4 professions for workers: Prison guard, Ambassador, Agriculturist and Taxer
ADDED: New in options menu: atmospheric effect. You can now enable/disable weather effects
ADDED: New graphics for main menu and loading screen
UPDATED: Another batch of optimizations with various calculations
FIXED: Resolved numerous smaller technical issues

Have fun!

The Tenants - Patch 0.8f (Trashing disabled!)

Hey there, Landlords!

Due to popular demand we've decided to temporarily disable the tenants trashing feature until we rework the system in a way that is enjoyable for players, instead of plainly frustrating.

General

- Disabled trashing altogether until the system's rework.
- Fixed an issue with room detection in the Baron's Mansion two-room job.

Hotfix v1.07

Hi!

We just released a new hotfix.

We had a recurring issue in multiplayer. Joining a server that is already in progress would result in the joining player never starting to see the spawns.

Now when a player joins a server that is already in progress, we force that player's spawns to activate on their own after a fixed number of seconds. This completely solves the issue for the rest of the match.

Other changes:

- Adjusted the bullet shooting origin point's rotation on Engineer classes when they have no weapon equipped, because we noticed that on multiplayer their bullets would sometimes go higher than they were being aimed.

Now it is always aiming forward from the pistol instead of rotating with the rest of the animation, which prevents this deviation. This adjustment is strictly done in the animation itself.

Hotfix v1.08

Hello!

New update is live.

Fixes:

- Achievement "PokerMan" has been fixed and should now unlock as soon as you get to a camp, as long as you have completed the card collection in that save;
- Killing bosses in multiplayer matches will now also trigger the specific boss killing achievements;
- Finishing the single player Story mode and continuing to play will now also trigger the "Is Anyone Out There?" achievement since the game mode automatically changes to the Wastelands;
- "Master of Cards" achievement will now trigger on any card game, and not just the first card game encounter in the Story mode.

0.473.4 - Crowning Achievement

The game can now detect corrupted offline achievement storage file and will rebuild it when required. This fixes game crashes should the file got corrupted somehow.

4.004 Easy There, Hack Response
(Released March 10th, 2022)

Remove an unneeded game lobby setting from the Spire Infused Empire.

Adjusted the expert, logistician, and challenger tooltips to reflect the fact that reduced resources (for hacking) starts out on challenger mode, and corrected things to note that beacons are only unavailable starting on logistician mode.
Additionally, the lobby tooltip for Expert no longer mentions having many fronts you must defend, but logistician now does.
Thanks to Strategic Sage for requesting.

Added a new setting to the game section of personal settings: No Ironman
If a campaign would normally be ironman, this will force it to NOT be ironman. Great for testing, but does make any save that would normally be ironman flag itself as being in cheat mode (so no achievements, etc). In multiplayer, this only matters on the host.

When modules on a ship line are changed around, all the ships in that line are paralyzed for 10 seconds.
Thematically, this is them doing their retrofitting. Functionally, this hopefully removes any incentive to drive yourself crazy microing the modules on and off during battle.
Thanks to motai for suggesting.

The cheat code "I don't even see the code" can now be entered without the apostrophe, and optionally without the second parameter (it then just gives you 400 HaP). You can also use the command "hacking" for short.

The game now supports reading in custom fields as "true" or "false" and converting those into bool values as you would expect, versus before it freaked out in an inscrutable way if you didn't remember to say "0" or "1". Now if it freaks out, it also gives you clarity on why.
Add a corrosive guard post to DLC3

Hacking Response Tweaks
Hacking responses were incorrectly including a Fallen Spire component even when they should not. This was leading to drastically inflated hacking responses

Hacking estimates for hacks with a strong post-completion response could be undercounted if completing the hack would bump you up one response tier (ie from 'Very Easy' to 'Easy')

The hacking estimate should now include the Exo response strength (where appropriate)

With the Hacking Debug setting enabled, the hack tooltip will tell you a bunch of information about how the estimate ie generated. This is for debugging/development use only
Thanks to Strategic Sage for a bug report

Dire CPAs
Dire CPAs are now in the base game. It's a galaxy setting one enables in the galaxy lobby.
When enabled, every so often CPA Bunkers will be spawned on the map. When a CPA is launched the CPA bunkers will release extra ships to make CPAs even scarier.
This just makes the game more challenging, and is on by default for some of modes harder than HA.

The CPA announcement now includes the strength of the Dire CPA component (if any)
Thanks to Strategic Sage for suggesting this

Return Of Faction Beacons (The First Two, Anyway)
Beacon hacking returns! At the moment, it's just for the nanocaust, but that's simply because that's all the xml I have set up thus far.
This can be set up, using only xml, to work with any faction or combination of multiple factions, and you can give any number of options for hacking them. With the nanocaust, I have 18 different options set, with intensities 5-10 of hostile to all, hostile to player, and friendly to player as options. When it's friendly to player, it also has them spawn near to you. Each hacking option is a fixed set of faction options, but so it's not truly freeform, but it does not have to be decided in the lobby, which is really nice.
There's a ton more power here than in the old beacon system, but one of the biggest improvements is to performance. In the past, this was having to include the entire faction, but just turn it off, when it was present. This was a huge performance drain, and also when many beacon factions are eventually added as options, particularly in mods, it would literally not fit in savegames. The new approach adds no factions until you choose to hack to meet them, and thereby lets you control the amount of insanity that is involved.
I will be making some more changes tomorrow, and adding in more beacons and beacon factions, but this is an excellent starting spot.

The game now supports having beacon factions that are different mixes on different options in the beacon hacks. Because why not.

All of the old unused beacon faction code and xml is now fully removed, since it is no longer needed at all even for reference.

The Fallen Spire beacon has been added back into the game, but it only seeds if you don't already have fallen spire or a spire-infused player present. Also, just like the regular fallen spire, it requires a metal-using player to be present in order to seed (so solo necromancer empire can't pair up with it).

For beacon factions, added a new blocked_from_seeding_unless_all_of_these_factions_are_included, which allows you to specify a required list of factions that must be present in order for it to seed.
Thanks to StarKelp for requesting.

Bugfixes
The tooltips for ships now show a lot more details for any auto-targeting targets they have for each of their systems.
Additionally, it now shows which auto-targeting group they are a part of.
Thanks to Tim_Fragmagnet for a report that inspired us to have more information visible here.

The way that auto-targeting groups are calculated is now done centrally, and it's no longer possible for units to potentially get lost in the shuffle and not get auto-targeting orders.
Thanks to Tim_Fragmagnet for a report where this was probably what was happening.

The way that "incoming shots" are tracked on ships, which is used in overkill detection, has been improved a lot.
First of all, it's more efficient now, and tracked internally only, and has more granular cross-threading protection rather than allowing for a cross-threading error to interrupt the entire process.
Secondly, any incoming shot now times out after 10 game seconds, so nothing can get stuck in a "it's going to die because of incoming damage" state where enemy units won't fire on it. Not sure if this was happening, but it's possible, and now it should not be.
The "Show incoming-shot debug data in unit tooltips" debug setting has been removed, as the individual shots are no longer interesting to see in the same way.
The tooltips now show how much damage the ship is expected to take from incoming shots, or if there are incoming shots but no damage, then it also shows that.
It is likely this will fix some bugs, or it's possible it might just make things more clear if a bug in this area resurfaces.
Thanks to Tim_Fragmagnet for the related report.

Adjusted targeting logic so that if a unit is not fully claimed, but belongs to a player, it is now valid to be shot. Previously, some metal harvesters that were half-alive were not being shot further, which looked like a bug. Now they get pasted instantly.
Thanks to Tim_Fragmagnet for reporting.

Fixed three more sets of tooltip errors that could happen right when units were dying.
Thanks to Lord Of Nothing for reporting.

The "bonus for sitting on a planet for a while" tooltip text was cut off and had some other oddities.
When this is a ship owned by nobody, it now just tells you about it in the abstract, as if you were not looking at a specific ship (so, if you capture this, here's how it would work).
When it's a ship owned by an NPC, it doesn't show this at all.
If this is not showing the first half of the sentence, it makes sure not to write the last half of the sentence (such as with cloaked flagships).
Thanks to Zer0h1nder and Strategic Sage for reporting.

In the event that a wave timer would be negative or zero (aka, it thinks the wave should already have landed, but it has not yet), it now says "SOON" on the notification, and "any second now... but the exact timing may be a surprise" in the tooltip for it.
Usually waves will launch on time, but there are cases where the game is running the AI threads more slowly because of load, or the "only run every X seconds" logic is there anyway, and so the exact timing is just not actually exact in all cases.
It doesn't really make any sense to try to make the timing more exact, since this flexibility is one of the things that helps performance, and not knowing down to the second when a wave is going to arrive is mildly interesting anyhow. So now it's simply handled in a way that makes it not look like a bug.
Thanks to Daniexpert and NRSirLimbo for reporting.

The description of Showdown Devices now more correctly matches their behaviour

Put in error handling for CalculateMatchesOnBackgroundThread, since I ran into an exception on that background thread in the internal version for some reason.

Fixed an exception that could happen when getting the faction's internal display name after a fairly specific set of operations involving adding a faction and then going back to the menu and back into the game. Likely it was also triggerable by other circumstances, but it's hard to be sure.

Fixed a long-standing bug in the display of multipliers regarding Attack Bonus of type 'multiple_of' in R-view.
Big thanks to Daniexpert for this fix, and figuring out how to fix it!

Mod Updates
Update to More System Defenders. Now allows players to choose a version of the Stormfront Ark to lead their Ark Empire within that game mode.

More to come soon.
Enjoy!

Hot Fix

This hot fix comes with various bug fixes, further performance improvements and fixes a crash related to the car wash.

Stability

- Fixed a crash related to the Car Wash.

Bug Fixes

- Ordering over 1000 units of anything should now be possible (in some saves it was still prevented with the last fix).
- Loans will now correctly subtract money and remove popularity. Loans will also automatically be paid off if you have enough money when the load period ends, rather than causing penalties.
- Using RMB when dropping cargo/boxes from delivery trucks will now always correctly return the box to the truck and the truck driver will no longer drive away with your goods if you do this on the last box of the set.
- We've disabled the 'Lift Car' button during the initial tutorial 'Fix the Car' quest, and enabled ordering of car parts on this quest already. The reason for this change is that players were getting stuck on this quest when they threw away the parts or failed to repair a car fully until they ran out of parts. This change should significantly decrease any chance of getting locked out of progress.

Performance

- We've optimized NPCs so they use less resources when idling. Further optimizations have been made to parked cars as well. At higher gas station levels the measured performance increase should be between 10-20% with recommended hardware or above.
We're continuing to look at further optimizations on both CPU and GPU.
- If you are noticing your performance dropping while washing cars, you can reduce the 'Effects' settings in Graphics Options to reduce the amount of particles that are being spawned and thus improve performance significantly.