Hardcore difficulty patch

This game update to version 1.0.5.15 fixes the issue of the Continue button disappearing when you exited the game on the Hardcore difficulty level.

More updates coming soon.

Thank you for your continuous support for Project Warlock! Please leave a review if you enjoyed the game - it really helps us get more visibility.

Version 1.1.5.10

Items
• Added Waist Pack and Large Wait Pack (belts)
• Added a new unique knife
• Added a new pair of unique boots
• Added new damage reducing drug
• [Expedition] Added Javelin, a non-unique early mid-game spear that's good for throwing
• [Expedition] Added a new unique sword

Tweaks
• Added support for 2880 x 1800 resolution
• [Expedition] Oddity requirement for veteran levels will now be rounded down to an even number, because oddity XP bar doesn't support odd numbers; this will result in ever so slightly faster leveling

Bugs
• Blast cloth will now work against explosive ammo's explosion
• You can no longer set UI to large on 1152x864 resolution (it won't fit)
• Fixed a rare dialog text wrapping bug
• All grenade and mine case blueprints are not classified as "intermediate"
• Dehumanizer properly classified as serrated knife instead of dagger
• Fixed the bug with certain wicked device applying your current weapon on hit effects
• Fixed a certain collar not being collected from dead Arena enemies at the end of a match
• Fixed not being able to tell the Faceless near Foundry about a certain group of people if you took the Phreak route in Core City
• Fixed Coretech PNT1 (damaged) device not getting removed fron NPC's inventory upon getting repaired
• Fixed several mutated dogs found in random location from indefinitely respawning
• Fixed ♥♥♥*****'s re**** logic to prevent him from getting stuck upon res****
• [Expedition] Fixed mutants in some dude's home not taking proper cold damage when the gas is released
• [Expedition] Future Orientation and Psychokinetic Elasticity feats now require you to have Psi Empathy feat first
• [Expedition] Fixed Small Crab loot table
• [Expedition] Fear immunity no longer blocks cerebral acidization
• [Expedition] Fixed being able to get a reward for finding naval mines from both Aegis and Grim Jetters
• [Expedition] Fixed not being able to bring Todd to Port Ceto in some circumstances
• [Expedition] Fixed some missing options when talking to Six about the shard
• Minor dialog/zone fixes

Howdy survivors, this time we’ll bring you a juicy maintenance patch with several bug fixes and a tiny (but also amazing) surprise! To find out what it is, read the changelog below!

As always, thank you for the amazing support and don’t hesitate to contact us if you come across bugs, errors or if you just want to keep feedback in general. We are always happy to hear from you.

Added
• Missions: Added more specific descriptions for the trading mission confirmation buttons.
• Missions: Added optional trading missions that can use Prosperity specific resources for players who own both Prosperity & Distant places.

Fixed
• General: Seeds: Fixed wrong scaling of melon seeds on fields. They are not behaving like balloons anymore.
• Expeditions: Global Expeditions: The wall part of the tower will now blend out correctly in scene 3 of the expedition leading north.

Tweaked
• Missions: Lem’s missions now also play their intro text first, so it is streamlined with all other trading missions.
• Expeditions: Global Expeditions: Relevant scene elements are now visually blent out when going back and forth between dialogues.

Added
• Environment: Birds: Added bird swarms to the map for a more vivid environment, enjoy! The occurrence and amount of birds can be adjusted in the main menu options. Option “Many” is chosen by default.

Fixed
• Buildings: Cemeteries will now properly dispose of settler corpses.
• Buildings: Empty ruins without any scrap left are now correctly removed/ deconstructed by the scrapyard.
• Settlers: Fixed dead bodies lying around underneath the terrain.
• Settlers: Settler Profession allocation is more stable now
• Buildings: Upon cancellation of building upgrade the allocated construction resources will now be available
• Buildings: Fixed construction sites not being build during raider attacks
• Settlers: Fixed possible error while demolishing a building
• Savegames: Implemented error message for missing disc space when saving a game
• Settlers: Fixed a bug that could result in settlers wearing and using the wrong equipment visually.

Tweaked
• General: Glossary: Removed old/wrong fertility image.

- Your Team from Gentlymad & Assemble Entertainment

New Features

• Points spent on the skill tree can now be refunded. Restart points can be earned by defeating bosses!
• New Game Plus is now available! Make your own custom difficulty and choose your starting skills!

Enemies

• Abyssal Hunter - fixed the enemy not being aware of the player while behind cover.

Weapons

• Worm Nest - enemy tracking improvements.
• Des Goules and upgrade - reduced beam visibility when aiming at distant objects or into the sky.

Skills

• Decreased cooldowns for most skills.
• Berserk - fixed being able to switch weapons while active by upgrading weapons in the skill tree.

Levels

• Factory - second shortcut elevator is no longer blocked when the game loads.

General Tweaks and Fixes

• Fixed enemies blocking other enemies from getting hurt by explosives.
• Fixed level completion timer sometimes not being accurate.
• Fixed player being able to select two buttons by using mouse and keyboard arrows at the same time.
• Entering the skill tree with the shooting button pressed no longer causes the game to shoot indefinitely until the shooting button is pressed again.
• While using basic weapon sets in level selection, players started with skill points but not with level, now it will start with both.
• Slow mo skill affected liquidators even when not used.

• Fixed bug where player would lose challenge progress on death. Dying after progressing in a challenge that was started since the last checkpoint will now display correct progress in the inventory after respawning.
• Fixed bug where wrong string would be displayed in the hero mode death screen.

LONG OVERDUE; THE BIG UPDATE YOU DESERVE

6.3 GB - RECOMPRESSED JUST FOR YOU

OKAY BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Compression is a big part of ever day computing. Images take up large amounts of memory and disk space, so we use compression techniques to store them when they're not being viewed. For example ".png" and ".jpg" are ways to store much larger information, just packed up neatly.
Particularly 2D games like Broken Sword 5, will contain tons of large graphical data and audio files that would take up obscene amounts of space without compression. To us i's important to keep an eye on the latest techniques and pass on those benefits to all of you!

FUN FACTS SIDEBAR:

Back when we finalised the frame of Broken Sword 5 the method of compression we used for such big files was z-lib, which is an industry standard super stable and quick default compression technique.
But then (dramatic music) a contender, a lone ranger, a rouge, open-source Zstandard appeared!!!

FILE SIZE REDUCED BY 10%

On mobile, as you might know, Broken Sword 5 was split into 2 parts.
And even then both parts are still MASSIVE!!! Especially for phones...
So we're always looking at the development of reliable compression, and Zstandard was used in our most recent overhaul-update of Broken Sword 5 on the Google Play Store. It's only fair that Steam should reap the benefits too. Therefore Broken Sword 5 now takes up 10% less hard drive space than it used to!

NATIVE APPLE SILICON SUPPORT

Apple have released their own CPUs known as Apple Silicon, or M1 chips.
This means Broken Sword 5 will now run natively rather than emulated!
It might not feel much different to you, but your Mac is LOVING this efficiency, and who knows, there might be a few more minutes of battery life in it for you too!
We felt like you deserved a little treat.

IMPROVED FULL SCREEN SUPPORT

There were a two things we felt the need to improve on in this matter:

SWITCHING BETWEEN FULL SCREEN AND WINDOWED MODE

Broken Sword 5 comes packaged with 2 completely different asset resolutions: 1080p (Full HD) and 720p (Regular HD). Which assets are displayed depends on the resolution of your monitor and whether or not you run the game in full screen, or windowed mode.
However when switching between full screen and windowed mode the game was previously allowed to switch between asset resolutions as well. This incurred a full tear down of the engine and a reload of ALL game assets. Not ideal!!! This resulted in the game going black and pausing for up to 10 seconds before displaying correctly. Imagine your computer just frantically recollecting every single asset like "Oh no, no. nonono I didn't know there was gonna be a test!?" while you get to stare into a black square! Many of you probably felt like the game was crashing - we don't blame you! But we do blame us!!!!!!!
When switching to windowed mode now, you get a single appropriate graphics solution.
So if your monitor is 1080p, the assets will remain in 1080p, even if displayed smaller in windowed mode.

WIDE-SCREEN MONITORS

When using wide-screen monitors some of you experienced cropping issues with the game.
We've now made sure more aspect ratios are supported so the game displays without any cropping or stretching issues! It will now utilize black bar spacers when needed.

BLACK BARS EXPLAINED

Sometimes the question comes up, and we think it's super interesting to talk about...
Broken Sword 5 is a 2D game; It contains tons of hand drawn artwork, and the characters while modelled in 3D, were processed and exported as 2D sprites. The actual game engine in Broken Sword 5 only ever deals with 2D assets! It's a true 2D point-and-click adventure. This was a stylistic choice, and combined the charm of a hand drawn game we wanted, with the character flexibility we needed.
In 3D games there is the luxury of assets in a scene with environment and geometry, and while it still takes a lot of work, the "camera" in this engine can be tweaked, and view ports can be altered to accommodate different aspect ratios.
But in 2D, there is no "bit to the side" - the art was made to fit the game exactly.
This leaves us (and other games in our position) with 3 options:

- cropping issues that can get players stuck
- big stretch to fit
- stop everything, fund a huge overhaul, re-do the whole game, work years to finish, find out a new ultra ultra wide monitor dropped, cry, rise, and repeat

* display black borders

MORE IN THE WORKS FOR OUR GAMES

We hope this sheds a little light onto how we make some of these decisions, and that it's not because we don't love you. We care so much about what you think and how you experience our games. Many of you reach out to us to tell us how much we changed your lives, well! You changed ours too!!
We think about your experiences all the time, and we really want you to feel appreciated, loved, and cared for.

Currently our plan is to look at our games all across the platforms they are currently on, and give them a spruce up, so if you're wondering if we're getting to the other games, we absolutely are.
Is there a timeline for that? Absolutely not! We don't want to overpromise. We're an indie studio with a tiny core team supporting our existing titles, which can mean that when things pop up it can affect our timeline. But the important part is that we want you to know it's happening, and we're actively, right now, working on it

Be vigilant, but stay kind.
Lots of love from all of us at Revolution

1.1.6 (19 June 2022)
- Exit to desktop button moved to a separate panel, has a red highlight and requires a confirmation to exit the game.
- A new popup will appear, that teaches you how to reset the current tool the first time you use the Copy Tool. Some players, even at 30+ levels didn't know, that they can right-click or press the east gamepad button for this. This will also appear for existing players, because I can't confirm if you already know about this (I didn't track resets before update).
- You can now open the options menu at the very beginning of the game (before intro credits) and in the tutorial at level 1.
- Fixed minor issue with keyboard/gamepad navigation in options.

1.1.7 (19 June 2022)
- Implemented a possible workaround for a bug, where on a very rare occasion you wouldn't be able to use the current tool until you open and close the options menu when playing on a gamepad. This simple bug has been haunting me for a long time. Only saw it on Twitch streams a few times, and today I saw it again.
- Fixed an issue, where the readability grid would be rendered over the tool indicators.

Pixelate setting

• Players can now play the game with the pixelated retro-style by going to Options>Filter and ticking Pixelate On.

New Filter settings

• The latest build contains 5 filters on Options>Filter>Filters, the above mentioned pixelate setting affects all the filters except "Green Boy".

Controller Support

• Added full controller support

Game balancing

• Slightly speeding up the rate of E3M5 boss' attacks.
• Increasing speed and the damage range of the skill "Icicle Burst" from E3M5 boss.

Bug Fixed

• Fixed bug that the previous weapon could not be stored by mouse scroll switching.

Build 0.0134
- Adjusted UI scale position for market history filter dropdown.
- Adjusted gate layout position for sector 94 Sea of Sorrows on campaign map.
- Adjusted station dock code for smoother performance and transition.
- Adjusted map editor code for better performance when saving map data to file.
- Adjusted keyboard zoom function for better usability and responsiveness.
- Fixed bug with Player created stations not saving to map file correctly.
- Fixed station bug with double creation on null object error.
- Fixed bug with map editor not properly retaining the warpgate scripting data when exporting map.
- Fixed Autodock with structure bug when upgrading to station from large energy gen.
- Added gate passkey for Archtelli - Sea of Sorrows gate in sector 74.
- Added gate passkey for Sea of Sorrows - Archtelli gate in sector 94.
- Added gate passkey for Allabentoris - Archon gate in sector 108.
- Added gate passkey for Archon - Allabentoris in sector 84.
- Added gate passkey for Alias Outpost - Janijo Lexa in sector 12.
- Added gate passkey for Janijo Lexa - Alias Outpost in sector 46.
- Added gate passkey for Vindicati - Forges of Mintar in sector 103.
- Added gate passkey for Forges of Mintar - Vindicati in sector 9.
- Added gate passkey for Zellis - Pindell in sector 27.
- Added gate passkey for Pindell - Zellis in sector 54.
- Added scripting files for gate key purchases for all above gate additions.
- Added ability for ESC key to close open windows before opening game options.
- Added game option to player_options.txt file allowing for Left Click camera drag.
- Added new structure layout for structure_gun_1.txt
- Added new structure layout for structure_gun_platform_1.txt

Full Patch Notes

Visual additions
- Refine the opening scenes (remove tilted characters)
- Refine camera animation in-game and in the Intro cinematic
- Add background horizontal swap on closeup camera on character change
- Refine the "Catch Etain" and remove risk chain bonus leftovers
- Improve the "Resist Berserk" visual scene setup
- Change the "Herd Escape" branch rewards to a new background location art
- Add Brian to the People Tab followers' insight visual scene

Visual fixes
- Fix "Choose Your Path" swapped backgrounds
- Fix the wrong background in the "Send Them Away or Let Them Stay" choice
- Fix legionnaire combat "Tree" Risk Chain character art
- Prevent missing character art due to non-existing weapon art

Audio additions
- Add missing voice-over lines to Act 1 scenes

UI additions
- Add tutorial “Click Control Button” and "Click Choice Percentage" reminders (triggered once per game launch on Paid Success, Low Success Chances, Control Drain)
- Refine the "Click Control" tooltips and tutorial texts
- Refine character pronouns in tooltips

UI Fixes
- Fix emotion overflow explanation
- Fix HP tooltip, so that HP regeneration corresponds with active game difficulty
- Fix Character Screen People Tab replay chapter renown values
- Fix People Tab NPC Face tooltip (use Story NPC names and NPC pronouns)
- Fix PC rank counting deceased or not yet introduced characters
- Fix Progress Modal Next Rank tooltip not filtering characters based on being already introduced and alive, and not using character story names
- Fix NPC screen motivation overflow after PC outranks them

Act 1 Story additions
- Refine "Abandon Hunt" choice effects in the "Deer Hunt" scene
- Refine the "Boast About the Deer Hunt" scene, rewarding the fifty strides shot
- Add enemies Insight "They have been subjugated recently"
- Add a non-violent option to the intimidate Morl by "Pretend to blow the alarm horn" branch
- make Morl "Out for Blood" if humiliated in combat (spit, slap)
- make Morl getting banished conditions more robust

Act 1 Story fixes
- Make the "Talk to Wid" scene in Chapter #1 more robust (fix loops)
- Fix the flow in the "Find Wid After You Wakeup" scene
- Fix the "Etain Is Coming" scene to filter out the options if the PC has no weapons
- Fix the game mentioning Raven's location even if the player didn’t learn it from the boy with the stone
- Fix the "Save Raven Cover Fire Only" risk chain not telling the game that you saved the girl
- Fix legacy lines mentioning Raven using bow and arrow instead of a slingshot
- Fix Raven's investigative scene "Let her think" loop
- Fix the "archer botched his shot" text in the "Etain's Life & Death check"
- Add missing stat effects in "Morl Banish" lines
- Fix "Kill Slaver Boy" aftermath choices affecting villagers even when they are not present
- Fix and update Chapter counting
- Fix quite a few typos

Act 1 End Rewards fixes
- Fix rewards increasing wrong attributes
- Fix rewards to precisely designate NPC's stat changes
- Add outfit Comfort stat to show up in Choice Effects

Combat fixes
- Fix the game not turning Combat off after knocking out Morl and choosing to "stand down"
- Fix the Risk Chain Bonus being set to zero in the combat "Flee" risk chain's last dice roll
- Make combat opponent switching more robust
- Fix NPC anger working in your favor in Speed PC vs. NPC combat attack checks
- Fix Morl's combat "Yield" scene line order mixup
- Fix the damage tooltip (PC hp bar floating text) to use correct character pronouns
- Fix the motivation penalty tooltip for NPC extra effort (close call defense)

Code fixes
- Fix Insight Boosting and Bonus Insight Experience and Renown Points
- Fix keyboard controls: "SHIFT + 1|2|3|4" boosts choices as intended
- Make the "Paid Success" code more robust
- Cap the FPS on game startup to avoid GPU fan noise

Localization prep
- Prepare tooltips for languages with character name declension

Balancing
- Rebalance 'the Strong' title

2.0 Update!

It's been quite a while, but am finally back with a major update to Factory Town!

Steam Deck & Gamepad Support

Factory Town can now has official gamepad support! Move around the menus with the D-Pad or left joystick, using shoulder buttons to jump left and right between menu regions or tabs. The world cursor can be controlled by moving the main camera (right joystick), or for more precise movement, navigated in single units with the D-Pad and shoulder triggers to change elevation. (This also works for keyboard users, with arrow keys + Page Up + Page Down.)

The main reason for adding this was so that the game could be played more comfortably on the Steam Deck. As a nice bonus, you can seamlessly switch between mouse mode & gamepad mode, so that Steam Deck users can use the touchscreen or right touchpad when they want to select something with a mouse click, but still use controller joysticks & D-Pad for other navigation purposes.

UI Rework

In order to allow effective menu navigation with a controller, many changes needed to be done to the UI. But a lot of these changes were also needed for better organization anyways.

The biggest change is the window that appears when you select an object. Previously, an overcrowded menu would appear in the bottom-right which also overlapped with the top-right menu showing inventory and various configuration options.

Now, the selected object's status menu is movable, re-sizeable, scrollable, and has tabs across the top to navigate different features. Tabbed groupings include production state, recipes, logic connections, inventory, upgrades, labels, water intake, etc. There's also dedicated buttons for rotation, context help, and object deletion, which previously were not included due to space constraints.

Fishery Changes

To prevent players from spamming Fisheries, they used a calculation that linked production speed to the number of connected water tiles. But that wound up being more convoluted than necessary, wasn't totally logical, and still allowed semi-arbitrary placement on any water tile. Fish tiles themselves confusingly didn't have much functionality for this building.

Now, Fisheries act more like other natural resource production buildings (i.e. farms, foresters, mines). For a Fishery to produce fish, it needs a Fish tile within its harvesting radius - just like a Farm needs a crop within harvesting radius. The Fishery will harvest fish from those tiles fairly rapidly, but the Fish tile can deplete. It will slowly regenerate, but players will need to have several fish tiles near a Fishery to sustain rapid production. Fortunately, the player can also place Fish tiles in the same way they can plant crop tiles, so it's possible to expand your fish production over time.

Linked water tiles will no longer have any effect in Fishery performance. However, more water tiles give you more places to place Fish, and placing new Fish tiles is relatively expensive (100 red coins), so it's in your interest to use naturally occurring Fish whenever possible and build near open water.

Legacy maps will contain Fisheries with no nearby Fish tiles, so to prevent immediate halting to production, the game scans for this scenario and automatically adds a few Fish tiles near these Fisheries.

Misc Improvements

- Added ability to adjust Steam boosters (0-2) and Elemental Boosters (0-5)
- When issuing a command to a worker, item selection panel will appear over a storage building even if it has no items
- Selecting a Computational Block, then clicking on blank terrain, will de-select the computational block
- A building’s progress towards absorbing another unit of nearby water is saved with the game file, to prevent lost progress
- Reduced memory usage for natural resources
- The Pipette tool, when used repeatedly on the same block, will cycle between Farm Tile and the crop planted on it (same with Tree Planters and OmniPlanters)
- Player can use larger cursor sizes when placing Fish
- When a popup option list is shown, entire rest of screen is slightly greyed out to show focus. Clicking anywhere on the background will dismiss the popup menu.
- Connecting Computational Blocks now defaults to most common trigger & action types. Further edits can be made by selecting the Computational Block and editing the Inbound or Outbound links.
- If a recipe is unable to complete because output storage is full, the associated output item icon is flagged with red text (similar to how missing ingredients are flagged)
- Added more intuitive highlights on panel that allows workers to pick up specific items
- Changed caption for picking up items from 'deliver' to 'pick up'
- Player can specify transfer item at the destination, if they chose 'everything' at the source
- Changed ‘Exit to Desktop’ to ‘Quit’
- Got rid of Controls sidebar, as it is redundant with action button panel - all actions that previously required hotkeys are now visible buttons
- When planting crops, the cursor is no longer blocked by buildings
- Invert Camera X & Y are now in the Controls menu, not Interface. They can be set independently for controller vs keyboard/mouse control
- Improved display of terrain purchase button
- Controls menu now shows icons for controller buttons instead of a text label
- Can use Page Up / Page Down to change the height at which a pipe is being placed
- Added command “Alt Cursor: Reverse” (default: Shift+Tab) to cycle backwards through alternate cursor options (pipe axis, block type, etc)
- Increased opacity of Tutorial panel
- Improved reliability of issuing multiple commands to workers

Bug Fixes

- Infinite maps would display seams between terrain chunks (i.e. when file saved and re-loaded) due to not storing correct terrain generator settings within the file. Note: previously created maps will still have this bug, due to missing data. But newly created infinite maps will work correctly
- Workers would fail to find new harvest target in some cases after their initial target was depleted
- Fixed Work Units calculation displaying the wrong value for Workers (was including the Happiness + Global Production Bonus values, when they should have been split out separately)
- ‘No Path’ alert was not shown for Grabbers that were missing a Chute or Belt path, if there was some other path type under the Grabber block
- Clicking the ‘Randomize’ button when editing map seed would not fully update seed display
- Fixed hangs/crashes resulting from logic connections missing a target
- Splitters with Overflow setting will no longer output items for a direction with a specified output ratio of zero
- Fixed campaign maps loading with non-localized / non-standardized names for Trading Post recipes
- Fixed extraneous buildings being highlighted as possible targets when specifying worker dropoff behavior
- When moving multiple items, the cursor icon now shows inventory bag instead of the arrow historically used for ‘move’ commands
- Fixed unexpected Research Menu scrolling when research completed
- Fixed some erroneous labels for the biome generation terrain types
- Players unable to assign worker harvesting tasks by highlighting depleted (but growing) crops & fish
- Buildings with many items to Pick Up would have its item targeting UI overlap the Drop Off items section
- Fixed incorrect text resizing on recipe selection buttons
- Fixed water clipping through bottom of boat
- Fixed production buildings not displaying linked resources if they were also linked to a Town
- Copy/paste on rail stops was not causing the copied item filter to be effectively applied immediately
- Priority Sorter was not showing its icon on the 2D underground views