Lovely day for it!  

We are back from our holidays, and back into the trenches. Did you play any amazing games over the break? Did you eat too much? We did!  

This is going to be an exciting year. Next week we will post our plans for 2017 (and a quick 2016 recap) so stay tuned. As a brief taster, we have some major announcements this year, several updates planned, we will finally begin talking about the narrative, but we want to caution that it won’t be about release dates. It will contain some discussion on timing, but we want to be clear that we won’t be announcing dates until they’re set in stone.  

In the meantime, here is our journal for this first week back.


Alex  

I am not very good at vacations. Writing is more of a jones than a job; if I don’t do some sort of writing, I get cranky. Moreover, those long car rides are really great for banging around ideas and solving story problems. At least until we get off the Thruway and onto the unremitting horror that is route 17S.  

So I wrote a bunch of encounters out in the country.  

More importantly, I played the story map. That’s the instance of the game world in which there are characters that trigger cinematics.  

“Hah!” you say. “Pull the other one!” No, truly, there is a story version of the game. You could play it right now, except we won’t let you.  

It’s exciting when you not only have loot to find, but story to find. Even if you wrote the story yourself.  

Today we had a lovely recording session with Tony Robinow, who voiced some creepy doctors you will regret meeting. When a line catches me off guard.  

Upcoming soon: recording sessions with Alex Wyndham; She Who Must Not Be Named; Simon Peacock; and probably Alice Kensington, though she may not know it yet.


Vincent

This week consisted in a lot of planning for every team, and animation is no exception! Huge heaps of work to do, so little time…


Guillaume

This week I’ve been finishing some props and started on a new secret location that I can’t unfortunately show you now.





Marc-André

Since the last weekly update, I’ve been working hard on crafting a special story location. I’ve spent most of the time working on environmental layout and lighting. Here is a small sample of my work.









Sarah

Happy New Year, Chickadees! If your holiday was anything like mine, then it probably involved a lot of over-indulgence, followed by the inevitable self-hatred and desperate pleading to any and all deities that might spare you from your own gluttonous misery. Such was the perfect mind-set for making an illustration that I'm now told is too spoiler ridden for this update. Sorry, chaps. Please instead be satisfied with this in progress drawing of an anthropomorphic bar of soap flossing his butt with a towel. A Clean Worker is a Keen Worker!




Adam

Happy New Year everybody. This week, I have been working on the “Church of Simon Says”. A gameshow where you are leading the charge, trying to get people to fail. Something goes horribly wrong towards the end, and mild shock turns into a nightmare.  

Thanks for tuning in!  

Compulsion Games

Lovely day for it!  

We are back from our holidays, and back into the trenches. Did you play any amazing games over the break? Did you eat too much? We did!  

This is going to be an exciting year. Next week we will post our plans for 2017 (and a quick 2016 recap) so stay tuned. As a brief taster, we have some major announcements this year, several updates planned, we will finally begin talking about the narrative, but we want to caution that it won’t be about release dates. It will contain some discussion on timing, but we want to be clear that we won’t be announcing dates until they’re set in stone.  

In the meantime, here is our journal for this first week back.


Alex  

I am not very good at vacations. Writing is more of a jones than a job; if I don’t do some sort of writing, I get cranky. Moreover, those long car rides are really great for banging around ideas and solving story problems. At least until we get off the Thruway and onto the unremitting horror that is route 17S.  

So I wrote a bunch of encounters out in the country.  

More importantly, I played the story map. That’s the instance of the game world in which there are characters that trigger cinematics.  

“Hah!” you say. “Pull the other one!” No, truly, there is a story version of the game. You could play it right now, except we won’t let you.  

It’s exciting when you not only have loot to find, but story to find. Even if you wrote the story yourself.  

Today we had a lovely recording session with Tony Robinow, who voiced some creepy doctors you will regret meeting. When a line catches me off guard.  

Upcoming soon: recording sessions with Alex Wyndham; She Who Must Not Be Named; Simon Peacock; and probably Alice Kensington, though she may not know it yet.


Vincent

This week consisted in a lot of planning for every team, and animation is no exception! Huge heaps of work to do, so little time…


Guillaume

This week I’ve been finishing some props and started on a new secret location that I can’t unfortunately show you now.





Marc-André

Since the last weekly update, I’ve been working hard on crafting a special story location. I’ve spent most of the time working on environmental layout and lighting. Here is a small sample of my work.









Sarah

Happy New Year, Chickadees! If your holiday was anything like mine, then it probably involved a lot of over-indulgence, followed by the inevitable self-hatred and desperate pleading to any and all deities that might spare you from your own gluttonous misery. Such was the perfect mind-set for making an illustration that I'm now told is too spoiler ridden for this update. Sorry, chaps. Please instead be satisfied with this in progress drawing of an anthropomorphic bar of soap flossing his butt with a towel. A Clean Worker is a Keen Worker!




Adam

Happy New Year everybody. This week, I have been working on the “Church of Simon Says”. A gameshow where you are leading the charge, trying to get people to fail. Something goes horribly wrong towards the end, and mild shock turns into a nightmare.  

Thanks for tuning in!  

Compulsion Games

Hey everyone,  

Wow, here we are, the final weekly journal of 2016! What a year it has been. We created a really weird and creepy booth at PAX East, debuted We Happy Few internationally at E3 and launched on Early Access a month later. Some of you have been with us since we first showed a demo of We Happy Few and some of you are new to the journey, but one thing is certain is that you guys are sticking by us through thick and thin and we couldn’t be more grateful.  

Yesterday we released a hotfix on PC for several crashes that were reported after the Clockwork Update. You can find the hotfix patch here. Thank you to everyone who submitted crashes and issues, and to our programmers and QA for working around the clock to get it done! If you are still getting crashes after the hotfix, you can send us your saved data to support@compulsiongames.com and we will look into the issue asap. We will also be updating on Xbox One once we’ve confirmed the hotfixes are stable.  

It’s also -25C outside in Montreal right now, so it’s definitely the winter season. Our nostril hairs are freezing, so it’s time to quieten down for a long awaited rest. So, this will be our last weekly update for 2016, and we will return on Jan 6 next year.


Adam

This has been a crazy busy week for me, but a very productive one. Some of my time has been spent working on secret stuff I can’t show yet. The other half has been spent working on communication efforts within the team. I have been breaking down future encounters into “work sheets” to make sure everybody can be updated easily about changes, requests, features, etc.



On top of that, I have finished my first draft of the Crafting breakdown. We have already noticed some surprising numbers of objects truly needed vs objects we find in the world, and it will help us go through a fairly large balance pass.  

Lastly… I had a tiny bit of downtime while waiting for some art to come in, so… I got a head start on an encounter I’ll be working on next year. Look forward to this one.




J.R., Mishka, Rémi and Vincent  

This week has been fun, it’s been a mix of a lot of different small--and less small--tasks. Rémi worked on the facial rigs for new NPC variants, such as merchants and Parade District residents.  

J.R. created animations for a new encounter near the train station, as well as a whole new conversation with the Bobby guarding the Parade District bridge.  

Mishka worked on a secret location, improving the conversation animations, and created new animation sets transitions for the Bobbies.  

Here is a video of Rémi and Vincent showcasing the new animations/behavior for the plagued wastrels. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlPs73bunl0&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z13cvxk4srfeebvil04cidiyqtfddryxj5s


Marc-André

This week I've been focusing on creating an old payphone and a new wooden trim modular set.





All of this modular set is mapped to a 1K tileable wooden trim texture, which is still in progress. This texture will be very useful in many situations.



This is an example of the texture, without wear and tear. Wear and tear is being sculped and is work in progress.



Sarah

We worked our frost bitten butts off on the last release, and we hope you guys like the improvements! This week I finished off the last of the painted pub signs, and made a lil' holiday illustration, commissioned by the community management team. I hope you find a warm place to spend the holiday season with the ones you love, see you next year!





Thanks for tuning in and happy holidays everyone, we will see you back in early January!  

Compulsion Team

Hey everyone,  

Wow, here we are, the final weekly journal of 2016! What a year it has been. We created a really weird and creepy booth at PAX East, debuted We Happy Few internationally at E3 and launched on Early Access a month later. Some of you have been with us since we first showed a demo of We Happy Few and some of you are new to the journey, but one thing is certain is that you guys are sticking by us through thick and thin and we couldn’t be more grateful.  

Yesterday we released a hotfix on PC for several crashes that were reported after the Clockwork Update. You can find the hotfix patch here. Thank you to everyone who submitted crashes and issues, and to our programmers and QA for working around the clock to get it done! If you are still getting crashes after the hotfix, you can send us your saved data to support@compulsiongames.com and we will look into the issue asap. We will also be updating on Xbox One once we’ve confirmed the hotfixes are stable.  

It’s also -25C outside in Montreal right now, so it’s definitely the winter season. Our nostril hairs are freezing, so it’s time to quieten down for a long awaited rest. So, this will be our last weekly update for 2016, and we will return on Jan 6 next year.


Adam

This has been a crazy busy week for me, but a very productive one. Some of my time has been spent working on secret stuff I can’t show yet. The other half has been spent working on communication efforts within the team. I have been breaking down future encounters into “work sheets” to make sure everybody can be updated easily about changes, requests, features, etc.



On top of that, I have finished my first draft of the Crafting breakdown. We have already noticed some surprising numbers of objects truly needed vs objects we find in the world, and it will help us go through a fairly large balance pass.  

Lastly… I had a tiny bit of downtime while waiting for some art to come in, so… I got a head start on an encounter I’ll be working on next year. Look forward to this one.




J.R., Mishka, Rémi and Vincent  

This week has been fun, it’s been a mix of a lot of different small--and less small--tasks. Rémi worked on the facial rigs for new NPC variants, such as merchants and Parade District residents.  

J.R. created animations for a new encounter near the train station, as well as a whole new conversation with the Bobby guarding the Parade District bridge.  

Mishka worked on a secret location, improving the conversation animations, and created new animation sets transitions for the Bobbies.  

Here is a video of Rémi and Vincent showcasing the new animations/behavior for the plagued wastrels. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlPs73bunl0&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z13cvxk4srfeebvil04cidiyqtfddryxj5s


Marc-André

This week I've been focusing on creating an old payphone and a new wooden trim modular set.





All of this modular set is mapped to a 1K tileable wooden trim texture, which is still in progress. This texture will be very useful in many situations.



This is an example of the texture, without wear and tear. Wear and tear is being sculped and is work in progress.



Sarah

We worked our frost bitten butts off on the last release, and we hope you guys like the improvements! This week I finished off the last of the painted pub signs, and made a lil' holiday illustration, commissioned by the community management team. I hope you find a warm place to spend the holiday season with the ones you love, see you next year!





Thanks for tuning in and happy holidays everyone, we will see you back in early January!  

Compulsion Team

We just pushed out a hotfix that addresses some of the more glaring and frequently reported issues.

• Fix crash when consuming items while inventory is full.
• Fix crash when respawning a second time with permadeath off.
• Fix crash when accessing resolution list on certain multi-GPU configurations.
• Fix crash when starting game on certain Steam installations.
• Fix game mode information (Day & Time, Permadeath, Second Wind, Map status) getting reset on continue.
• Fix player getting stuck in conversation mode when loading if on the diary step of "If You Give a Pig a Pancake".
• Fix ghost not moving during "Walkabout".
• Improve pathfinding of hostile wastrels near "Where's the Power".
• Fix rare crash in video decoding.
• Fix rare crash when carrying corpses.
• Fix attempt for rare issue where terrain is invisible when continuing.

We just pushed out a hotfix that addresses some of the more glaring and frequently reported issues.

• Fix crash when consuming items while inventory is full.
• Fix crash when respawning a second time with permadeath off.
• Fix crash when accessing resolution list on certain multi-GPU configurations.
• Fix crash when starting game on certain Steam installations.
• Fix game mode information (Day & Time, Permadeath, Second Wind, Map status) getting reset on continue.
• Fix player getting stuck in conversation mode when loading if on the diary step of "If You Give a Pig a Pancake".
• Fix ghost not moving during "Walkabout".
• Improve pathfinding of hostile wastrels near "Where's the Power".
• Fix rare crash in video decoding.
• Fix rare crash when carrying corpses.
• Fix attempt for rare issue where terrain is invisible when continuing.

Hi everyone,  

Yesterday, after 3 months of hard work, we released the Clockwork Update for We Happy Few! We hope that you have been enjoying it. It has been a tough update for us, because working on the same content for 3 months (as opposed to creating lots of new stuff!) is pretty draining, but we are much, much happier with how the build is performing. 

We’d also like to thank Clara (one of our new team members!) for doing such a great job on this update video:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ssRHbJdNU&feature=youtu.be

So, now that we’ve got this out into the wild, it’s time to get back to business on creating new, fun and awesome stuff for you to play! Including, of course, the main story.


Marc-André

Throughout this week, I've been working up on assets and staging of an exciting story location. However, since we don't want to spoil some of the game's surprises, I can't show anything artsy here pertaining to that. What I can show, though, is a side project I've been working on. I've been diving into MEL scripting and have been creating two custom pie menus for Autodesk Maya. Pie menus are user customizable UI elements that appear on screen. They allow the user to quickly access its tools and also, when custom scripting is involved, automate certain tasks.  

The first menu is primarily for modeling/UV use. It has various commands that make applying vertex colors on an object much more easier - and faster - than with built-in Maya tools.



The second pie menu is the biggest time saver though. It is used for baking the id, normals and ambient occlusion maps. By using a custom script I wrote, it automates the baking process by configuring the Turtle renderer parameters. Up to now, us environment artists had to manually reconfigure all of the settings each time we baked a new object - and some multiple times throughout the baking process. I can say that this tool easily makes us save ten if not more minutes per asset, which amounts to a whole lot when you consider the amount of assets that we go through each week. I do plan to add more features (and new pie menus) in the following weeks.

Emmanuel

Now that the new shelter is out, I can finally break my silence to show you what I worked on!







 I created a brand new modular trim and bevel material inspired by Sunset Overdrive’s ‘’Ultimate Trim’’ concept. This allows for really quick and fun modeling, kinda like playing with legos and help save a huge amount of time for creating customs modular environment assets.








Stephanie

Hey Downers!  

♫ In the second week of December the team gave to me - a release candidate filled with 860+ fixed bugs, 380+ tasks completed, a couple boxes of doughnuts and at least one large glass of whisky ♫  

Since our major refactor, my main focus has been testing and verifying fixes with our previously fragile quest system (RIP Faraday's epic misadventures - 'nuff said).  

I want to thank everyone in the WHF community who have helped us track down various issues by emailing us, posting in the forums and uploading videos in the last few months - you guys rock!

Lee 

Greetings to all residents of Wellington Wells!  

This is my first entry for the weekly journals, but I’ve been with the team for a little over 2 months testing the game and helping to log as many issues as possible. Our goal with this most recent update is to give the community a much smoother gaming experience on both PC and Xbox One. This includes improvements to stability, general performance, save/load persistence and making sure the encounters currently in the game can be completed.  

While testing the refactoring of encounters and the new save system has been a challenge, these new systems will make introducing new content in the future go much more smoothly. As always, we love to hear what you think on the forums so we can improve the game, and your help in tracking down rare or difficult to reproduce issues is invaluable to us during early access.

I leave you with an example of what our day tends to look like on the QA team:




Adam 

I have been working on another exercise. A Crafting RGD (rational game design). What I’m doing here is taking every craftable item in the game, and listing out the ingredients it requires. This gives me a great overview of how many of each type of ingredient I would possibly need to craft one of every type of item. Just on paper, we have already seen some balancing issues that needed to be taken care of (you’ll see a few of them in our next major release). This also tells me what ingredients I need most during the beginning, mid-game, and end-game.



There are a few other things I’m working on, but I’ll hold onto those until they are more fleshed out.  

Happy Holidays!


Vincent

Hallo! This week I’ve started to add some hand poses for NPCs. So far when they receive a gift, they just played an animation and the object usually went through the hand in a quite ugly way…  

Well, hand poses will improve that, Marc (Programmer) has finished the system last week and I’ll progressively add poses for each of the giftable objects! (Video coming next week) I’ve also worked on creating new animation for the final stage of the plagued wastrels. We might improve a few more things, but at least they kind of stand out more now… we’ll show you how it looks next week when the behaviour is fully integrated!  

(Meanwhile, the rest of the anim team is on secret missions involving cinematics and story, or so I’ve been told)

J.R. 

Hi! As Vincent said, a lot of what we're working out right now is a little bit secret. Basically on my side I've been touching up the introduction of our friend the mad scotsman! This week, I was making animations for some of the treacherous areas surrounding his residence. I’ve put in a small clip in the next animation video, watch your step!  

Thanks for tuning in!  

Compulsion Team

 

Hi everyone,  

Yesterday, after 3 months of hard work, we released the Clockwork Update for We Happy Few! We hope that you have been enjoying it. It has been a tough update for us, because working on the same content for 3 months (as opposed to creating lots of new stuff!) is pretty draining, but we are much, much happier with how the build is performing. 

We’d also like to thank Clara (one of our new team members!) for doing such a great job on this update video:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ssRHbJdNU&feature=youtu.be

So, now that we’ve got this out into the wild, it’s time to get back to business on creating new, fun and awesome stuff for you to play! Including, of course, the main story.


Marc-André

Throughout this week, I've been working up on assets and staging of an exciting story location. However, since we don't want to spoil some of the game's surprises, I can't show anything artsy here pertaining to that. What I can show, though, is a side project I've been working on. I've been diving into MEL scripting and have been creating two custom pie menus for Autodesk Maya. Pie menus are user customizable UI elements that appear on screen. They allow the user to quickly access its tools and also, when custom scripting is involved, automate certain tasks.  

The first menu is primarily for modeling/UV use. It has various commands that make applying vertex colors on an object much more easier - and faster - than with built-in Maya tools.



The second pie menu is the biggest time saver though. It is used for baking the id, normals and ambient occlusion maps. By using a custom script I wrote, it automates the baking process by configuring the Turtle renderer parameters. Up to now, us environment artists had to manually reconfigure all of the settings each time we baked a new object - and some multiple times throughout the baking process. I can say that this tool easily makes us save ten if not more minutes per asset, which amounts to a whole lot when you consider the amount of assets that we go through each week. I do plan to add more features (and new pie menus) in the following weeks.

Emmanuel

Now that the new shelter is out, I can finally break my silence to show you what I worked on!







 I created a brand new modular trim and bevel material inspired by Sunset Overdrive’s ‘’Ultimate Trim’’ concept. This allows for really quick and fun modeling, kinda like playing with legos and help save a huge amount of time for creating customs modular environment assets.








Stephanie

Hey Downers!  

♫ In the second week of December the team gave to me - a release candidate filled with 860+ fixed bugs, 380+ tasks completed, a couple boxes of doughnuts and at least one large glass of whisky ♫  

Since our major refactor, my main focus has been testing and verifying fixes with our previously fragile quest system (RIP Faraday's epic misadventures - 'nuff said).  

I want to thank everyone in the WHF community who have helped us track down various issues by emailing us, posting in the forums and uploading videos in the last few months - you guys rock!

Lee 

Greetings to all residents of Wellington Wells!  

This is my first entry for the weekly journals, but I’ve been with the team for a little over 2 months testing the game and helping to log as many issues as possible. Our goal with this most recent update is to give the community a much smoother gaming experience on both PC and Xbox One. This includes improvements to stability, general performance, save/load persistence and making sure the encounters currently in the game can be completed.  

While testing the refactoring of encounters and the new save system has been a challenge, these new systems will make introducing new content in the future go much more smoothly. As always, we love to hear what you think on the forums so we can improve the game, and your help in tracking down rare or difficult to reproduce issues is invaluable to us during early access.

I leave you with an example of what our day tends to look like on the QA team:




Adam 

I have been working on another exercise. A Crafting RGD (rational game design). What I’m doing here is taking every craftable item in the game, and listing out the ingredients it requires. This gives me a great overview of how many of each type of ingredient I would possibly need to craft one of every type of item. Just on paper, we have already seen some balancing issues that needed to be taken care of (you’ll see a few of them in our next major release). This also tells me what ingredients I need most during the beginning, mid-game, and end-game.



There are a few other things I’m working on, but I’ll hold onto those until they are more fleshed out.  

Happy Holidays!


Vincent

Hallo! This week I’ve started to add some hand poses for NPCs. So far when they receive a gift, they just played an animation and the object usually went through the hand in a quite ugly way…  

Well, hand poses will improve that, Marc (Programmer) has finished the system last week and I’ll progressively add poses for each of the giftable objects! (Video coming next week) I’ve also worked on creating new animation for the final stage of the plagued wastrels. We might improve a few more things, but at least they kind of stand out more now… we’ll show you how it looks next week when the behaviour is fully integrated!  

(Meanwhile, the rest of the anim team is on secret missions involving cinematics and story, or so I’ve been told)

J.R. 

Hi! As Vincent said, a lot of what we're working out right now is a little bit secret. Basically on my side I've been touching up the introduction of our friend the mad scotsman! This week, I was making animations for some of the treacherous areas surrounding his residence. I’ve put in a small clip in the next animation video, watch your step!  

Thanks for tuning in!  

Compulsion Team

 

Hi all,

It has been three months since our last game update and we are excited to announce that the wait is finally over! Today we are releasing the Clockwork Update on both PC and Xbox One!

We created a video which introduces the new changes present in the update. For a more detailed list of the changes, head down below to the patch notes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ssRHbJdNU

This update introduces a number of technical systems that we’ll explain more below.  We also address the disconnect between the intro and the beginning of the game by implementing a new shelter, which shows how Arthur got to where he is.  There are also too many bug fixes to list, but we have listed a few of the major ones below.

We hope that this will provide a much higher quality experience to all players out there, and will allow us to focus more on new content and better gameplay moving forward.

PSA: Please be aware that due to the wholesale quest/save system changes, previous save games are incompatible.

Under The Hood

• Quest state system: Every encounter/quest in the game is now built using a new quest state system.  This system changes quest tracking from a scripting-based system to a code based system, where the game knows at all times exactly where you are in any given quest.  This makes it much simpler for us to create encounters, and also much more reliable.  We no longer need to have complicated scripts tracking save/quest/item situations, and instead can focus more on gameplay and making cool things.

• Improved save/load: The quest state system also ties into a new save system, which should allow for much more robust saving.  Please keep in mind that when you load a game you may find Arthur on a bench reading a paper.  Likewise there are some areas (eg the Mystery House) where you will no longer be able to save, as to do otherwise allows exploits and errors when completing encounters.  

• Faster save/load times: As a consequence of the new quest state/save systems, autosaving is now significantly faster, and loading is faster too.

• Conversation mode: When talking with an encounter NPC (eg someone with specific dialogue and purpose, rather than the systemic NPCs), you will now enter conversation mode.  Little black bars will come down around you, and you will effectively be isolated from the outside world while you talk to them.  This means we can place better animation with the VO, and quest givers can’t be interrupted by other NPCs, or you, or them.  Aka, the game won’t lose the plot as much any more, and it’ll be slightly better more cinematic.

• Puppet system: NPCs can now have highly scripted behaviour, instead of their normal systemic behaviour.  The puppet system allows us to remove their systemic brains and give them specific actions to do, rather than having the two systems fight (which led to all manner of crazy shit).

• Consistent map marker behaviour: Map markers should now be reliable and operate consistently. When you see an encounter, you will see an encounter marker to let you know that something is over there.  Once you are given the first stage of the quest, you will have encounter markers telling you where to go.

• Improvements to manual quest tracking and map markers.

Encounters

• New shelter!  Arthur now has a new starting shelter, which provides a cleaner and more streamlined introduction to the basics of crafting and combat.  

• Refactored encounters: The following encounters have been refactored by re-implementing them with the new puppet, conversation and quest state systems:

•  If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• Mushroom Log
• Looks Like Rain
• Biological Hazard
• Fine Cuisine
• It's A Terrible Life
• Crazy Legs
• Lovebirds
• Blood in the Streets
• House of Faraday
• Walkabout
• Moon Juice Leech
• Campfire
• Lilies of the Field
• Bees
• OD Wellie
• Record Location 1
• Record Location 3
• Altar of the Yam
• The Dollhouse
• Cult of Jack
• Hallucinogenic Salad
• Wounded Wastrel
• Mine! Mine! All Mine!
• Bring Out Your Dead
• Where's the Power
• Public Works
• Shibboleth
• The Vandals Took the Handle
• Altar of the Yam
• Mystery House
• Popped Popper

• Improved realization: Along the way, the following encounters have had their realization dramatically improved, by introducing better animation, better VO, better tool tips, better art, and/or working map markers:

• Mysterious Chest
• Mystery House
• Doll House
• Fine Cuisine
• Biological Hazard
• OD Wellie
• Public Works
• Mushroom Log
• It's a Terrible Life
• Where's the Power?
• Walkabout
• First Marriage
• Hallucinogenic Salad
• Green Thumb
• Altar of the Yam
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• TV Altar
• Campfire
• Crazy Legs
• House of Faraday
• Popped Popper
• Moon Juice Leech

• All encounters should now be completable.

• Faraday should no longer be capable of blocking your progression. This is so important that it deserves its own line in these notes.

• The House of Curious Behaviours and the bridges have not been refactored, but will be next time.

• Tea Time and Lovebirds have been removed for now, because they were not good enough.  We will rebuild them.  Better.  Faster.  Stronger.

• The can of grapefruit juice in White Tree Park can now be picked up.

Environments

• The houses in the Village of Hamlyn have been dramatically improved.

• Additional house variations in the Village are available.

• Village houses now have exterior signs to add a little bit more happiness to the environment.

• Archways and other decorative elements have been added to the Village.

Animation

• Integration of “Turn in Place” animations. In certain AI states, the NPC will play an animation to face the player instead of sliding.

• New corpse interaction animations for picking up, dropping and throwing corpses.

• Added interaction animations for trap controls when using the trap disarm tool and polarity device.

• More talking animations for encounters. Mostly to fit new initial postures, like sitting on the ground, sitting on benches, laying down, etc.

• Improved sitting animations for certain NPCs. They now pull the chair out and slide it back in.

Allows us to compact the chairs and tables closer to each other for more room around these objects.

• New two-handed combat animations for NPCs for cricket bats, shovels, etc.

• Added down-to-up melee animations for the player, for more variation with one-handed weapons.

• New base animations for plagued wastrels (walking, idle, etc).

UI/HUD

• Throw/Drop corpse interactions switched.

• Aim acceleration settings are now saved.

Gameplay

• NPCs now have a very short delay window between when you walk into their line of sight, and when they notice you.  This means stealth is now more forgiving, and more viable.

• Histoplasma mushrooms now have a (temp!) visual effect, and are required to enter certain areas.  Take a look around for clues.

• The Advanced Electro Lock Shocker should now operate on any lower tier objects.

• The materials required to craft certain items have been generally reduced. 

Bug Fixes

• Low spec PCs should no longer crash every 10-15 minutes.

• Various crash fixes.

• Floor materials have been mostly corrected across the entire game, so the correct footstep sounds should occur.

• Too many quest/encounter bugs fixed to list here.  At this point, we have very few known bugs that block progression, and some minor ones relating to animation etc.

• The game should no longer reset to day 1 randomly.

• Looted pickups no longer reappear after save/load.

• It is now safe to place items in containers other than the personal safe.

• Items dropped on ground will be deleted after save load.

• The final island now always appears.

Thanks for tuning in! 

Compulsion Team

Hi all,

It has been three months since our last game update and we are excited to announce that the wait is finally over! Today we are releasing the Clockwork Update on both PC and Xbox One!

We created a video which introduces the new changes present in the update. For a more detailed list of the changes, head down below to the patch notes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ssRHbJdNU

This update introduces a number of technical systems that we’ll explain more below.  We also address the disconnect between the intro and the beginning of the game by implementing a new shelter, which shows how Arthur got to where he is.  There are also too many bug fixes to list, but we have listed a few of the major ones below.

We hope that this will provide a much higher quality experience to all players out there, and will allow us to focus more on new content and better gameplay moving forward.

PSA: Please be aware that due to the wholesale quest/save system changes, previous save games are incompatible.

Under The Hood

• Quest state system: Every encounter/quest in the game is now built using a new quest state system.  This system changes quest tracking from a scripting-based system to a code based system, where the game knows at all times exactly where you are in any given quest.  This makes it much simpler for us to create encounters, and also much more reliable.  We no longer need to have complicated scripts tracking save/quest/item situations, and instead can focus more on gameplay and making cool things.

• Improved save/load: The quest state system also ties into a new save system, which should allow for much more robust saving.  Please keep in mind that when you load a game you may find Arthur on a bench reading a paper.  Likewise there are some areas (eg the Mystery House) where you will no longer be able to save, as to do otherwise allows exploits and errors when completing encounters.  

• Faster save/load times: As a consequence of the new quest state/save systems, autosaving is now significantly faster, and loading is faster too.

• Conversation mode: When talking with an encounter NPC (eg someone with specific dialogue and purpose, rather than the systemic NPCs), you will now enter conversation mode.  Little black bars will come down around you, and you will effectively be isolated from the outside world while you talk to them.  This means we can place better animation with the VO, and quest givers can’t be interrupted by other NPCs, or you, or them.  Aka, the game won’t lose the plot as much any more, and it’ll be slightly better more cinematic.

• Puppet system: NPCs can now have highly scripted behaviour, instead of their normal systemic behaviour.  The puppet system allows us to remove their systemic brains and give them specific actions to do, rather than having the two systems fight (which led to all manner of crazy shit).

• Consistent map marker behaviour: Map markers should now be reliable and operate consistently. When you see an encounter, you will see an encounter marker to let you know that something is over there.  Once you are given the first stage of the quest, you will have encounter markers telling you where to go.

• Improvements to manual quest tracking and map markers.

Encounters

• New shelter!  Arthur now has a new starting shelter, which provides a cleaner and more streamlined introduction to the basics of crafting and combat.  

• Refactored encounters: The following encounters have been refactored by re-implementing them with the new puppet, conversation and quest state systems:

•  If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• Mushroom Log
• Looks Like Rain
• Biological Hazard
• Fine Cuisine
• It's A Terrible Life
• Crazy Legs
• Lovebirds
• Blood in the Streets
• House of Faraday
• Walkabout
• Moon Juice Leech
• Campfire
• Lilies of the Field
• Bees
• OD Wellie
• Record Location 1
• Record Location 3
• Altar of the Yam
• The Dollhouse
• Cult of Jack
• Hallucinogenic Salad
• Wounded Wastrel
• Mine! Mine! All Mine!
• Bring Out Your Dead
• Where's the Power
• Public Works
• Shibboleth
• The Vandals Took the Handle
• Altar of the Yam
• Mystery House
• Popped Popper

• Improved realization: Along the way, the following encounters have had their realization dramatically improved, by introducing better animation, better VO, better tool tips, better art, and/or working map markers:

• Mysterious Chest
• Mystery House
• Doll House
• Fine Cuisine
• Biological Hazard
• OD Wellie
• Public Works
• Mushroom Log
• It's a Terrible Life
• Where's the Power?
• Walkabout
• First Marriage
• Hallucinogenic Salad
• Green Thumb
• Altar of the Yam
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake
• TV Altar
• Campfire
• Crazy Legs
• House of Faraday
• Popped Popper
• Moon Juice Leech

• All encounters should now be completable.

• Faraday should no longer be capable of blocking your progression. This is so important that it deserves its own line in these notes.

• The House of Curious Behaviours and the bridges have not been refactored, but will be next time.

• Tea Time and Lovebirds have been removed for now, because they were not good enough.  We will rebuild them.  Better.  Faster.  Stronger.

• The can of grapefruit juice in White Tree Park can now be picked up.

Environments

• The houses in the Village of Hamlyn have been dramatically improved.

• Additional house variations in the Village are available.

• Village houses now have exterior signs to add a little bit more happiness to the environment.

• Archways and other decorative elements have been added to the Village.

Animation

• Integration of “Turn in Place” animations. In certain AI states, the NPC will play an animation to face the player instead of sliding.

• New corpse interaction animations for picking up, dropping and throwing corpses.

• Added interaction animations for trap controls when using the trap disarm tool and polarity device.

• More talking animations for encounters. Mostly to fit new initial postures, like sitting on the ground, sitting on benches, laying down, etc.

• Improved sitting animations for certain NPCs. They now pull the chair out and slide it back in.

Allows us to compact the chairs and tables closer to each other for more room around these objects.

• New two-handed combat animations for NPCs for cricket bats, shovels, etc.

• Added down-to-up melee animations for the player, for more variation with one-handed weapons.

• New base animations for plagued wastrels (walking, idle, etc).

UI/HUD

• Throw/Drop corpse interactions switched.

• Aim acceleration settings are now saved.

Gameplay

• NPCs now have a very short delay window between when you walk into their line of sight, and when they notice you.  This means stealth is now more forgiving, and more viable.

• Histoplasma mushrooms now have a (temp!) visual effect, and are required to enter certain areas.  Take a look around for clues.

• The Advanced Electro Lock Shocker should now operate on any lower tier objects.

• The materials required to craft certain items have been generally reduced. 

Bug Fixes

• Low spec PCs should no longer crash every 10-15 minutes.

• Various crash fixes.

• Floor materials have been mostly corrected across the entire game, so the correct footstep sounds should occur.

• Too many quest/encounter bugs fixed to list here.  At this point, we have very few known bugs that block progression, and some minor ones relating to animation etc.

• The game should no longer reset to day 1 randomly.

• Looted pickups no longer reappear after save/load.

• It is now safe to place items in containers other than the personal safe.

• Items dropped on ground will be deleted after save load.

• The final island now always appears.

Thanks for tuning in! 

Compulsion Team