Heart of the Machine has been developing faster than a self-replicating nanobot, with a ton of new updates coming to the game recently! From quality of life, performance, balance, and new additions, these updates are full of great changes and additions, largely based on feedback from players and preparations for modding to come to Heart of the Machine. Check out the full roundup below to get the full datablast.
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Heart of the Machine Roundup
Update 73: Self-Regeneration focused heavily on quality-of-life improvements, adding new options for greater clarity in many key gameplay functions. These changes should make a lot of players very happy. Some standout changes include the option to choose between a 12-hour and 24-hour clock, greater clarity with the ledger when storage is full, and a count of how many unused internal robotics you have when considering an upgrade to internal robotics. This patch also contains a few key bugfixes, especially around morale-based units having more sane targeting.
This only scratches the surface of all the great changes made in this update. Make sure to check out the full changelog here for the whole scoop!
Update 75: Surpassing Artifice is a big one, touching tens of thousands of lines of code! These changes are focused on continuing work towards modding support, cleaning up the UI, and making things easier for modders. This update also focuses on making long-requested changes, for example, being allowed to build in the curves of the roads now, mimics no longer being part of the shell company, as well as agility and movement speed buffs. There are certainly more changes made in this update, so make sure to check out the full changelog here!
The next update, Update 76: Memory Inferno, is another large update focusing on finishing up the housekeeping for modders, with workshop support expected to be coming soon! Chris wanted to make sure that modding work for Heart of the Machine is as easy as possible and that he was providing a stable surface to mod on. This update also focuses on a big performance overhaul, increasing CPU-side performance, and more even frame rates across the board for all players. On top of all this housekeeping and performance overhauls, many bugs reported by players were also fixed in this update.
This update goes in-depth on the behind-the-scenes process of these changes, how they were inspired, and the work that went into getting all the work done, so if that is your kind of thing, make sure to check out the full patch notes here for the full story!
Update 78 introduces a large batch of general improvements and bug fixes, all requested by players. Some standout examples include making it harder to kill people without noticing, and a pop-up that alerts players the first time they murder someone, even if on accident, for you pacifists out there. There are also some balance changes made, like ensuring nonlethal attacks don't automatically turn into lethal attacks if there would be no effect, and a new VR Cradle Megaplant allowing you to build way more VR Cradles very quickly. All of the changes and bugfixes in this update, both long-requested and some more recent, were requested or reported by players, so make sure to check out the patch notes here to see if any of your suggestions were added!
Update 83: Investigative Goggles is the most recent update to come to Heart of the Machine and focuses on generalized improvements all based on player feedback, plus a new mod! A few of the standout quality of life changes are a change to worker hubs, making sure they never stop producing units, a health bar fix with a cap on how tall health bars can be to ensure they no longer take up your entire screen, and a change to the slum obsession, making it much easier to finish this contemplation.
A new mod is also introduced in this update, Delete At Will, which makes timeline deletion free - with this enabled, it will no longer cost 1,000 Aetagest or 1 Misery. You will still need 100 Aetagest on hand to delete one, and you still cannot delete your first timeline. Make sure to check out the full changelog here to get the most recent Heart of the Machine update news.
Heart of the Machine has seen a lot of updates and changes since the last Round Up, so let's take a quick look at the updates that bridge these big conceptual and overhaul updates!
- Update 74: The Evaporative Human focused mainly on fixes, including a big fix to Intel-based Macs loading the game. This update also lays the groundwork for upcoming Steam Workshop support! Chris also continues squashing the bugs that players report.
- Update 77: Proton Pack collects in one place the previous four hotfixes that were released after the previous update, as well as making a few final bug fixes to return the game to its previous stability. It also adds a couple of quality-of-life changes, like a new mouse cursor in the style of the game!
- Update 79: Electronic Aggression fixes a very specific startup crash affecting M-series and adds more player requests. Some of the coolest additions are searchable settings and controls; no longer do you need to manually scroll through the settings to find that *one* specific thing! As well as balancing how brownouts affect unit caps and mental energy.
- Update 80: Creative Research introduces the ability to re-roll research results with scaling creativity costs based on your difficulty and an option to make this free with a new mod. This update also fixed an issue with achievement localization.
- Update 81: Crystallized Workers is another update based upon player requests, this time focusing on clarity around crystallized emotions, adding a breakdown of where each amount is coming from, to help with understanding if there are any problems. This update also addresses worker clarity with a few quality-of-life updates.
- Update 82: Seeing-Eye Mech has quite the mix of changes and additions, adding new upgrade paths for mechs and vehicles, a new Guide section to help with tricky sections of the game, and various other clarity items and bug fixes.
Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!
~The Hooded Horse Team
