Mostly fixes, but also laying the groundwork for upcoming steam workshop support. Also a big speed boost for intel-based macs loading the game.

If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.

Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.

Thanks for reading and for playing.

• Goodbye Darkness, My Old Confusion: Previously only macOS -- most notably on older intel-based macs -- there was a point at which a bunch of Metal shader compilation was having to happen, and it was just a black screen. It now continues showing the proper loading screen, with updates on it to let you know it's still alive. In general, macOS has to compile PSOs (pipeline state objects) in a way that windows and linux don't, but only on the first time that the driver sees each shader. These changes don't make that any faster, but they do keep the ui responsive during that time, and also keep the ui up rather than it being a black screen.
• Red Is The Bad Color: If your load has some sort of error while the game is still on the initial loading screen, it will now change all the text to red rather than the normal white, to help it be clear something is going on. This almost never happens to anyone, but it's a nice safety feature.
• Intel Macs Have Gone Plaid: The priority of background loading threads have been increased, and the timing of synchronous loads during initial startup have been made tighter as well. This overall does not change things on windows or linux much, but on macOS it cuts the initial loading time to about 33% of what it previously was. The windows and linux builds are in general still 4x faster than macOS, but they're no longer 12x faster than macOS. That's a nice gap to close, while having windows and linux still as fast as they ever were. Please note that this is for intel macs -- the apple silicon macs are already blazing fast like windows and linux.

• Steamworks Log Verbosity: When the steam API fails to initialize, it now gives an actual meaningful error back, rather than just noting generically that it failed.
• Steam Deck Hooks Restored: As of two hotfixes ago, the steamworks integration was revised in order to have better support for things I want to handle, like the upcoming workshop integration. However, on steam deck only, there was a complication with how UTF8 is read, and this made it so that steam was not able to log in properly on steam deck anymore. This is now fixed, and returns the steam deck functionality that was disabled due to it not realizing it was on the deck.
• Selective APIs Not Running Is Okay, Actually: After moving to a new Steamworks api to better support workshop, there was a general problem with certain APIs that seem to be intentionally disabled on the steam deck were blocking the rest of steamworks integration. Those are now fixed, and simply logged as informational, as the game doesn't use those apis, and all of the other ones that are used do function perfectly fine. These seem to be intentionally disabled by Valve on the deck, as they're not relevant in that context ever.

• Nintendo Does Their Own Thing: Fixed an issue with dropdowns where they could be erroneously closed by Nintendo switch pro controllers that were plugged in. That particular kind of gamepad handles its output in a pretty funky way, and now that doesn't impact the game anymore.
• No More Babyproofing For Adults: Fixed an issue where on the first turn on timelines beyond the first, it was not letting you scrap androids via the scrap button (but was via the scrap hotkey).
• WW4 Coming To A Rock Near You: Fixed a longstanding issue where WW4 crossovers were not properly applying from the timelines they were in. Other timelines were reading them properly, but I made a mistake in how they were supposed to propagate outward.
• Lone Monsters No Longer Afraid To Cross Dimensions: Fixed an issue with the experimental monsters crossover where it would disappear if your count of monsters in the current timeline was less than 500. I did that on purpose originally, but it was very confusing. I've shifted it now so that the crossover will only disappear once there are no more loose monsters at all in your current timeline.
• Wait, You're Not Bob: Fixed an issue where, under very rare circumstances, your icon for a unit could be wrong after scrapping one unit in a transport, and then creating a new unit and loading it into the exact same slot. The bug was related to if the new unit used the same internally-pooled object, so this was fascinatingly rare.
• Two UIs Walk Into A Bar: Fixed an issue where the ability bar for units was still drawing when the command mode bar was opened.

• Fix To Evaporating Citizens: Fixed an issue with sheltered humans where humans could evaporate when there were even temporary housing shortages. Basically, if some folks needed to move to refugee housing for any reason, then the correct number would do so (let's say you were over cap by 2000 people, 2000 refugees would appear), but then an additional double that number would evaporate without a trace (so in that example, there would be a further 2000 people who just disappear entirely). In cases where people temporarily move to refugee housing and then right back in, this could lead to large numbers of people just vanishing without a trace.
• Fix To Evaporating Citizens: Fixed an issue where if you had a budding cyberocracy on the same city tile as some of your own housing, your own sheltered humans would be mistakenly killed, invisibly and without warning. It would actually set up kind of a periodic drain on your own buildings, so more and more humans would get "disappeared" over time. This was a compound bug with some changes over time in the codebase that led to this unexpectedly.
• Fix To Undocumented Deaths In Mysterious Circumstances: Fixed several cases where when sheltered humans or similar in your housing died, the reason wouldn't be stated in the recent sheltered humans list. It now notes if they were stepped on by a giant robot, or hit by chemical weapons, or the various other things that can happen.
• Fix To Make Sure Residents Clear The Building Before It Blows: If you're destroying one of your own buildings that houses people, then it is very careful to give your own people time to move out and become abandoned humans, rather than them potentially getting caught and killed as the building comes down. I'm not positive this was happening before, but now I'm positive that it won't. Better safe than sorry!

Full notes here[wiki.arcengames.com].

If you missed the retrospective of what changed from the start of Early Access to the 1.0 release, you can read that here:

Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:

💬 Discord[discord.gg] – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.