Hi Mechanics!
It's that time again - we've managed to sneak some Scrap Mechanic news past the Farmbots!
These last few months have been pretty fantastic for us at Axolot, because we've managed to make a ton of progress on the game. As always we've loved watching the inventive ways you all find to use your scrap and we're pleased to say that while we've been hard at work on Survival mode, we've also found the time to start developing some other cool new features too.
So, without further ado - let's dive in to all the juicy new stuff!
Pistons are in the works!
Time and time again we get people pining for interactive parts, and pistons always top the list. Well, request no longer Mechanics, because it's nearly time to get your pist-on! Eagle-eyed players may remember that a long time ago in a Devblog far,far,away we promised to add something special to the Pistons. Well folks, hold on to your tool belts because we're happy to reveal that with the arrival of the piston comes a brand new feature! Players will be able to connect these new interactive parts to a controller, making them expand and contract in a sequence. Just thinking about the amount of awesome things you will be able to build with that function blows our mind so we hope you're excited too! As well as expanding and contracting, you will also be able to simply connect them to a trigger and set the extract length. Right now they can be up to 16 blocks long, but as this part is still fairly new, we're still toying around with its maximum length. Unfortunately, it's not quite ready yet because we have to find that sweet spot that also works well with Survival mode. We were originally planning to have this part come out alongside Survival, but after seeing such high demand for pistons we decided to shuffle them straight to the front of the queue! Exciting, eh? Work on pistons is well underway - and we can't wait to see what you all choose to do with them. Thanks for your patience - pist and love to you all.
Spooky warehouses
Remember the glory days of Devblog 9? What a time to be alive! In that wondrous update we shared some really early images from a huge, spooky-looking warehouse that we were working on for Survival. Well fearless players, we're happy to say that we've got a scary sneak peek for you all. Creepy, huh? While it's already pretty cool, the good news is, the whole warehouse interior is also fully destructible! Obviously this is still a work in progress, so keep in mind that this place will soon get even darker and more sinister when we add the final lighting....Well, if we aren't too scared to finish building it anyway! As we mentioned in DB 9, more buildings are also in the works, but as we're massive teases - that's all we can say for now.
Scaling wedges will make your life easier
We don't know about you, but we're big fans of potato wedges here at Scrap Mechanic HQ. Whilst munching on those delicious, juicy chunks of carby goodness, we were struck with inspiration - WE CAN LET THEM SCALE THEIR WEDGES! We've heard what you've been saying, and we know that building with slanted parts can feel a bit tedious.That's why we are working on scalable wedges so you can get that large slanted surface you all desire faster than ever before.Yep, that's right - all blocks will be getting a slanted version! Depending on how the block is rotated, it will scale either vertically or horizontally,saving you all a ton of time. We can't wait to get them in the game so you Mechanics don't have to place wedge parts one by one. Now if you'll excuse us, we have some potato wedges to attend to.
Creative mode terrain update
As long time players may have noticed, the creative mode terrain has been the same since release a little over a year ago. Right now it's made out of over 30 Terrain tiles in different sizes that get generated randomly every time a world is created. While this is all well and good, we thought it was time to live up to the mode's namesake and add a little more creative variation! By carefully watching how you mechanics play the game, we think we now have a pretty good idea of how to make the terrain tiles even more fun to play around in. So we're happy to announced that we will be adding over 20 big and small terrain tiles to the mix very shortly. Expect a lot of great jumps, ramps and even a cave or two! As we're all about giving you control, we're also planning to give mechanics access to the very terrain editor that we use in the studio. Yep, that means that soon everyone will be able to make their own terrain! You can expect more news on that exciting feature in the coming months.
New outfits
We all know that there's nothing better than that feeling of rocking a fresh new outfit, so we thought we'd treat you all too some sweet new threads. Right now we have made over 50 pieces of new unique clothing that the player can equip! What can you expect from these classy new outfits, you ask? Well, that would be ruining the surprise wouldn't it? ..OK,OK as we're nice we'll let you have a quick look at two outfits we managed to sneak past the Farmbots unnoticed! If you like what you see, remember there's plenty more on the way, too. We love customizing our characters just as much as you do, so as well as these awesome new outfits, we'll be adding even more cool outfits for you to try on when we launch Survival mode.
Optimization
Now that we have our shiny new engine in place, we can focus on making Scrap Mechanic run as smoothly as possible. As well as tweaking the engine to help you all get even better frame rates, we will also be updating the game so that bearings that aren't moving will freeze. This should make creations with a lot of bearings run much smoother, hopefully making Scrap Mechanic even more fun. For us we're always working on improving the game, whether that's through tweaks, new content and even huge undertakings like Survival. As you can probably imagine, Scrap Mechanic is a pretty complex game to work on thanks to its unique physics and growing multiplayer component. Juggling the creation of a new mode, constant new content AND multiple tweaks takes a fair amount of time, but we're almost there. The team's working incredibly hard to get these optimization tweaks out to you soon, so thanks for being patient!
Smoking hot particles
Since we made our new particle engine, we have made a ton of sexy new particles that will be added to the game. Hottest on the list are these smoking hot particles...I mean, just look at them! We thought that you Mechanics could get a kick out of these, so here is an early look at an explosion in action and our dazzling new fire! Did we just confirm destruction? Well, that would be telling.
When is Survival Mode coming out?
Unsurprisingly, we are still hard at work on Survival, but we're pleased to say that recently we've been really happy with the progress that we've made. This is largely thanks to us bringing in more programming wizards to speed up development - and these new additions to the team have been a huge help. While we know you're all patiently waiting to play it, we can't stress enough that our ambitions are high for this mode and will not release it until we feel that Survival is a mode that is great fun and worthy of your time. We are basically making a whole new game...in a way.
Mod support
Firstly we've been blown away by all the great feedback from this, so thanks once again to everyone who's helped us test the mod support. We were really impressed to see that so many brilliant mods where uploaded during the testing period. If you missed out on these, you can see all the mods made to date on our steam workshop page. The first step to making this work for modders was to let them add their own parts and blocks in an easy and intuitive way. We're really happy with how this worked out, and we're working hard right now to given modders even more awesome options in the future. In fact, the whole Survival mode is pretty much being made like a mod from the ground up so that we can give modders a ton of possibilities straight off the bat. We will continue to tweak and add in improvements that you guys suggested.
That's all for this devblog, thanks so much for hanging out with us and reading. Until next time, Mechanics. Stay creative!