Version 0.4.0 is now available to download. It is the first update since we launched in early access and is a chance to explain our approach to updates. We have talked to a lot of you about this and found that most of you would rather we released fewer, more significant, updates during early access. We want to try and balance our development time between adding new content and responding to player feedback. Our approach is going to be releasing patches when we have three new chunks of content ready for you to play with. A chunk of content might be a new panel, or it might be a new objective, or perhaps something else. The patch will also include all of the fixes, balance changes and quality of life improvements we've managed to cross off our list while adding new content. Our aim is to release an update like this around once a month. Like always with game development plans change, but we wanted to be open with you and let you know our current thinking. If this changes at all we will of course let you know. So lets get into the patch notes...

New Panel - Non Copyright Infringing Time Dilation Device!

If you can generate enough energy and get your vehicle fast enough this baby will slow down time...

Community Suggestion: New Panel - Bumpers!

A suggestion from our community bumpers are powered by electricity and will fire you and objects diagonally with a little boost. The more electricity the more effective the boost... ...anyone fancy building a pinball machine?

Challenge Mode Revamp

Those of you in our discord will know we've been thinking about this for a while... We have decided to try the following structure for challenge modes.

• Three daily challenges (Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3) which are unlocked using stars from the story mode. With the daily challenges there is a chance that the leg may have a modifier which coincides with an objective from the story mode. For example, there might be bridges, carrots or bees...
• Three weekly challenges (Act 1, Act 2 and Act 3) which are unlocked using stars from the story mode. The weekly challenges will not have any modifiers and are all about vehicle design.
• Three monthly sandbox challenges with all panels available to you but different budgets ($500, $5000 and $10,000). These will be unlocked by attempting the other challenge modes.

We have also played with how panels are randomly selected to try and make things more interesting. Our aim with this structure is to give you an easy way to launch the game and play around designing a vehicle, while still leaving the enjoyment of discovery in the story mode. It will also allow you and us to test Act 3 panels and new hazards as we add them. Please let us know what you think about this structure.

Balance Changes

• Price of water wheel and amount of water it consumes has been increased.
• Increased the max rotational speed of propellers and turbines and decreased their rotational friction. This means they require a little less constant attention.
• Increased suction force of coin collector.
• Solar panels now generate bonus electricity depending on the time of day (in addition to what they generated pre-patch)
• Bellows now decrease the velocity of objects which pass through them.
• Reduced mass of Auto Sails from 5 to 2
• Increased mass of all bellows from 10 to 13
• Decreased mass of electric engine from 10 to 5
• Decreased mass of haulage container from 50 to 35
• Decreased mass of headlights from 10 to 5
• Increased mass of boulders panel from 5 to 10
• Decreased mass of propeller and turbine from 10 to 8
• Decreased mass of sails from 10 to 7.5
• Increased mass of empty scaffold from 1 to 2
• Increased mass of water wheel from 5 to 15
• Decreased cost of wheels from 10 to 5 and decreased mass from 5 to 4

Other Changes

• Increased the hit boxes on all bellows to fix a bug where sometimes an object is travelling so fast the bellow doesn't detect it.
• All physical objects are now effected by the trampoline.
• Two music tracks now play during each leg.
• Music credits now complete in game.
• Moved suction point of coin collector forward.
• Increased vision range of bees to stop them hanging around at the front of long vehicles.
• Propellers and turbines no longer take the player out of a boost from a cannon.
• Cherry bomb fuse is now triggered a few frames before it hits the ground.
• Fixed the text rendering bug in the water tank description.
• Fixed the bug where the backwards facing cannon walls appeared mirrored in game.
• Added total weight indication to blueprint screen.
• Added linear drag to boulders.
• Fixed a bug which was stopping wind effecting sails correctly.
• Fixed a crash in blueprint mode caused by mousing over the add new column button before the player controller was initialised.
• Fixed the insurance fraud bug which allowed you to earn money when panels got destroyed in leg.
• The boulder panel now shows how many are left.
• Fixed the bug where the on schedule message would sometimes not display a time.
• Player dialogue no longer animates character by character.
• Fixed a bug which stopped the sail tutorial correctly triggering.
• Changed video codec to VP8 to improve Linux support.
• Fixed a bug which caused a the player to move when standing on an overpass.
• Fixed a bug whereby objects would move incorrectly when the player was not on the vehicle.

[ 2020-08-24 15:53:46 CET ] [ Original post ]