Hi Mechanics!
As you can see from the image above, we’ve just released a really exciting update! It has big changes to the game engine and in-game lighting, but there are also important tweaks to textures, suspension and the Big Wheel.
- New Game Engine
The reworked game engine that we have been working on for a very long time has now been added to the game. Phew!
Over the testing period for the engine we have noticed significantly less crashes, something that has been one of our main goals. The framerate has also improved, but it’s still not exactly where we want it to be. Though it’s much better than before, we do have more nefarious schemes that will improve it even more - but they’ll have to wait until early next year.
It’s not noticeable when you’re playing the game, but the new engine has a lot of hidden benefits - it makes our workflow a lot smoother and opens up a whole range of new possibilities for our game development. That means less time solving bugs, and more time making awesome gadgets and features for you.
- Dynamic lighting
Thanks to popular demand, we can announce we have finally added dynamic lighting! You can finally light up the environment, using one of two spotlights, which can be activated using a trigger. These are the headlamp and the warehouse spotlight.
By pressing ‘E’ on the light source, you can set how far you want the light to reach. Maybe the best part is that you can color the lighting with the paint tool. This is only the start - there are a lot of new lamps coming next year, not only spotlights!
- Suspension resistance
Another thing that was a very popular request amongst our amazing mechanics was the option to set the resistance of suspensions. So we’ve just built it in.
Now you can press E on the suspension and fine tune it. This will let it handle different weights in different manners. Please keep in mind that the max stiffness is for really big and heavy vehicles - using it on a small jalopy will make for a bumpy ride, and most players will find the first ten resistance levels the most useful.
Oh, and one more thing - and the suspension can now be colored!
- New block textures
As we are clawing our way towards survival mode, we are changing and improving a lot of older elements - not only in the code, as with the new engine but also with the visuals!
Particularly, many mechanics requested a change to the glass blocks - of course, we listened, but we also went one step further. We changed the standard glass block to be completely clear and renamed the previous, more opaque, glass block to ‘tile glass’.
More widely, we have also completely remade the block textures, making them fit more with the final visual style we are aiming for.
- Reinventing the Big Wheel
We know lots of you use the Big Wheel in your creations, but it wasn’t quite up to scratch for us - the old one simply didn’t meet our new visual standard. Thankfully, we finally got around to redesigning it, and we think it’s wheely much better. We hope you like it as much as we do!
- Full list of changes
- New rendering engine
- Added dynamic lighting
- Added warehouse spotlight and tweaked headlamp so they now have dynamic lights with a beam range setting. The beam can now be colored with the Paint Tool.
- Suspension resistance setting added.
- Remade and updated all block textures
- Updated the inventory icons
- Bearings/Suspension are now paintable
- Remade the big wheel
- Added a new clear glass block
- Glass now renders correctly in workshop and inventory GUI
- New reflection cube map for flat world
- The paint tool now shows the selected color
- Radio now has a on and off animation
- Gas Engine and Electric Engine now have an animation when using the engine setting.
- Added names above the players and also improved it so it follows the
mechanic better. - New particle engine. Particles are now rendered using our new particle engine
- The game is merging boxes and cylinders resulting in less collision checks
- Lots of bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations!
- Fixed a crash that new players experienced when starting a game.
- Connect tool numbers fixed.
- Weld Tool collision check fix.
- Max engine, thruster, bearing, etc.. settings removed.
- Invisible block fix.
- Fixed a crashed that occurred on startup on some graphics cards.
Mods will need to be updated to work with the new engine.
In the meantime we are leaving the old engine version (0.1.32) where mechanics can play all their mods. But no worries! Early next year we will add official mod support making modding much better!
- A final word
We hope you enjoy playing our Winter update. In the meantime, we would like to take this opportunity to thank each and everyone of you mechanics out there for all your amazing support in 2016. It has been a great year for us at Axolot, and we couldn’t have done it without you.
But this year is only the beginning. From where we are standing now, 2017 will be even better, with a ton of new updates! Rest assured, we are not going anywhere and we’ll see you in 2017!
We love you! Keep on scrapping mechanics!
For all the latest news, follow us on