Here at Axolot we are working hard to make sure our new engine upgrade will be as smooth as possible. Here are a few fixes that we made so far:
Fixed in Hotfix 3:

• Fixed a crash at startup or when loading games related to the character.
  
• Larger saves should now load.
  
• Added checking for modded blocks and parts that the game doesn't currently have loaded.

Fixed in Hotfix 2:

• Fixed a crashed that occurred on startup on some graphics cards.

Fixed in Hotfix 1:

• 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.

Here at Axolot we are working hard to make sure our new engine upgrade will be as smooth as possible. Here are a few fixes that we made so far:
Fixed in Hotfix 3:

• Fixed a crash at startup or when loading games related to the character.
  
• Larger saves should now load.
  
• Added checking for modded blocks and parts that the game doesn't currently have loaded.

Fixed in Hotfix 2:

• Fixed a crashed that occurred on startup on some graphics cards.

Fixed in Hotfix 1:

• 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.

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!

0.2.0 Hotfix 1:

• 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.

0.2.0 Hotfix 2:

• Fixed a crashed that occurred on startup on some graphics cards.

- For the modders
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
Facebook
Twitter

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!

0.2.0 Hotfix 1:

• 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.

0.2.0 Hotfix 2:

• Fixed a crashed that occurred on startup on some graphics cards.

- For the modders
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
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

How about we open up our window and let you grab another little glimpse into our magical workshop of delights? That’s right friends, it’s time for another delicious devblog! The last month at Scrap HQ has been a busy one, so get comfy in your driver’s seat and let’s jump into one of our most epic devblogs yet!
Now you’re strapped in, let’s just take a quick moment to say a massive thank-you to all you Mechanics who’ve been helping us test our new game engine. Your bug reporting skills have been invaluable, thanks so much!


-Engine Update
We’ve started testing the new engine on a public test branch, and your feedback has been fantastic! Heaps of Mechanics have been reporting improvements in their FPS and players who couldn’t start the game before are now all up in there, scrapping away like champions. This makes us very, very happy!
We want to make sure we're all up front and transparent with you about our hopes and priorities for the engine. First up, we want to make sure the game works for the players who've so far been unable to play without issues. After that, we'll be working towards improving FPS and and making sure the physics run more smoothly which is work that we'll continue smashing away at up to and beyond release of the engine. We really want you to keep all of this in mind: just because the engine's released doesn't mean we're completely done with optimizations. You guys deserve all the tricks we've got up our sleeve, not just one or two!
Some of you will have noticed that we get a sneaky weekly update out into the test branch with fixes and improvements, and that should carry on happening right up until the official release in the coming weeks. We’re working as quickly as we can, and aim to keep on improving after the release.




-Female Machanic
In the last devblog, we promised a redesign of our female Mechanic and here she is! We’ve made a ton of new faces and hairstyles, and here’s your first look at a few examples that we hope you’ll like. Really looking forward to getting her into the game when Survival Mode’s ready.




-Updated Textures!
As we beaver away in the background, cleaning up and improving the code in Scrap Mechanic, we’re also working hard to improve a whole bunch of visuals. Since release, the block textures have been really small, making it tough for us to make a texture that both looks great and doesn’t tile too obviously. Thanks to the glory and magnificence of our new game engine, we can get the block textures bigger, meaning there’s more working room for us to make them all look incredible.
The new textures are also way more in line with the ambitions we have for the quality of visuals on offer in Survival Mode. Here is a first look at the new wood and concrete textures!
All of our block textures will be getting the nips, tucks and full-on facelifts they so richly deserve, so get ready to see your creations looking a whole lot more awesome in the near future!




-Encrypt Your Connections
While you’re exploring buildings in Survival Mode, the temptation will definitely be there for you to whip out your connect tool and examine where all the interactive parts are located so you can get your scavenge on. One upcoming spanner in those particular works is gonna be the encryptor.
This device will hide all of the connection wires until it’s removed from the structure on which it’s placed. Mechanics will of course be able to place and hide this device on their creations so that you can make life harder for any mischievous Mechanics, protecting yourself from those who are out to fiddle with your connections and snaffle your stuff.




-Survival Outfits
Oh me, oh my! More Survival Mode goodness! Right now, we’re working on a range of alternate outfits that Mechanics can stumble upon in Survival Mode. We want to keep these sweet styles a secret until release, but the Farmbots have said it’s ok to give you a sneak peek of this one.
Naturally, gloves, jackets, pants and other items are all separately interchangeable giving all you fashion-conscious Mechanics a whole bunch of ways to express your style! Exciting times for personalization fans, right?




-More Beards & Hairstyles
As the ancient saying goes, with great beard comes great responsibility. You’re now gonna have the chance to choose just how great your beard is with the new range of beards and hairstyles for the male Mechanic so you can always be certain of fantastic follicles. Here are a few examples. Some of them are hil-hair-ious.




-Suspension Update: You Asked, We Deliver!
Ahh, the new engine is making all our fixes so much smoother already, we can’t tell you how happy we are about all of this! This time, it’s freeing us up to focus a bit more on showing our beloved suspension a little extra love.
Your feedback has led us to throw in a resistance slider to the suspension function. Some creations are incredibly heavy, and do nothing but instantly squash the suspension, so now it’s possible to adjust the resistance to handle different weights. We’re also fixing up the possibility for you to be able to add color to your suspension using the paint tool, which wasn’t previously an option.




-Particle Engine for the Modders!
Our awesome programmers have put together a brand new particle engine with a whole load of new features, meaning we can add more particles as well as improve the current ones. Best of all, we’ve made it crazy easy to use so all you modding Mechanics can make your mods even more amazing!



-Survival Mode
Just a quick update! As you’re reading this, we’re working hard on the crafting system and terrain. There’s still a long way to go on Survival Mode because our ambitions for this are high, and we won’t be releasing anything that’s half-done with a heap of cut corners. We’re aiming to make it great!
Unless it’s something we can feel proud of at the same time as knowing it’s something you’ll all love and enjoy, what would the point be?
Progress is good though, and we will of course share news as and when we get closer and we’ll be doing our very best in the meantime to keep you entertained with new fun updates to make your wait less painful.


That’s all for this devblog, thanks so much for reading.
Until next time, Mechanics! Keep on scrapping!


For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

How about we open up our window and let you grab another little glimpse into our magical workshop of delights? That’s right friends, it’s time for another delicious devblog! The last month at Scrap HQ has been a busy one, so get comfy in your driver’s seat and let’s jump into one of our most epic devblogs yet!
Now you’re strapped in, let’s just take a quick moment to say a massive thank-you to all you Mechanics who’ve been helping us test our new game engine. Your bug reporting skills have been invaluable, thanks so much!


-Engine Update
We’ve started testing the new engine on a public test branch, and your feedback has been fantastic! Heaps of Mechanics have been reporting improvements in their FPS and players who couldn’t start the game before are now all up in there, scrapping away like champions. This makes us very, very happy!
We want to make sure we're all up front and transparent with you about our hopes and priorities for the engine. First up, we want to make sure the game works for the players who've so far been unable to play without issues. After that, we'll be working towards improving FPS and and making sure the physics run more smoothly which is work that we'll continue smashing away at up to and beyond release of the engine. We really want you to keep all of this in mind: just because the engine's released doesn't mean we're completely done with optimizations. You guys deserve all the tricks we've got up our sleeve, not just one or two!
Some of you will have noticed that we get a sneaky weekly update out into the test branch with fixes and improvements, and that should carry on happening right up until the official release in the coming weeks. We’re working as quickly as we can, and aim to keep on improving after the release.




-Female Machanic
In the last devblog, we promised a redesign of our female Mechanic and here she is! We’ve made a ton of new faces and hairstyles, and here’s your first look at a few examples that we hope you’ll like. Really looking forward to getting her into the game when Survival Mode’s ready.




-Updated Textures!
As we beaver away in the background, cleaning up and improving the code in Scrap Mechanic, we’re also working hard to improve a whole bunch of visuals. Since release, the block textures have been really small, making it tough for us to make a texture that both looks great and doesn’t tile too obviously. Thanks to the glory and magnificence of our new game engine, we can get the block textures bigger, meaning there’s more working room for us to make them all look incredible.
The new textures are also way more in line with the ambitions we have for the quality of visuals on offer in Survival Mode. Here is a first look at the new wood and concrete textures!
All of our block textures will be getting the nips, tucks and full-on facelifts they so richly deserve, so get ready to see your creations looking a whole lot more awesome in the near future!




-Encrypt Your Connections
While you’re exploring buildings in Survival Mode, the temptation will definitely be there for you to whip out your connect tool and examine where all the interactive parts are located so you can get your scavenge on. One upcoming spanner in those particular works is gonna be the encryptor.
This device will hide all of the connection wires until it’s removed from the structure on which it’s placed. Mechanics will of course be able to place and hide this device on their creations so that you can make life harder for any mischievous Mechanics, protecting yourself from those who are out to fiddle with your connections and snaffle your stuff.




-Survival Outfits
Oh me, oh my! More Survival Mode goodness! Right now, we’re working on a range of alternate outfits that Mechanics can stumble upon in Survival Mode. We want to keep these sweet styles a secret until release, but the Farmbots have said it’s ok to give you a sneak peek of this one.
Naturally, gloves, jackets, pants and other items are all separately interchangeable giving all you fashion-conscious Mechanics a whole bunch of ways to express your style! Exciting times for personalization fans, right?




-More Beards & Hairstyles
As the ancient saying goes, with great beard comes great responsibility. You’re now gonna have the chance to choose just how great your beard is with the new range of beards and hairstyles for the male Mechanic so you can always be certain of fantastic follicles. Here are a few examples. Some of them are hil-hair-ious.




-Suspension Update: You Asked, We Deliver!
Ahh, the new engine is making all our fixes so much smoother already, we can’t tell you how happy we are about all of this! This time, it’s freeing us up to focus a bit more on showing our beloved suspension a little extra love.
Your feedback has led us to throw in a resistance slider to the suspension function. Some creations are incredibly heavy, and do nothing but instantly squash the suspension, so now it’s possible to adjust the resistance to handle different weights. We’re also fixing up the possibility for you to be able to add color to your suspension using the paint tool, which wasn’t previously an option.




-Particle Engine for the Modders!
Our awesome programmers have put together a brand new particle engine with a whole load of new features, meaning we can add more particles as well as improve the current ones. Best of all, we’ve made it crazy easy to use so all you modding Mechanics can make your mods even more amazing!



-Survival Mode
Just a quick update! As you’re reading this, we’re working hard on the crafting system and terrain. There’s still a long way to go on Survival Mode because our ambitions for this are high, and we won’t be releasing anything that’s half-done with a heap of cut corners. We’re aiming to make it great!
Unless it’s something we can feel proud of at the same time as knowing it’s something you’ll all love and enjoy, what would the point be?
Progress is good though, and we will of course share news as and when we get closer and we’ll be doing our very best in the meantime to keep you entertained with new fun updates to make your wait less painful.


That’s all for this devblog, thanks so much for reading.
Until next time, Mechanics! Keep on scrapping!


For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

First! we would like to thank everyone who has sent us bug reports. Thanks to you we can finish things faster and make it better!

So now that the updated engine is up on the test branch we plan to update it frequently with fixes and more features. At first the engine might not feel so different. But all the awesome stuff will start to be apparent as we add more things. So let’s take a look at what we've added today.

Here are some of the new improvements:

December 17th (0.2.0 Test 10):


• Added dynamic lights for testing
  
• Suspension resistance setting added for testing
  
• Fixed UV-Animations for Timer/Logic Gates
  
• Remade and updated all block textures
  
• Updated the inventory icons
  
• Steering Wheel Animations are now working
  
• Bearings/Suspension are now paintable
  
• Remade the big wheel
  
• Glass windows now render correctly
  
• Glass now renders correctly in workshop and inventory GUI
  
• Vsynch now works
  
• A lot of bug fixes and optimisations

December 2nd (0.2.0 Test 9):

• Added workshop to the test! You can now load and save creations
  
• Glass block is now transparent
  
• Added item preview to inventory
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when exiting a game.
  
• You can now jump in to a friends world from a single player game without any issues and the other way around.
  
• Added a different reflection map to the flat world.
  
• Random bug fixes with the base material rendering
  
• Optimized updating of blocks to minimize slowdown when building on big creations

November 22th (0.2.0 Test 8):

• Fixed a bug that would randomly crash the game at startup or show a black screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes made it impossible to weld things together that should have been possible.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed objects to be welded into each other; aka glitch weld.
  
• Added names above the players and also improved it so it follows the mechanic better.

November 18th (0.2.0 Test 7):

• Added depth of field to the new engine.
  
• Fixed rendering issues with the male mechanic while seated.
  
• The environment map is back.
  
• Fixed a random crash related to some optimizations.
  
• Particles are rendered using our new particle engine.
  
• Background colors in loading screen fixed.
  
• GUI interaction scales with the window.
  
• Added support for multiple block texture tiling.
  
• Added font caching.

November 11th (0.2.0 Test 6):

• We have optimized our rendering more! The game should now run smoother.
  
• Optimized the internal code structures. This should make it better at handling a lot of blocks and parts.
  
• Fixed a world naming bug.

November 9th (0.2.0 Test 5):

• Added grass and other ground cluttering.
  
• Fixed rendering issues with the terrain surface.
  
• Fixed some invisible letters when typing a new game name.

November 3rd (0.2.0 Test 4):

• Fixed a crash that happened when the terrain was loading in the main menu.
  
• Crash fixed caused by the particle system. Often triggered with the Paint Tool.

November 2nd (0.2.0 Test 3):

• Added more optimization. The game is merging boxes and now even cylinders resulting in less collision checks (Yay!)
  
• Fixed incorrect normals on blocks.
  
• No more highlight flickering when pointing with the Lift or the Weld Tool.

November 1st (0.2.0 Test 2):

• Fixed a crash with the Weld Tool.

We also forgot to mention three smaller improvements that were in the first test:

• The lever on the engine now moves when setting speed.
  
• Added pressed state when Radio is activated.
  
• The Paint Tool now shows the selected color on the tool itself.

We appreciate all the bug reports so keep them coming!

Time for us to get back to work.
Till next time Mechanics!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

First! we would like to thank everyone who has sent us bug reports. Thanks to you we can finish things faster and make it better!

So now that the updated engine is up on the test branch we plan to update it frequently with fixes and more features. At first the engine might not feel so different. But all the awesome stuff will start to be apparent as we add more things. So let’s take a look at what we've added today.

Here are some of the new improvements:

December 17th (0.2.0 Test 10):


• Added dynamic lights for testing
  
• Suspension resistance setting added for testing
  
• Fixed UV-Animations for Timer/Logic Gates
  
• Remade and updated all block textures
  
• Updated the inventory icons
  
• Steering Wheel Animations are now working
  
• Bearings/Suspension are now paintable
  
• Remade the big wheel
  
• Glass windows now render correctly
  
• Glass now renders correctly in workshop and inventory GUI
  
• Vsynch now works
  
• A lot of bug fixes and optimisations

December 2nd (0.2.0 Test 9):

• Added workshop to the test! You can now load and save creations
  
• Glass block is now transparent
  
• Added item preview to inventory
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when exiting a game.
  
• You can now jump in to a friends world from a single player game without any issues and the other way around.
  
• Added a different reflection map to the flat world.
  
• Random bug fixes with the base material rendering
  
• Optimized updating of blocks to minimize slowdown when building on big creations

November 22th (0.2.0 Test 8):

• Fixed a bug that would randomly crash the game at startup or show a black screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes made it impossible to weld things together that should have been possible.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed objects to be welded into each other; aka glitch weld.
  
• Added names above the players and also improved it so it follows the mechanic better.

November 18th (0.2.0 Test 7):

• Added depth of field to the new engine.
  
• Fixed rendering issues with the male mechanic while seated.
  
• The environment map is back.
  
• Fixed a random crash related to some optimizations.
  
• Particles are rendered using our new particle engine.
  
• Background colors in loading screen fixed.
  
• GUI interaction scales with the window.
  
• Added support for multiple block texture tiling.
  
• Added font caching.

November 11th (0.2.0 Test 6):

• We have optimized our rendering more! The game should now run smoother.
  
• Optimized the internal code structures. This should make it better at handling a lot of blocks and parts.
  
• Fixed a world naming bug.

November 9th (0.2.0 Test 5):

• Added grass and other ground cluttering.
  
• Fixed rendering issues with the terrain surface.
  
• Fixed some invisible letters when typing a new game name.

November 3rd (0.2.0 Test 4):

• Fixed a crash that happened when the terrain was loading in the main menu.
  
• Crash fixed caused by the particle system. Often triggered with the Paint Tool.

November 2nd (0.2.0 Test 3):

• Added more optimization. The game is merging boxes and now even cylinders resulting in less collision checks (Yay!)
  
• Fixed incorrect normals on blocks.
  
• No more highlight flickering when pointing with the Lift or the Weld Tool.

November 1st (0.2.0 Test 2):

• Fixed a crash with the Weld Tool.

We also forgot to mention three smaller improvements that were in the first test:

• The lever on the engine now moves when setting speed.
  
• Added pressed state when Radio is activated.
  
• The Paint Tool now shows the selected color on the tool itself.

We appreciate all the bug reports so keep them coming!

Time for us to get back to work.
Till next time Mechanics!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!


1. This post is about the test version of the game with the new, updated engine. Please remember that this is a test! We don’t recommend playing the test version unless you have one of the graphics cards specified below. There are still some fundamental elements missing in this version and, though it’s a fun experience, we can’t guarantee its stability just yet! And if you experience bugs, please do report them.

2. We are testing the rendering engine mainly in this first version. So players with crashes and/or with problems seeing textures should notice the biggest difference at this point. The bigger fps optimizations will be coming at a later point.

Now that we’ve made that clear, you might be wondering why we needed to do a test version? Read on...

First, thanks for tuning in! It’s FINALLY time for us to start testing the first part of our updated engine. But before you do that, let us shine some light on what exactly we have done and why this engine update was so important.

You see, to our great annoyance, ever since the first release we have had issues with some graphic cards. (Especially the benighted Intel 520 and 530 (Grrr!)) This caused Scrap Mechanic to crash at the start menu, making it unplayable for an unlucky few of you. Again, big apologies to those affected Mechanics who’ve been waiting all this time and are still here - HUGE thanks from us for hanging around!

Killing the OGRE
Once we got elbows-deep into the code, we quickly realized that the only way to fix this problem was to make a big change to our game engine. Not only that, it was also a good opportunity for us to rewrite a big part of our engine to get even better control over optimization and rendering. (This is probably the most awesome part about this update, though it doesn’t sound very sexy, we know!)

Ancient Mechanics might remember that our previous rendering engine was OGRE. It was good to begin with, but in the long run it just wasn’t able to do what we wanted. Animation in particular was like pulling teeth.

Now we’ve built our own awesome rendering engine from the ground up! This allows us to create visual effects and features that just weren’t possible before. Oh! And we even have a better animation system in place. I hope you can tell that we’re really excited now that we can make Scrap Mechanic look even better.

Run, Game, Run!
Flipping over to the optimization side! With our new engine, we can now make the game run even better and have less frame rate drops. In terms of productivity, it also makes our workflow much faster, meaning we should be able to optimise quicker!

In this first test, our initial optimization work means that you should notice an increase in the frame rate, especially on creations without bearings. We’re working right now on further optimization, but we’ve had to push it back until we’re happier with it - we know that sucks, but all this is just the first step towards making Scrap Mechanic run slicker and smoother. With the new game engine in place, we have tons of ideas of how to optimise everything further.

Final Thoughts
In other words, things are looking great for the Scrap Mechanic players. So please expect some big improvements to happen when this engine update is out of our way. However, there are things currently missing in the test version that are in the main version. Unfortunately they need more work.
Here they are:

• No glass rendering
  
• Depth of field is not added yet
  
• No UV animation
  
• The physics are not fully optimized yet.
  
• No name above players in multiplayer
  
• Steering wheels do not have a turn animation
  
• Workshop is not yet working
  
• There is no grass on the ground
  
• Object previews in the invetory do not show




On a final note, the engine work has impeded us over the last few months so you have probably noticed a slowdown in updates. Now this is done, we plan to go back to more frequent updates. But we’re aware that this update has really taken a LOT of our time so we really appreciate your patience.

Thanks for reading Mechanics! Keep on scrapping!
We are almost there now!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!


1. This post is about the test version of the game with the new, updated engine. Please remember that this is a test! We don’t recommend playing the test version unless you have one of the graphics cards specified below. There are still some fundamental elements missing in this version and, though it’s a fun experience, we can’t guarantee its stability just yet! And if you experience bugs, please do report them.

2. We are testing the rendering engine mainly in this first version. So players with crashes and/or with problems seeing textures should notice the biggest difference at this point. The bigger fps optimizations will be coming at a later point.

Now that we’ve made that clear, you might be wondering why we needed to do a test version? Read on...

First, thanks for tuning in! It’s FINALLY time for us to start testing the first part of our updated engine. But before you do that, let us shine some light on what exactly we have done and why this engine update was so important.

You see, to our great annoyance, ever since the first release we have had issues with some graphic cards. (Especially the benighted Intel 520 and 530 (Grrr!)) This caused Scrap Mechanic to crash at the start menu, making it unplayable for an unlucky few of you. Again, big apologies to those affected Mechanics who’ve been waiting all this time and are still here - HUGE thanks from us for hanging around!

Killing the OGRE
Once we got elbows-deep into the code, we quickly realized that the only way to fix this problem was to make a big change to our game engine. Not only that, it was also a good opportunity for us to rewrite a big part of our engine to get even better control over optimization and rendering. (This is probably the most awesome part about this update, though it doesn’t sound very sexy, we know!)

Ancient Mechanics might remember that our previous rendering engine was OGRE. It was good to begin with, but in the long run it just wasn’t able to do what we wanted. Animation in particular was like pulling teeth.

Now we’ve built our own awesome rendering engine from the ground up! This allows us to create visual effects and features that just weren’t possible before. Oh! And we even have a better animation system in place. I hope you can tell that we’re really excited now that we can make Scrap Mechanic look even better.

Run, Game, Run!
Flipping over to the optimization side! With our new engine, we can now make the game run even better and have less frame rate drops. In terms of productivity, it also makes our workflow much faster, meaning we should be able to optimise quicker!

In this first test, our initial optimization work means that you should notice an increase in the frame rate, especially on creations without bearings. We’re working right now on further optimization, but we’ve had to push it back until we’re happier with it - we know that sucks, but all this is just the first step towards making Scrap Mechanic run slicker and smoother. With the new game engine in place, we have tons of ideas of how to optimise everything further.

Final Thoughts
In other words, things are looking great for the Scrap Mechanic players. So please expect some big improvements to happen when this engine update is out of our way. However, there are things currently missing in the test version that are in the main version. Unfortunately they need more work.
Here they are:

• No glass rendering
  
• Depth of field is not added yet
  
• No UV animation
  
• The physics are not fully optimized yet.
  
• No name above players in multiplayer
  
• Steering wheels do not have a turn animation
  
• Workshop is not yet working
  
• There is no grass on the ground
  
• Object previews in the invetory do not show




On a final note, the engine work has impeded us over the last few months so you have probably noticed a slowdown in updates. Now this is done, we plan to go back to more frequent updates. But we’re aware that this update has really taken a LOT of our time so we really appreciate your patience.

Thanks for reading Mechanics! Keep on scrapping!
We are almost there now!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter