Oct 30, 2019

Gamecraft Experiment 10 - Hotfix Now Live

Gamecraft - JoshJammer

Hello Gamecrafters,

Last weeks massive update that saw Robocraft X become Gamecraft went extremely well overall and we’ve seen some absolutely stunning creations uploaded to the Workshop already! There are a few bugs and issues that we’ve been made aware of though. We’ve got some bug fixes, tweaks and balance changes for you while we continue to work on the next major update. Read the full patch notes below:

New Features

Featured and Tutorial filters
We’ve added a couple of new filters to the Community Games screen. These filters are aimed at showcasing some of the ‘easy to pick up’ games as well as tutorial levels focused on helping new players get to grips with the controls and features. “Tutorials” will be the current default.

We’ve also made the filter persistent for each session. This means that changing to “Favourites”, then entering and leaving a game, will load you back into the “Favourites” filter rather than defaulting back to “Tutorials” each time. We’ll be working on a global system to remember filters and other UI states a bit later on.

New “Pilot Seat” guide
We’ve added a new short “guide” to the My Games screen that should help new players understand how the Pilot Seat and associated signal channels work. This will only be visible for completely fresh installs. We’ll be working on a better system for updating “guide” saves going forward. If you would like to access this tutorial, you can follow these steps: “ Right-Click Gamecraft -> Properties -> Local Files -> Verify Integrity of Game Files”

N.B. This will not erase any local saves. You will keep any games you’ve saved over the past week if you chose to do this but it’s always a good idea to keep backups of these.

Other Changes

Motor torque balancing
The torque of scaled Motors wasn’t quite reaching the level we wanted. We’ve tweaked these slightly so that larger motors will output more torque.

Improved messaging for Limited User Accounts and accounts that have not signed the Workshop Agreement
Firstly, anyone that has yet to sign the latest Steam Workshop Agreement should now be informed of this when they first try to publish a game. A window now appears that clearly messages that the agreement needs to be signed before the game can be published publicly. The window will then open your newly published game in the Steam Overlay, where you can see a banner informing you of the agreement and current visibility of your game

Secondly, it has come to our attention that anyone that currently has “Limited User” status https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-iagk-7663 will be unable to cast votes on community content, and are unable to set their own published games to “public” visibility. This is Steams policy, which we must follow. However, we’ve improved the messaging of the “Error” shown when trying to cast a vote to make this clear.

Reorganised the details page of Community Games
We have a couple of minor changes to this screen:

The Subscribe and Favourite buttons have moved next to the Like/Dislike buttons. This should be a bit less confusing and more consistent now.
A new “Discussions” button has been added that will take you straight to the Discussions page of the game you are looking at, to encourage feedback and community engagement.
“Plays” has moved to the far left, to keep it separate from the new button layout

Bug Fixes

Fixed a crash that could occur when quitting from the main menu - There may still be a few cases of this so do let us know if it still happens
Fixed a slightly older bug that caused blocks to connect by edges, rather than faces alone - This shouldn’t impact many existing games but you may find that blocks that previously connected no longer do
Fixed an error when placing a Pilot Seat in a Community Game
Fixed an error that could appear when placing or scaling cubes through text blocks, triggers, controllers or motorised parts in certain situations
Fixed an error when enclosing a joint in cubes so that it cannot move
Fixed a bug that caused Pistons to behave unexpectedly when multiple OnStay/OnEnter Triggers are entered at the same time
Fixed a bug that caused Pistons to retract slower when stacked or holding weight
Fixed a bug that caused Trigger volume collisions to lag behind on moving objects
Fixed some general performance issues - We’ve cleaned up a few high-impact issues but we’ll continue working on this for the next update

Next on the list for Gamecraft is a few “useability” improvements, optimisations, physics engine updates as well as the “Colour Tool” and a new way of sharing creations that don’t quite count as games. We’ll start sharing more details on these over the next few weeks. Until then, keep crafting and publishing amazing games!

The Gamecraft Team

Oct 24, 2019

Gamecraft Early Access Update - Now Available!

Gamecraft - Jballen

Hello Gamecrafters,
Today’s major update to Gamecraft (formerly known as RobocraftX) represents a huge amount of work we’ve been doing to begin to show what is unique about Gamecraft and the early potential it has as a Game Making platform and Builder’s Paradise.

Game Crafting and Self Publishing

From today, Gamecrafters can create full games from blocks using our unique Block Building, Physics and Game Simulation Engine and can then self-publish them for anyone else in the community to play, all with just a few clicks and all from within game.

Creators can give Titles to their games, add Descriptions and can create Screenshots using the in-game screenshot tool. Then by clicking ‘Publish’ they can upload their creations to the cloud so others can find them and play them via the ‘Play Games’ screen.

Games Portal

All games created and published by the community will be available for everyone to play via the ‘Play Games’ screen. From this new screen you can sort games by ‘Trending’, ‘Most Popular’, and ‘Most Recent’. You can also filter on games that you are Subscribed too, games that you have marked as your ‘Favourite’ and games you or your Steam Friends have published.

Also via the ‘Play Games’ screen you can ‘Subscribe’ to games that you want to keep up to date, so that if creators update a game Steam will automatically download the latest version for you.

You can also rate games by giving them your ‘Thumbs Up’ or ‘Thumbs Down’ (Reddit style) and you can see stats like the number of times a game has been Played, and the number of Subscribers and Favourites each game has.

Note: Uploading can take up to 15 minutes to appear in the workshop/Play Games screen. Some users may need to accept the latest Steam Workshop Agreement to upload and play games, you can agree to that agreement here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement/

Rebrand and Premium Switch Over

On the 27th September we announced that we would be shifting from free-to-play to Premium (i.e. pay-up-front) on the 24th October. We also announced that anyone who added the game to their library prior to the switch would keep the game for free forever and thousands of players have done just that.

We had decided that a free-to-play model [where users grinded for blocks and paid to accelerate that speed] would not have worked well for Gamecraft and felt that a fair price up front (initially just $5) was a much simpler and fairer way to monetise Gamecraft long term. We also decided to change the name of the game from RobocraftX to Gamecraft as we felt that the new name better described the open ended nature of what Gamecraft us destined to become. We are still committed to ensuring that Gamecraft can eventually support competitive multiplayer building style games but we wanted to communicate that Gamecraft is being designed to support games of all types, both single player and multiplayer, competitive and co-operative, locally hosted and dedicated servers. It doesn't support all of these things at this time, but this is our goal.

IMPORTANT: All players who added the game to their library whilst it was free will keep the full game for free forever. We have notified Valve that we want to make this switch now, but it may take them a few days to make the transition formerly so if you’re quick you may still have time to sneak in adding it to your library.

IMPORTANT: We want to make it clear that the initial price of $5 is an initial price for early adopters who join the community early and that this price will rise as we feel the product is improving in a similar way to some other well known games have done so as they have grown. We will always give players plenty of warning of any future price changes.

Freedom to Scale

A major new feature available in this version of the game is that we now support incredible degrees of freedom when it comes to scaling. We have added ‘Uniform’ scale on top of our very unique ‘Non-uniform’ scaling system. With this new scaling system, you as the Gamecrafter can decide what block size you want to work with, from huge blocks to landscape quickly, to small high-fidelity blocks for compact physics simulated machines like vehicles.

To set your scale simply hold CTRL and use the Mouse Wheel to scroll between 27 different scales from 1/3rd of “normal” block size up to 27 times its size (and all sizes in between). If you’re a fan of the Minecraft block size then you want to mouse wheel twice to a 3x3x3 Gamecraft block. You can of course interchange block sizes within a single creation and our automatic texturing system will keep the fidelity of the textures to be realistic and hide the seams between your blocks regardless of the scale you choose.

The best thing is that this new scaling system works with all functional parts [that it makes sense for it to work with]. So, you can have House sized Wheels and Motors on huge vehicles if that’s what you want. If you really want you can have crazy things like Pistons that extend the height of sky-scrapers and launch you high into the sky. As you scale functional parts their physics changes too, so mass and inertia increases, forces, torques, velocities, energy consumption and storage, and even audio effects all get bigger as the parts get bigger.

Pro Tip: Hitting F4 will toggle between the 1 unit grid snapping to grid snapping at the same size as your current Uniform Scale setting. This is particularly useful if you want to build Big and Fast.

Text Block

We’ve also added a powerful Text Block to the game. The new Text Block can be attached to any other block, static or moving and can be non-uniform scales so you can have tiny text to label your Buttons and Switches or huge text to add fun to your games.

What’s really awesome is that the Text system is supports powerful ‘tags’ that you can include in your text for powerful formatting, including bold, italic, font size, colour, and even emojis. You can find a list of most of these supported tags here: http://digitalnativestudios.com/textmeshpro/docs/rich-text/

Pro Tip: Using the Console Block (see below) you can can update text on Text Blocks from in your games in real time.

Triggers

We have added new Trigger Blocks. These are small microchips which create an invisible volume (invisible when playing games) which allow you to trigger things to happen when objects or characters go inside (or overlap) them. They really are very powerful and when combined with physics components like Motors and Pistons allow you to build crazy automated machines and when combined with the Console Block (see below) allow you to do powerful things such as changing the gravity, or even changing the day to night based on events that occur in your games.

Console Block

The Console Block is also in this update and allows you to configure console commands that will trigger from within your game. You can rig these Console Blocks to Controls like Buttons and Switches or to Trigger Blocks.

Using the Console Block you can create games that change the gravity, the colour of the sky, the sunlight color or direction, the text on a text block, the player movement speed, teleport the player, enable fly mode, set the player camera to 3rd or FPS, and we plan to continuously add new commands to this list for ever more freedom to Gamecrafters.

For a full list of commands type /help when you’re in the console block UI (accessed by placing a console block or clicking on it once it’s already in your build).

New Controller Parts

Up until now we only had a Lever and with this update we have added the Switch, Button, Three-way-switch and the Dial to the roster, all which have different functionality useful for different scenarios.

Other Changes (since Preview)

New Grass and Dirt textures
New Trees and Shrubs
New Flowers and Rocks
New animated sky which works with the console block and updates depending on sun direction
Improved fog that isn’t as strong and intrusive
Improvements to the post processing effects and colour balance
Rust Iron changed to beautiful Iron Plating based on previous Infinitum material

New Social Community Spaces

We are setting up new Official Community social spaces to coincide with the change of name to Gamecraft. New Discord channel and subreddit are linked from buttons in the Main Menu. Please subscribe and join the channels as we plan to be active in them with the community as we have been so far and will cease to use the previous RCX channels in time.

Here are links to all the new channels:

From Preview to Live

All the features that were added in the Preview version will also be committed to Live with this update. Here’s a short rundown but you can read the full notes here: Preview Release Patch Notes

My Games screen with Multiple Saves
Save as many creations as you want via your My Games screen. This is also where you Self-Publish your games from.

Pilot Seat, Control Console, Passenger Seat
Rig up machines, games and vehicles to keyboard and mouse controls with custom cameras for different scenarios using these new powerful Pilot Seat and Control Console. Provide seats for passengers or just a resting place for the player using the Passenger Seat.

Landscaping with Grass and Dirt
In the Preview version Infinitum has been changed to ‘Iron’ and so now ‘falls’, and Landscape blocks like Grass and Dirt provide the same anchoring functionality as Infinitum did (i.e. they do not fall under gravity and things that are attached to them also do not fall.

Latest DOTS and Unity
We upgraded to the latest DOTS and Unity engine versions which provided much more precise collision detection and improved physics simulation and performance.

Other changes of note

With the Preview version we changed the polarity of some of the Levers can controls (reversing their direction so that the Pistons would extend on ‘positive’ as opposed to negative for example), this change has been committed to live
Bounciness has been removed from rubber. We regrettably had to make this change as we had many glitches and bugs related to the simulation of bounciness. We are hoping to find a solution to this and to reintroduce bouncy materials longer term. Rubber still retains its super grippiness
The interaction for Pick, Delete and Channel Select has been altered to match the distance that you place blocks (thanks to Steve’s Maker Space for that feedback).
Fixed the annoying continuous hissing of Pneumatics when they try to extend or contract but are blocked or constrained by something
Max distance increased by 10x so games can be larger (our intention is to keep scaling this and pushing the boundaries as tech improvements allow it)
Preview will now be disabled until we have a new one for you to play

Bug Fixes

Leo should now get stuck less often when walking near low cubes
Connecting a Pilot Seat to the sides of Edge cubes will no longer trigger an error
Fixed an issue that caused builds with Pilot Seats to flip over if you build too close to them
Fixed some bugs with Springs that caused them to not “damp” enough

Game and Save Breakages

With this huge change from RobocraftX to Gamecraft we have many major changes that cause old RCX saves to break. Changes to scale, physics, polarity, and engines all contribute to causing issues and breaking old RCX saves. These changes have been live in the Preview branch for a while now and have been experienced by those who have been playing with and giving us early feedback on that version. We are very sorry for breaking any saves you have created so far. Our plan going forward is to do our best to maintain the integrity of all the games that are crafted after this point through a number of tactics as follows:

If we make a functional change to an existing part, we will attempt to auto-convert your games to continue to work as you intended if this is possible
Alternatively, we may retain the old functionality for legacy games and apply the new functionality to new games for a period of time to allow games to evolve
If we make a part obsolete, we will continue to retain the legacy part for a period of time so games can evolve
We will find a place [probably a wiki website] to communicate all of these changes and provide plenty of warning to changes that are up and coming
IMPORTANT: If you have designed your game to exploit an obvious glitch or bug, you should expect that bug to be fixed and at that point your game will break. We will not attempt to maintain games that are based on glitches or bugs that are present.

If you would like to carry your saves over from Robocraft X or the Preview Build, you can do so by following these simple steps:

Start by installing/updating Gamecraft to generate the new save file location (C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Freejam\Gamecraft)
Navigate to the folder of the previous install (...\RobocraftX or ...\GamecraftPreview)
Copy the save file from these folders to the new “\Gamecraft\Games” folder
(Robocraft X Only) Open the save folder and rename “GameSave.RCX” to “GameSave.GC”
Launch Gamecraft and confirm your games appear in the My Games list

N.B. With all of the major changes, we can’t guarantee that older Robocraft X save files will still function the same, or at all, although we have taken steps to try and preserve these as much as possible.

The Gamecraft Team

Oct 14, 2019

Announcement about Experiment 10 Release Date

Gamecraft - Jballen

Hello Gamecrafters,

We have a big announcement to make. The planned move from RobocraftX to Gamecraft and from free to pay-up-front which was scheduled to be on the 17th of October will now be on the 24th of October, so you have an extra week to get the game forever for free now as long as you add it to your library before the 24th October.

We have delayed the launch by a week as we have some major features that are near completion that we wanted to include with the launch of Gamecraft as we see these features as “game changers”. Here is the low down on what you can expect to see on the 24th:

Full Self-Publishing

We have been working hard integrating the Steam Workshop API into the game so that Gamecrafters can create games and self publish them for the Gamecraft community to play. You’ll be able self-publish from within the game with simple button clicks without having to manually manage files or visit the Workshop in Steam itself, so it will be easy and painless to share games.

Everyone in the Gamecraft community will have access to all published games via a fully functional ‘games portal’ accessed via the PLAY GAMES screen. From here you can filter games by the following filters (Trending, Most Popular, Most Recent, Subscribed, My Favourites, Made by Creators I Follow, My Games, My Friends Games). Additionally you’ll be able to use a Text Search to search for text in ‘Titles’ and ‘Descriptions’ of games. You’ll be able to vote on games you like, Follow creators you like, Subscribe to their games and see games created by your Steam Friends all via the portal.

Text Block

We’ll be releasing a new Block called the Text Block which allows you to put text on anything you want in your games at any scale and with loads of options for formatting the text.

Using ‘rich text tags’ (a bit like html tags) you’ll be able to configure font size, bold, italic, text alignment, etc. You’ll be able to write small text on a single block to label controls like Levers, and you’ll be able to scale up hugs Text Blocks to have enormous text for huge signs etc.
Additionally you’ll be able to update the Text on any Text Block in your game using a Console Command, which you’ll be able to trigger in games via another new block (aka the Console Block).

Console Block

Another new block we’ll be adding in is the Console Block. This incredibly powerful block will allow Gamecrafters to trigger console commands via electricity signals on our unique circuitry system.

So, if you want a Lever to change the Gravity, you can do it by linking the Lever to the Console Block. If you want a Trigger to Teleport a player, you can do it via the Console Block. Hold on a sec, did I just mention Triggers?!?!?!

Trigger Blocks

Yes, Triggers block are going to be in the release on the 24th. You’ll get special Trigger Volumes that you can add to your games which can trigger when Objects or Characters enter them.

Using the triggers and the unique electricity system in Gamecraft you can use Triggers to make Motors spin, Pistons extend, and even trigger Console Commands. You’ll be able to do crazy stuff like Teleport a player when he walks into a room, or make everything float with negative gravity when the player drives a car through a checkpoint (anti-gravity racing anyone?).

New Controls

We'll be adding new Control Blocks too, including the Slider, Dial, Three-Way-Switch, Button and Toggle Switch so you have more flexibility when rigging up controls for your creations.

You can see them in action here: https://twitter.com/MarkDJammer/status/1182702123894611970?s=20

The Most Advanced Scaling System in a Block Building Game Ever!

We’re completely exploding the building possibilities with this release. Not only will you be able to use Gamecraft’s revolutionary Non-Linear Drag Scaling system but we’ll be introducing a brand new Uniform Scaling system that works with all parts, including functional parts like Motors, Batteries, Pistons and Wheels.

By default new users will begin building and snapping to a grid with blocks the same size as the current Live version of Gamecraft (aka Robocraft or Minecraft block size).

*NB: If you’ve been playing the Preview version of Gamecraft, this means that the default block size will feel like the ‘old’ block size, not the new smaller size.

What’s really special and unlike any other building game is that creators will be able to use the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys to change the block and grid snap size to scale them down for smaller blocks (minimum is 1/3rd current size) and can scale them up to 27 times the smallest block size. This scaling also works on all functional parts so you can have Motors and Wheels the size of houses.

One of the really cool things about this is that when you scale a Functional Part like a Motor up, its Physics will change, so it will deliver greater Torque, give you a greater Top Speed and will consume more energy from Batteries.

When scaled up blocks will [by default] snap to a larger grid which will allow rapid building of large scale things such as landscaping huge environments. The larger blocks will also work with the Non-Linear Drag Scaling system (so you can plonk down a large block and then click and drag to get large non-linear shapes).

You can even toggle the grid snapping from ‘current block size’ to ‘single unit size’ for high fidelity snapping using the F4 key. We’re pretty confident that you’re going to create some amazing things with this new creative power at your fingertips and we feel gamecraft will begin to show what it has to offer that differentiates itself from other building games on the market.

Preview Branch Released

Along with this release we’ll be pushing all the changes in the current Preview version to the Live version but with a bunch of bug fixes which have all been made possible by the fantastic feedback and assistance given by the Gamecraft community.
Preview Branch Patch Notes

Reminder on Name and Price Change

On October 24th 2019 Our plan is to shift the game over to $5 Premium (i.e. pay up front) along with the brand name change.

ANYONE WHO ALREADY HAS A COPY OF THE GAME WILL KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

ANYONE WHO HAS THE GAME IN THEIR STEAM LIBRARY BETWEEN NOW AND THE 24th WILL ALSO KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

SO - TELL YOUR FRIENDS OR ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED TO OWN THE GAME IN FUTURE, THAT RIGHT NOW IS THE LOWEST PRICE THE GAME WILL EVER BE (i.e. FREE!) AND TO GET IT NOW.

The Gamecraft Team

Oct 8, 2019

Experiment 09/Gamecraft Preview Build Now Available

Gamecraft - Jballen

Hello Experimenters,
A ‘Preview’ (work in progress) build of our latest features and changes is now available. Details on how to get the Preview version are given below. Please read all of the patch notes before downloading it.

New Scale

We’ve received feedback over the last couple of months from users in the community on how difficult it is to make smaller builds. We’ve had the blocks and parts to allow users to create gigantic machines and objects, but there were limits on how compact you could make things when making complex stuff like claw machines or pinball machines etc. RCX is all about creative freedom, so we have decided to work on a scaling feature that will allow you to build with blocks and functional parts that are at any size you choose, from the size of a small cardboard box to the size of a house (yes you will be able to have house-sized Wheels and Motors if you wish).

Ahead of that change we need to make a change to the smallest block size otherwise it would not have been possible to allow you to make things that are more compact and higher fidelity than they are at present. Therefore, ahead of the introduction of the new ‘uber scaling’ feature mentioned above we have reduced the smallest block size to 1/3rd of the size when compared to the current live version.

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget, in a few weeks time you’ll be able to set the scale to any size you like using CTRL + Mouse Wheel and will be able to interchange between scales in a single creation.

Here’s a screenshot showing Leo stood in front of some blocks at the new smallest size:

Pilot Seat, Passenger Seat and Command Console

We’ve been teasing these parts for a while and they’re available in this Preview version. The Pilot Seat and Control Console both allow you to configure parts to be controlled by keyboard and mouse when Leo is sat in them.

To configure parts to be controlled by a seat, you simply add a seat to your machine on a conductive cluster of blocks. Then, on functional parts like Motors, Servos, Pneumatics and Steppers you’ll find some new signal channels that you can assign:

Forward/Backwards - assigns to W & S by default
Left/Right - assigns to A & D by default
Jump - Space
Crouch - Shift
Run - CTRL
Fire/User - LMB
Alt-Fire/Use - RMB
Cycle - Mouse Wheel
Sit - these is a special channel that allows you to make things happen when someone is sat in the seat

NB: We decided to assign player actions to controls as opposed to ‘specific keys’ so that your creations will work for all users even when they have different keyboards (like the French AZERTY) and when users have reconfigured their controls in future via an options screen.

These new channels can be found at the end of the signal list (after channel 99). Pro tip: Scrolling backwards from the default channel of ‘?’ will bring you right to them in an instant.

To sit in a seat when the simulation is running (aka Play Mode) you just click on it with LMB. LMB in RCX is the way you will ‘Use’ everything that is interactive in game.

Once sat in the seat you need to push ‘E’ to exit (this allows LMB to be assigned to machine controls when you’re in a seat.

PRO CREATOR TIPS:

When in a seat you can also interact with other controls that are nearby (like Levers) when in First Person
Multiple seats on a single creation will average their signals (like Levers), so keep this in mind
Passenger Seats do not send any signals
If you want multiple seats on a single machine controlling different things, separate them out using ‘conductivity’
When in a seat the First Person camera will match the orientation of the character sat in the seat (i.e. as if you’re looking out from his eyes), so if the seat is upside down the world will also appear upside down
Pilot and Passengers seats allow the third person camera to move outside a vehicle even when Leo is inside a cockpit (aka vehicle cam in Robocraft)
Control Panel keeps the character in view when using the third person camera so will move forwards if there is an object between the camera and Leo
Alt + Mouse Wheel can enter and exit third person at any time even when sat in a seat

Multiple Saves

The Preview version lets you get a first look and play with the new ‘My Games’ screen. It is from this screen that you will be able to view and edit all the games you have created and are working on. It is also from here that in a few weeks time you’ll be able to self-publish your finished creations for others in the community to play.

To save, just push ESC, bring up the Pause Menu and select ‘Save’. There are also ‘Save and Quit’ and ‘Quit without Saving’ options on the Pause Menu.

NB: The saving options are disabled when you are running the simulation in Play Mode. You can only save from Build Mode.

When you save you’ll be asked to give your game a Title (you can change this at any time) and a screenshot (which you can also update and change at any time).

The Screenshot Taker is a feature built into the game which allows you to fly the camera around and get a good shot of your creation for a save thumbnail image (it’ll also be used when you self-publish your games in the future).

PRO TIP:

If you’re in First Person when you save, Leo will be hidden from view. If you’re in Third Person he will be visible in your screenshot where you left him. Great for certain screenshots where you want him in the composition.

IMPORTANT: This new save method replaces the old autosave system, so please be aware that the game will no longer autosave (we didn’t want to overwrite your saves if you didn’t want to save). We may bring this back in the future as a kind of backup autosave. If you’d like to see that feature let us know.

IMPORTANT: Save File Changes

As we prepare the game for the move from being called Robocraft to Gamecraft, any files saved in the Preview version will be saved to a new location on your HD:

“C:\Users\\[USER]\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Freejam\\GamecraftPreview\\Games”

NB: When we move from Preview to Live the location will be the same but without the word ‘Preview’ in the ‘Gamecraft’ folder name. This system will allow us to have concurrent Preview and Live branches going forwards.

We have also changed the file extension of save data files from .RCX to .GC (the stuff inside is the same, it’s just the file extension that has changed).

If you want to load an old save in the Preview version you need to move it to the new folder and rename it from .RCX to .GC and then you’ll be able to load it.

Future Proofing

A lot of the changes in this version will break many existing creations. We made a decision that we needed to get all of these known game breaking changes out of the way now as we’re working hard to integrate Steam Workshop which will allow you to self-publish your game creations. We felt that if we got all the major known game breaking changes out of the way in one go now then you would benefit from knowing that anything you created wasn’t likely to get broken in a significant way in the future*, so you could begin working on larger projects with less fear that we’d introduce a change that would destroy them.

*as we improve the game and introduce new features you may need to update your games, but our aim would generally be that you only need a quick update or tweak as opposed to it being completely destroyed

Landscape Changes

In RobocraftX we want you to be able to build games of all kinds from outdoor adventures to indoor arenas and deep space battles. This means that you will want to customize the landscape, or even remove it altogether depending on your game idea.

We experimented with various methods of landscaping and the one that just felt right for RCX was a block based system, so that everything in the games are created with a single powerful unified block building engine.

We’re working on new (concave) shapes and (material and colour painting) features that will allow you to build landscapes of all kinds and plan to release them in just a few weeks time. The uber block scaling feature (mentioned earlier) will also work hand in hand with landscaping to let you create large landscapes from blocks quickly (also coming in a few weeks time). We’ll add landscape props like Trees and Rocks so you can place them too.

So, as we develop these new features we have taken the step to finally remove the temporary landscape [we’d been using since the first prototype of RCX] in this Preview version. We didn’t want to keep two completely different types of landscape systems long term and we were aware that we would break all games created on the old landscape when the new landscape system was finally live so felt it better that any games you built now you would know would be fine when we have completed all the current planned work ahead of full self-publishing.

With this Preview build we’ve added a Grass and Dirt block set as a start. In a few weeks time we hope to support concave shapes so you can landscape properly as well as more landscape material types.

Engine Changes

We have integrated the very latest release of Unity’s DOTS Physics Engine which provides much more precise collision testing. We noticed that some of your games relied on objects to be able to pass through other objects in order to work and this stuff doesn’t happen so easily now so it’s worth noting.

These changes have allowed us to increase the performance and improve the rigidity of joints, which many of you have requested.

We have integrated the latest version of Unity Burst and Unity Engine also which includes many bug fixes and improvements.

Servos, Pistons, Pneumatic, Stepper and Spring Changes

We had quite a few users show us how easy it was to get objects to glitch through one another with Servos, Pistons, Pneumatics and Steppers. When we dug into fixing this we were forced to rework the way these parts worked so that their collision detection was more precise and robust by applying the forces in a way more in tune with the laws of physics. We have also reworked the Damped Spring so it feels more realistic. These changes are pretty big and will affect how some of your previous creations work.

Again, we wanted to get all these major overhauls out of the way in one go so the things you build now will all still work when we enable self-publishing.

Polarity changes

One change we made with the Piston and Servo work is to fix the polarity of motorised parts. In a lot of cases, this shouldn’t impact your builds, but in certain rotations, Motors, Servos, Steppers and Pneumatics may now work “in reverse”.

All Pistons now extend when they receive a positive signal, rather than a negative. Motors will rotate clockwise when they receive a positive signal and anti-clockwise with a negative signal. Motorised Axles will work in the same way. Motorised Hinges will turn towards the display on negative signals and away from it on positive signals.

New and Updated Parts

Dirt Blocks & Grass Blocks
These new parts are going to accomplish two things: Replacing Infinitum as a ‘static’ block, that can be used as an anchor point and to replace the terrain. Dirt and Grass can be placed exactly the same as any other block and will be grid aligned. For now, only the standard cube shapes will be available but we’ll be supporting more in the future.
Why remove Infinitum?: We felt it was more logical that objects would be anchored and not fall from the sky or fall over when they were joined to landscape (like Grass and Dirt). If you love the old red metal panelling of the Infinitum, don’t worry, it’ll be coming back when we bring in the full material editing and painting system in a few weeks time (see below).

Infinitum -> Iron
Infinitum is being repurposed as “Iron”. A heavy, conductive but non-static material.The biggest change here is that these parts will now fall if they are not anchored, but they will now work as a heavier alternative to Aluminium.

Oily -> Oiled Steel
Oily cubes are now conductive and made of metal so have been renamed to Oiled Steel.

Hemisphere
A new shape.

Trees and Rocks
These new props accompany the Dirt and Grass blocks in the new terrain system. Trees can be grid aligned, or placed freely in the sky and will fall if they are not attached. These parts cannot be scaled at this stage, but will be when Uniform Scaling is added.

Rocks will be completely free from the grid (like Spheres) and will also fall or be pushed around if you hit them. These parts can be freely scaled as well!

New Wheels
We’re offering up two types of wheel as of this experiment. The standard wheel remains the same size, but now has an extra connection point on the outside as it was so widely requested!. You’ll be able to scale it up in the future as well. The new small wheel is a 1x1x1 version (with a slightly larger radius) that also has connection points on both sides.
Both will be scalable from the new small block size up to 27x27x27 when the functional block scaling system goes in.

Battery
The Battery S has also been changed to be two blocks tall, much like a real AAA Battery.

The Future of Parts, Materials and Color

Next week we will begin work to overhaul the Inventory to allow all parts and shapes to be set to any material type and any colour. Here’s a mockup which will hopefully explain how it’ll work:

Infinite Parts

We’re finally doing away with the 99k block count in the Inventory! We really want to be able to offer truly infinite building capabilities so we’re working hard to achieve this. With the removal of the part count, you’ll be able to place parts that have been scaled to incredible sizes as well as simply being able to place more parts overall.
A caveat of this change is that we still have some hard limits in place that we need to work through to make building fully infinite. As of this experiment, you’ll be able to place up to 5000 instances of a single part type. This means that you can have 5000 Aluminium Edge pieces present, scaled to any size you wish, so you could have 5000 Edges made up of millions of parts when scaled. We’ll be working to remove this cap as soon as we can as well.

Other Changes

Lever Interaction Range
We’ve reduced the range at which Leo can grab Levers. With the introduction of the Pilot Seats we felt that we should bring these in line and make the interactions a bit more realistic. It also looked very odd in multiplayer tests when a player could be observed to be moving a Lever across the other side of the room to where they were standing. Leo can now grab Levers (and enter Pilot Seats) from roughly 6 blocks away.

Block Deletion Tweaking
We’ve made a minor change to the block deletion timer that we added in Experiment 08. Now, any single part, or part that has been scaled up to 10 units will be deleted instantly. Anything larger than 10 units in size will now take 0.2 seconds to delete, scaling up to a total of 3 seconds depending on the size of the block being deleted. This change should make clearing section of builds a little smoother and quicker, whilst still preventing the accidental deletion of larger parts.

Border Added to Labels
We’ve added a small drop shadow to the hotbar and the text that appears when scaling a part to make it easier to read on lighter backgrounds. We can make this a bit more pronounced if this is still causing issues.

How do I get the Preview Version Now?

To access the Preview Build, follow these steps:

Open the Library tab on Steam
Right-Click on RobocraftX
Click on “Properties”
Click on the “Betas” tab
Enter the code “FreedomIsKey” and click on the “Check Code” button
Click on the dropdown and select the “Preview” branch
Give this a minute to download
Make sure the game appears as “RobocraftX [preview]” in the Library
Click Play and enjoy!

The switch may not always be smooth so if the application fails to launch, or launches the old version, please try verifying the game files via the "Local Files" tab and try again.

N.B Some of the branding is in the process of being updated, so you’ll start to see “Gamecraft” being used in some places but not others.

Bug Fixes

Users that were receiving an error dialogue relating to “Prefab Manager” before reaching the main menu should no longer get this error. We believe that this was due some users having PC’s that did not meet the min spec requirements. We have enabled a dialogue error which checks a users PC is compatible and gives a message if it is not to help users know when this is the case.
Crash when entering Creative Mode or Community Games on certain CPU lines should now be resolved. Please get in contact with us to confirm/let us know whether this issue has been resolved for you.
Fixed an issue with collisions vanishing on certain scaled parts.

Known Issues

We have a couple of outstanding issues that we need to resolve but these shouldn’t have a major impact on the rest of the update so we’ll be putting the Preview Build live with the following known issues:

New Seats have a “force Field” texture at all times - These should only be present in Build Mode to help you see where the collision actually extends to and should disappear in Play Mode
If you are attempting to place cubes during the transition to simulation, these parts may not connect correctly. If this happens, delete and place the part again, waiting a second or two before entering simulation again
The screenshot taker has some visual issues with the Sky when it is first opened. We'll be working on a fix for this

Current State of Existing Games

As we’ve mentioned, these changes are pretty massive and have impacted almost every game that has been submitted to us over the last few months. For now, we’ve temporarily removed all games from the Community Games screen but we’ll be working hard to rebuild as many levels as we can in the new scale, with the new physics changes and parts to reintroduce them when we can.

Any Level Creators that want to rebuild levels on their own and resubmit are more than welcome to do so and we’ll reintroduce them over time.

Reminder on Name and Price Change

On October 17th 2019 Our plan is to shift the game over to $5 Premium (i.e. pay up front) along with the brand name change.

ANYONE WHO ALREADY HAS A COPY OF THE GAME WILL KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

ANYONE WHO HAS THE GAME IN THEIR STEAM LIBRARY BETWEEN NOW AND THE 17th WILL ALSO KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

SO - TELL YOUR FRIENDS OR ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED TO OWN THE GAME IN FUTURE, THAT RIGHT NOW IS THE LOWEST PRICE THE GAME WILL EVER BE (i.e. FREE!) AND TO GET IT NOW.

The Robocraft X Team

Sep 27, 2019

MAJOR UPCOMING FEATURES, NAME CHANGE, AND PRICING

Gamecraft - Jballen

First, let us say a huge thank you to everyone in the RobocraftX community for some of the incredible games you’ve built with the very limited set of components we’ve given you so far. Your creativity and ingenuity has amazed us. With this announcement we’ll be covering a whole suite of new upcoming features that are designed to give you Creators the parts you need to begin to turn your creations into compelling pieces of content, and to enable you to self publish them for others to download. We’ll also be announcing a change to the name of the game and an announcement about pricing.

First up, we'll give you the lowdown on the suite of cool game creator features we’re adding:

Pilot Seat, Passenger Seat and Control Panel

The Pilot Seat, Passenger Seat and Control Panel are parts that you can put on any creation. You can put seats anywhere, even on ceilings and walls.

Leo can use/sit in the seat by left clicking when the crosshair is over it (i.e. this is how you ‘use’ things in RCX). As long as you have a line of sight to a seat you can get in it. When in a seat you push ‘E’ to exit the seat again.

When in a seat you are seat belted to the creation/vehicle so you move where it moves. The seats come with special cameras too. When in first person, if your seat goes upside down, then you see the world upside down. The Pilot Seat and Control Panel have two different 3rd person cameras. The Pilot Seat’s camera works like classic Robocraft so you can view vehicles with the Alt+MouseWheel controlling zoom distance. The Control Panel will always keep character in view, so if an object gets in the way it will move forwards closer to the character. These different behaviours are useful in different scenarios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl1syecFVDs
Pilot Seats and Control Panels allow you to assign keyboard and mouse input actions to functional parts that are connected to them (via conductivity and signal channels). You can configure Motors and Servos (and anything else) to respond to the player’s input when in a seat. It’s pretty easy to rig up cars, cranes, etc. using them, but it’s also possible to rig up some incredibly creative controllable contraptions using the same system. The seat even sends a signal when you are simply sat in it, so you can make cockpits close and doors open automatically when someone sits in the seat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1BXXyNP7Jk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ_sT6nCZ1M

Text Block

The Text block is a scalable block that can be scaled from 1x1 to any size. When you place it in the world a UI pops up allowing you to input text on it. Using rich text tags you can set variable font size, colour, italic, and bold.

You can mount the Text Block on anything, static things, walls, and moving things like vehicles.

You can also give each Text Block a unique ID. Using the command console you can issue a command that can update the text on any Text Block in the world at run time. Read on to find out how the Script Block can be used to trigger console commands to change text whenever you need in your games.

Triggers

We’re adding Object and Character Triggers too. Triggers are microchips that you put on your creations and then scale to define a ‘trigger volume’. Trigger volumes can be overlapped which you’ll find very useful for complex creations. Triggers are visible when building games, but not when playing games, so your players won’t see them when they play your games.

There are multiple trigger types, ‘OnEnter’ sends a pulse signal on anything connected (via conductivity) each time something enters it. ‘OnExit’ is similar but sends the signal when something exits it. The ‘OnStay’ trigger sends a continuous signal when anything is inside it.

You can rig up movement parts like Motors or triggerable parts like Script Blocks to the triggers to create various gameplay behaviours such as:

Using these triggers you can:

Make lifts rise automatically when a character is stood on it
Trigger a script command to change the gravity when a vehicle drives into an are
Make a vehicle automatically steer when it gets near objects (it’s possible to attach triggers to moving things too)

Script Block

The Script Block is akin to the Command Block in Minecraft, but it works with all the wonderful physics in RCX. A Script Block placed on the same conductivity cluster as any signal sender can respond to it and trigger console commands. This means you can do stuff like:

Teleport the player when someone enters a trigger volume
Update the text on a Text Block when someone gets into a pilot seat
Change the gravity when someone pulls a lever

As you can see, the RCX build system is really going to step up a gear with the addition of the Pilot Seats, Triggers and the Text and Script Blocks.

Saving Multiple Creations

We’re adding a proper save game system. At any time you’ll be able to save the game and you can have as many save files as you like.

When you save the game you’ll get a Screenshot Taker so you can save a cool thumbnail image, you can give it a Title and Description.

You can edit, delete, and update any of your saved games at any time via the new ‘My Games’ screen.

Publishing to Workshop

We’re also integratring RCX with Steam Workshop. You’ll be able to click a ‘Publish’ button from in game and your game will automatically upload to Steam Workshop. If your game is already published on Workshop you’ll be able to update it at any time in the same way.

Once published it’ll be available for everyone in the community to play. From in game you can add a screenshot, title and description and if you want your games to really stand out you can use all the Steam Workshop functionality to add your own custom photoshopped click bait thumbnail, screenshots, youtube videos etc.

Users can give you votes on your content using Valves Workshop voting system but they can do it from in game. Players will be able to Sort content by ‘Newest’, ‘Most Popular’ and other common sorting methods like that.

Users can ‘Follow’ creators and can Subscribe to your game so they automatically get updates when you make them. They can Favourite games also to create a short list of favourites that can be revisited at any time.

Users can comment in Workshop on your games and you can respond to feedback you receive.

End Game Command

Game creators will be able to trigger custom end game screens. You can trigger them whenever you want; say when someone falls off the side of a platform or if a puzzle is solved incorrectly. You can also trigger the end game screen when the player succeeds and congratulate them with custom text content and styling. For the first time you’ll be able to make proper games which players can Win and Lose.

The End Game screen will have options to Retry and Quit. The EndGame console command will be triggered via the Script Block.

Of course in the future we’ll add Counter Blocks, Timer Blocks, Logic Blocks etc, so you’ll be able to do proper logic in your games.

Physics changes

We’ve been working hard on the core physics. This work will never really stop as we’ll always seek to improve this element. We’ve done some work to make joints more ‘rigid’ which we will release with Experiment 09. We’ve also done some work to improve collisions between objects. We’ve reworked the Servos and Pistons to prevent them glitching through things so much.

All of these changes have altered the behaviour of some of the existing games and we’ll be working hard at Freejam to fix them for you and re-introduce them, or if you decide to fix them yourselves and upgrade them with these new features above (such as Pilot Seat) we’ll focus on integrating your update as quickly as we can until the self publishing options are live.

Materials & Colouring

We’re aiming to add more materials too and the ability to paint colours on all of them. Materials like Carbon Fibre, Wood, Ice, Brick, Tile, and others we have planned will come online.

Timing

We’re aiming to have this all done by Halloween, it’s a lot to do so we’ve got our work cut out but that gives you an idea of what’s in store very soon.

Multiplayer beta

We’re also hoping to release around the same time a beta branch which will include the very earliest version of the multiplayer engine. You’ll need to use console commands to connect to friends and we expect you’ll find bugs and issues at this early stage but we’re keen to release a beta branch this time (something we never did in Robocraft Classic) so that we can let you play with new features and feedback on them early.

Name change

We’ve been feeling that the name RobocraftX isn’t really properly communicating what the game is. Whilst we hope to bring destruction, weapons and team multiplayer into the product, the aim is to add these as features you game creators can use to make awesome games for the RCX community. RobocraftX is way more than just a Robot building game, it’s a full Game Creator where you will be able to build full working multiplayer games with logic, narrative, characters etc. and all with blocks.

For this reason, on October 17th, along with the release of Experiment 10 we’ll be changing the name to Gamecraft. Here’s a work in progress new logo:

Price

Finally we want to discuss price. We had originally thought the game would be free-to-play, but we have struggled to design the free-to-play business model to work well with grinding / buying blocks. We feel the product will work so much better if it’s a simple pay-up-front Premium model with a fair price point that starts very low and escalated as the product gets better.

Our plan is to shift the game over to $5 Premium (i.e. pay up front) on October 17th along with the brand name change.

This next bit is important:

ANYONE WHO ALREADY HAS A COPY OF THE GAME WILL KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

ANYONE WHO HAS THE GAME IN THEIR STEAM LIBRARY BETWEEN NOW AND THE 17th WILL ALSO KEEP THEIR COPY, FOR FREE, FOREVER.

SO - TELL YOUR FRIENDS OR ANYONE YOU THINK MAY BE INTERESTED TO OWN THE GAME IN FUTURE, THAT RIGHT NOW IS THE LOWEST PRICE THE GAME WILL EVER BE (i.e. FREE!) AND TO GET IT NOW.

We’ll be posting repeated posts in the coming weeks about the name and price change so nobody misses the opportunity to get the game for free whilst it is free.

NB: Along with this change we’ll remove the limits on block counts in the Inventory.