Hi Mechanics!
This time, we’ve been focusing on continuing to optimize the game further. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to what improvements and additions you all wanted to see and are pleased to say that we managed to add some of your requests in this update! We’ve also polished up the thrusters and added some fun new parts that we know you’ll get creative with.
Let’s go over things in more detail.

-Bathtub
So you may have noticed that we have a sink and a toilet, but we couldn’t help thinking that when it came to bathrooms, something was missing. That’s right, we’ve added a bathtub. We all know you work very hard on your creations, so we thought you’d earned yourselves a bit of R&R. As we’re very generous hosts, when you choose to sit in a bath, your mechanic will be treated to a nice relaxing bubble bath. That is of course, unless you’ve decided to go all 2bath2furious and attach thrusters to it so you can fly it full speed across the terrain. Remember, even wash-time can be fun-time.

-Follow cameras
Whenever we read through Scrap Mechanic discussions, we always come across requests for a camera that follows when your vehicle turns. Well, happy belated (or super early) new year people, because you’ve now got yourself a follow camera as well as a strict follow camera that also follows vertically. You can set the camera in the settings or change it while seated with the Ctrl key! We really like it, so please give it a go and let us know what you think!

-Toggle Hotbar
As master mechanics ourselves, we know how annoying it can be when you fill up the hotbar and it takes that little bit longer to access everything. Well, now you can rotate between three hotbars at any time, simply by pressing Alt - Q and Alt - 1/2/3 for direct access. We’ve seen a few of you asking for this so we hope it will come in handy when you’re busy building creations with a lot of different parts!

-Optimization
While you all know that the new engine is finally in the game, we still feel that there is a lot we can do to optimize the game further. As a first step, we’ve made some rendering optimizations that dramatically improve slowdowns when placing blocks on really large creations. We’re happy to say that it works a lot smoother now. Remember though, this is just the tip of the optimization iceberg, so strap yourself in, because there’s a whole lot more where that came from!

-Thruster fire
Thanks to our lovely new particle engine, we can finally implement the kind of particle effects we always imagined for Scrap Mechanic. As we’ve been so impressed with this engine, our plan is to redo all the particles in the game from scratch, bringing them up to the same standard of visual quality that we’re aiming for with the upcoming survival mode.
The first glimpse of these nice new particles in action is in the brand new thruster fire. Thanks to the addition of dynamic lighting, your thrusters will not only look a lot more realistic, but they will even trigger dust when close to the ground.
Like all good mechanics, sometimes we also have to go back and give older parts some extra love.

-Mug
We noticed a lot of players are using pipes as mugs when they build houses.
It’s creative and it’s how a true scrap mechanic should drink his coffee. However, as much as we like our beverages piping hot, we thought we’d treat you and add a proper mug as a building part. This one comes with a symbol that you might have seen before. What could it stand for? Hopefully it will all make sense in Survival mode...... hmm.


Please keep in mind that updates like this do not affect the work we do on survival mode. These updates are made to give you some fun new things to play with while we work on survival mode and bigger features.

Up next we will be dishing out the details on the official block mod support.
We are also working on a very special new interactive part that we have a hunch some of you might be excited about.
More on that later.

Thanks for reading mechanics, that’s it for now!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!
This time, we’ve been focusing on continuing to optimize the game further. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to what improvements and additions you all wanted to see and are pleased to say that we managed to add some of your requests in this update! We’ve also polished up the thrusters and added some fun new parts that we know you’ll get creative with.
Let’s go over things in more detail.

-Bathtub
So you may have noticed that we have a sink and a toilet, but we couldn’t help thinking that when it came to bathrooms, something was missing. That’s right, we’ve added a bathtub. We all know you work very hard on your creations, so we thought you’d earned yourselves a bit of R&R. As we’re very generous hosts, when you choose to sit in a bath, your mechanic will be treated to a nice relaxing bubble bath. That is of course, unless you’ve decided to go all 2bath2furious and attach thrusters to it so you can fly it full speed across the terrain. Remember, even wash-time can be fun-time.

-Follow cameras
Whenever we read through Scrap Mechanic discussions, we always come across requests for a camera that follows when your vehicle turns. Well, happy belated (or super early) new year people, because you’ve now got yourself a follow camera as well as a strict follow camera that also follows vertically. You can set the camera in the settings or change it while seated with the Ctrl key! We really like it, so please give it a go and let us know what you think!

-Toggle Hotbar
As master mechanics ourselves, we know how annoying it can be when you fill up the hotbar and it takes that little bit longer to access everything. Well, now you can rotate between three hotbars at any time, simply by pressing Alt - Q and Alt - 1/2/3 for direct access. We’ve seen a few of you asking for this so we hope it will come in handy when you’re busy building creations with a lot of different parts!

-Optimization
While you all know that the new engine is finally in the game, we still feel that there is a lot we can do to optimize the game further. As a first step, we’ve made some rendering optimizations that dramatically improve slowdowns when placing blocks on really large creations. We’re happy to say that it works a lot smoother now. Remember though, this is just the tip of the optimization iceberg, so strap yourself in, because there’s a whole lot more where that came from!

-Thruster fire
Thanks to our lovely new particle engine, we can finally implement the kind of particle effects we always imagined for Scrap Mechanic. As we’ve been so impressed with this engine, our plan is to redo all the particles in the game from scratch, bringing them up to the same standard of visual quality that we’re aiming for with the upcoming survival mode.
The first glimpse of these nice new particles in action is in the brand new thruster fire. Thanks to the addition of dynamic lighting, your thrusters will not only look a lot more realistic, but they will even trigger dust when close to the ground.
Like all good mechanics, sometimes we also have to go back and give older parts some extra love.

-Mug
We noticed a lot of players are using pipes as mugs when they build houses.
It’s creative and it’s how a true scrap mechanic should drink his coffee. However, as much as we like our beverages piping hot, we thought we’d treat you and add a proper mug as a building part. This one comes with a symbol that you might have seen before. What could it stand for? Hopefully it will all make sense in Survival mode...... hmm.


Please keep in mind that updates like this do not affect the work we do on survival mode. These updates are made to give you some fun new things to play with while we work on survival mode and bigger features.

Up next we will be dishing out the details on the official block mod support.
We are also working on a very special new interactive part that we have a hunch some of you might be excited about.
More on that later.

Thanks for reading mechanics, that’s it for now!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

We have a new update coming soon!
But the awesome thing is that you can already try it now on our test branch.
As always we like to try things out before we add it to the main branch to make sure everything works great!

Here is what we added

• Follow camera and a camera setting.
  
• Updated thruster particles that now have dynamic lighting and trigger dust when close to the ground.
  
• Rotate between three hotbars with alt+q or access them directly with alt+1/2/3.
  
• Items are saved in the hotbar when joining other players.
  
• Did some render optimizations that fix the slowdowns when placing/deleting blocks on huge creations.
  
• Added bathtub. A new interactive part!
  
• Added a mug part.

All of these have been requested by our awesome Scrap Mechanic community!




We appreciate all bug reports so keep them coming!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

We have a new update coming soon!
But the awesome thing is that you can already try it now on our test branch.
As always we like to try things out before we add it to the main branch to make sure everything works great!

Here is what we added

• Follow camera and a camera setting.
  
• Updated thruster particles that now have dynamic lighting and trigger dust when close to the ground.
  
• Rotate between three hotbars with alt+q or access them directly with alt+1/2/3.
  
• Items are saved in the hotbar when joining other players.
  
• Did some render optimizations that fix the slowdowns when placing/deleting blocks on huge creations.
  
• Added bathtub. A new interactive part!
  
• Added a mug part.

All of these have been requested by our awesome Scrap Mechanic community!




We appreciate all bug reports so keep them coming!

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

There were quite a few issues in the 0.2.0 version. The hotfixes fixed some of them but far from all. We hope that this patch should help even more players who are having trouble playing the game!

Here is a list of things that have been fixed:

• Uploading blueprints to the workshop should now work for players with special characters in their windows usernames.
  
• Added an optimization that should be noticeable in worlds with many parts.
  
• Using interfaces for some interactive parts while another player destroys it no longer crashes the game.
  
• Removed d3dx11.dll dependency.
  
• Various crash fixes.
  
• Added more info to crash reports that will help us fix more things in the future.

We noticed that a lot of players were having issues with corrupted game data folders in the previous version. Hopefully, that shouldn't happen again. But if you get a crash on startup, try this:

• Uninstall the game (don't worry, your saves are safe).
  
• Remove the "Scrap Mechanic" folder from steam library folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common).
  
• Install the game again.

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

Hi Mechanics!

There were quite a few issues in the 0.2.0 version. The hotfixes fixed some of them but far from all. We hope that this patch should help even more players who are having trouble playing the game!

Here is a list of things that have been fixed:

• Uploading blueprints to the workshop should now work for players with special characters in their windows usernames.
  
• Added an optimization that should be noticeable in worlds with many parts.
  
• Using interfaces for some interactive parts while another player destroys it no longer crashes the game.
  
• Removed d3dx11.dll dependency.
  
• Various crash fixes.
  
• Added more info to crash reports that will help us fix more things in the future.

We noticed that a lot of players were having issues with corrupted game data folders in the previous version. Hopefully, that shouldn't happen again. But if you get a crash on startup, try this:

• Uninstall the game (don't worry, your saves are safe).
  
• Remove the "Scrap Mechanic" folder from steam library folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common).
  
• Install the game again.

For all the latest news, follow us on
Facebook
Twitter

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