Dear Stormworkers,

Many thanks to all those players who have given us clear feedback to the latest update! With your help we have been working hard making several improvements! If you have feedback, let us know in a clear way with reproducible steps on the issues board.

Some of you have been asking us questions throughout the week and we will share the answers here:

Should modular engines and other Stormworks features reflect real life units, and values?



No. In Stormworks, we model lots of systems and mechanics to work in a real time game simulation, While the systems are based on reality, it's impossible to accurately model everything as if it was real life, in a video game. We balance systems to reflect real life, with simplifications, and balanced to work as a game.

Should modular engines overheat?



Yes. Overheating is a feature of classic and modular engines (unless you turn it off in the creative menu!). In modular engines, heat generation is directly proportional to fuel combusted. Engines under load and at high RPS will burn a lot of fuel and so heat up quickly. Manage the rate of fuel burn to manage the engine temperature. Check out the examples in the presets section for examples including coolant systems.

Overheating can be avoided by combusting less fuel, and circulating more cool water through the coolant manifolds.

What is next?



Thank you for asking because we are really excited to tell you! We are working on loads of the top features from the most recent poll, including AI ships and aircraft, nuclear reactors, steam engines, and weapons! We are really excited about all of it, and will be releasing these updates throughout this year. It is a really exciting set of features that were highly voted for by players (at least 2,500 votes each!) in the most recent poll.

A few weeks ago we released the 2021 roadmap and that still stands, although the order of updates could change if you want them to. Now is the time to let us know your thoughts and feedback about what you want to see in the upcoming updates, how you want the mechanics to work, There is still plenty of time for us to integrate community feedback so we would love to know what you think.



As always, we continue to work hard on fixing issues and making improvements to existing features. Please see below for the latest patch notes.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.1.4

Feature - Updates to fluid gantries
Feature - Added exhaust tooltip to cylinders
Balance - Reduced exhaust production
Balance - Increase intake scoop pressure
Balance - Increased passive cooling rate
Fix - Engines now passively cool when holding no coolant
Fix - Modular engine belt rendering when mirrored
Fix - Renamed torque node labels from Power to RPS

Dear Stormworkers,

The modular engines major update is now live!

Thank you to all the players who helped shape this update with their thoughts and feedback, and those who helped test on the experimental branch of the game. Thank you also to all those players who voted for this update on the issues board and the Discord polls!



Modular engines are a series of new Stormworks blocks that allow you to design and build your engine the way you want. You place crankshaft blocks, pistons, air, fuel, exhaust, and cooling manifolds. There are also clutches, flywheels, power manifolds, starters, alternators, pumps, gearboxes, new radiators and heat exchangers. You can arrange these components how you wish, to design your own combustion engine.

You will need to consider fuel and air mixture ratios to control the power and efficiency of your engine. You will need to consider engine cooling so that your engine does not overheat. Engine size, flywheels, and RPS affect the torque and power output. You can boost engine performance using a supercharger or air scoop to pressurize the air entering the engine.



We hope you enjoy all the new components and systems, and we can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback and see what engines you create!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



Patch Notes

v1.1.2

Feature - Modular Engine Parts!
Parts include:
Crankshafts
Pistons
Engine Manifolds
Air Intake Manifold
Fuel Intake Manifold
Exhaust Manifolds
Coolant Manifolds
Drive Belts
Clutches
Flywheels
Starter
Alternator
Fluid Pump
New Gearboxes
Electric Radiators
Air-Air Heat Exchangers
Air-Liquid Heat Exchangers
Liquid-Liquid Heat Exchangers
and more!

An example modular engine has been included in presets.

Dear Stormworkers,

The modular engines major update will release in less than a week, on Thursday the 18th February 2021 at 17:00 UTC!

This long-awaited and most requested new feature brings the ability to design and build your own engines, from modular parts.

Over the last weeks and months, we have been developing this new major update and sharing our progress live on the experimental branch of the game. We want to thank the many players who have given their thoughts and feedback and helped shape this update.



The new modular engines give players the ability to build smaller and larger engines than ever before, arrange, shape and fit their engines to the form of their vehicle, and tune the behaviour and performance of their engines with the various new modules. While these engines may be more complex to design and build, they can be more powerful and efficient.

The old engines will remain unchanged in the game, for simpler and quicker building where required.

We can't wait to share this major release.



We are also releasing a hotfix addressing several issues and making several improvements. Please see below for the full patch notes.

What is next?

We are already working on the 2 most popular items on the most recent features poll, with over 3,000 votes each, nuclear reactors and modular weapons. We have been releasing the 5th most popular item (AI ships, planes, helicopters) as minor updates, and have other big features planned for this year.



Join us on the official Discord for the big major update launch on Thursday!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

v1.0.34

Fix - Character teleportation bug (Causing twilight zoning)
Fix - Secondary physics transforms after teleporting a vehicles
Hanging seat, Ski, and all wheels
Fix - Scripts ticking while simulation is paused
Fix - Rotor blade mesh issues
Fix - Rotor blade angle when mirrored
Fix - Rotor definition force, mass and cost
Fix - Rotor counter-torque not scaling with blade count
Fix - Phantom force after all rotors are destroyed
Fix - Added rotors to tech tree
Fix - Explosion fuse ignoring random time component
Fix - Scene ticking using camera transform in place of player transform
Fix - Custom vehicle tooltips only appearing on non-editable vehicles

Lua Api:
Added x, y, z = getAITarget(character_id)
added setVehicleShowOnMap(vehicle_id, is_show)

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we bring coaxial and advanced rotor mechanics to the main branch of the game!

Over the last week we have been hard at work, listening to your ideas and feedback, improving, extending, and updating the new coaxial rotors!

We have added a full set of rotors, from small size to large, light and heavy versions, as a similar set to the old rotors.



Some of the new rotors have cylinder and cone versions, so they can be arranged cosmetically as well, with cones stacking neatly on the top of the intermediate cylinders.

In response to player feedback on the experimental branch, we have addressed the balance of yaw force so that rotors drag enough to put a helicopter into a spin, in a similar way to that of a real helicopter with failed tail rotor.

The rotor size slider has been added to allow fine adjustment of your rotor blades, to achieve the exact size and look that you are looking for with your rotary wing aircraft.

All the new features discussed last week are included in this new release including power transmission so rotors can be stacked, coaxial rotors, yaw force and rotor drag, and more.



We can't wait to see the new creations you make with these new parts, and the old aircraft you upgrade and improve with these new parts!

As always, we continue to work hard improving the quality of the game with bug fixes and improvements. Please see the patch notes below.

Stay tuned for future posts on the upcoming modular engines, modular weapons, and other big updates that we are working on!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers



v1.0.33

Feature - New Advanced/Coaxial Rotors
An update to the Stormworks rotors with sleeker designs, anti-torque force, blade size adjustment, stackability, and better support for intermeshing!

Rework - Added mission and Env-Mod as optional tags when uploading addon to workshop (defaults to Env-Mod if neither selected)
Rework - Relocatted Edit Playlist Lua button to the top toolbar, which now stays active while editing

Fix - Radar detection for rotated bodies
Fix - setVehiclePos zero-ing out rotation
Fix - Crash when returning a burning vehicle to workbench
Fix - Worldpsace ui popups always being visible
Fix - Editor warnings breaking when editing a connected microprocessor

Lua Api
========

Added server.save([savename]) function
An issue with the function has already been reported by #experimental Stormworkers and the Devs are working on a fix.

Dear Stormworkers,

Many of you have been asking for better rotor mechanics with rotor drag, more compact rotor assemblies, variable blade length, and torque pass-through to be able to build coaxial rotors. Many of you have even been creating incredible coaxial helicopters despite needing awkward pipes feeding the upper rotors.

We are currently working on all of these new features, and are sharing early versions of the new advanced rotors on experimental branch.

Existing helicopters and the existing rotors will continue to work in the same way as before.



The new, advanced rotors create rotary drag, causing a yaw force. The rotors spinning drag on the air as they rotate. This drag depends on the size of the rotor, and the angle at which it is slicing through the air. Without a tail or other force to counteract this drag, the helicopter would go into a spin. Tail rotors will now be mechanically essential to conventional helicopter designs to balance this force, and damaging a tail rotor will cause the helicopter to enter a spin in a similar way to a real helicopter.

The new rotors remove the blocks at their base, instead connecting the rotor axis directly to a torque pipe. This gives more power and flexibility to vehicle designers, reclaiming vital blocks at a critical area of the helicopter. This will make it easier to fit in other components and produce more compact helicopter designs.



Tweaking the size of your rotors is frequently requested, and an important feature for getting the right scale and feel for your rotors. Blades will be able to tweak their scale in a similar way to changing the size of wheels, where you can adjust the size, perhaps +/- 20% per rotor type.

Coaxial rotors will now be possible by simply stacking rotors on top of each other. Power can be passed through lower rotors to the upper ones, and the lack of block base and new meshes make these new rotors a lot more in-fitting and visually appropriate. Coaxial rotors can spin in opposite directions, creating drag that counteracts each other. They can be yawed by increasing the collective on one rotor set while decreasing on the other to imbalance the drag.



We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on the new advanced rotors! We will continue to test this new feature, as well as others on experimental and look forward to bringing it to the main branch of the game soon.

In case you missed it, a few weeks ago we announced that we are working with Microprose on the sequel to Carrier Command. If you are interested in game design and development, we have a series of posts discussing calling in fire support, the helm, remote vehicle control, inventory, manufacturing, logisitics, and more.

Meanwhile, we continue to work on modular engines, modular weapons, as well as a broad range of fixes and other improvements to the game.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week, we are adding new tools for optimizing the physics performance of your vehicles!

Performance optimization tools are something that have been frequently requested, and we have been listening carefully! Thanks to all players who let us know they were looking for better optimization!

Read more about optimizing your vehicles in Stormworks.

F2 Physics Tool

The F2 physics visualization tool is back! This is a developer tool, but we have re-added this as it can be useful to players. When pressing F2, your vehicles will render in physics display mode. Each physics shape is shown in a different color, so you can easily see how Stormworks is building the physics representation of your vehicle.



How Does Stormworks Build The Physics Shapes?

Stormworks uses our own, internally developed technology to turn hundreds of thousands of voxels into a much smaller number of convex physics shapes. This process is lossless, so the physics representation is still fully detailed and accurate.

The algorithm is sensitive to how you have built up the shapes in your vehicle, and some arrangements of blocks are much easier to simplify than others.



Physics Flooding Block

We have added a new block that will flood internal compartments within your vehicles with physics - without adding weight. This is extremely useful for flooding internal areas of your vehicles such as inaccessible areas of your ships hull. Filling these zones makes it much easier for the physics system to optimize your shapes!

Using the block is simple. Simply place the new physics flood block within the enclosed compartment, and make sure there are no wedges or pyramids within the inside of this compartment. The physics system will now have a much easier time creating simpler, faster physics for your vehicle!

Our own testing has shown that just a few minutes placing these blocks can improve physics on most vehicles by at least 20%.



We can't wait to hear what players think of these new tools and what performance gains you can find!

We are also planning another Question and Answer session! Please submit your constructive and short questions here thank you for submitting your questions! We have now recorded the video.

Please see the changelog for the usual list of fixes and improvements.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

v1.0.29

Feature - Physics Flooder Optimisation Block
Feature - Fluid Spawner spawn level property
Feature - F2 Physics Debug Mode

Rework - Scripts are now initialized before Env Mod creation rather than during
Rework - Tutorial Starter Boat Optimisation
Rework - Editor Warnings Speed Optimisation

Fix - Added a heat zone to the Beginner Island House
Fix - Editor Warnings Undo/Redo issues
Fix - Editor Warnings reloading issues
Fix - Mutex issue that possibly caused blackscreen on world load
Fix - Vehicles Twilight zoning due to secondary physics after teleporting
Fix - Crash when object is spawned without its secondary physics
Fix - Solid Rocket Nozzles and Jet Engines often failing to destroy their ghost physics fully (Occasional Crash/Lag)
Fix - Fractional component masses showing as rounded numbers in the component inventory
Fix - Removed Empty option on fluid spawners
Fix - Crash when a vehicle's ghost objects are destroyed in the Addon Editor
Fix - Intermittent crash when disconnecting a rope and despawning the vehicle
Fix - Vastly improved network efficiency for setVehicleButton and setVehicleDial

Addon Lua API Update Changes:

Functions that were directly updated and need replacing in scripts
===
spawnVehicle -> spawnAddonVehicle
spawnVehicleAppData -> spawnVehicle
getLocationIndexByName -> getLocationIndex
onSpawnMissionComponent -> onSpawnAddonComponent

Functions that were combined and may need replacing in scripts
===
getPlaylistIndexCurrent() / getPlaylistIndexByName(name) -> getAddonIndex([name])

Functions that updated but still retain their previous form as an alias
===
getPlaylistPath -> getAddonPath
spawnMissionLocation -> spawnAddonLocation
spawnThisPlaylistMissionLocation -> spawnThisAddonLocation
spawnMissionComponent -> spawnAddonComponent
getPlaylistCount -> getAddonCount
getPlaylistData -> getAddonData

New Functions
===
getVehicleData(vehicle_id)

Dear Stormworkers,

Stormworks is a featured Weekend Deal on Steam with 20% off!

This is the first Steam discount ever for Stormworks, after over 3 years on Steam. We have held off doing discounts and promotions until now, but Valve recently reached out to us, suggesting we be one of the Weekend Deals. This is a great opportunity to get on the front page and let more players know about Stormworks!

If you or your friends have not got Stormworks yet, this weekend is a great opportunity to get it, as we can't say when the next discount will be. Buy now at the discounted price!



Thank you to all the players who have supported the game and made Stormworks what it is. There are over 90,000 creations on the workshop, with many creations having over 20,000 subscribers! The average player has over 75 hours of playtime, which is incredibly high on Steam, and as we all know, many players have several thousand hours.

Your creativity and skill is what makes Stormworks special. Thank you.



We will continue to develop the fixes, improvements, and new features to make Stormworks as great as we can. We are really excited to see what player creations the future brings.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

Happy New Year!

It is time for a minor update! This week we bring light highlights, so you can now see lights in the distance. This is a huge help for identifying runways, vehicles, or seeing distress flares and strobes.

This week, we have also added the long awaited 3 way corner pipe junction in pipe and block form! This component is frequently requested and completes the set of pipe pieces.

Distant Lights



Omni-directional lights now produce small glints in the distance, to better model the appearance of lights when they are far away.

This is particularly useful for Stormworks, where runway lights are very important to be able to see from distance, or where you are trying to locate a vehicle or player who have navigation lights, flares or emergency strobes. In effect, this small change to the cosmetics to lights is actually a very mechanical update, and is all about navigation and locating objectives.

It also makes vehicles and lights look better at distance, and improves the effect of navigation and landing lights, to help communicate your direction and intentions.

3 Way Corner Pipe



The final pipe piece is here! The pipe set is finally complete!

The corner pipe works just like other pipe components, creating junctions for fluids, gasses, or torque to travel along. This piece is useful where space is limited and the layout of other parts makes this particular junction necessary to fit everything in.

Winter Break

It has been a busy winter break! We have moved to our new office and were working hard over the break decorating the walls and reconditioning our furniture. Here in the UK, we are not allowed to use our office yet due to Covid-19, but we hope to move in soon enough. In the mean time, we will continue with our development plans working from home.



Questions and Answers

In case you missed it, we did a Q&A video over on MrNJerseys Youtube channel. It was really fun to talk about Stormworks and share upcoming development info, and we think these should become a regular feature to engage with players and better communicate the development plans.

We plan to keep progressing and balancing the new modular engines, and are very excited to get to new fixes and features in this new year.



As always, there are plenty of other changes and fixes in this update, so please see the full change log below for details.

We look forward to reading your thoughts and feedback on this new update!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

v1.0.26

Rework - Experimental Internal torque damage is now tied to 'Engine Overheating' setting instead of general 'Vehicle Damage'
Fix - Wheels killing/launching players
Fix - getPlaylistIndexByName() functionality
Fix - Disabled Load button during Saving
Fix - Multiplayer CTD caused by returning a vehicle to workbench that is connected via rope to another object

v1.0.27

Feature - Runway Lights and Distant Light Flares
Feature - Pipe Angle Corner and Pipe Angle Corner (Enclosed)
Fix - CTD on setCharacterSeated with an object with no loaded dynamic object

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we discuss the new modular engine mechanics recently added, the design intentions, and development plans.

We are also announcing that we are taking a 2 week break this winter for the holiday period. Yesterday we moved office, and over the next couple of weeks, we will be decorating and setting up the new office. Up until now, we have been sharing an office with other businesses, and are really excited to be getting our own small studio to make games in.

This means there will be no new announcements over the next couple of weeks, but main development will resume on January 4th.



Thank you to everyone who submitted questions this week for the Q and A session. Our plan is to record the answers for Youtube (perhaps with the help of MrNJersey) so keep an eye out on Youtube for the responses to your questions!

Modular Engine Mechanics

Over the last few weeks, with the help of player feedback, we have been reviewing the modular engine components, how they work, and how they interact with each other. We have added various new systems and updated existing mechanics:

Sea Water

We have split the "water" fluid type into two types - sea water and fresh water! Sea water comes from the sea, while fresh water can be spawned using fluid spawners or tanks. The critical difference is that fresh water is suitable for modular engine cooling, while sea water will cause engine scaling causing the engine to cool less efficiently.

Heat Exchangers

We have added new fluid-to-fluid, gas-to-fluid, and gas-to-gas temperature exchangers. In these parts, there are two routes for fluid or gas to pass through these components. Heat transfers between these routes so that temperature averages out between the two flows.

Be sure to use the right type of exchanger for your application. Heat will not efficiently transfer if you transfer gas through a fluid path or vice-versa.

Heat exchangers are very useful for modular engine cooling, particularly where you want to use sea water cooling systems. Using a heat exchanger rather than passing sea water straight through your modular engine is an effective cooling strategy.

Turbo Charging and Centrifugal Pumps

We have reduced the turbo charger to a single impeller type pump. This allows you to arrange your turbo from two pumps in any orientation you like, use it to make a supercharger, or just use it as a mechanical pump.

Gear Boxes

We have created a new set of gear boxes from the smallest 1 block gearbox, to much larger units. These new gearboxes have a max torque load, and if you exceed their specifications, the gearboxes can be damaged.

Smaller gearboxes does make it easier to create larger gear sets with more ratio combinations.

Electric Radiators

We have added new radiators that include electric fans. Running these fans provide improved cooling at the cost of electric consumption. These radiators can be particularly useful as secondary cooling for vehicles that use air scoops to use moving air to pressurize a primary cooling system. This kind of system may be particularly effective on fast moving vehicles such as jet boats or planes, but doesn't have as much effect when the vehicle is not moving.

We plan to continue to improve modular engines with your feedback so let us know your thoughts and help us shape this next major update!

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

We are making this one-off announcement to share some special news.

Carrier Command 2

We are excited to announce that over the past couple of years, we have had the opportunity to build a sequel to the 1988 Microprose classic, Carrier Command (originally created by Ian Oliver and Graeme Bird). This game has been made by an entirely separate team to the Stormworks team, using a different original game engine and original code base.



This is a huge deal for us. I grew up on Microprose games, and as a game developer, I have always had a deep admiration for 1980s video game development, where the rules of game design were still being invented, hardware was extremely limiting, and development tools were primitive. When we are not making games, we are gamers ourselves and get really excited about classic games.

Carrier Command is one of the greatest example of 1980s game innovation. It was one of the first true 3D games, and the most detailed military sim of it's time. With an open world of islands to explore, and multiple cooperating vehicles, it has been a big inspiration in the creation of Stormworks. The magic and depth of this era of gaming is sadly lost in most of todays games, and something we have aimed to repair with Stormworks.



We have been working with Microprose (yes, they are back!) to create a true spiritual successor to the 1988 original. For us, that has been about capturing the depth of strategy and mechanics of the original, then pushing this all much, much further. You command from the carrier bridge, with a literalism where every screen, button and switch has an important function. You manage manufacturing, inventory, logistics, strategy, systems, and can take over manual control of any vehicle.



Carrier Command 2 is NOT a vehicle building game, it is a military simulation and strategy game.

For many players, this sequel is 30 years overdue and we only hope that we can make it worth the wait.

You can view the store page for Carrier Command 2 here.

What Does This Mean For Stormworks?

Nothing.

Carrier Command is made by a different development team, and the work is almost complete. Over the past 2 years, we have continued to release minor and major updates to our regular, uninterrupted Stormworks schedule and this is going to continue for years.

It has been very beneficial to be developing the additional experience, skills, and technology and both games have benefitted from being built near each other.

It is really important to us that players know we are committed to Stormworks and will support and improve the game for years to come. Let's discuss how:

Stormworks Development Roadmap

Here is our current roadmap as an info-graphic. We only have space to list out the main features and not all the minor updates, improvements and fixes that we will continue to add on our regular timetable.

If you have feedback or ideas that you think should be here, be sure to let us know! We are always listening to players and will adjust the plan to respond!



Answering Community Questions

Keeping players informed and answering your questions is important to us. We are going to trial a question and answer session and ask you to submit your questions over the next few days. We are still making plans but may try and answer them in a Youtube video. If this goes well, it could become a regular feature to best keep players informed and involved in the development process.

Submit your question now by clicking on this link! Thank you for the questions! Session has been recorded but keep an eye out here on the announcements and we may do this again.

Here is to 2021 and beyond! Tune back in on Friday for the weekly announcement.

Much love <3,

The Stormworks Developers