Hi everyone! We’re back with another development update, and it’s one we’ve been looking forward to. It’s about multiplayer in Trailmakers.

When we set out to make Trailmakers, a game where you build your own vehicle in a big world with multiplayer, we stumbled on a big technical challenge. Every time a dune buggy crashes into a drag racer at high speed, hundreds of vehicle parts go flying in every direction. Each of these parts have a trajectory that needs to be calculated and shared between players which leads to enormous amounts of calculations to simulate real physics. This takes a real toll on computers. Our programmers have spent many months making this work smoothly, and we are getting there.


This is what a multiplayer collision looks like from both sides

So what will Multiplayer be like when Early Access launches?

When we launch Trailmakers on the Steam Early Access program, the most groundbreaking multiplayer feature will be the real-time physics over network - a feature that lets you and your friends experience some very cool vehicle destruction. To set the scene for crashes, we have created a multiplayer mini game - the first of many to come. The game mode will support up to 4 players and is a ton of fun! What kind of mini game mode is it? More on that when we get closer to launch 😉


Now with dust trails

Anyone can host a multiplayer game and play with their friends, but we do recommend that the person with the fastest computer and internet connection is the host. The game’s physics calculations are done by the host’s PC, and then sent to the other players so everything is completely in sync. The more blocks are in the game, the more physics calculations are needed, and the slower the game will run. If every player decides to build something extremely elaborate, you might experience some performance issues.

During Early Access, we will optimize the open-world Sandbox and Expedition modes to be multiplayer compatible. We also plan on taking full advantage of your feedback during Early Access, so a lot of future multiplayer competitions will depend on your suggestions.
If you have a great idea for a multiplayer game mode, let us know in the comments!

PS. If you want to see the current state of the game or have a burning question you want answered, tune in to our first Dev Stream this Friday (September 29th) at 2PM UTC+1 on www.twitch.tv/PlayTrailmakers - Follow the channel if you want a notification when we go live.

Hi everyone! We’re back with another development update, and it’s one we’ve been looking forward to. It’s about multiplayer in Trailmakers.

When we set out to make Trailmakers, a game where you build your own vehicle in a big world with multiplayer, we stumbled on a big technical challenge. Every time a dune buggy crashes into a drag racer at high speed, hundreds of vehicle parts go flying in every direction. Each of these parts have a trajectory that needs to be calculated and shared between players which leads to enormous amounts of calculations to simulate real physics. This takes a real toll on computers. Our programmers have spent many months making this work smoothly, and we are getting there.


This is what a multiplayer collision looks like from both sides

So what will Multiplayer be like when Early Access launches?

When we launch Trailmakers on the Steam Early Access program, the most groundbreaking multiplayer feature will be the real-time physics over network - a feature that lets you and your friends experience some very cool vehicle destruction. To set the scene for crashes, we have created a multiplayer mini game - the first of many to come. The game mode will support up to 4 players and is a ton of fun! What kind of mini game mode is it? More on that when we get closer to launch 😉


Now with dust trails

Anyone can host a multiplayer game and play with their friends, but we do recommend that the person with the fastest computer and internet connection is the host. The game’s physics calculations are done by the host’s PC, and then sent to the other players so everything is completely in sync. The more blocks are in the game, the more physics calculations are needed, and the slower the game will run. If every player decides to build something extremely elaborate, you might experience some performance issues.

During Early Access, we will optimize the open-world Sandbox and Expedition modes to be multiplayer compatible. We also plan on taking full advantage of your feedback during Early Access, so a lot of future multiplayer competitions will depend on your suggestions.
If you have a great idea for a multiplayer game mode, let us know in the comments!

PS. If you want to see the current state of the game or have a burning question you want answered, tune in to our first Dev Stream this Friday (September 29th) at 2PM UTC+1 on www.twitch.tv/PlayTrailmakers - Follow the channel if you want a notification when we go live.

Hi everyone!

I hope you’ve had a great summer! On the Trailmakers team, we are revving up our engines, and getting ready for a very busy fall. We have even done a bit of hiring over the summer so the team is bigger than ever! Oh, and before you ask: Trailmakers is still planned for Steam Early Access Launch at the end of the year 🚀

The past month we have been showing off Trailmakers at Gamescom in Cologne and at PAX West in Seattle. It was great meeting so many of you at these events, and seeing how excited you are for Trailmakers. We also met some interested journalists which have resulted in a bit of press:

• PC Gamer interviewed our Creative Director, Mikkel Thorsted
  
• Gamecritics called it “an incredible amount of fun”
  
• And TechBuyersGuru said it’s “the essence of why we have video games in the first place”

Click on the gif to see a highlight video from PAX West!

Hi everyone!

I hope you’ve had a great summer! On the Trailmakers team, we are revving up our engines, and getting ready for a very busy fall. We have even done a bit of hiring over the summer so the team is bigger than ever! Oh, and before you ask: Trailmakers is still planned for Steam Early Access Launch at the end of the year 🚀

The past month we have been showing off Trailmakers at Gamescom in Cologne and at PAX West in Seattle. It was great meeting so many of you at these events, and seeing how excited you are for Trailmakers. We also met some interested journalists which have resulted in a bit of press:

• PC Gamer interviewed our Creative Director, Mikkel Thorsted
  
• Gamecritics called it “an incredible amount of fun”
  
• And TechBuyersGuru said it’s “the essence of why we have video games in the first place”

Click on the gif to see a highlight video from PAX West!

Hi everyone! Hope you are enjoying the summer as much as we are. Today I’d like to tell you a bit about how we are designing the world in Trailmakers.

Did you know that with just six 2x4 LEGO bricks you can make 915,103,765 different combinations? A truly staggering number of different constructions with only a few bricks. The problem is, most of them look very similar and none of them are particularly interesting. That’s what happens if you randomly put stuff together, with LEGO or with game development for that matter: Lots to see, not much to do with it.



Couldn’t fit pictures of the remaining 915,103,763

In Trailmakers, our world is not randomly generated, but we are using procedural tools that helps us make new landscapes faster. Tools like the ones in the timelapse gif below where we are first deforming the earth to make an island in the sea, then using another tool to shape some mountains on the island and finally adding vegetation in the form of trees with a third tool. These tools carry an element of randomization without being totally random.


Croissant Island

The way that island was made in just a few minutes is comparable to painting with a big paint brush. It’s quick and effective, but it’s missing the finer details, and it’s the fine details that makes the game fun to play. In Trailmakers, you will do a lot more than just explore the world - we want the environment to challenge you. For that to be certain we need carefully craft the challenges. The big brush can make the mountain, but we will handcraft the roads that lead to the mountain peak to ensure that it is sufficiently challenging.

The same principles apply when you start building vehicles in Trailmakers. We are giving you the different parts and making a few rules about how they can be stuck together. If you put them together randomly they might not function very well, but there are still thousands of possible combinations that will work magnificently.


It’s rainbow road all over again

As development of Trailmakers progresses, we are making more and more tools that makes it easier for us to create new worlds fast. We hope this will pay off in the long run when we can make worlds quicker for the content-hungry Early Access players.

Do you have any cool examples of procedural or random generation? Are you going to spend the summer making all 915,103,765 LEGO combinations?

Till next time!

Hi everyone! Hope you are enjoying the summer as much as we are. Today I’d like to tell you a bit about how we are designing the world in Trailmakers.

Did you know that with just six 2x4 LEGO bricks you can make 915,103,765 different combinations? A truly staggering number of different constructions with only a few bricks. The problem is, most of them look very similar and none of them are particularly interesting. That’s what happens if you randomly put stuff together, with LEGO or with game development for that matter: Lots to see, not much to do with it.



Couldn’t fit pictures of the remaining 915,103,763

In Trailmakers, our world is not randomly generated, but we are using procedural tools that helps us make new landscapes faster. Tools like the ones in the timelapse gif below where we are first deforming the earth to make an island in the sea, then using another tool to shape some mountains on the island and finally adding vegetation in the form of trees with a third tool. These tools carry an element of randomization without being totally random.


Croissant Island

The way that island was made in just a few minutes is comparable to painting with a big paint brush. It’s quick and effective, but it’s missing the finer details, and it’s the fine details that makes the game fun to play. In Trailmakers, you will do a lot more than just explore the world - we want the environment to challenge you. For that to be certain we need carefully craft the challenges. The big brush can make the mountain, but we will handcraft the roads that lead to the mountain peak to ensure that it is sufficiently challenging.

The same principles apply when you start building vehicles in Trailmakers. We are giving you the different parts and making a few rules about how they can be stuck together. If you put them together randomly they might not function very well, but there are still thousands of possible combinations that will work magnificently.


It’s rainbow road all over again

As development of Trailmakers progresses, we are making more and more tools that makes it easier for us to create new worlds fast. We hope this will pay off in the long run when we can make worlds quicker for the content-hungry Early Access players.

Do you have any cool examples of procedural or random generation? Are you going to spend the summer making all 915,103,765 LEGO combinations?

Till next time!

This development update is inspired by a forum post on the Steam Community Hub by a player called Coda. He asks “What level of control should we expect? When does physics go from a matter of making something fly for the fun of it, to micro-managing attack angles and points of force as a tedium?”

It is a topic we are still discussing on a daily basis in the development team. It is at the very core of the game design. Trailmakers has been physics-based from the beginning which means we will always use somewhat realistic aerodynamics, gravity, weight distribution etc. At the same time, we want the game to be accessible for everyone, even if you have no prior experience with vehicle building games.


Boop!

A big part of the discussion boils down to a simple question: “What is the most fun?”. It’s not fun if an engineering degree is required to build a simple 4-wheel car - that should be easy. Soon after you do that, you want to try making something more complex like an airplane. If that only requires putting wings on your car, you are not being challenged. We want you to at least think about where you place the wings. Failing to build something the right way can be fun if the result does something hilariously unexpected.


A helicopter without counter-torque is like a fidget spinner

It’s very important that you can see what you did wrong, so you know what to improve. You see your car topple over all the time? Probably a problem with the weight distribution or center of mass. Helicopter spins your cockpit? Add counter-rotation. When you finally get it right, it’s satisfying like solving a puzzle.

Coda wants to know to what extent our physics engine will challenge the player - how detailed is it? To answer briefly: It is more important to us that our in-game physics are predictable than that they are realistic. That being said, there should still be stuff to tinker with for players who want to fine-tune their creations. These things should just be optional. For example, right now in the Alpha Demo we have optional key mapping for mechanical parts. It allows some advanced sequencing, but is not required to complete the game. We hope we can make it impactful to actually bother with fine-tuning.


Weight distribution - how not to do it

Going forward in development, here are some design philosophies we use as guidelines:

• It should be simple to build something basic.
  
• It should feel satisfying to succeed in building something complex.
  
• It’s alright if it takes a bit of experimentation before you get it right.
  
• You have to be able to tell what is wrong when you build something that doesn't work.
  
• ‘Predictable’ is more important than ‘realistic’.
  
• Complexity should be possible but optional.

If you have a suggestion for a development update topic like Coda had, let us know in the comments!

This development update is inspired by a forum post on the Steam Community Hub by a player called Coda. He asks “What level of control should we expect? When does physics go from a matter of making something fly for the fun of it, to micro-managing attack angles and points of force as a tedium?”

It is a topic we are still discussing on a daily basis in the development team. It is at the very core of the game design. Trailmakers has been physics-based from the beginning which means we will always use somewhat realistic aerodynamics, gravity, weight distribution etc. At the same time, we want the game to be accessible for everyone, even if you have no prior experience with vehicle building games.


Boop!

A big part of the discussion boils down to a simple question: “What is the most fun?”. It’s not fun if an engineering degree is required to build a simple 4-wheel car - that should be easy. Soon after you do that, you want to try making something more complex like an airplane. If that only requires putting wings on your car, you are not being challenged. We want you to at least think about where you place the wings. Failing to build something the right way can be fun if the result does something hilariously unexpected.


A helicopter without counter-torque is like a fidget spinner

It’s very important that you can see what you did wrong, so you know what to improve. You see your car topple over all the time? Probably a problem with the weight distribution or center of mass. Helicopter spins your cockpit? Add counter-rotation. When you finally get it right, it’s satisfying like solving a puzzle.

Coda wants to know to what extent our physics engine will challenge the player - how detailed is it? To answer briefly: It is more important to us that our in-game physics are predictable than that they are realistic. That being said, there should still be stuff to tinker with for players who want to fine-tune their creations. These things should just be optional. For example, right now in the Alpha Demo we have optional key mapping for mechanical parts. It allows some advanced sequencing, but is not required to complete the game. We hope we can make it impactful to actually bother with fine-tuning.


Weight distribution - how not to do it

Going forward in development, here are some design philosophies we use as guidelines:

• It should be simple to build something basic.
  
• It should feel satisfying to succeed in building something complex.
  
• It’s alright if it takes a bit of experimentation before you get it right.
  
• You have to be able to tell what is wrong when you build something that doesn't work.
  
• ‘Predictable’ is more important than ‘realistic’.
  
• Complexity should be possible but optional.

If you have a suggestion for a development update topic like Coda had, let us know in the comments!

Wildlife in Trailmakers is something we have mentioned once or twice - in this development update, I’ll go into a bit more detail.

If you have seen any videos or even tried the Alpha Demo of Trailmakers, you might have noticed some flying carrion birds in the sky. This is a sneak peek of what you can expect in the Early Access version of the game coming to Steam later this year.


Johnni to the left, Rhino to the right

The setting of Trailmakers is a somewhat-abandoned world repurposed to host a weirdly dangerous rally expedition. It’s only natural that the world has been re-inhabited after people left it behind. The animals may seem familiar at first, but they are not normal. Many of them are very large, and most of them are very aggressive. Trailmakers is set in a very hostile environment, and the animals play a central role in keeping you on your toes.


“Turtle Power”

Wildlife helps a lot to make the world of Trailmakers feel more living. We set out to make a game that feels new to every player, and unpredictable even when you have played it for hundreds of hours. One of the ways we are doing this, is by having these unpredictable creatures to encounter. Each of them will behave differently, serve a specific purpose in the world, and challenge your engineering skills. You might have to put some armor on your car to survive butting heads with a rhino!


Land whale? Work in progress...

Another really great side effect of putting creatures in the game is the subliminal hint it can provide. We noticed that when players first see the birds in the game, they seem to realize that flight is a possibility, even before they find wings for their vehicle. This works really well to teach players about aspects of the game without putting it in a tutorial. Show - don’t tell.

Do you have any cool ideas for creatures we could put in the game? Leave a comment below :)