Apr 18, 2024

F1® 24 - Electronic Arts

Today, EA SPORTS™️ unveils the full feature set for F1®️ 24, the official game of the 2024 FIA Formula One World Championship™️, arriving earlier than previous seasons, on May 31 ,

Not only will players feel closer to the action courtesy of the new EA SPORTS Dynamic Handling, for the first time they’ll be competing as a driver from the 2024 F1®️ season in the fan-favourite Career mode, with even more ways to connect across Formula 1®️ and F2™️.

Watch the full reveal trailer, featuring Champions Edition cover star Max Verstappen, as he challenges players to beat him and Be One of the 20.

EA SPORTS Dynamic Handling

Working closely with Max, the new EA SPORTS Dynamic Handling redefines the feel of the car to produce a realistic and predictable performance across wheel and pad.

All-new suspension kinematics, an upgraded tyre model, advanced aerodynamic simulation, and new engine and car setup options enhance the driving experience. All driving aspects are improved with cornering, rolling resistance, brake pressure, ambient track temperature, and variable conditions enabling drivers to receive immediate feedback to maximise their on-track performance.

“The new handling model, powered by EA SPORTS Dynamic Handling will enable players to get maximum performance from their car, with authentic physics giving them the confidence in racing wheel to wheel with their rivals”

Lee Mather, Senior Creative Director

Greater Authenticity

Enhancements on and around the circuits add to the race week experience, including Silverstone which has received a significant update to deliver authentic circuit accuracy.

Changes to Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Lusail International Circuit, and Jeddah Corniche Circuit ensure that in-game tracks match their real-world counterparts.

In addition, actual driver audio samples taken from F1® broadcasts add a new dimension, as they react to on-track incidents. Plus, a new broadcast presentation package and cutscenes add to the race day immersion.

Revamped Career

In the overhauled Career mode, players can step into the shoes of F1®️ drivers from the 2024 grid, up-and-coming competitors from the world of F2™️, or legendary past racers in the form of Icons.

Exclusive to Champions Edition players, two new Icons make their debut in F1®️ 24: former World Champion James Hunt and Colombia’s most successful F1® driver, Juan Pablo Montoya.

Further innovations to Career mode include:

Gain Recognition: Build reputation within the Paddock through on-track objectives. Race-day tasks keep players focused on the chequered flag. Completing Contract Targets can help secure a new deal or pave the way for secret meetings to negotiate a move to a bitter rival.
R&D Upgrades: Driver reputation also affects the support players get from their team. The greater the rep, the more motivated the team. Players can go all-in on one innovation or spread the resources for more balanced development.
Earn Accolades: In addition to short-term achievements, every driver has longer-term goals based on season expectations. These could range from number of Top 10 finishes, Pole Positions, to claiming the World Championship.
Race with a Friend: Join forces or race as rivals in two-player Career, with all the new changes reflected here. With individual driver objectives, players must stay focused to become the team’s number one driver.
Challenge Career: A perfect introduction before committing to a 24-race season. Jump into the shoes of a pre-selected F1® driver and compete in a series of mini seasons, with community-voting influencing the conditions and circuits for future events.

“Our biggest Career innovation since 2016 delivers more of what our players want with greater variety away from the track. Alongside new handling and Career innovations, updated circuits, new audio, and a refreshed broadcast presentation give players the feeling of being closer to the grid.”

Lee Mather, Senior Creative Director

F1®️ World Returns

Returning for a second season is F1® World, the home of Multiplayer, Grand Prix™, Time Trial and the new Fanzone feature.

Players align with their favourite team and driver over the course of a Podium Pass season and join a game-wide, time-limited league that includes collaborative goals whilst competing against rival teams.

Starting next week, players can develop a better insight into what the changes with the physics, handling, Career, and more will mean for them, thanks to a trio of Deep Dive videos. Subscribe to the official EA SPORTS F1 YouTube channel to be notified when these videos go live.

Available to Pre-Order Now

Players who pre-order* the digital-exclusive Champions Edition by May 1 will get immediate access to a selection of 2024 liveries for use in F1®️ 23’s special Time Trial mode^, as well as the two new Icons, 18,000 PitCoin**, an F1® World Bumper Pack, up to three days of early access starting May 28 including exclusive Verstappen-inspired special events with unique unlockable rewards, and one bonus VIP Podium Pass.

Plus, those who own F1®️ 2021, F1®️ 22, or F1®️ 23, can take advantage of a 15% loyalty discount on F1®️ 24 Champions Edition pre-orders***. Load any of these games to find out how.

Players pre-ordering* the Standard Edition will receive 5,000 PitCoin** and an F1® World Starter Pack.

Stay tuned for more about F1® 24 in the coming days and weeks.

Want to find out more about the F1®️ 24 cover art? Click here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2488620/F1_24/

*Conditions and Restrictions apply. See https://www.ea.com/games/f1/f1-24/disclaimers for details.
**Virtual currency to spend in-game.
***Offer ends on May 31, 2024
^Online connection required alongside copy of EA SPORTS F1® 23. Only applicable to Champions Edition pre-orders.

Apr 18, 2024

Devlog 019 - The one about Trains

shapez - Jelle

Hello everyone!

It's finally time to talk about possibly the most anticipated feature of shapez 2: Trains! We'll keep the intro short, but please remember to wishlist shapez 2! There's a high chance you already have (in which case, thank you very much!), but every single wishlist helps out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2162800/shapez_2/

Disclaimer

Please note that the vast majority of train visuals are placeholder or early concepts. The mechanics and balancing explained in this blog are also subject to change, depending on community feedback. To read more about how we implement new content and the current state of the game, check out our previous devlog!

You can explore everything you see and read in this blog yourself in Alpha 19, available to Patreons.

Our goal for trains

We’d like to quickly preface the blog with our intentions for trains. Their purpose is to transport a large amount of shapes over large distances. While tunnels and space belts work fine to connect nearby platforms, trains will connect your distant platforms that mine that specific shape you really need, but spawned multiple sectors away.

Ultimately, our goal was to create a fun, long-distance transport option that fits well into the existing shapez world and the mechanics you’re used to. It should be easy to get into but provide depth for optimization and versatility. For this reason we’ve omitted signals and other, more complex train mechanics in favor of a simpler line system that still offers a lot of depth for those willing to invest their time into optimization.

The basics

To get started, let’s place a station! You can also choose to start with the track or a depot, but we’ll start with a station as they come with a pre-build segment of track. The station building tells a locomotive where to stop. To load and unload the wagons you need to place Train Loaders and Train Unloaders, both of which are available for both shapes and fluids. Each (Un)Loader can service one wagon.

Once the stations are in place, it’s time to place tracks. You don’t have to worry about the length of the line, as placing tracks is completely free. Connect the stations by track in any way you want, but do keep in mind that tracks are directional. Additionally, trains have to slow down when making a turn and speed up on long, straight sections. You’ll want to minimize the amount of turns a train needs to make in order to maintain a high speed.

When your stations are connected, you won’t have to worry about making a loop or a place where the train can turn around: tracks are double-sided. When a train reaches the end of a line, it will flip to the bottom side of the track and turn back to where it came from. This helps a lot with space management as you won’t have to worry about frontal collisions or need to make two tracks to allow trains to travel back and forth. However, trains traveling along the bottom of a track cannot be serviced by stations and only travel in a straight line. If the line has junctions or switches, you may still need to complete a loop to get your train back to the start.

Now that you’ve connected an input station and an output station, it’s time to get a train running. To spawn a train, you need a train Depot. This depot is one chunk big and allows you to spawn a single locomotive that cannot carry any products by itself. To add capacity, you’ll need to attach a Wagon Extension to the Depot. You can choose between two types of cargo wagons: Shape Wagons and Fluid Wagons. Filler Wagons are also available to space out two cargo wagons, but can’t be used to transport products. You’re free to mix and match the wagon types, there’s no need to stick to just one. With these wagon extensions attached, any train spawned by the Depot will pull a single wagon for every extension. If you’d like a second train, you’ll need to place a second train Depot with its own wagon extensions.

A train will automatically spawn from the depot and do its thing: it will follow the track and stop at every station it comes across. It will load shapes at Train Loaders, and unload shapes at Train Unloaders. This is the simplest use of trains: a single train moves along a line and does its thing. You can stop there, but there’s a lot more possible.

Lines

If you were to give every single line its own track, you’d need to reserve a lot of space for all the tracks you’d need. Instead, you can work with colors! When placing a track or a Depot, you can currently pick between four colors: red, green, blue and white. The color determines which line which train will follow. For example, a train from a red Depot will always follow the red line in case of a switch.

The colors come into play once you merge two or more tracks of different colors into a single track. If you have a green line and you merge a red line onto the same track, the track will become both green and red in the direction of the track. This means that both red trains and green trains can travel along this line! If you were to split the green line off this track, you’d get your separated red and green tracks back.

A track can support all four colors simultaneously, giving any piece of track an effective limit of four different lines. If you require more lines, you’ll need to make a parallel track that travels in the same direction or separate your train network into smaller subnetworks. When traveling along the bottom of a track, trains will no longer follow their line and only go straight at switches.

Crossings

If you need to cross tracks, there are two ways to do it. The first one is to simply create a crossing by placing a second track across an existing track to create a crossing. At a crossing, lines and trains can only go straight. If you want to give trains the option to merge into the other track as well, you need to manually build a switch.

However, the second way is a lot more fun: just make a Train Launcher! Just like with conveyor belts, you can place a launcher that will launch the train into the air and across any other tracks and onto the catcher. Unlike the conveyor belt equivalent, you can change the strength of the launcher to determine how far the train will fly.

Before you ask: Yes, the Train Launcher also works on trains at the bottom side of the track.

Balancing

So after all this, you may wonder why you’d use trains instead of tunnels or space belts. Aside from being way cooler, it’s a matter of cost, speed and throughput.

Costs

Below, you see a table with the costs of running a train. For this example, we run a single train with three wagons between two stations with capacity for all wagons.

Object

Chunk cost each

Amount

Chunk cost sum

Locomotive

Wagon

Station

Platform

––

Chunk cost total

39 chunks may sound like a lot, but the best part is that tracks are completely free! This means that no matter the distance, be it 5 chunks or 500, the cost remains the same. Additionally, locomotives don’t require fuel and there’s no maintenance fee either. If you compare this to our other mass-transport options like Space Belts and Space Tunnels, both of which have an effective per-chunk cost of 1, trains become increasingly more chunk-efficient the longer the distance traveled. The cheapest possible setup for a functioning train is one locomotive with one wagon running between two stations, which would cost you 21 chunks.

Throughput

Shapes and fluids are loaded on a train in packages. A single wagon has capacity for three packages – one for each building layer – with each package having a capacity of 960 shapes or 9,600 L of fluids. This gives every wagon a maximum capacity of 2,880 shapes or 28,800 L of fluid when using all three layers. Trains will only pick up packages that are completely filled, giving a wagon a minimum required load of 960 shapes or 9,600 L as well.

A wagon can only pick up one package per layer. If you only use the bottom layer of the station, the wagon can only pick up one package: it does not automatically place a second package on top of the first one. Additionally, Loaders and Unloaders can store up to two full packages per layer. To make full use of both the wagons and the (Un)Loaders, you’ll want to split the load across all three layers.

When it comes to speed, trains are considerably faster than the alternatives. If you were to move shapes across a distance of 300 chunks using space belts, you’d be looking at almost an hour of travel time! A train however, will cross that distance in under 30 seconds. Trains slow down for turns and take some time to get back up to speed, so every corner will considerably increase the travel time of a train. Adding wagons to a train does not affect the speed or acceleration.

To summarize the balance, space belts and tunnels are ideal for short-distance connections between platforms. Trains are what you’ll want to use for medium and long distances. They’re incredibly versatile and you can add or remove trains and wagons as needed. However, it takes time to set them up and poor planning and/or using too many trains can create bottlenecks when collision avoidance enters the fray – more on that next.

Future possibilities

Collision avoidance

In the latest Alpha build (Alpha 19 at the time of writing), trains still just phase through each other. However, we’re currently experimenting with a collision avoidance system. How it will work exactly is still to be determined, but a train should brake when another train gets in its way. Once the path is clear, it should continue its journey.

This also means that congestion would be possible if you have a lot of trains on the same line or have a very busy crossing. Avoid conflict points, build station bypass tracks and use the line colors to the best of your ability to avoid gridlocking your entire transport system.

Colorblind features

Since we’re working with colors, we’re planning to use the same color pattern shaders we showed in the last devlog for the line colors as well. How exactly this will look depends on what the final train and track visuals end up looking like.

We have some more ideas, but they require more testing before we can say with certainty they'll make it into the game. Names pending.

Side swapper track: Special track segment that will ‘flip’ the track and allows trains to swap to the other side while continuing in the same direction, without slowing down.
Locomotive recoloring platform: Change a locomotive’s line color and reroute them on the fly with a special platform.
Vortex train launch: Launch trains directly into the Vortex to deliver a large amount of shapes at once.

Can't wait to try trains and want get involved in the process? Consider supporting us on Patreon to get access to the bi-weekly Alpha builds as they release! Your feedback is essential to us while we're working very hard to get shapez 2 ready for Early Access.

That's all we have on trains for now! We hope to soon be able to show you what trains will actually look like, but we first need some more time to get all the features in. Thank you for your time and we hope to see you again in two weeks.

~ Tobias & the shapez 2 team

Join the community:

X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon

Apr 18, 2024

Devlog 019 - The one about Trains

shapez 2 - Jelle

Disclaimer

Our goal for trains

The basics

Lines

Crossings

Before you ask: Yes, the Train Launcher also works on trains at the bottom side of the track.

Balancing

So after all this, you may wonder why you’d use trains instead of tunnels or space belts. Aside from being way cooler, it’s a matter of cost, speed and throughput.

Costs

Below, you see a table with the costs of running a train. For this example, we run a single train with three wagons between two stations with capacity for all wagons.

Object

Chunk cost each

Amount

Chunk cost sum

Locomotive

Wagon

Station

Platform

––

Chunk cost total

Throughput

Future possibilities

Collision avoidance

Colorblind features

Side swapper track: Special track segment that will ‘flip’ the track and allows trains to swap to the other side while continuing in the same direction, without slowing down.
Locomotive recoloring platform: Change a locomotive’s line color and reroute them on the fly with a special platform.
Vortex train launch: Launch trains directly into the Vortex to deliver a large amount of shapes at once.

Join the community:

X / Twitter YouTube Discord Reddit TikTok Patreon

Apr 18, 2024

Developer Update | April 2024 PTB

Dead by Daylight - dance_BHVR

As the 7.7.0 Update approaches, we’ve prepared some adjustments after going through the feedback we’ve collected during the Public Test Build (PTB).

[REVERTED] Victor no longer latches onto Survivors who are put into the Dying State.
[REVERTED] Victor once again latches onto Survivors who are injured by his pounce.
[REVERTED] Charlotte no longer gains Haste when Victor is latched onto a Survivor.

Dev note: We have received a lot of comments about The Twins’ strength during the PTB. We have made the decision to revert the changes to Victor’s pounce and keep the various quality of life improvements (faster switch between Charlotte and Victor, ability to recall Victor, and Add-On adjustments & base kit inclusion). We may revisit The Twins in a future update, if necessary, but these smaller tweaks will make The Twins feel better to play for the time being.

[CHANGED] Summoning Stone Add-On – this will increase the initial rush duration by 0.5s (was 1s)
[CHANGED] Soul Chemical Add-On – this increases the initial Rush speed by 5% down from 10% on the PTB

Dev note: Feedback around The Blight often centered on the two Add-Ons and his improved collision detection. We made some adjustments to the Add-Ons to slightly lower their strength whilst still maintaining their usefulness. The Blight’s collision detection will remain as it was on the PTB, and we will continue with our ongoing efforts to improve this collision across all maps.

[REMOVED] Decisive Strike no longer has a new animation.

Dev note: This PTB featured a new animation for Decisive Strike in which the Survivor would stab the Killer to free themselves. This animation had too much of an effect on the Perk’s expected behaviour (adding a delay before the Survivor wiggled free). We have decided to remove the animation for Decisive Strike before the update is released. The stun time for the Perk will remain at 5 seconds for the time being.

Note: The following changes will be part of a future update. The Perk will remain as it was on the PTB in the meantime.

[REVERTED] Affected Survivors will once again scream instead of having their aura revealed.
[CHANGE] Now affects Survivors within 32m of the locker (previously inside the Killer’s Terror Radius).

Dev note: We received some mixed feedback during the PTB; while the Perk was less appealing for some Killers, it remained a strong choice for Killers with high mobility. To make its strength a little more even across more Killers, we’ve changed Ultimate Weapon to be based on the locker’s position rather than the Killer’s. This way Killers without traversal abilities or with a smaller Terror Radius can take advantage of the Perk more consistently without it being excessive on highly mobile Killers.

With this in mind, we have also brought back the scream to allow it to synergize with other Perks once again.

Until next time...

The Dead by Daylight Team.

Apr 18, 2024

Incursions Update Release Date Announcement

EVERSPACE™ 2 - RFG_Jeremy

Greetings, Pilots!

We’ve been sharing details on our blog and livestream about our free Incursions update over the last few weeks, now it’s time to share the release date and some of the bigger features that will be included! With all the changes under the hood, this update may be one of our biggest yet.

New Incursions Event and Revamped Rifts

Past a certain rift-related point in the EVERSPACE 2 story, beacons appear and unlock a new horde-mode style combat challenge. Pilots fend off incoming enemy ships to drain beacon shields and open up brief opportunities to strike. Defeating all the beacons in an area completes the Incursion and rewards players with a large loot drop including chances at new legendary gear and reliquary treasure chests.

Here’s a quick look at an Incursion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODmAPBJ6P-4

There’s plenty more coming in Incursions:

New Legendaries and Reliquaries

We’ve shared a few of the new legendaries coming in the update, but you’ll have to wait until release for the rest. Fifteen new pieces of legendary gear are being added, get set to collect them all! If you missed it, Catch up on our Radiant and Reliquaries blog for more details.

Scout Ultimate Change

As shared in our last update, the Scout’s Shadow Strike Ultimate is being overhauled. In Incursions, Scouts gain an ability that grants additional cloaking time for each kill while the ship’s Ultimate is active. This change turns a slow buildup sniper one-shot into an invisible powerhouse that can shred squadrons.

Improved Controller Support on PC and Consoles

Many EVERSPACE 2 players love their controllers and we want to ensure they have the best experience possible. Incursions adds native PlayStation 4 Dualshock and PlayStation 5 DualSense support for PC players on Steam, GOG, and the Microsoft Store. Console pilots will also soon have much-requested button mapping options similar to those available on PC.

Photo Mode Improvements

Virtual photographers have done wonders with EVERSPACE 2, capturing incredible cosmic events and incredible space battles. The Incursions update provides some changes and improvements that make this feature easier to use.

New Cosmetic Ship Modules

Longtime EVERSPACE 2 pilots have been asking for more ways to customize their ships and our designers have delivered. A selection of new ship front, rear, and cockpit modules will be found throughout the DMZ. Collect them all to ride in style!

That’s just a taste of what’s to come in Incursions. In addition to our migration to Unreal Engine 5, a full list of features, changes, and bug fixes will be available when the update goes live on all platforms April 29 at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm BST / 7pm CET.

See you in the stars!

Lee & your ROCKFISH Games team