Hello Experimenters,
Robocraft X Experiment 08 is now live! You can download it by clicking the following URL.
Download Robocraft X Experiment 08 Now
Experiment 08 has landed! This Experiment brings a new first-person perspective along with some other improvements and tweaks. Read the full patch notes below.
First-Person Camera
It’s here! One of the more frequently requested features is now ready to go. Players can now build, play and experiment through the eyes of our lovely little Leo!
By default, the camera will now start out in this new first-person view whenever you enter a game. Holding Alt and scrolling the mouse wheel will zoom in and out as usual. To accommodate this change we’ve also centered the third-person camera now, so that it is directly above Leo. This should hopefully make the transition between views smoother, and make controlling Leo in third-person better in general.
Playing in first-person almost feels like a completely different experience so we hope you all enjoy it! We’re going to make some more changes to this in the future, like showing Leo’s hands, a front facing camera and more.
NUS Phase II
We launched Non-uniform Scaling (NUPS/NUS) a couple of experiments ago, and while it went down extremely well, there were certainly some unfinished aspects of it. We’re releasing the second phase of this feature, which includes the following changes and improvements:
Size and cube count display
One of the more prominent complaints about NUS is how hard it was to keep track of how far you’ve scaled in each axis.
Now, as soon as you start scaling, you’ll see a label under the crosshair that shows you the current dimensions of the part you are scaling (XX x YY x ZZ) along with how many cubes the scaling will consume from your current inventory (TOTAL/INVENTORY). If you try to use more parts than you have available, this label will turn red, along with the ghost cube to explain why the placement isn’t possible anymore.
Axis Changes
Another issue was the inconsistency with determining the ‘starting axes for X and Y. This was being determined based on the most perpendicular plane from the camera’s rotation. This lead to some confusing situations where we would assume dragging in a certain direction would work, but a different axis would be used.
To improve this, we’re now determining the X and Y axis based on the ‘base’ of the block. By this, we mean the connection point. As an example; placing a cube on the floor would set the first two axes as horizontal to the floor. The third axis would be vertical, regardless of where you’re standing. This should make scaling a lot friendlier, and more consistent to use.
The other major change to this is that scaling a cube into the floor, or into the blocks behind it, will no longer be possible. We now ignore that ‘behind’ axis during the final stage and only allow you to drag away from it. You’ll still be able to intersect during the first stage, but this should be much harder to accidentally do.
Connection Cursor and Centre Cursor
The little green border that appears at the base of connection points has been locked in place now. Previously, this little cursor would move around with the scaled cube and act as a ‘centre point’. This wasn’t the intended behaviour, so we’ve now locked that cursor to the actual starting point, where the initial connection occurs. It was extremely helpful knowing where the center of the cube was though, so we’ve added in a second cursor to highlight the center of the connecting face as well and later, we’ll add something to highlight the true center.
Deletion Time
We’ve all been there. We’ve all accidentally deleted a large scaled cube when trying to remove something smaller but we say “No more!”. Cubes that have been scaled will now have a short “time to delete”, based on their size. This means that tapping the delete button will still delete single cubes, but for larger cubes, you’ll need to hold down the delete button for a little bit longer.
The current maximum time is 3 seconds, but smaller cubes will only take roughly half a second. This value may need some tweaking after the initial launch, based on feedback, but we feel like we’ve struck a fairly good balance between preventing accidental deletion and having to wait 10 seconds to delete a single part, every single time.
Community Games
The following games have been added/updated:
- The Escapeship by Paprika (Updated)
- Futuristic Train by Gigashoton (Updated)
- Manual / Mechanical by My_Hard1Disk (Updated)
- Escape in 90 Seconds! by My_Hard1Disk (Updated)
- Checkmate by My_Hard1Disk (Updated)
- Open Sesame by My_Hard1Disk (Updated)
- LAOC by GenMGW
- Way Out 2 by Paprika
- Mind the Gap by Cyber_Dragon_123
- Realistic Cooking Sim by JapeEgg
- 4x4 Tic-tac-toe by GenMGW
- O.S. Further by My_Hard1Disk
- Fight by My_Hard1Disk
- Wild Car Race by My_Hard1Disk
- PC KILLER PARKOUR by Memre13
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the SetGravity, SetPhysicsPrecision and SetPhysicsFrequency console commands caused everything to stop moving
Multiplayer is still heavily in development but it’s likely going to be quite a while before it’s stable so we want to try and release a few experiments in between, with more new features, fixes and improvements, with this being the first. We’ll share more information on what we’re putting in these releases as we go but there should be some interesting changes to keep everyone pleased while we get multiplayer ready!
The Robocraft X Team