Hello Experimenters,
Robocraft X Experiment 03 is now live!
Below is a full list of the new features, changes and bug fixes this experiment brings!
Levers
The lever makes its way into your Inventory!
This nifty little contraption allows Leo to manually change the direction and power of any Motors it connects to. Levers will only affect Motors that are connected via conductivity, which we’ll explain shortly! Placing a lever on a block, or even directly on a Motor, will automatically link them together.
While the Lever is in the neutral position, no power signal will be sent out, which means all connected Motors will remain ‘off’ and not consume any power. Moving the Lever into the ‘+’ position will send a positive signal out, causing connected Motors to spin forwards. Likewise, pulling the lever to the ‘-’ position will cause them to spin in reverse.
The torque of the Motors can also be tweaked by sliding the lever! Moving it towards the ‘+’ ever so slightly will cause a weaker signal to be sent to the Motor, allowing it to spin slower.
The Lever is just the first of many things that will be able to control Robots in future including Buttons, Dials, Switches and even Pilot Seats.
Conductivity
Conductivity is now in full effect! Aluminium and Infinitum are fully conductive, while Rubber, Glass and Oily Cubes are not. These can be used to split which Levers power which Motors.
Batteries will only provide power to Motors that share the same conductivity cluster and Levers will only affect Motors in the same way, so if non-conductive materials stand between them and a Motor, the Motor will remain unpowered. This means that there will need to be a clear path of connected, conductive materials leading all the way up to the Motors they need to power.
New Parts
Sliced Cube, Slope, Corner, Pyramid Segment, Rounded Sliced Cube, Rounded Slope, Rounded Corner, Cone Segment, Cylinder, Sphere, Lever. All of which can be found in the Inventory (accessible with the hotkey ‘Q’). These new parts open up a world of possibilities!
New Materials
Aluminium - Lightweight conductive metal. Mass: Light. Friction: Standard. Bounciness: Low
Rubber - Bouncy, grippy and non-conductive material. Mass: Standard. Friction: Very High. Bounciness: Very High
Oily - Standard metal covered in a slick, oily, non-conductive substance. Mass: Standard. Friction: Very Low. Bounciness: Very Low
Infinitum - Immovable, conductive construction metal. Mass: N/A. Friction: Standard. Bounciness: N/A
Glass - Tansparent and non-conductive material. Mass: Standard. Friction: Standard. Bounciness: Standard
Unified Texture System
On top of these new materials and parts, we’ve set up a beautiful unified texturing system that seamlessly merges the material across all combined shapes! This will allow for much cleaner, smoother looking builds.
New Audio
- Parts colliding with each other and the environment
- Parts scraping together
- Joints breaking
- Placing, removing and rotating parts
- Motors
- UI interactions
- New Stasis/Simulation mode Background Music and transitions
Improved Environment
- Trees have sprung up
- Spring has improved the overall look of the ground
- Grass is better optimised
Other Changes
- Newton’s Third Law has made its way to the planet, preventing unintended behaviours when pushing contraptions that you are standing on
- Improvements to collisions on a variety of parts
- The Inventory and Hotbar have been polished and made more robust
- Improvements to the look of the ghost cube
- A new popup dialogue will appear when something goes wrong which should make it easier for us to track down reported issues. Output logs are always welcome still
- A new dialogue will appear when launching RCX on machines that do not meet the minimum system requirements
Bug fixes
- Medium Hinge Center of Mass is now correct allowing it to behave as expected
- Placing and Deleting parts at the same time no longer causes errors
- Camera sensitivity should no longer be higher than intended on certain machines (A slider will be coming at a later date)
- Inventory tooltip sizes are now correct for all parts
- Resolutions of 2K and above will no longer be forced into windowed mode
- Moving items around the hotbar, into empty slots, will no longer leave incorrect highlights and labels behind
- The client no longer crashes if the player is launched into the air at ludicrous speeds
As always, we can’t wait to see what creations you make with all these new things.Thanks for all of the support so far and for joining us on this journey! If you want to support the development of Robocraft X further, please share it with your friends and leave a review on Steam.
Onward to Experiment 04!
The Robocraft X Team