Hello Gamecrafters,
Today’s major update to Gamecraft (formerly known as RobocraftX) represents a huge amount of work we’ve been doing to begin to show what is unique about Gamecraft and the early potential it has as a Game Making platform and Builder’s Paradise.
Game Crafting and Self Publishing
From today, Gamecrafters can create full games from blocks using our unique Block Building, Physics and Game Simulation Engine and can then self-publish them for anyone else in the community to play, all with just a few clicks and all from within game.
Creators can give Titles to their games, add Descriptions and can create Screenshots using the in-game screenshot tool. Then by clicking ‘Publish’ they can upload their creations to the cloud so others can find them and play them via the ‘Play Games’ screen.
Games Portal
All games created and published by the community will be available for everyone to play via the ‘Play Games’ screen. From this new screen you can sort games by ‘Trending’, ‘Most Popular’, and ‘Most Recent’. You can also filter on games that you are Subscribed too, games that you have marked as your ‘Favourite’ and games you or your Steam Friends have published.
Also via the ‘Play Games’ screen you can ‘Subscribe’ to games that you want to keep up to date, so that if creators update a game Steam will automatically download the latest version for you.
You can also rate games by giving them your ‘Thumbs Up’ or ‘Thumbs Down’ (Reddit style) and you can see stats like the number of times a game has been Played, and the number of Subscribers and Favourites each game has.
Note: Uploading can take up to 15 minutes to appear in the workshop/Play Games screen. Some users may need to accept the latest Steam Workshop Agreement to upload and play games, you can agree to that agreement here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/workshoplegalagreement/
Rebrand and Premium Switch Over
On the 27th September we announced that we would be shifting from free-to-play to Premium (i.e. pay-up-front) on the 24th October. We also announced that anyone who added the game to their library prior to the switch would keep the game for free forever and thousands of players have done just that.
We had decided that a free-to-play model [where users grinded for blocks and paid to accelerate that speed] would not have worked well for Gamecraft and felt that a fair price up front (initially just $5) was a much simpler and fairer way to monetise Gamecraft long term. We also decided to change the name of the game from RobocraftX to Gamecraft as we felt that the new name better described the open ended nature of what Gamecraft us destined to become. We are still committed to ensuring that Gamecraft can eventually support competitive multiplayer building style games but we wanted to communicate that Gamecraft is being designed to support games of all types, both single player and multiplayer, competitive and co-operative, locally hosted and dedicated servers. It doesn't support all of these things at this time, but this is our goal.
IMPORTANT: All players who added the game to their library whilst it was free will keep the full game for free forever. We have notified Valve that we want to make this switch now, but it may take them a few days to make the transition formerly so if you’re quick you may still have time to sneak in adding it to your library.
IMPORTANT: We want to make it clear that the initial price of $5 is an initial price for early adopters who join the community early and that this price will rise as we feel the product is improving in a similar way to some other well known games have done so as they have grown. We will always give players plenty of warning of any future price changes.
Freedom to Scale
A major new feature available in this version of the game is that we now support incredible degrees of freedom when it comes to scaling. We have added ‘Uniform’ scale on top of our very unique ‘Non-uniform’ scaling system. With this new scaling system, you as the Gamecrafter can decide what block size you want to work with, from huge blocks to landscape quickly, to small high-fidelity blocks for compact physics simulated machines like vehicles.
To set your scale simply hold CTRL and use the Mouse Wheel to scroll between 27 different scales from 1/3rd of “normal” block size up to 27 times its size (and all sizes in between). If you’re a fan of the Minecraft block size then you want to mouse wheel twice to a 3x3x3 Gamecraft block. You can of course interchange block sizes within a single creation and our automatic texturing system will keep the fidelity of the textures to be realistic and hide the seams between your blocks regardless of the scale you choose.
The best thing is that this new scaling system works with all functional parts [that it makes sense for it to work with]. So, you can have House sized Wheels and Motors on huge vehicles if that’s what you want. If you really want you can have crazy things like Pistons that extend the height of sky-scrapers and launch you high into the sky. As you scale functional parts their physics changes too, so mass and inertia increases, forces, torques, velocities, energy consumption and storage, and even audio effects all get bigger as the parts get bigger.
Pro Tip: Hitting F4 will toggle between the 1 unit grid snapping to grid snapping at the same size as your current Uniform Scale setting. This is particularly useful if you want to build Big and Fast.
Text Block
We’ve also added a powerful Text Block to the game. The new Text Block can be attached to any other block, static or moving and can be non-uniform scales so you can have tiny text to label your Buttons and Switches or huge text to add fun to your games.
What’s really awesome is that the Text system is supports powerful ‘tags’ that you can include in your text for powerful formatting, including bold, italic, font size, colour, and even emojis. You can find a list of most of these supported tags here: http://digitalnativestudios.com/textmeshpro/docs/rich-text/
Pro Tip: Using the Console Block (see below) you can can update text on Text Blocks from in your games in real time.
Triggers
We have added new Trigger Blocks. These are small microchips which create an invisible volume (invisible when playing games) which allow you to trigger things to happen when objects or characters go inside (or overlap) them. They really are very powerful and when combined with physics components like Motors and Pistons allow you to build crazy automated machines and when combined with the Console Block (see below) allow you to do powerful things such as changing the gravity, or even changing the day to night based on events that occur in your games.
Console Block
The Console Block is also in this update and allows you to configure console commands that will trigger from within your game. You can rig these Console Blocks to Controls like Buttons and Switches or to Trigger Blocks.
Using the Console Block you can create games that change the gravity, the colour of the sky, the sunlight color or direction, the text on a text block, the player movement speed, teleport the player, enable fly mode, set the player camera to 3rd or FPS, and we plan to continuously add new commands to this list for ever more freedom to Gamecrafters.
For a full list of commands type /help when you’re in the console block UI (accessed by placing a console block or clicking on it once it’s already in your build).
New Controller Parts
Up until now we only had a Lever and with this update we have added the Switch, Button, Three-way-switch and the Dial to the roster, all which have different functionality useful for different scenarios.
Other Changes (since Preview)
- New Grass and Dirt textures
- New Trees and Shrubs
- New Flowers and Rocks
- New animated sky which works with the console block and updates depending on sun direction
- Improved fog that isn’t as strong and intrusive
- Improvements to the post processing effects and colour balance
- Rust Iron changed to beautiful Iron Plating based on previous Infinitum material
New Social Community Spaces
We are setting up new Official Community social spaces to coincide with the change of name to Gamecraft. New Discord channel and subreddit are linked from buttons in the Main Menu. Please subscribe and join the channels as we plan to be active in them with the community as we have been so far and will cease to use the previous RCX channels in time.
Here are links to all the new channels:
From Preview to Live
All the features that were added in the Preview version will also be committed to Live with this update. Here’s a short rundown but you can read the full notes here: Preview Release Patch Notes
My Games screen with Multiple Saves
Save as many creations as you want via your My Games screen. This is also where you Self-Publish your games from.
Pilot Seat, Control Console, Passenger Seat
Rig up machines, games and vehicles to keyboard and mouse controls with custom cameras for different scenarios using these new powerful Pilot Seat and Control Console. Provide seats for passengers or just a resting place for the player using the Passenger Seat.
Landscaping with Grass and Dirt
In the Preview version Infinitum has been changed to ‘Iron’ and so now ‘falls’, and Landscape blocks like Grass and Dirt provide the same anchoring functionality as Infinitum did (i.e. they do not fall under gravity and things that are attached to them also do not fall.
Latest DOTS and Unity
We upgraded to the latest DOTS and Unity engine versions which provided much more precise collision detection and improved physics simulation and performance.
Other changes of note
- With the Preview version we changed the polarity of some of the Levers can controls (reversing their direction so that the Pistons would extend on ‘positive’ as opposed to negative for example), this change has been committed to live
- Bounciness has been removed from rubber. We regrettably had to make this change as we had many glitches and bugs related to the simulation of bounciness. We are hoping to find a solution to this and to reintroduce bouncy materials longer term. Rubber still retains its super grippiness
- The interaction for Pick, Delete and Channel Select has been altered to match the distance that you place blocks (thanks to Steve’s Maker Space for that feedback).
- Fixed the annoying continuous hissing of Pneumatics when they try to extend or contract but are blocked or constrained by something
- Max distance increased by 10x so games can be larger (our intention is to keep scaling this and pushing the boundaries as tech improvements allow it)
- Preview will now be disabled until we have a new one for you to play
Bug Fixes
- Leo should now get stuck less often when walking near low cubes
- Connecting a Pilot Seat to the sides of Edge cubes will no longer trigger an error
- Fixed an issue that caused builds with Pilot Seats to flip over if you build too close to them
- Fixed some bugs with Springs that caused them to not “damp” enough
Game and Save Breakages
With this huge change from RobocraftX to Gamecraft we have many major changes that cause old RCX saves to break. Changes to scale, physics, polarity, and engines all contribute to causing issues and breaking old RCX saves. These changes have been live in the Preview branch for a while now and have been experienced by those who have been playing with and giving us early feedback on that version. We are very sorry for breaking any saves you have created so far. Our plan going forward is to do our best to maintain the integrity of all the games that are crafted after this point through a number of tactics as follows:
- If we make a functional change to an existing part, we will attempt to auto-convert your games to continue to work as you intended if this is possible
- Alternatively, we may retain the old functionality for legacy games and apply the new functionality to new games for a period of time to allow games to evolve
- If we make a part obsolete, we will continue to retain the legacy part for a period of time so games can evolve
- We will find a place [probably a wiki website] to communicate all of these changes and provide plenty of warning to changes that are up and coming
- IMPORTANT: If you have designed your game to exploit an obvious glitch or bug, you should expect that bug to be fixed and at that point your game will break. We will not attempt to maintain games that are based on glitches or bugs that are present.
If you would like to carry your saves over from Robocraft X or the Preview Build, you can do so by following these simple steps:
- Start by installing/updating Gamecraft to generate the new save file location (C:\Users[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Freejam\Gamecraft)
- Navigate to the folder of the previous install (...\RobocraftX or ...\GamecraftPreview)
- Copy the save file from these folders to the new “\Gamecraft\Games” folder
- (Robocraft X Only) Open the save folder and rename “GameSave.RCX” to “GameSave.GC”
- Launch Gamecraft and confirm your games appear in the My Games list
N.B. With all of the major changes, we can’t guarantee that older Robocraft X save files will still function the same, or at all, although we have taken steps to try and preserve these as much as possible.
The Gamecraft Team