Hello Gamecrafters!
Tomorrow, a new update will go live! This will contain reworked springs and joints, new spring blocks, a Centre of Mass block and some more door and chair variants. There will be a great mix of changes and additions coming tomorrow. Check out the full patch notes below!
Reworked Damped Spring Block!
The Damped Spring has been an integral building part for a while now but it can feel a little underpowered. We’ve completely overhauled the way these work so you’ll find them incredibly powerful now.
This was made possible with our recent Havok update and helped address several complaints that the community had regarding this block.
As you can see in the image above, the new springs can handle more movement and thus give a smoother ride across bumpy terrain.
The reworked springs also gave us more power and the ability to set the extension length, of course, we created a spring loaded car launcher!
N.B: Due to the nature of these changes, the stats on existing springs could not be carried over. In most cases builds will still function close to the same, but some will certainly be different.
The Centre of Mass Block.
This handy dandy block allows you to set a vehicle's centre of mass. This can be used to give vehicles more stability, balance your hovercrafts and much more. If one of these blocks is attached to a cluster, the Centre of Mass of that cluster will biome this block’s position. You can also add a little extra offset via a tweakable stat.
For example, without a CoM block, a top heavy vehicle turning could topple over quite easily:
But by adding the Centre of Mass block and placing it towards the bottom of the vehicle, this bus will be much more stable and can take sharp corners with ease
Hinge Spring Block And Axle Spring Block
There will be two new powerful spring block additions in this update.
The first block is the Hinge Spring. This block works similarly to the standard hinge block, but with a resting position when no force is applied to it.
This new block would allow you to create doors and contraptions that could push against your vehicle or character. For example, there would be certain Hinge Springs that Leo, as a character, can easily push through, but a strengthened spring would be impossible for Leo to push through and he’ll need a vehicle with more power.
The Hinge Spring also allows for a new type of suspension and can create some rather hypnotic vehicles that are able to traverse harsh bumpy terrain while also making the ride smooth for the driver:
The second spring based block is the Axle Spring. A rotational spring block that will bounce back into its initial position when no force is applied to it. Of course you can set varying levels of strength to customise this blocks situational usefulness!
We created a few fun contraptions with this new block including a battering ram.
A vehicle with Torsion suspension.
And seesaw platforms.
New Door Variants
On the 12th of December, we revealed that we'd be adding four new door variants with a stylish advert
These doors function as the unpowered doors, so Leo can push through them.
New Chairs
We also revealed new chairs on the 13th of December via another advert!
Servo/Stepper/Pneumatic Joints Rework
These parts have always been a powerful tool, but have been considered a bit on the weak side. We’re ramping up the power on these parts to make them incredibly strong. No more stacking joints to get more power. No more relying on Physics blocks for that extra oomph.
These changes do make Pneumatics a little slower (still x5 faster than Servos). This is mainly due to their incredible strength letting them push through other objects a little too easily.
Other Changes
- Bit Blocks can now have their initial value set! This logic block can now be set as 0 or 1 during Time Stopped, so you don’t have to manually set this block with some extra wiring.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an error that could occur when creating wires
- Default world is now flat and correctly grid aligned
- Fixed a couple of errors that could occur when connecting to larger multiplayer games (More fixes and improvements are coming next year!)
- Fixed a bug that caused pistons to jitter when retracting
- Fixed a bug that caused Leo to play the Pilot Seat animation in all seats
- Potential fix for users that were experiencing incorrect blueprint thumbnails
- Fixed an issue that could prevent commands from being activated while at a low framerate
The Gamecraft Team