It was suggested that we do some form of smaller, more frequent, updates. So we're going to try that out. These will be more informal, frequent posts with a bit about the most recent things we're working on. This one may be a bit longer cause it's been a month since the last post but.. I'll try to keep it brief.. :]
{ Vehicle Yards }
Vehicle yards are how the player brings vehicles into an area. In most cases you start in an area on foot, walk to a nearby vehicle yard and that yard has one or more spaces. These spaces are where you can bring vehicles that you've unlocked into the area. Once you use a space to bring a vehicle in, it is used up unless you reset the whole area. This creates a strategic set of choices to make when choosing vehicles, when you bring vehicles in, and how you manage those vehicles once they're in the area.
When you bring a vehicle in, you're able to customize its parts from ones that you've unlocked as well as adjust tuning settings on those parts, like the stiffness of the suspension (spring rate) or the air pressure in the tires. Recently, we made it so this happened live on the vehicle so you can see the changes to parts or tuning, as well as see a preview of the vehicle live before you bring it into the area.
{ Vehicle Parts }
Vehicles in the game are made up of parts. These parts are now swappable and unlockable. We started with wheels, suspension springs and suspension dampers. The wheels are the most complex at this point, while the suspension parts have less of an impact for now. The suspension springs/dampers can be swapped but there are essentially two types now with the only difference being the strength of them - one set designed for small vehicles like the mower, the other designed for medium sized vehicles. Wheels on the other hand have many significant variations.
Next to the panel when you're swapping a vehicle's parts or tuning it, we display the stats of the parts. For wheels, this gives the player insight into what goes into the behavior of tires in general as well as what that specific wheel is good/bad at.
An example is the "front/back friction" vs the "left/right friction" on tires. It may not be obvious while playing until you know about it, but the grip a tire provides while moving forward or backward can be significantly different than when it slides sideways. We blend between these values depending on the movement of the tire in relation to the ground. This makes a huge different when turning, especially in time trials, or when trying to get enough grip to change direction while carrying a very heavy load. An example might be equipping a rear wheel drive vehicle with high left/right friction tires in the front and then on the rear axle, higher front/back friction. This would provide high grip to propel the vehicle forward while giving the non-powered wheels in the front the highest grip when they are trying to turn. You can really feel these things while driving, especially if you know why they're happening.
Without being able to see the stats and then experiment, this is very challenging for a player to figure out. I'm excited to keep expanding this aspect, getting more info about the part stats, more part stats that influence gameplay, as well as getting different methods to customize your vehicle live, like garages (pull vehicle in and customize/repair) or while on foot (walk to tire on trail and change it with a spare).
{ Vehicle Axle Saving/Loading }
Because vehicles are brought into areas once, and then managed in an area, it is important they are both stable and save/load well. Areas can take as little at 15 minutes but possibly many hours to complete particularly if they require road building and construction - that mixed with high consequence modes of play, saving/loading is important for player experience. With detailed physics on the vehicle's tires/axles, it became clear that we needed to save/load them precisely, which means saving/loading the exact positions of the suspensions. This would let us have a vehicle rock crawling or in ruts and be loaded without issue back into the exact situation it was in.
We considered a few other more simple options, but they all had major problems. Moving the vehicles to a nearby spot that has flat ground or letting the vehicle drop approximately where it had been both would result in significant changes to the situation the player was in, amplified if they were towing anything or had any cargo load. We also considered making it so vehicles could only save their positions when on a recovery pad - this is the simplest option but would essentially penalize players for having to save/load their game - unacceptable in areas where it can take 45 min+ to haul a single load.
So we made it so vehicles load their exact axle, suspension and wheel positions. This will put the players back into the exact same scenario, good or bad, that they were in when they saved & quit. Technologically, it provided a lot of benefits to the rest of the game because we now have much better overall control of the vehicles for things like LODing their physics, teleporting them in a stable way, repairing them live, swapping their parts live, etc.
As you can see, we've been focusing effort on vehicles recently. I'm trying to narrow down what we're doing to things that are required for the player experience, attempting to just do what is needed to get the next update out. This is also balanced against making sure I'm excited about and giving time to what I'm working on in the game. I really want the game back into a state where we're frequently updating it, but I also don't want it to be a mess to play. I know it's in early access so people don't expect perfection - but it's a balance. I'd love to get an update to the game live in September, we'll see if I can hit that goal!
Thanks for reading and following along!
