Heya engineers!
While we're working on a bigger update containing a new game mode we have a smaller one ready now! It addresses a few points that came up in the early-access-survey we started a few weeks ago. So thanks to everyone who took the time to fill it out, that really helped us find out where we can improve Unrailed 2! And if you haven't filled out the survey yet, but have feedback not addressed with this update you can still do so here:
Now let's dive into what has changed. As always, here's a TLDR image:
If you want more details, here we go:
UI Improvements
One main piece of feedback that was highlighted in the survey was that the UI bubbles can easily obstruct elements of the shop. We've now added smaller preview bubbles that pop up when hovering, where players can toggle the full bubble on demand. The new bubbles take up way less space than the old ones, but contain all the important information in a condensed format. Here's how they look in action:
Somewhat related to UI, we also improved the boss introduction and handbook texts to make their mechanics clearer to understand, as some players reported in the survey that they did not find them clear enough. Controllers now also rumble when dashing into other players, taking damage and in a few other places!
Alternate Camera
Another often requested feature (even before the survey) was a camera more closely centered on the player instead of the whole map. This update adds an alternate camera mode that does just that. Here's an example of the new camera-mode:
If you're playing on a Steam Deck or another device with a small-ish screen, the new camera mode comes in really handy! By default the camera smoothly follows the player. As some of our community members wished for the camera to be strictly centered on the player this option can be enabled in the accessibility settings.
Bot Improvements
A thing that became clear with the survey was that the bot needed improving, so we've spend quite some time polishing up its gears. The bot is now faster, a lot more reliable, can use more wagons, uses more action cartridges and is doing more advanced pathing when building tracks and mining. The bot chooses a train track path on its own, but you can now use the flag emoji to draw a different one for the bot to follow.
Progression Balancing
Many responses also wished for faster unlocking of cartridges and cartridge slots. We've now changed it so that the unlocking of cartridge slots is bound to defeating the bosses in endless mode, and reduced the prices for cartridges across the board. This should make unlocking much faster and reward players who try to venture into new biomes.
We further rebalanced some wagons and cartridges as well as the speed increase when visiting biomes the second time. Those changes should make pushing the limits more interesting. As those changes will change the meta-gameplay, we decided the split the highscores again. Be one of the first to score a crown: https://u2.unrailed-online.com/ !
New Character
While this update is mostly quality of life improvements, we've still added one new character to unlock: Pecky the chicken from Unrailed 1! On popular demand we've also added a pylon hat that is available in the Fashion Express.
Networking Bugfixes
About a week ago we had a server outage that caused problems on startup. These issues have been resolved and also helped us to discover the source for related networking problems that have mainly impacted players located in China. This update should fix hang-ups on startup, problems with joining friends and potentially desync issues. Please reach out if you still have issues though, it makes it much easier to fix them, if we have someone to contact directly.
As always, there are many other smaller improvements and bugfixes you can find in the detailed changelog below. Also, as always, please let us know what you think of these changes here and on our Discord server. Aaand if you want to check out the new game mode we've talked about in the introduction, you can do so on our Discord server as well. 😉
Midweek Madness
Both Unrailed! and Unrailed 2 are having a midweek madness sale where you can get up to 80% off! If you’re new to Unrailed or have one of our games but not the other, it’s a choo-riffic time to check out the Unrailed bundle.
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That's all! See you on the tracks!
Changelog
Version v-568-47f10f7
General
New: Pecky Character now available - the beloved Chicken from U1
New: Stylish Pylon hat
New: Player-centric-camera option (Y on keyboard; left stick press on controller)
New: Pathing tool - draw a path over the map to tell your friends where to go! (Use the flag emoji to start a path!)
New: New page of emojis (including Huaji and Wrangler Huaji!!) & all emojis on the 2nd page have animations now
New: New highscore table! You can still see the old scores online or checkout the #update-4 branch.
New: Clearer UI
Improvement: Ada now gives some hints before the canyon boss and swamp boss
Improvement: Improved some handbook descriptions
New: Controllers have now rumble enabled for dashing into other players, taking damage, walking over spider webs, the sandworm and a few other places.
Networking
Improvement: Reduced player jitter in high ping scenarios with bad network conditions
Improvement: More robust game time synchronization for inconsistent network conditions
Improvement: Network protocol can now fix certain possible desyncs (please let us know if you still have issues)
Bug fix: Joining other players might not be possible when the highscore server wasn't reachable
Bot
Improvement: Bot tries to maintain a (second) pathway next to the tracks or around a mountain in case of a bottleneck to access the train.
Improvement: When a path is drawn (via flag emoji), the bot orients along this path when the actual command is placed not on the map.
Change: When placing a bridge emoji on the map, the bot is now trying to reach that position (same as with the flag emoji before)
Improvement: Player and its bot have the same outline. The player name tiles now display whether it’s a bot with a bot icon. The circle under the bot is smaller
Improvement: Bot should be better in avoiding explosives
Improvement: Bot should now stronger prioritize getting the right commodities to keep the crafter running
Improvement: Bot can dodge mimics in loco labyrinth & versus bombs
Improvement: Bot dashes now to be faster
Improvement: Bot only puts rails on the brake track crafter if it was explicitly selected via the emoji
Improvement: Bot can now bring animals to the milk wagon and also uses the milk from it
Improvement: Bot can use stomp action cartridge (when mining)
Improvement: Bot can use running action cartridge
Improvement: Bot waits for track being crafted instead of crafting new ones when the train is close to crashing
Improvement: Bot wiggles itself out of spider webs
Improvement: Bot can now serve the versus wagon
Bug fix: Many fixes where the bot was just standing around or looping (please reach out if you encounter such an issue!)
Visuals
Improvement: Slightly downscaled wagons, players & npcs to improve the general visibility
Improvement: UI Bubble improvements and fixes
Balance
Balance: Rebalanced cartridge prices & rarities (everything is a bit cheaper)
Balance: You now unlock the cartridge slots automatically by defeating a certain number of bosses
Balance: Speed curves for plus-biomes (those that were visited more than once) adapted: Bosses appear now after 2+k stations when visiting the k-th plus-biome. A plus-biome resets its speed to -2 stations of the speed of the station where the boss started to appear. In simpler words: The more plus-biomes you play, the later the boss comes and the start speed in each plus-biome is increased.
Balance: Miner wagon wasn’t mining its correct range when mining horizontally; It's now a little bit slower on level 6 (with the fix it's probably overall stronger)
Balance: Collector is a little bit faster on level 6
Balance: Cannon wagon is a bit faster on all levels
Balance: Turret wagon range beyond level 6 goes to 9 (instead of 14); it’s now a bit faster on level 6
Balance: Speed extensions now consistently change the “speed/frequency” and not the “duration” directly. Practically this means that the speed effect is gets damped with many speed extensions
Balance: Bucket cartridge capped at 4
Balance: Lucky punch now capped at 15
Balance: Slot wagon drop count goes to 9 (instead of 12) when going beyond level 6
Balance: Slot wagon consecutive win rewards are now /3 the normal reward (before /2); when winning brake tracks, the consecutive win counter is reset
Balance: Slot wagon is slightly slower on the highest level when fully supercharged (1.5sec instead of 1sec)
Change: Re-enabled cannon auto-place tracks (when flag is on the last track) in editor
Bug fix: When reconnecting, you don't reset your action cartridge progress
Bug fix: When reconnecting while respawning, you'll respawn
Fixes
Crash fix: On startup related to auto-saves
Freeze fix: Freeze in main menu
Freeze fix: Freezing mapgen fix (Labyrinth)
Bug fix: Fix commodity drops when resetting in a shop related to deers on a carriage
Bug fix: Possible invisible carrying fix (let us know if it still happens)
Bug fix: Some wagons did not work anymore after ~7 speed extensions
Bug fix: Various UI fixes
Bug fix: ESC->Feedback should be working again
Bug fix: Removed reconnect to lobby modal which sometimes overlapped the auto-save modal
Improvement/Bug fix: The default split controller mapping can now drop items as well (without this, the tutorial was not solvable)
Bug fix: Player disconnects when opening ESC->settings