Greetings, fellow Hijinksters, new and old! We present to you the Weed Removal Update, a major update for Highway Hijinks!
The focus of this release is to remove many of the long-standing annoyances (”weeds”) that have been in the game. We’ve rebalanced the game difficulty, overhauled the UI, improved the visuals, fixed a whole bunch of bugs, and made some significant improvements to the performance. This is a big step towards our planned exit from Early Access later this year.
Check out the trailer for the Weed Removal Update:
Or, have a look at these exciting screenshots:
Here is a full list of what has changed in this update:
Gameplay
Added a pit stop at the start of each run that lets you choose 1 of 3 random modules
Added damage resistance system
Added some energy gain for destroying obstacles
Adjusted weapon energy consumption scaling with fire rate
Adjusted decay rate of excess energy when overcharged
Adjusted size of speed pad hitbox
Adjusted size of player’s hitbox
Increased starting speed from 100 km/h to 200 km/h
Increased minimum speed from 100 km/h to 150 km/h
Made speed pads give a brief acceleration and total speed boost of 5 km/h
Fixed player being able to shoot themselves in some cases (gruh)
Fixed mortar shells not exploding if they miss the road surface
Fixed pushed objects colliding with debris
Fixed shield charging while on cooldown when it should not
Difficulty
Adjusted obstacle health scaling with difficulty
Adjusted obstacle and turret spawning frequency scaling with difficulty
Prevented obstacle density from increasing if your speed is below your initial speed
Adjusted difficulty scaling rate
Races
Changed race rewards
The reward for winning a race is now just one Voucher
Some tiers of race reward are Double-Sided Vouchers that let you reroll their offered items once
Added a 5th heat variant for each race challenge
Adjusted the Denser Obstacles race challenge to have lower densities overall
Prevented obstacles from spawning near the start and end of races
Added the ability to parry race opponents
Improved collisions between players and race opponents
Added a new race start screen
Added a cool new guy at the start of races
Made the race finish line look cooler
Fixed players being able to collide with race opponents at the start of a race
Turrets
Removed generators for turrets
Added turret charge VFX
Improved turret targeting behavior
Adjusted turret damage and fire rate
Reduced turret projectile explosion area of effect
Prevented obstacles from spawning around the first turret in each run
Fixed turret explosions not disappearing
Fixed turrets disappearing when entering a pit stop or starting a race
Pit Stop
Reduced the number of abilities offered in the pit stop shop from 2 to 1
Reworked UI flow for buying items
Moved scrap/health/energy meters to main screen
Added mouse interactivity
Prevented obstacles from spawning near pit stops
Improved visibility pit stop highway signs
Added an animated series of arrows that direct the player to each pit stop
Added turn arrows to pit stop exit lanes
Added an icon next to selected items in the shop when you have a Gift Card
Updated sale icon
Fixed inventory UI overflowing the screen when there are many items
Fixed text overflowing on item info screen
Items
Removed the Ability Slot module
Made health pickups, Portable Repair Kit, and Personal Protective Equipment instantly cool down the shield
Prevented Quick Exchange and Consumerism from fiving Overtime
Made Flatten only prevent collisions with obstacles
Doubled Mortar shell damage
Adjusted how much energy Energy Harvester gives
Rebalanced Saw Orbital
Fixed Saw Orbital blades rotating while paused
Fixed Saw Orbital rotation speed being framerate-dependent
Fixed Vehicular Sabotage not doing anything
Fixed Dentures still healing player after its status effect has expired
Fixed car being slowed by collisions while Funny Driving Juice is active
Attack Traits
Added new mechanical aspects to attacks called “traits”, which can be one or more of:
Critical
Flaming
Piercing
Pushing
Added a push to objects when another pushed object collides with them
Added the Pushing trait to explosive attacks
Added the ability for burning things to inflict burning to other things they collide with
Adjusted the burning effect to now deal a % of the target’s max health
Made most attack traits inheritable
Tutorial
Added checkpoints that the player instantly respawns at when they die
Increased speed from 75 km/h to 100 km/h
Adjusted obstacle spacing
Audio
Added audio effects for attack traits
Added audio for crate debris
Added audio for Saw Orbital blades
Made race countdown sound effects non-spatial
Increased maximum number of concurrent sound effects
Fixed audio cutting out when entering pit stop or at the start of a race
Fixed audio breaking when getting a lot of scrap at once
Fixed spinout sound effect being played too much
Visuals
Added damage numbers text to show how much damage was dealt by an attack
Added a new retro grid shader effect to replace health bars on obstacles, turrets, etc.
Removed volumetric shadows that had almost no effect
This significantly improved performance
Added new obstacle textures and removed the old ones
Added new crate and barrel obstacle models and removed the old ones
Added a warning icon on obstacles that will kill the player if they collide with it
Added icon to HUD warning you when race opponents are close behind you
Added a flashing effect while a car is invincible
Added a flashing effect on Dentures when its status is about to expire
Added a flash effect when enemies take damage
Added a “hit stop” shake effect to things when they take damage
Added new camera effects when using speed pad
Added a flame effect to the car exhaust when using a speed pad
Added arrow signs near the end of a race
Added electricity transmission towers
Added dithering to car headlight trails
Removed weapon indication ring from HUD
Improved appearance of outlines on obstacles and pickups
Reduced camera shake caused by turret shots and ram
Made gun fire animation speed scale with fire rate
Improved nuke visuals
Made glitch visual effect scroll over the screen to prevent important information from being obscured
Improved health/shield vignette screen effects
Improved obstacle destruction effects
Adjusted how Crossbow arrows stick in cars
Adjusted camera shake when using the Rifle
Adjusted projectile trails
Improved fire VFX
Adjusted race opponent's lights
Improved appearance of golden objects
Adjusted speed lines screen effect
Adjusted Funny Driving Juice visual effect
Adjusted energy meter colors for better visibility
Improved shield visual effect
Made outline color of targeted obstacles change based on distance from player
Improved explosion visual effects
Fixed flickering in energy and health meters
User Interface
Added a newly redesigned UI
Replaced the game logo and app icon
Added a tutorial button in the main menu
Added a feedback/bug report button in the main menu
Added loading screens for smoother scene transitions
Fixed dropdowns in UI not scrolling when navigating through their items
Controls
Added a newly redesigned input settings screen
Changed the default controls for keyboards and controllers
Removed Switch Tab input action
Added customizable secondary controls for each action
Added customizable controls for Pause action
Added positional controller rumble for explosions
Fixed D-pad buttons on Xbox 360 wireless controllers not working properly on newer Linux kernel versions
Settings
Added a setting to reduce the strength of the Funny Driving Juice visual effect
Added a setting to skip UI opening and closing animations
Fixed Render Scale setting not working
Fixed duplicate resolutions being listed in video settings
Miscellaneous
Made a whole bunch of improvements to performance
Made the game pause automatically when the app loses focus
Fixed Steam Cloud not working on macOS in some cases
The location of your saved game folder on macOS might change
Thank you all for playing our game! We hope you all enjoy the update. There is still a lot more to come!
Want to discuss the game with other Hijinksters or tell us your thoughts? Join our Discord server!