Hey there Robocrafters,
It's been a while since we've done a Dev Jam and a few of you out there in our community have asked us to do more of them so you've a greater insight into what's going on here in terms of Robocraft's on-going development. We really want you to join us on the development journey and so we're going to try to do Dev Jam blogs more frequently.
This Dev Jam will focus on our plans to upgrade the Steam/Launcher version of Robocraft to Robocraft Infinity. We will have another Dev Jam for you next week that will give more details on Tiers (No More Crates Phase 3) and other new features coming soon™.
Robocraft Infinity coming to Robocraft with Tiers
Many of you in the community have been frustrated with the speed at which we’ve been releasing new features, content, and community-suggested improvements to Robocraft. There are some big differences between the newer Infinity version of Robocraft and the older Robocraft that makes bringing the new features and improvements we make to Infinity to Robocraft incredibly difficult and time-consuming.
So, in order to speed up the process of giving you lots of awesome new stuff for Robocraft, we've made the decision to upgrade the original Robocraft to Robocraft Infinity as a totally free update which will allow us to bring 100% of all the exciting things we are doing in Infinity to all of the community on Robocraft.
Our goal is to get you the upgrade sometime in the next 6-8 weeks and we'll let you know when a more concrete date is set.
So, what are we going to bring to Robocraft? Here's a break down of the awesome features and content you'll be getting for free in Robocraft:
- Infinity Inventory system - unlock a part on the Tech Tree and then use it an Infinite number of times, no need to Forge parts anymore
- Infinity CRF - download as many Robots as you like as long as you have the parts unlocked, with rewards going to the builder based on when users play with those downloaded Robots (even if they edit/tweak them after download)
- Infinity Duplication system - duplicate and tweak your Robots an infinite number of times, create 10 of the same Robot with different paint jobs and loadouts if you wish, tweak designs to your heart's content without sinking parts from your Inventory
- A new Item Shop - spend your hard-earned Robits to unlock Cosmetics for free, i.e. those cosmetics that would otherwise be ‘CC only’ will be available for Robits also, so nothing in the game will be behind a paywall, everything will be available for free
- Tiers - this is being implemented in Infinity now so will come straight to Steam with this upgrade
- More paint colours - 8 for free, 32 for Premium
- Cosmetic Garage and Building bays - configurable for each Robot allowing you to have Earth, Mars or Ice planet as backdrops whilst building and when viewing your Robots in the Garage (available via Item shop for both CC and Robits)
- New Main Menu and UI - an overhauled Main Menu and UI with an improved flow, look, and better handling of different resolutions including those higher than 1920x1080 up to 5k
- Improved CRF sorting algorithm - focusing on bringing Robots from active players that are ‘new’ and ‘trending’ and ‘most popular’ to the top of the searches
- New improved weapons crosshairs
- Massive improvements to Weapon Feedback and Fighting - improved Special Effects, improved Audio Technology, Improved Audio Effects, many changes to the HUD to give you much better feedback for how much damage you’re doing, how much you’re taking, and where the damage is coming from
- Improved graphics, better lighting
- Controls can be edited via the Settings screen even when in battle
- Battle-ready Robot Check - Robocraft checks the user has functional cubes on the Robot and warns before they enter battle
- Building hints, help users learn the advanced controls and can be hidden in Settings menu
- Kill feed is colored when in battle mode so it’s easier to read
- End of battle Robot voting screen
- Popup tooltips on many of the buttons and options in the Main Menu
- Improved network technology for improved reliability and connection to the Robocraft servers and backend
- New Unity version for improved performance and stability
It’s worth noting that there are some data differences between Infinity and original Robocraft which we will not bring across as we want to avoid breaking everyone's Robots:
- CPU values will remain the same as current Steam version
- Max CPU will remain the same as current Steam version
Community Concerns
Some veteran players in the community have some concerns regarding the Infinity system; these are:
- “I had to grind for my parts but new users would get an Infinite number of them, this isn’t fair”
- “I like grinding for parts, it gives me motivation to play battles”
Having listened to these concerns, we will be doing a few things focusing on the veteran players in the game:
- We will release exclusive golden variants of all Legendary functional base parts (excluding C6 and cosmetic variants). Every player who owns more than X number of a Legendary part (either loose in their Inventory or on current Robots) will receive an exclusive Golden version of that same part
- We haven’t decided how many of X part you will need to get the golden variant but we will reveal the number and give you plenty of time prior to releasing the Infinity upgrade so you can make sure you don’t miss out
- The golden variants will be exclusive to those who played before the Infinity upgrade and will come with golden special effects
- We will be releasing a new Item Shop where users can buy Cosmetic parts that are normally real money only with Robits also
- We will be adding a number of new goals for players to chase. These have been specifically designed to challenge our veteran players with long term goals.
- We’ve expanded on the old Tiers system to add depth to it
- We’re adding a new Career system that gives prestige and rewards to those who have invested a lot of time into Robocraft
Thanks for taking the time to read the Dev Jam and for your continued support for Robocraft. We will have another Dev Jam for you next week that will delve a bit deeper into some of the things outlined above.
Happy gaming!
Freejam