Hey everyone,
It's time for the first content update on our road to Chapter Two! It's a long requested feature, and one we've been pretty excited about: The ability to purchase vehicles and garages.
Let's jump through all the various additions and features of the update, and talk about what's coming next.
Three New Vehicles
Say hello to the Jalo Perogi, the Chancellor Statesman and the Mudbaby 200.
The Jalo Perogi is a cheap, drifty little hatchback that comes in at a fairly affordable price tag. If you want to take advantage of Rockhavens various alleyways or hidden corners, the Jalo is one of the more navigable cars you can get your hands on.
The Chancellor Statesman on the other hand, is a tried and true classic. A hefty sedan, often used as Taxi Cabs or Police cruisers - everyone in Rockhaven knows what the Statesman is about. It's price tag is double the Perogis and then some, but diehards will say it's worth it.
The Mudbaby 200 however is a vehicle that was originally designed for children to play in, but given that this is Rockhaven, of course dropkick adults decide to test their luck in zipping them around. Try not to injure yourself when you take it out for a spin.
As hinted in the last blog, more vehicles are on their way, including some exciting two wheeled machines..
Three Purchasable Garages
If you're going to buy Vehicles, you'll need a place to put them: Enter Garages! Buying garages will increase your overall fleet capacity, and be a physical location you can visit to show off your owned vehicles, or pick them up for a spin. You'll get your first Garage in Green Island through a mission, but you'll have to find and purchase the remaining two (Check near the shores!). We'll add more garages for purchase in future updates. Visiting garages is a great way to grab one of your vehicles, but it's not the only way...
The new "Valet" system
Say you're out on the town, nowhere near your cars but you need a ride. It's simple! Using the Valet application on your phone, you can summon one of your available cars to your location. A very sorry driver will bring it right to you. Don't forget to tip! In a future update, tipping will progress you along an upgrade path inside the Valet application, but for now, it's just a nice thing to do. If your cars are destroyed, you can also pay the insurance fee to replace them right from the application. That leads us into the next topic
Damage overhaul and repairing
Cars now have a visible HP hud and damage states reflecting the condition of the car you're in. No more sudden explosions, and no more guess work. We still want to do visual damage to windows, doors and other parts on the car in a later update, but we figured we should at least address the basics. Your car will now exhibit white smoke, black smoke, and fire when it's about to blow up, and the ensuing explosion can cause chain reactions, so be sure to get out of the blast radius. Destroyed cars will also drop a smattering of broken tires, and whatever was in their inventory, so it's a good way to uh, you know - steal more stuff.
Additionally, if you're driving one of your vehicles, or have stolen one you're enjoying and want to repair them, head on over to Wheelies. There's a new second button there, and pay attention! One button crushes, while the other repairs the car inside for a fee. If you're playing in co-op, why not "repair" one of your friends cars. Surely that will end well.
New Car Material System
You'll notice some new paints and wraps on the vehicles of Rockhaven driving about. We've overhauled our car paint system on the back end which allows us to make some pretty exciting combinations. In this update, you'll get to pick some preset paint jobs at Car Dealerships, or notice some new colors on AI vehicles driving about, and that's where it is for now - however, as we tackle customisation, you'll be able to unlock and apply a whole range of colors and designs (among more substantial customizations to vehicles). For now, we hope this change gets you excited and envisioning what kind of crazy car you'll build in the future.
Two Dealerships
Buying cars debuts with two dealerships being opened in Rockhaven. By the south beach boardwalk is "4 Real Automobile", a rather run down establishment that has both the ride on lawnmower and Maximo for sale. If neither of those are doing it for you, Big O's Car Yard in North Beach has both the Jalo Perogi and Chancellor Statesman available. Peruse the disgusting available colors at launch knowing full well in time you'll be able to repaint them. Make sure you have your wallet upgraded from Dr Powicks upgrade station before buying a car though - they're not cheap!
A new mission "New Whip"
To introduce the concepts of wheeling and dealing automobiles, Beggar King will offer you a mission entitled "New Whip". Go meet Big O and stunt drive a Mudbaby 200 through the streets. If you do a good enough job, he'll go ahead and throw you the keys. We're pretty happy with some of the systems we've developed in this mission, and have some more exciting missions to leverage the work done here further in an upcoming update.
Bug Fixes and System Improvements
We've also crushed a fair amount of bugs, attempted some more performance improvements and made some changes to underlying systems that should help traffic and AI navigate better.
Additionally, we've added some more logic and physics to items and set dressing through the city to better improve the driving experience throughout. If you do get stuck, there's now an option on the interaction wheel on all vehicles to flip them right side up.
Oh, and people BLINK now!
HUGE UPDATE.
Last but not least, Cloud Saves are online
We've finally gone ahead and enabled Cloud Saves. If you're a user who's played on multiple PC's, we recommend booting the game on the PC with your preferred saves first, and thereafter letting Steam handle the sync operation. We don't expect any problems to arise, but again, if they do, feel free to hit us up on Discord (or leave a comment here) and we'll fix 'em up.
What's Next?
Up next on our schedule is working on an improved first time user experience that'll better explain the core concepts of the game, and give the world some much needed flavor and substance to Rockhaven. A lot of the work we're doing on that will fallback into usual moment to moment gameplay, so while it primarily targets new players, veterans will have some appreciable content fall out of that.
We're also looking to launch two wheeled vehicles in the next content update, including motorbikes, electric scooters, and more. This is of course on top of new missions, new places to go in the city, and expanding the variety of cars, garages, houses and items to buy.
Once we've accomplished those larger two milestones, we'll start to roll out the customisation update, which'll allow you to modify vehicles into your fleet in all kinds of crazy and dumb ways, including opting out of wearing seatbelts - so if you're a fan of becoming a projectile, look forward to that.
Enjoy the update, and we'll talk again soon!
