It's been the craziest of all roller coasters of developing what started as a hobby project 10 years ago into a fully released game on Steam. And now, after two years in early access, Screw Drivers is now fully released!
Before diving any deeper into all the new stuff and changes, let me quickly just say the biggest of all thanks to you, the drivers and builders. I got to make so many new friends along the way, be it on the discord, in the Steam forums or wherever it was. Making Screw Drivers allowed me to meet so many wonderful people sharing my passion for the joy this game brings. I thank you all with all my heart for supporting us just by being part of this community and by playing Screw Drivers!
Without further thanking, below you can find all the changes we have done since the last early access update. I tried to put in some few new building parts, a little track editor, some quality of life things and tried to fix as many things I could. I really hope you enjoy this full release, although I would wish I had even more time to put into Screw Drivers.
I also want to highlight that we translated the game into 24 languages. With a mixture of our amazing discord community and some AI assists, we tried to translate as much as possible. Keep in mind that most languages are AI translated, so if things are wrong feel free to let us know and we'll improve it
One last thing before lettings you dive into the changelog: I really really hope I can continue developing Screw Drivers further and further even now. I don't know what the future holds tho, and what projects I will be doing to pay the bills.
But just know that Screw Drivers will never die!
Track Editor: Build your own tracks by placing starting grids, checkpoints, decoration and destructible objects - cones, flags, ramps, tyre stacks, wooden barricades, arrow and turn signs. Test drive your track straight from the editor, take a thumbnail screenshot, and upload it to the Steam Workshop.
Workshop Browser: We re-added the in-game Workshop browser for vehicles - and added a brand new one for custom tracks from the Workshop.
Blueprints: Turn vehicles into blueprints. Assemble gear boxes, engines and more, save them as blueprints, and insert them as a whole into other constructions.
Controller support: Full gamepad navigation through the menus - car selection, garage, tech tree, settings and the tutorials. Hold the left trigger in the parts menu to switch straight to the shop.
The game is now available in 25 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (Simplified). Translated together with our community and the help of AI, with a language selector in the settings menu and full CJK font support.
Menu tutorial: A new guided tour after the driving tutorial, walking you through the career, garage, tech tree and blacklist.
Minimap previews: Challenges now show a minimap preview with the full checkpoint layout before you start.
Greatly improved car selection performance - especially with several hundred vehicles, the scene now loads much faster.
Greatly improved the game's startup time.
Greatly improved car analysis performance. Calculating a vehicle is much faster now (big thanks to ATLAS, who helped out a lot here!).
Improved multiplayer stability and performance. Loading and spawning cars is much faster, and multiple players driving at the same time now works much better.
Fixed a recurring 2 second stutter on Steam Deck.
Upgraded the game to Unity 6, for better performance and stability across the board.
All islands are now unlocked in creative mode.
Reworked scrolling and sorting in the garage and car selection.
Improved text wrapping and text layout across the whole UI.
Rebalanced the prices of building parts.
Hardened the multiplayer servers against malicious and modded clients — server settings, passwords, the map vote and the active challenge can now only be changed by the actual host, and all incoming data is validated and rate limited.
Complete overhaul of the tech tree: added all the building blocks that were still missing (around 30 new entries), and reorganized everything.
Added new building blocks: decorational wooden panels, and a new engine - the XR - Thrust 2010, a big two stroke engine.
New building block - Clutch: Lets the engine slip at low RPM so it doesn't bog down, for much smoother launches.
New building block - TCS Block: Adds traction control to your vehicle, with an adjustable strength from 0 to 100% - dial in exactly how much wheelspin you want.
Added an introduction and a placement side panel for the chain, including a warning when two sprockets aren't on the same plane.
Added destructible cans.
Added named spawn points to free drive on the islands.
Re-added the ghosts of the RT map, volcano, supersonic and stunt races, and re-drove the Combustion King ghost.
Added part info pages for grip pads, the keybindings plate, the fusion engine and the two stroke 3x3.
Your driver's license now shows badges for the DLCs you own.
New minimap sprites for the Content Creator and Prototype islands.
The AC1 electric engine now has sound (previously it had none).
Fixed the AC suspension not having power holes for axles - they now have them.
Fixed cars with a neutral gear not calculating properly.
Fixed the free gear bug, which caused gears to mesh that shouldn't mesh with each other.
Added a tab in the car analysis window to inspect individual rigidbodies, to easily find loose parts in cars.
Fixed cars getting wiped when a part property contained certain special characters.
Fixed periodic freezes on dedicated multiplayer servers.
Fixed custom maps spawning underneath the map.
Fixed the map editor placing objects while a menu was open, fixed placement when pointing at empty space, and fixed the map editor UI not blocking the 'E' key.
Fixed the wind resistance not showing in the car analysis.
Fixed not being able to leave the car analysis scene with 'X'.
Fixed personal best times not being recorded properly, which made the checkpoint delta to your PB during a race show mostly nonsense.
Fixed free drive spawn points not unlocking correctly.
Fixed the parts menu in the tutorial not being scrollable.
Fixed the tech tree scroll view not sizing its content correctly.
Fixed the selection border of the island top banner.
Fixed Xbox controller button sprites not showing up in texts.
Fixed several controller navigation bugs in the settings menu.
Fixed shadows in the car analysis scene.
Restored the hint that tells you how to reset or repair your car after falling off the track.
Fixed a number of crashes and errors during scene loading, multiplayer part destruction and menu rendering.
Thank you, as always, for being part of this most amazing community and happy building, racing and crashing!' Simon