Good morning fellow Screw Drivers,
It's been waaay too long, and I hope you're all doing well!
In today's update we've got some big news to share. On August 20th, Screw Drivers will turn into a premium title and receive a large update at the same time.
First off, the most important thing: Nothing changes for you, if you've already claimed the game for free!
From August 20th, the Screw Drivers base game will be available for 7,99€. The Supporter Pack, that is currently available for 4,99€, will no longer be available from the same date. All other DLC will remain available for purchase at the same price they are currently listed at. All DLC, including the Supporter Pack, will of course still be available in your library if you've already purchased it. All Steam Workshop up- and downloads will remain unchanged, and you will be able to play with all your friends in multiplayer mode, regardless of if they've claimed the game for free or bought it after the switch to premium.
In addition to these changes to the game, we also updated our small indie team. Marc and me split ways half a year ago, and since then Screw Drivers lies fully in the passionate hands of myself and Headup.
Together we've decided to make this change to our pricing model, because we feel it better reflects the love and dedication we have put into this passion project of ours. I would love to be able to bring you infinite more content for Screw Drivers and more games in the future, which is only possible through this step. We wanted to make this change as transparent as possible, to make sure you still have a chance to claim the game for free and purchase the Supporter Pack over the next 2 days.
While nothing changes with our switch to premium, we do have some big changes coming your way with the big update that will go live on the same day!
The most exciting one: We are adding a track editor into the game! It was one of the features I had in mind for a long time now, and I'm pleased you can finally design your own tracks and even share them in the Steam Workshop. It's not a full logic system yet, I hope that's the next big thing I can tackle!
Additionally, the in-game Workshop browser is back. Without memory leak, and for both vehicles and your custom tracks. I also worked on full controller support for the game, and translated the game into a total of 25 languages with the help of our amazing discord community!
And there's of course also many new building blocks to tinker around with, a lot of improvements to the game's performance in car calculation, loading times and multiplayer along with a bunch of fixes. You can find the full patch notes here:
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