Quality of Life Update V0.3.12.1 adds Editor Improvements, Building Blocks, ...

Welcome to our second Early Access milestone update!

Since the last Screw Drivers update, there was gamescom, some vacation and some flue. But still, we’ve prepared a massive update for you, with some awesome quality of life changes to the building editor. This update was originally planned as the fifth milestone update on our Early Access roadmap, but as QoL improvements were requested by you more often, we have prioritised the update.

As a result, the ‘Character Editor’ update, originally planned as the second update, has been swapped with the ‘Quality of Life’ update and is now the fifth on the roadmap. The roadmap on the product page has been updated and adapted accordingly.

We also added three new gears to play around with, some other building blocks, new challenges, a new leaderboard and much more. We also implemented a peer-to-peer multiplayer system, which should allow you to host your own server without forwarding ports in the router. Feel free to try that out as well.

And we also added a vote to the main menu, whether you would prefer the ranklist career or the tech tree career as main career mode for the future. Let us know which one you enjoyed the most!

So here is the full changelog of V0.3.12.1. And as always, please share your thoughts & feedback with us!

BUILDING EDITOR

Mutli Selection Mode

You are now able to multi select multiple parts of your car and move them around using the arrow keys and the scroll wheel. It’s also possible now to delete, colorize, rotate and copy a selection of parts. To select multiple parts just hold SHIFT and click multiple parts hold down the left mouse button and drag a selection square over your screen.

Then use the arrow keys and the scroll wheel to move the selection around. Or use the little action buttons to color the whole selection, rotate it or duplicate it.

Mirror Mode

We added a mirror mode to the building editor. You can activate it by pressing 'M', then move the mirror-plane left and right with the arrow keys. And all the blocks you place or remove on one side will be mirrored on the other side.

Hot bar
The building editor now has a hot bar. You can assign up to 9 blocks to the numeric keys of your keyboard to quickly access your favorite parts. When you open the parts menu, hover a part and press the alpha key to assign that part to that slot.

Color palette
You can now select colors by opening a color palette on the bottom of the screen. There you can see and select all available and unlocked colors. You can still switch between colors quickly by using the scroll wheel.

NEW BUILDING BLOCKS

• Worm Gear: A small typical worm gear. It can be used to create extreme gear ratios. Logically it has two gear teeth.
• Plate Gear: A flat plate of the size of the medium gear, but the teeth are angled in a 90 degree angle. With this you can both implement a gear transmission, but also transmit power around the corner.
• Small Corner Gear: Works pretty similar to the current corner gear to transmit power around the corner. But this is much smaller, so it uses less space. And it can not be used to transmit power sideways.
• Large Shark Fin: A bigger shark fin with a bigger area and thus bigger force in the wind.
• 1x1 building block: Like a beam, but only one hole in length.
• 2x2 building block: Like two beams x2 on top of each other and glued together.
• Axle x10: A 10 blocks long powertrain axle.

MAJOR CHANGES

New Challenges
There are two new Optional Challenges on the Main Island and three new Challenges on the Supersonic Racetrack including a slightly new kind of challenge type

A Brand new Leaderboard
We switched the old and bugged leaderboard with a new one holding way more useful information. You are now categorized in a new way showing you in which percentage of the players your driven time is. You can still see your global rank, but now it matters, if you’re in the top 5%, top 20% or top 50% of all players. Accordingly you’re categorized to be in the sapphire, gold, silver or bronze area.

Update to wind resistance
The old wind resistance calculation didn’t calculate what you would expect. Since some cars with flat surfaces had less wind resistance than aerodynamically built cars. We changed the whole system, so now it should make more sense in general. You can now also see where your car suffers the most wind resistance. The wind streams with high wind resistance are colored now, and you can also see small pop ups showing the amount and position of the causes of wind resistance.

Easy multiplayer hosting
We added a peer-to-peer multiplayer solution, which should allow server hosting without having to forward ports in your router. You can try this out in the main menu, by just clicking on host and see if you and your friends can connect to your server. As soon as you have connected to your own server, invite your friends through steam, and hopefully, everything works smoothly.

MINOR CHANGES

Take-off bridge
On Pulau Mahkota there is now a take-off bridge near the harbor for airplane like vehicles with a spawn point.

New car stat
We added a new car statistic to the game: The tip-over value. This should indicate, how prone a vehicle is to tip over while cornering. It is being calculated by dividing the height of the center of mass by the maximum sideways distance of your wheels.

BUG FIXES

Removed invisible colliders in A-to-B races, which sometimes catapulted cars into the air near the start or finish line.

Drive safe, friends. And have a relaxing weekend!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1279510/Screw_Drivers/