Right, packages are updated, depots uploaded, game updated etc and Scraps versions for Mac and Linux are now available alongside Windows. They’re all fully cross-compatible so you should be able to play in the same game with people from all three OS’s.
There are just a few known issues right now:
Known Issues
Windows:
None.
Mac:
When playing singleplayer or hosting a multiplayer game, a Scraps Server icon appears and sits bouncing in the dock.
Linux:
MSAA anti-aliasing settings may not work in-game. You may be able to work around this by manually enabling AA in your graphics driver settings. e.g. For Radeon cards, open Catalyst Control Center and go to 3D → Anti-Aliasing, then set Mode to “Override application settings” and set Level where you like (4x is nice).
On multi-monitor setups, screen resolutions may show up as options that are higher than your main monitor’s resolution. If selected they’ll look wrong and you’ll just need to change it back to a lower resolution.
Changes
I’ve also had time to make a few updates to the game:
Aiming
This was partly a performance choice (the new system requires a few less checks), but the aiming system now works a little differently. Whereas all the little weapon cross-hairs used to show what they’d actually hit if firing in a straight line, they now essentially just show the aim direction of that weapon. Theoretically that sounds worse, but in practice the old system was often a bit confusing when trying to aim at something, and it caused some issues like getting really close to a vehicle and having your cross-hairs sort of sweep out of the “proximity aiming” circle range. Bullet drop from some weapons also sort of negated its usefulness. See what you think.
Aiming things with a camera that’s at a different place than the things is always a little complicated. Some games just cheat and shoot everything straight out of the camera, but that causes some other issues - you get people doing stuff like shooting over walls they’re hiding behind.
Health info for key parts
As shown above. Gives a better idea of things than just the damage textures. Showing health for all parts on the vehicle is a bit much, but the cockpit and chassis are the ones that actually get you destroyed, and they also tend to have the most HP, so they’re useful to see in more detail.
The labels and icons over enemy vehicles fade in and out at different distances, to try and avoid blocking your view. All the bars are also sized based on total HP - that is, stuff with more HP starts with a bigger bar, and the same amount of damage will also take off the same chunk.
Blocks
Lots more basic block shapes.
Full Changelog
2015-09 - 0.5.2.5
Added cross-platform Mac and Linux OS support!
Updated player name labels and added health info for their key parts under the label.
Also added health info for the player’s own key parts into the GUI.
Rounded off the bridge on SandyBridge a little (less getting stuck on the corner).
Reticles (crosshairs) for active weapons now show them aiming at infinity, instead of showing them on what they’ll actually hit if firing straight.
Added several additional basic blocks.
The “wealth multiplier” that increases costs for rich players now (more logically) only takes vehicle value into account, rather than total wealth.
Vehicle scrap value now also takes part damage into account (damaged parts have less value).
Reduced max collision damage a little.
Updated Russian translation text.
When choosing an initial game resolution, if your native res is ridiculously high (looking at you, Retina displays!), the game looks for a good lower one at the same ratio so you’re not squinting at tiny menus. On Linux Scraps will actually start windowed the first time it boots instead to avoid the following known issue. You can still set fullscreen and any resolution in the game options.
Bug Fixes:
Scrolling the inventory no longer also zooms the vehicle camera.
Fixed a server memory leak that I accidentally introduced in the previous release.
Fixed loading text not updating to the new language right away when the language was changed.
It’s pretty cool! The only thing that’s annoying me a bit is how dull the environments are, you could add props to it, wooden houses, trees, cactuses (or cacti?), a lake (or oasis in the desert), and so on
Looks amazing, hopefully you’ll make it. I played robocraft for a while, stopped and tried continue playing again. They ruined the game imo. So we need a new one, hehe
Agreed that the maps could do with more detail. I’m getting better at the stuff, and I do plan to give the existing maps a bit of a makeover at some point. Although I don’t want it too cluttered either, because it’s good to have plenty of room to maneuver without hitting things (unless they’re simple instant-knock-over props).
The time where everyone tries to come on together has been a weekly thing recently. Not sure if it’ll happen today but it’s had a decent amount of people on each time for the past three weeks. Details here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/350150/events/105063526136670299
Apologies or the lateness of this update. I wasn’t able to do Scraps work last week due to some real life events, and this week is going to be the same. Rather than having to push the next update way back, I’ve managed some time to clean up and release a smaller update today that still has the two major features I mentioned last time, plus a few other things as well.
Full changelog: 2015-10 - 0.5.2.9
Added ability to rebuild as well as repair damaged vehicles while in-game.
Wreckage pickup is easier, it kind of “attracts” towards you.
Some general balance tweaks to wreckage.
Improved the AI’s weapon selection methods.
Different sounds for each type of vehicle warning.
Parts now sell for their purchase value, taking any wealth tax into account, so you never lose money.
Increased steering speed for keyboard controls a little.
Refreshing the server list clears the old list when it was user-prompted, just so it’s more obvious that it’s doing something.
Workaround for an issue in Steam where sometimes only the first two lobbies got returned.
Spawn FX no longer show when creating existing vehicles as a player joins a game that’s already in progress.
Vehicle labels no longer show on top of loading screen dialogs.
Fixed AI looking as if they repair right before they evac, instead of after.
Fixed audio screeches and other silliness that sometimes occurred when entering maps.
Fixed a bug with part costs and wealth tax when ctrl-placing parts.
Fixed another bug with wealth tax when calculating estimated repair costs.
Rebuilding
You can now rebuild lost parts automagically after using evac pads (if you can afford it).
There are several ways this could work. As with my general philosophy for Scraps I’ve tried to balance functionality against complexity. At the moment it works like this:
Parts lost in-game count as ones to rebuild. Parts you manually remove on the Build Screen don’t.
Removing a part on your vehicle on the Build Screen doesn’t clear the rebuild list, but if parts in the rebuild list depended on that removed part, they’ll fail to get added back. You won’t be charged for those failed parts.
Adding a part to your vehicle on the Build Screen clears the rebuild list and sets the current vehicle as the “base” vehicle that’ll be rebuilt to. This means you can build on your saved vehicle during a game and rebuild back to your temporarily improved one after you lose parts in battle, but it does also mean that adding a part when you have parts to rebuild will lose you that rebuild list. It’s a compromise because once you start trying to handle these sort of branching trees of vehicle designs the complexity of the system skyrockets.
The Scraps Community
Just a note on the Scraps community in general: You guys are the best. While other people are complaining about their toxic game communities and “it broke plz fix” bug reports, Scraps players are sending me bug reports with a video of the bug happening. Recently I got a bug report that came with a suggested fix that was actually a good solution! In game dev circles that’s usually accompanied by pigs flying.
It was so nice to come back after not being able to check up on the game for a few days to see three new super nice reviews (especially coming not too long after one that began with “honestly the worst game I have ever played…”). It’s always especially cool to hear from people that have been following things since the early Builder Demo-only days. I know Scraps dev can be slow so I appreciate the people that keep checking back even more.
I’ve added a new map called RiverRift to the game. It’s got jumps as shortcuts, water, and a big rift in the ground that you can shove vehicles in to destroy them.
Skidmarks are finally back (see my post here for a technical writeup on the skidmarks effect).
And leaderboards now show whether other players have their vehicles currently in-game.
Icons are a vehicle on terrain for in-game, a spanner & hammer for build screen, and a dash for no vehicle.
I’ve also adjusted vehicle speeds a little: Very light vehicles will be a little slower, but heavier vehicles will generally be a bit faster now with the same engine configuration. Mass in general had a little too much effect on speed.
The first time I made the change I set the multiplier too high. Actually so high the frame optimisation ruined this gif I tried to make of it:
You’ll also find a little more wreckage drops in general, due to a change of calculation for drop amount from reliant parts (when a part is destroyed that has other parts that are reliant on it for their connection to the vehicle).
Full Changelog 2015-11 - 0.5.2.11
New engine power calc. Very light vehicles are now a little slower, but heavy vehicles are significantly faster.
Vehicles with a high centre of mass are a bit less prone to tipping over.
Better wreckage spawn calculation; reliant parts get sorted by cost. Bug Fixes:
Fixed SFX volume, which was no longer affecting all sounds.
Better collision damage calculation in some cases.
2015-11 - 0.5.2.10
New Map - RiverRift.
Skidmarks make a triumphant return, now without the ridiculous garbage generation.
Minor work on existing terrain FX.
Improved game camera obstacle avoidance.
Added icons to leaderboards to show player’s vehicle state (none/in-game/building).
A while ago a few people organised an unofficial “Weekly Game” where people would try to come onto Scraps multiplayer at the same time to play together. These have been going on for a while now and they’re sometimes more popular than others, but if you’re looking for people to play against, coming on at one of these times is probably your best bet:
The main one is at midnight Saturday UTC. That linked Steam event will automatically adjust its timezone to match the region you have set in Steam if you’re logged in.
There’s no official server to join - either people join one of my official ones or they create their own with custom settings. Again these are just unofficial things - no guarantees of attendance - but it’s been good fun in the past.
The one you posted is interesting though as it points out something. Why you havnt done much to visual improvements. With a few shaders and effects it can could look quite different.
I know inferno in my sig looks rubbish without the over done image effects
Well, because I kinda like simplicity, because the complex vehicles and existing effects (hard edges + outlines = extra verts) can be challenging performance-wise on their own (although I’ve got that a lot better recently), and because I’m no artist and whenever I’ve tried adding post-processing before it’s either made things look worse or affected gameplay (e.g. motion blur looks cool but makes it harder to aim at speed).
Having said that I also realise the game still looks a bit blah and that decent graphics are a major selling point.
This update is mainly lots of bug fixing and code cleanup behind the scenes. I also did a smaller v0.5.2.14 update that I didn’t make an update post for earlier, which improved CPU performance.
The specifics:
2015-12 - 0.5.2.15
Added heavy armour part
Better support for XBox 360 controller on Mac and Linux. Separate default key bindings keep actual inputs the same on all platforms
Engine sounds with multiple of the same engine work together better
Removed an annoying ridge in the RiverRift terrain
Added some subtle fades between scenes
Bug Fixes:
Fixed occasionally coming back from testing vehicles to the build screen and your vehicle has flown off into space somewhere
Removed more false positives and not-really-bad words from the swear filter
“Open save folder” button now working on Linux
Fixed the loading screen getting stuck if your vehicle spawned in right as a round ended
Fixed visual glitch between light beams and edge wall glass
Fixed screen staying white if your vehicle was destroyed right at the moment of evac completion
Fixed game modifiers (low gravity) not being unapplied on connected clients if the server shut down
Fixed SkinnedMeshRenderer errors being generated in-game (in the background) if a vehicle had no moving parts
Lots of refactoring and fixing issues with chassis, propulsion systems and their hit points and other values
Tooltips for chassis select now include the extra HP gained from the wheels (so they show the actual full chassis HP now)
2015-12 - 0.5.2.14
CPU performance improvements due to physics and rendering optimisation work
Tweaks to the RiverRift map layout
Swedish translation update
Have a good Christmas everyone. Thanks everyone who reported bugs that are fixed here.
It’s been a bit longer than usual since the last Scraps update, so I just want to give some reassurance that I’m still working hard on things. There was a little time off over Christmas and New Years, but recently I’m working on something that I’ve alluded to a little in the past: A major new single-player game mode. My thoughts are that it should help a lot to flesh out the game content whether or not Internet multiplayer numbers pick up. I won’t go into details of how it’ll play just yet because I’m still testing things out myself, but I will in the near future. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.
The new mode is pretty major, and is going to take several months to finish completely. I’ll attempt to get some stuff out to try earlier, but I’ll also keep doing some smaller game updates in the meantime regardless. The next game update will be next weekend but it’ll be mostly bug fixes and minor improvements. Still, things are happening, and I’ll have more to show soon.
The latest Scraps release is again focused on fixing bugs and generally making the core game better. In the background I’ve also been working on the new Singleplayer mode, but that’s not ready to show off just yet.
0.5.3.0
More efficient shader/material usage for environmental stuff
Bigger shockwaves move faster (just looks better)
Some new destruction FX
Fixed some lightmapping glitches and improved some normal maps on terrain
Added some new stuff on the test map that I’ve been creating for the upcoming singleplayer game mode
Using the lowpassed music track in the lobby instead of the full one, it’s more chill
Added an additional vertical adapter block Bug Fixes:
Fixed multiple issues where games could get stuck at Dropship In Transit when starting games. Please let me know if this happens to you after this update
Fixed AI sometimes being lazy and just hanging out until being destroyed for the first time, causing it to henceforth spring into life
Fixed game start failing if scrap limit was changed lower, then deploy clicked right away, causing the limit to lower and make a vehicle selection invalid
Fixed some incorrect cube weights on the Test Map
Fixed shockwaves sometimes not showing up when they should
Two Dropship In Transit bugs - one that happened on going from menu to lobby, and the other while going from lobby to game - were horrible timing bugs that only occurred when the stars were aligned just right. The issues I found are definitely fixed now, but please let me know if you still get stuck at a loading screen in the future. Of course, report any bugs you find - I do try to fix things!
