We are very excited to share that our first content update to Robocraft 2 launches tomorrow!
Along with the titular Hoverblades, several features are coming to this update. But let’s start with the brand new movement part, Hoverblades!
The first of several movement parts coming to Robocraft 2! the Hoverblades allows you to create vehicles that ascend, descend and strafe! This allows you to be far more agile than many wheeled vehicles.
This part works very similar to the original Robocraft so you’ll need to balance the weight accordingly to create a vehicle that works well!
Read more about this part here
There will be plenty more parts coming in the future and we’re already working on Tank Tracks! Let us know which ones you’re excited about after you’ve had an opportunity to play with the Hoverblades
ARTSTYLE IMPROVEMENTS
We’ve had some comments regarding Robocraft 2’s art style and have been working on improving its overall quality. Our first step is to adjust the tone of the environment to match the original Robocraft visuals. The environment will now look like this:
This is just the first step to improving the graphical quality of the game. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be sharing more information and examples of how we plan to improve Robocraft 2’s visual style.
UNDO & REDO
Undo has been one of the most requested features in Robocraft 2. If you’ve ever felt the pain of deleting your pilot seat accidentally, losing all of your complex wiring and logic systems with an ill-fated accidental right-click, you will be pleased to know that undo is here to save the day.
Read all about Undo & Redo from this dev blog
SCOREBOARDS
This update introduces the Scoreboard to the Tab key! You’ll be able to see how many kills you’ve made, how much damage you’ve done to other vehicles and also your ping to the server.
Read more about Scoreboards here
MASS STATS
We’ve added mass stats to several areas of the game which will allow you to see more detailed information on your robocraft, whether you are in build mode, browsing through your robocraft list or looking through the CRF to check out other players’ robocraft.
There will be more building editor features in the future which will help to assist you whilst building your robocraft so stay tuned for more information at a later date.
PARTIAL CONTROLLER SUPPORT
We’ve been interested in supporting controllers since we began working on Robocraft 2. This is why we’ve used certain naming conventions for the pilot seat when wiring. In the future, we plan to look at releasing the game on more platforms so controller support has been very important to us.
[previewyoutube=DTCTN7k6xXo;full][/previewyoutube]
We still have quite a lot of work to do which is why we’re starting with partial support for now. You’ll be able to use the controller in simulation and combat but will need to use a keyboard and mouse to navigate menus.
Read more about Controller support in this dev blog
NEW ANNOUNCER VOICE
We’ve re-recorded all announcer voice lines so that their delivery is similar to Robocraft 1. Check out a few examples below:
[previewyoutube=lzGZXSimroM;full][/previewyoutube]
CHANGES TO ONBOARDING/PROGRESSION
The Tech Ladder will be going through an important change in this update. Instead of unlocking build modes, tools and blocks, you’ll have access to all of these as soon as you start the game. This includes the new Hoverblades.
The Tech Ladder has been repurposed as a collection of tutorial videos aimed at introducing the various features and parts. This update also includes the Hoverblade video.
We understand that some new players may be slightly overwhelmed by the amount of features when first looking at the inventory but we wanted to do this to address some of the concerns players had over certain functionalities like copy/paste requiring an unlock and some other concerns in reviews that the game was pay to win even though the Tech ladder only used earned in-game currency from battles.
In the future, we want to introduce a progression system similar to the Robocraft 1 Tech ladder. However, this was going to take a considerable amount of time to design and would require work from our server programmer who is currently working on the Friends and Party system.
Below are several balance changes to the game and bug fixes that we have addressed since the last update:
Balance Changes
Laser
- Penetration energy reduced from 2,000 to 1,500
Plasma
- Penetration energy increased from 1,000 to 2,000
Rail
- Projectile velocity increased from 450 to 600
Aiming Servos
- Bond Strength Override increased from 4 to 24
Joints
- Bond Strength Override set to 8
Other Changes
- Art improvements
- Lighting, colours, materials etc. to make the maps feel more vibrant
- Removed Edgewear
- Zoom no longer handled serverside
- Fire/Zoom decoupled from place/delete blocks so they can be rebound separately
- More actions can now be assigned to mouse buttons
- Renamed some seat ports to be more generic i.e. LMB is now Fire
- Removed Zoom port, zoom is now always RMB unless rebound
- Shows tower health if you are nearby
Bug Fixes
- Fix for some audio events not being assigned to the correct sliders
- ‘!’ no longer appears on CRF bots that have materials or parts you do not own
We’re talking with many of our community quite frequently over on our Discord so please do check it out if you want to follow the development closely. Once you’ve spent some time with this update with its new features and content, please consider leaving a review on Steam! We hope that you enjoy this first content update and are looking forward to future content and improvements over the coming months.
Build, Drive, Fight!
