Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Bugbear Entertainment released a new major build and subsequent update to Wreckfest over the last couple of days... read on to find out all the details..
After a steady start to life on the Steam Early Access programme many moons ago, Bugbear Entertainment have really ramped up the rate of development for Wreckfest in the past few months, seemingly tirelessly working at the game as they move ever closer to a full version one release and eventual porting over to console machines.
Hot off the back of a hugely impressive December build release the developers have once again hit the ball right out of the park with this new update, giving yet more life to a destruction derby style racing game that is very quickly racking up the results and forming into a decidedly impressive change of pace for those wanting time away from the serious business of road racing.
New content, plenty of fixes and more than a few improvements to the core gameplay experience, this January update might have come a couple of days later than planned, but it seems like it was more than worth the wait....
January Update Highlights (2nd Feb):
EXPANDED CAREER
Three completely new championships with more series, more races and more crashes! That, and a host of important usability enhancements based on the feedback we’ve received, such as the ability to see the series restrictions, expanded vehicle classification, improved scoring and more. Scoring, unlocks and experience accumulation are still being worked on, so any feedback you care to share with us in regards to these elements would be super.
FOUR NEW CARS
This time nomen est omen for real since we’re pleased to introduce you true tools of destruction: Bulldog, Hotshot, Speedemon and Warwagon. This newest set has something for everyone – a heavy-hitting demolition derby inspired American station wagon, another American with classic sleek lines straight from the 60s, a more exotic 80s sports car, and finally, a bad-to-the-bone Scandinavian folk-racing style 60s rod. Check them all out!
MORE CUSTOMIZATION PARTS
Every car now has a number of Front Bumper, Rear Bumper, Window Bar, Side Protector and Roll Cage customization parts that you can use to deck out your ride in a proper demolition racing style, and not only that: customization parts now have a weight and protection properties, so for an instance, a heavy demolition derby style front bumper will make the car withstand more damage to the business end but also make it slower due to the added weight. Rock!
NEW ENGINE UPGRADES
This too is something that we’ve gotten a plenty of requests for: all cars now also have a number of class-based engine upgrades that can be used to increase or decrease the class of the vehicle, so from now there’s nothing stopping you from taking that awesome Class C front-wheel-drive Firefly to Class A events! (Don’t forget to put on some serious metal as well, though, otherwise you won’t last long.)
NEW ROUTES AND IMPROVED TRACK ART
Tarmac 3 now has a reverse layout, and both Sandpit 1 and Tarmac 3 have new shorter routes complete with reverse layouts. In addition to that we’ve added a new wicked suicide racing style Speedway 2 route with tight loops at both ends and a high-speed oval section that’s going to guarantee spectacular head-on crashes! We’ve also replaced many of the old legacy assets around the tracks with shiny new ones (yes, including that pesky fire truck), yielding a welcomed visual improvement.
NEW AND IMPROVED EFFECTS
We’ve enhanced old effects and added a number of completely new ones related to mechanical damage, and for example driving without a wheel will now cause sparks to fly off from the hub. There are also a bunch of brand new audio effects to add to immersion.
REALISTIC DAMAGE SETTING
There’s now a setting in the custom race event options to choose between Normal and Realistic Damage, Normal being the same as in the previous build while Realistic offers more visceral gameplay with intensified visual damage and increased mechanical damage gameplay effects.
EXPANDED TUNING
The tuning feature has been expanded based on your feedback, and instead of just three, most parts now have five setups to choose from, allowing for more in-depth tuning of your ride for specific tracks.
As you can see, this update again introduces quite a few new features with some of them still being heavily worked on, the new realistic damage setting being the most obvious one. Even so, we thought it would be great to get feedback on them already so please give them a try and share us your thoughts.
That’s it for the main stuff – in addition, this update contains a number of other improvements and bug fixes, like for example it’s no longer possible to pick up more speed by wall riding. We also isolated at least one case which caused server instability and addressed that, but we’ll of course keep on monitoring the situation. In case you’re interested in tidbits the full changelog can be found below.
CONTENT
- Added four new vehicles: Bulldog, Hotshot, Speedemon, Warwagon.
- Added Front Bumper, Rear Bumper, Window Bar, Side Protector and Roll Cage customization parts 1–4 for all vehicles.
- Added a new Sandpit 1 short route + reverse layout for it.
- Added a Tarmac 3 reverse layout, a new Tarmac 3 short route + reverse layout for it.
- Added a new Speedway 2 suicide style route, Outer Oval Loop.
- Added three new championships.
- Series restrictions are now shown in the series selection screen.
- Vehicles are now classified also by their body style and size.
- Added length and surface info for tracks, displayed in various locations throughout the user interface.
- Bonus objectives are now tracked correctly during multi-heat events (the player has all heats to meet the targets).
- Player finishing position is now displayed correctly in the results screen of multi-heat events even if player gets eliminated before the final heat.
- Player now receives more experience and credits from multi-heat events.
- Added congratulatory screens for championship and series completion.
- Main Menu > Misc now has a Reset Career button that can be used to reset the career progress in case you’re experiencing issues or just want to start afresh. Please note that resetting the career will remove all your vehicles, credits and experience so absolutely NO FIDDLING AROUND WITH THE BUTTON.
- Replaced the parked cars littered around tracks with final ones.
- On many tracks, replaced grey proxy building with final ones.
- Replaced some legacy assets such as billboards with new ones.
- Generally improved Tarmac 3 environment art.
- Overhauled Speedway 2 pit area.
- Added new effects for mechanical damage such as sparks.
- Generally improved particle effects.
- Improved skid marks.
- Customization parts now have a weight and protection properties.
- Added a setting to choose between Normal and Realistic Damage in the custom event options, single player only for now.
- Vehicles now have a set of class-based engine upgrades that can be used to increase or decrease the class of the vehicle.
- Expanded Tuning, instead of three possible choices most parts now have five settings to choose from, extending the tuning range.
- Improved gamepad vibration effect to give more detail, for example sliding will now cause slight vibration of the controller.
- It’s no longer possible to maintain or even pick up speed by wall riding (i.e. grinding against the wall with the car).
- Improved collision detection to reduce the tendency of the cars clipping with each other in heavy collisions.
- AI is now easier when using Novice AI difficulty.
- Player (and AI) can now take loops like found in the Crash Canyon the either way.
- Improved checkpoints on a number of tracks to prevent cheating.
- In-game, pulling a PIT maneuver (i.e. spinning the car by pushing it from the rear) is now a score event.
- Added a more refined (work-in-progress) Pause Menu with race standings.
- Added a new (work-in-progress) Loading Screen with info about the track.
- Improved Reset Position detection when resetting car.
- There is now a lawn mower only AI Set available in Custom Race event options.
- Tuning menu is no longer shown for the lawn mower.
- MP: Fixed a case in which player quitting caused a crash.
- MP: Increased client timeout from 30 to 45 secs to prevent slow clients from dropping out on track change.
- MP: Deathmatch no longer defaults to 0 min duration after changing track in the multiplayer lobby.
- MP: Random lawn mower guys no longer appear in the lobby when adding a bot.
- Garage no longer disappears when returning to the garage after Team Deathmatch.
- Automatic backup camera is now disabled by default (can be re-enabled in the Settings menu).
- Fixed incorrect tab titles in lobby.
- Added effect audio for various mechanical damage states.
Any vehicle mods need to be updated with new deform and tire damage bag files for the new realistic damage setting. The files that you need are:
deform/settings_normal.vsbd
deform/settings_real.vsbd
deform/tire_damage_normal.vstd
deform/tire_damage_real.vstd
To get you going right away you can simply copy the old file to the new file names.
January Update Hotfix (Feb 3rd):
A critical hotfix for January Update is now out, addressing some of the misfires with the update:
- MP: Unresponsive zombie clients now get disconnected properly.
- Having the example vehicle mod enabled will no longer cause the game to crash at launch.
- Installing the “None” front bumper on Nexus will no longer cause the game to crash.
- Fixed a number of visual glitches related to customization parts.
- Decreased strength of most front and rear bumbers.
- Increased mechanical damage on normal damage setting.
- Added track info for Tarmac 3 Short Route Reverse.
- Career: Demolition Derby series are now shorter and single heat only.
- bgeometry.exe and bimage.exe are now included in the tools folder.
- MP: Spectating will occassionally crash the game, please avoid until a fix is out.
Wreckfest is available for PC with console versions due to release during 2018.
Check out the Wreckfest Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding the sim. For added excitement we have an already immensely popular and exciting Racing Club, details of which can be found here.
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