Screw Drivers News

Gooood afternoon everybody, this one is a big one! ːsteamhappyː

After working day and night for the last two months, without any sleep or eating, we now have one of the biggest updates ever. And not only that, we also added airplanes to the game. Since the Steam Workshop is already flooded with airplanes, we finally added proper airplane physics to the game. With our new DLC “Pretty Fly” we added a huuuuuuge map to the game with airports and floating islands. You will have airplane wings, propellers and turbines to craft your own airplanes and challenge all the six monarchs of Pretty Fly:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3500960/Screw_Drivers__Pretty_Fly

If you rather wanna stay on the ground, we also released the huuuge “Rennpisten Insel” to the main game. It’s the biggest non-aircraft island ever, and it contains an immense amount of roads and racing challenges.

On top of all of that, there are a bunch of new building blocks, changes in downforce and physics, looots of bug fixed, some new bugs you can discover and some more changes.

We hope you enjoy all the new stuff, as always please let us know your thoughts and feedback on everything, be it in the Steam discussions, in the comments below or on discord. We’re happy if you’re happy, and we cannot wait to see you on the Rennpisten Insel or in the skies!

So here is a list with all the additions/changes/fixes that come with the update:



[h3]Rennpisten Insel (German for “Island of great and big race tracks suited for high speeds and excellently engineered race cars“)[/h3]

• The new island is finally here! With the Rennpisten Insel we added a huge new island with a million kilometers of roads. There is a lot to discover, all roads have dedicated and special names, the roads are wide and open with lots of space to reach high speeds.
  
• The island also comes with a bunch of new challenges ruled by our three new monarchs: The Turbo Knight, Nitro Princess and the Tarmac Tyrant. As you probably guessed because of the name of the Nitro Princess, we added some new building blocks as well: Correct, we added super chargers and a brand new V-engine!
  
• The super charger consists of two building blocks, the base and the extension. You can attach the supercharger base to the PW-Blaze engine, or to the new V-engine. Then you can attach the supercharger extension to the base, to increase the power gain even more.
  
• The V-engine weighs a lot due to the size and its two cylinders. It has a lower RPM range than the other combustion engines, but a lot of power in return.
  
• On Rennpisten Insel there is also a new gems system. Instead of having to beat bronze in every race to challenge a monarch, you now have to collect a certain amount of gems.

[h3]Gauge Blocks[/h3]
We added small attachment blocks for the driver seat. You can use those to customize the UI elements while driving. By placing gauge blocks onto the attachment block, you can determine which gauges you want to have displayed and where.

• Speed Gauge
  This is the normal speed gauge. It shows RPM, the current gear and speed.
  
• Power Curve Gauge
  This gauge is also not new, but you can place it now wherever you want. It displays the current power curve of your powertrain.
  
• Car Status Gauge
  This gauge was also already in the game. It shows your current weight, how much damage your car has taken and whether you’re missing some wheels or downforce.
  
• Gyro Gauge
  This gauge is new. It shows the current lateral and longitudinal forces on your car. It also shows the maximum forces that affected the car since you last repaired it. This could be used to evaluate your cars’ performance in terms of acceleration, brake speed and how fast you can go around corners.

[h3]New Building Blocks[/h3]

• V-Engine: A strong and heavy combustion engine with a low RPM range.
  
• Supercharger Base: A supercharger base to slot onto the PW-Blaze or the V-engine. It increases the power in low RPM ranges.
  
• Supercharger Extension: Looks damn cool, and also increases the power in low RPM ranges even more.
  
• Smoll Suspension: An extremely small and compact suspension. In comparison to all other suspension, it doesn’t have a hole for axles, so it can just be used as a wheel to steer and roll.
  
• Keybindings Panel: A small panel you can attach anywhere to your vehicle. Then you can configure it and describe all the keybindings of your vehicle. This will then be displayed while driving if you press F1 to open the controls hints. This helps with vehicles having many or complicated keybindings.
  
• Star Connector: Similar to the ??? connector, but with four pins sticking out.
  
• Gauges and Seat Extension: We added four gauges and a seat extension block where you can attach them to your seat.
  
• 3-states Piston: We added a piston having three states. This piston starts in a half extended state, and can be contracted with one key, and extended with another one.

[h3]Minor Changes[/h3]

• We improved challenge loading times. The big loading time came from loading the ghosts (Bronze, silver, gold and personal bests). This should happen much faster now.
  
• The small wooden poles of the checkpoints don’t damage or slow down the car anymore. They’re like butter now.
  
• Engine extension gadgets now contribute to the overall horse power of the vehicle.
  
• You can now assign controller axis like left/right stick or the triggers to stepper motor and piston keybindings.
  
• When hovering over the car stats with the mouse cursor, the car used to do an explosion animation. This was bugged in the last update, and should now be fixed again.
  
• The dynamic camera is now a little higher and further away from the car. This should make it easier to see the track and road ahead.
  
• Added a leaderboard button to the career tab, where you can inspect the leaderboards directly in the menu.
  
• A couple of months ago we updated the whole damage system of the game. We reverted the changes, where light weight parts took significantly more damage. Now battle bots should be possible again.
  
• You can now look around when sitting in first person in your seat. You can also use the scroll wheel to adjust your eye height.
  
• You can now unsubscribe from Workshop vehicles by right clicking them in your garage. So you don’t have to search for it in the workshop tab.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed the effect turbos and capacitors have on engines. Their added power curve is now scaled correctly, so they can be used properly with all types of engines now.
  
• Fixed that the “Loading” circle of challenges did not disappear, although the challenge was successfully loaded.
  
• Three cage parts weren’t configured to be unlocked in the ranklist career. This should be fixed now.
  
• I tried to fix the PS5 controller. You can now switch to PS5 controller input mapping in the controls settings. After that, the mapping will be changed and hopefully matches the PS5 controller properly.
  
• Fixed the leaderboards again.
  
• There was a problem with some cars, where their brakes would not work. That’s due to the ABS system I coded. I tried to adjust it, so it doesn’t prevent those cars from braking at all.
  
• Fixed a problem with the center of mass calculation. When repairing, the game sometimes recalculated the center of mass wrongly. This should now be fixed.
  
• When lowering the texture quality in graphic settings, the UI texture resolution got also reduced. Now most of the UI should be unaffected when reducing the overall texture resolution.

[h3]Physics Changes[/h3]

• It wasn’t possible before to build an engine, which goes directly to a planetary gear and then powered a hinge joint. This should now work properly.
  
• The game now correctly calculates the rotation direction of gears and axles for everything that powers hinge joints. The game still doesn’t care about the rotation direction in the powertrain for wheels. But for everything else, you can now determine the rotation direction with the gearing. (There is a bug tho with worm gears still)
  
• We completely changed the forces and speed of hinge joints. Before, no matter which engine used, hinge joints sped up to insane speed almost instantly. Now the game actually uses the power curve of the attached engine and powertrain to determine the power and top speed of hinge joints. This means, that you can now use multiple engines and/or gearing to power hinge joints with the speed and power you want or need. This also means that hinge joints in general are now much weaker and slower. If you want to spin something heavy, it will probably take some time to accelerate to speed. Likewise if you try to spin something that doesn’t weigh much, it will spin up much faster. Hopefully this makes the whole game much more realistic and makes it much more fun to play around with hinges, since their physics and forces now also use the same forces that are used to power the wheels of cars.
  
• We changed the downforce physics. The wings now use a much more realistic force calculation. In general, they now produce less downforce than before, which should result in more realistic behavior. Due to those changes, we will reset all leaderboards of the game, so you can freshly start to conquer them.

Drive and fly safe, friends!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios


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

👀 Something’s turning… and it’s not just screws!
Big moves. Bold news! Join Simon, Mark, Nova, and Lucas if he has time! Craaazy cool stuff is happening. Don't miss it, even if you have to wake up at 3 am or skip school! (Just kidding, please don't skip school!)

You’re gonna want to see this!

🔧 Screw Drivers Announcement Stream
📅 Thursday, April 10th
🕒 3 pm CEST
📍 www.twitch.tv/creactstudios

Make sure to be there when the gears start turning!

How long have you been playing Screw Drivers?
I installed Screw Drivers on June 25th of 2024 and I've spent over 800 hours in game by now. I added the supporter pack soon after installing the game and recently bought the first DLC.

How did you find out about the game, and what made you decide to play the game?
I saw Scrapman playing SD on YouTube and was attracted to the game right away. During my childhood, I played a lot with LEGOs, especially LEGO Technic. I've been looking for a game which allows me to build stuff in an equal way for quite some time now, but never was able to find what I was looking for. So when I learned about SD, obviously I had to try it right away!

What can you tell us about your vehicle?
Oh, my bus?! Yeah, it's a beauty, isn't it? 😄

I took inspiration from a Saurer 2SC, a beautiful old excursion bus from the '50s. It's not an exact copy, though.

It is quite hard to realize this specific design style in SD. You know, those old cars/buses have a lot of elegantly curved shapes and replicating them is quite a challenge. Somehow, I feel especially attracted to building stuff like this. (I did something similar with my GMC '40s military trucks and the DC-3 Airliner, for example). Getting close enough to the original shapes, so that the model becomes recognizable, gives me a great sense of achievement. 🙂

Concerning the '50s bus, the new DLC parts, specifically the curved cage parts, came in very handy. (Although they are very heavy, unfortunately). First of all, to make the round shapes of the rear roof part, but also to imitate some of the numerous chrome parts and trimmings busses from this era have.


I also added a nice interior, with a lot of seats, a steering wheel and even a stick shifter. I feel like a themed build just isn't complete without interior. Especially, if you can easily look inside, as in the case of my bus. The door can be opened and I really like the little stairs at the entrance.
As a final touch, I added some interior lighting. With the new lamp parts, I just couldn't resist making this little detail.


Technically, it was quite hard to make it work somewhat decently. It's a very heavy build at 5.1 tons. That causes some issues with the game physics, so the wheels tend to burn out all the time. Reducing the wind resistance and building a motor that has enough, but not too much power, brought the wheel spin down to an acceptable level. There's still a lot of wheel spin, but it settles down when reaching a certain speed. This little imperfection makes the bus less realistic, but actually very fun to drive!!! You can easily drift this 5-ton-monster through turns in a very controllable way!
So, what started out being a problem, ended up being a super fun feature and I love doing races with the bus! Even though it's far from being competitve 😄

How did you come up with the name of the vehicle?
The name I chose isn't very creative. It just describes the build: '50s-Style Bus (Loves to drift!!!) And that's exactly what you get.

How long did it take to create it, and do you know how many pieces there are?
The bus consists of exactly 1608 parts and I worked on it for three days. Most of it was done after the first day, though. During the following days, I just added some details, like the door and the interior lighting, and optimized some things, especially the performance. All in all it took me maybe around 10-12 hours.

Did you create it for a specific challenge, or why did you decide to create it?
I didn't do a big project for quite a while, so it was about time to build something epic again. I had the idea of making a bus while building the DC3's interior. Making a bus with complete interior, too, just seemed obvious to me.

If you could choose and new feature to add to the game, what would it be?
Well, first of all there's several bugs I'd love to see being fixed and some other things which should be optimized. The functionality the game currently offers is great. In my opinion, making it all work smoothly would benefit the game more, than introducing new features and most likely new bugs in the process.

Still, since I'm very much into building and flying planes, I'd very much appreciate it, if dedicated plane parts would be introduced to the game. I designed a set of such parts for this specific purpose in Blender and provided the developers with them already. So I have high hopes, that this might become a part of the game at some point.



Do you have any tips for a new player or someone that wants to get better at building vehicles?
My advice would be to just keep building! It's like with everything in life: The more practice you get, the better the outcome will be!

For people who wanna do themed builds, I suggest trying to get the shapes right first, and worry about the technical aspects, like engines and transmissions, later!

Also, whatever you wanna build, check the workshop for something similar, download the build and analyze it in the building editor. You can learn about many building techniques this way.
And, last but not least, join the Discord! It's definitely the best resource for any kind of information or help you might need! And the community is very friendly and welcoming!

Do you have any favorite vehicle from the Workshop that you use or take inspiration from?
There's a lot of interesting things on the workshop. Flame's Ornithopters for example are amazing. Afaik, he was the first to pull it off and I highly respect his innovative talent!
The Thrust SSC made by Vidden (on the workshop his name is Skalhamn) is just crazy. Snarf's Tiger tank is stunning. Whitedwarf's propeller cars are on another level. I love Funky Friz's bulldozer. There's so many...

I wouldn't exactly say that I'm inspired by these builds, though. I take my inspiration mainly from real life models.

I'd like to say thank you to the devs for making this wonderfull, creative game. It's great how close they are to the community and how they always try to listen to what the community wants and needs! Keep up the great work!!!

Thank you for having me and giving me the chance to show off my bus!

xoxo CatBurger23

Steam Workshop: '50s Style Bus

Developer Comments
I soo much love themed builds like this, and especially big ones like this bus. When I started creating Screw Drivers, I always imagined it to be possible to build really big vehicles, where the engine isn't even visible since it's hidden somewhere inside the car, and that the vehicle has mechanics to open/close doors etc. Hence I so much appreciate this bus from CatBurger and I love that it even drives this smoothely. Can't wait for a bus racing event! 😄 - Simon

A Bus??? That's insane! I love all the details like the bus drivers seat with the steering wheel, the ground which instantly gives me a back to school feeling and the stairs to get into the bus.
With the sunshine of the images I wish I could be on Isola Tornanti and just drive around in the bus to all the sightseeing points of the island.
And the bus driver is an grumpy king whos condemned to drive all the Prince and Princess around.
Love it! - Mark

Greetings, Drivers!

Even though it's almost February: We wish you all a happy, healthy and successful year 2025!

And we are starting the new year with update v0.4.1.1.2, or as we call it: The Performance+ Update! We took the whoooooole projekt and lifted it onto the new Unity version to clean up the project and boost the Performance of the game. So this update is mostly about optimizing the game so you can either now play the game without crashing and crying or play it 3 times on the same device. Depending on your setup!

So here is a list with all the stuff that changed besides the better FPS with this new Performance plus update:

BETTER PERFORMANCE

• We improved and optimized the game overall, so memory usage, cpu and graphics usage should all improve with this
  
• update.
  
• If the game crashed when launching it before, try it! The chances are high that you are able to run the game now.
  
• We massively improved the memory usage of the game. Overall it should now use a lot less of your RAM.
  
• We also improved the FPS of the game, which should also now run much more smoothly both when you’re driving and in the building editor.
  
• The loading times of all menus and scenes should have also improved, especially if you have a lot of vehicles in your garage and you enter the career or creative mode.

MAJOR CHANGES

• 3 states Stepper Motor: We updated the Stepper Motor so you can now switch between 3 states instead of just two. This means, you can configure a second keybinding and a second target angle. On top of that, you can also configure the resting angle, allowing for even more customization
  
• Bug & King Engine: We added two new engines to the game with a living powersource. There is the Bug Engine and the King Engine.
  
• New Building UI: We improved the Building UI by shrinking the size of the UI elements and rearranged them to the bottom of the screen so there is more space to see your vehicle
  
• We reduced the size of the king character, when he’s sitting in the seat of your vehicle. We made bro smaller.

MINOR CHANGES

• There are two new optional races on the Pulau Mahkota where you can win the two new engines we added to the game. The “Panorama Sling” and the “Microscope Match”. Good luck with driving gold there!
  
• We added more Screw Driver advertisement screens into the game which improve the race feeling to the game and islands.
  
• Before, you could only play the challenges you already unlocked in career mode. Now when you enter creative mode, you can play all challenges, regardless of how far you’ve progressed in career.
  
• The Crater Race on the Isola Tornanti was reworked so it is finally fun to play!

NEW LOOK

• Due to the work on the new Racetrack map and the slightly changes by the new Unity version we improved the light
  
• settings and some of the textures, objects and grass in the game so now you can enjoy the beautiful islands even more!

BUG FIXES

• There was a bug with the stunt challenges of the “Stunt Showdown” DLC. When using flying vehicles, you were sometimes able to lift off, then land again, and this would cause the points counter to infinitely increase. This should be fixed now.
  
• As always, we tried to fix the bug, that the game crashes when quitting. Perhaps it is fixed now…
  
• When leaving the building editor while the mirror mode was still active, it caused cars to be corrupted when re-entering the building editor the next time. This should now be fixed.

Drive safe, friends!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios


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

Happy Saturday everyone,

we've prepared a small patch for the bugs we introduced with the latest v0.3.15.9 update.

So here is a small and sweet patch for v0.3.15.10:

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Removed the camber from offroad suspensions again. We will postpone the whole balancing of suspensions until we have time to look at all suspensions at the same time.
  
• There was a bug, where it was possible to access some DLC building parts when being in creative mode.
  
• Not ignoring the steering angle limit is now the default setting. Before it was the other way around.
  
• Added a new area on the supersonic map where you can try to drive upside down on the ceiling.
  
• Tried to fix the bug, where the game crashes when quitting (Task failed successfully).
  

Have a great weekend,
Simon & Marc