Screw Drivers News

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!


[h3]BUILDING EDITOR[/h3]

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.


[h3]NEW BUILDING BLOCKS[/h3]

• 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.

[h3]MAJOR CHANGES[/h3]


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.


[h3]MINOR CHANGES[/h3]

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.


[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
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/

Happy Friday everyone!

Today, we reached our first milestone of Early Access: It’s the multiplayer modes update!

We added two game modes to multiplayer, the automatic races and speed building. Unfortunately, the keep the flag mode isn’t ready yet, because we started working on improving the building editor last week as well, since we think that is something important we want to add to the game earlier than planned. So you can expect some building editor improvements in the coming weeks.

Let us know what you think about the update, as always please share your thoughts and feedback with us. Of course we have even more plans for multiplayer, and there is so much more to come in the future, as well as improvements to hosting your own servers, we also haven’t forgotten about that ;D

[h3]Cheers guys, and here are the patchnotes of v0.3.11.1:[/h3]

Multiplayer

• We created two game modes for multiplayer: Automatic races, and Speed Building
  
• In Automatic races, as the name suggests, the server will automatically start random races. Players can then participate in the races and gain points for beating the other players. After five rounds, a winner is crowned and a new cycle of five random races starts
  
• In Speed Building, the server selects a random race, and a random set of rules. Then all players have 20 minutes time to build a car that satisfies these rules to participate in the race
  
• Apart from the two new game modes, we also added the possibility to define your own set of rules. As the server host, you can define and configure custom rules for the vehicle weight, power, acceleration and so on. This way, you can create your very own rules for your server

Major Changes

• We added optional challenges to the game. These are challenges which are invisible, until you beat the secret queen. Then the optional challenges will appear and can be driven to climb the leaderboards, or to be driven in multiplayer
  
• We added three fighting arenas to the Supersonic map. These can be used to play some fighting PVP in multiplayer

Minor Changes

• If you restart a challenge, the loading time should be greatly reduced, because the game now caches the ghost race data of the last driven challenge
  
• You can now color the carbon wings properly as well
  
• You can now switch back to the old camera movement in the building editor in the general settings (Instead of only being accessible through the F9 key)
  
• Engines now actually have colliders. Gears still have no colliders tho, so you don’t have to worry about them touching the ground
  
• Tech Tree can be toggled with the right stick on controller
  
• Reduced the hit box of the small dirt wheel, since it was bigger than the hit box of the wider dirt wheel. This is the hit box when building, so it should be possible to build closer to the small dirt wheel now.
  
• Added new building part: Beam x4
  
• Added two new experimental camera modes: Orbit, and free orbit
  
• Added an FPS limit of 100 to the graphics settings menu
  
• Reduced the weight of the corner gear from 6kg to 4kg
  
• We fixed the calculation of the center of mass for a lot of parts. In big combustion engines for example, the center of mass was offset to the side. This should now be fixed for most parts
  
• We further improved the performance of the game especially in multiplayer. Mainly we decreased the physics tick-rate, which has been pretty high so far.. With the new physics tick-rate, the physics behavior should not have changed by much, but at the same time the game should run more smoothly, especially with many cars in multiplayer.

Bug Fixes

• We re-simulated all destructible objects in the game. During our heavy optimization a month ago, we made some of the destructibles behave weirdly. Now most of them should behave correctly again when driven into
  
• Fixed a potential issue, where it wasn’t possible to navigate the garage menu with controller.
  
• Renaming a car category in the garage was assigned to the ‘A’ button on controller. This has been fixed, and it is now the left stick
  
• Fixed a rare bug, which caused the garage to crash and not show any cars anymore.
  
• When making wheels steerable, they sometimes rotated upside-down instead of left-right. This should now be fixed
  
• Fixed wrongly configured weight for unlocking the deco lasercut part in the tech tree career
  
• We fixed the mini map on the Supersonic map. The map there was only a placeholder and not an actual mini map. Now it should actually represent the map properly.

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


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

Greetings friends!

And welcome to another Screw Drivers update. We are currently working on multiple game modes for the multiplayer, and on a new map and lots of other things. This update contains a couple of fixes, and a new experimental multiplayer game mode.

[h3]Full changelog of v0.3.10.12:[/h3]

Multiplayer

• It is now no longer possible for anybody to stop a multiplayer challenge, if it is running. Multiplayer challenges now end automatically, if all players reached the goal, or if 50% of the participating players reach the goal, and the timer of one minute finishes
  
• We changed the UI of joining a challenge in multiplayer, so it does not overlap with the playerslist anymore
  
• We added a new game mode to the multiplayer, called “Two blue engines”. It is a special game mode, which automatically starts random challenges, and allows only cars to join the challenge, which only have two TurboVolt-TX 200, and weigh at least 1000kg
  
• Added more spawn points to each challenge, so they support up to 16 players instead of just 8

Minor Changes

• In the ‘X’ menu in the building editor, you can now see the amount of building blocks of your vehicle, as well as whether it can be spawned on a multiplayer server, due to the current file size limit of the .ccc files
  
• If you have unlocked all parts which are used in some of your creative mode cars, they will now show up in your career mode. You can then buy all missing building blocks of the car, to add it to your career, if you want
  
• The compass should now also point to part color books

Bug Fixes

• The helicopter spawn point on the Supersonic map was not clickable. This should now be fixed
  
• There was a bug, where your score or time of a race was not uploaded to any leaderboards, if it was no personal best time. This of course caused problems with the class specific leaderboards. Now the leaderboards get updated correctly
  
• The special colors of the Supporter Pack DLC are not needed anymore to reach 100% progress in the singleplayer careers. That was unintentional, and should be fixed now ;D
  
• The text below the minimap showed the left stick for toggling the minimap. This is now fixed, and the text correctly shows that the right stick is used to toggle the minimap
  
• It is no longer possible to change the island, while a challenge is running
  
• The road on Pulau Mahkota was floating in some places. This should now be fixed
  
• Fixed weird shadows on the Connector double
  
• Fixed a bug, where sometimes the creative mode would not unlock, even tho the player has beaten the Prince of Gears in one of both careers
  
• Fixed, that when starting a server from the main menu with no password, the password was accidentally set to “-port”
  
• The books containing new part colors did not properly disappear after you collected them. When restarting the game, they became visible again, although you already have found that color. This should now be fixed
  
• The compass is now ignored in the progression percentage of the tech tree career, since it cannot be unlocked there (At the moment 😉)

Drive safe, friends!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios


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

Happy Friday everybody!

We have a big update ready right in time for the weekend. We added a prototype area (also called grid map) where you can test and drive infinitely:





We also added five new building blocks. There are no new engines or wheels or similar yet, but inspired by your ideas, we added a new connector and four new decorative beam parts. And on top of that, there is a new speedometer which you can switch back and forth, where ScrapMan gave us the idea for.

[h3]Full changelog of v0.3.10.1:[/h3]

New map

• We added a new testing area map. It is called Supersonic. There are some areas and ramps to test your vehicle. But mainly, the map consists of a very big and wide plane, where you can infinitely test the top speed of your vehicles. As soon as you reach the end of the map, the game will teleport you to the other end of the map, without resetting your velocity 🙂
  
• There are also two small race tracks in Supersonic. One is a three laps race in the oval, and the other is a wild course through the testing area

New building blocks

• We added five new building blocks to the game. Most of the heavily inspired by our community
  
• Deco Winglet 1x2x3: A small, rounded decorative winglet. Has no aerodynamic properties
  
• Lasercut 3x5 Triangle: A triangular lasercut part
  
• Connector double: Like the connector, but with a pin on each side
  
• Part Beam Edge 3x5: A beam shaped like an ‘L’
  
• Part Beam H: A beam shaped like a ‘H’

New car colors

• To welcome the summer we included 4 new summer colors for your car which you can find all across the island

Torque curve

• You can now see the torque curve of the previous calculation when pressing ‘X’ in the building editor. It always shows you the previous curve, and renders the current power curve on top. This way, you can compare the differences you make to your powertrain
  
• You can now also inspect and enable the power curve during driving. Just press ‘N’ to switch the speed gauge

Minor Changes

• We adjusted the prices of the weight blocks. The small weight price changed from 205 to 15, the medium weight from 480 to 28 and the big weight from 1400 to 45
  
• We added a super sonic bang sound that happens, if you exceed the speed of sound
  
• We removed two collision boxes from the gear shift blocks. Now you are able to put pins through the holes properly, which should make it even easier to build gear shifting mechanisms
  
• You can now assign the WASD keys to a stepper motor again 😉

Bug Fixes

• In multiplayer you can send other players your cars by right clicking them. This was bugged and didn’t work. Now it should work properly again
  
• There has been a bug, where the back button in the settings menu stopped working, and one had to restart the game in order to get it working again. This should now also work again
  
• I tried to fix the problem of server hosts again. Maybe now the first person which joins a server will stay host of that server, no matter if that person disconnects
  
• There was a stone on the map which had no collider. That stone should be able to stop you now
  
• It was possible to attach a stepper motor to the powertrain of a vehicle. Since the stepper motor had an insanely high top speed, it could be used to create waaay too powerful cars. This is no longer possible

We hope you enjoy the new update, keep the feedback coming and have a great weekend!

Drive safe, friends!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2999730/Screw_Drivers__Supporter_Pack/

Hey there, drivers and tinkeres!

Two weeks ago we released Screw Drivers into Early Access. And ey, we couldn't be happier about how everything has developed in the past days. You can take our word for it!

In the meantime, more than 100,000 players were on the road in Screw Drivers. 100,000! This is MASSIVE, and simply incredible! And on top of that, almost 4,000 vehicles have been uploaded to the Steam Workshop. And the figures continue to rise.

We have received tons and tons of super important and useful feedback from all of you. And please don't stop sharing your ideas and opinions about Screw Drivers with us, because we want to make it the best possible experience for you and for us as well!

Enjoy your stay in Screw Drivers!
Marc and Simon / Creactstudios



P.S. In case you want to support our work on the game, we would be super happy if you would consider to buy our Screw Drivers supporter pack. All items included are cosmetics and do not give any advantage, they are just a small thank you for supporting us:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2999730/Screw_Drivers__Supporter_Pack/