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Content Update: Vehicle Purchasing

Hey everyone,

It's time for the first content update on our road to Chapter Two! It's a long requested feature, and one we've been pretty excited about: The ability to purchase vehicles and garages.

Let's jump through all the various additions and features of the update, and talk about what's coming next.

Three New Vehicles

Say hello to the Jalo Perogi, the Chancellor Statesman and the Mudbaby 200.



The Jalo Perogi is a cheap, drifty little hatchback that comes in at a fairly affordable price tag. If you want to take advantage of Rockhavens various alleyways or hidden corners, the Jalo is one of the more navigable cars you can get your hands on.



The Chancellor Statesman on the other hand, is a tried and true classic. A hefty sedan, often used as Taxi Cabs or Police cruisers - everyone in Rockhaven knows what the Statesman is about. It's price tag is double the Perogis and then some, but diehards will say it's worth it.



The Mudbaby 200 however is a vehicle that was originally designed for children to play in, but given that this is Rockhaven, of course dropkick adults decide to test their luck in zipping them around. Try not to injure yourself when you take it out for a spin.

As hinted in the last blog, more vehicles are on their way, including some exciting two wheeled machines..

Three Purchasable Garages



If you're going to buy Vehicles, you'll need a place to put them: Enter Garages! Buying garages will increase your overall fleet capacity, and be a physical location you can visit to show off your owned vehicles, or pick them up for a spin. You'll get your first Garage in Green Island through a mission, but you'll have to find and purchase the remaining two (Check near the shores!). We'll add more garages for purchase in future updates. Visiting garages is a great way to grab one of your vehicles, but it's not the only way...

The new "Valet" system



Say you're out on the town, nowhere near your cars but you need a ride. It's simple! Using the Valet application on your phone, you can summon one of your available cars to your location. A very sorry driver will bring it right to you. Don't forget to tip! In a future update, tipping will progress you along an upgrade path inside the Valet application, but for now, it's just a nice thing to do. If your cars are destroyed, you can also pay the insurance fee to replace them right from the application. That leads us into the next topic



Damage overhaul and repairing



Cars now have a visible HP hud and damage states reflecting the condition of the car you're in. No more sudden explosions, and no more guess work. We still want to do visual damage to windows, doors and other parts on the car in a later update, but we figured we should at least address the basics. Your car will now exhibit white smoke, black smoke, and fire when it's about to blow up, and the ensuing explosion can cause chain reactions, so be sure to get out of the blast radius. Destroyed cars will also drop a smattering of broken tires, and whatever was in their inventory, so it's a good way to uh, you know - steal more stuff.

Additionally, if you're driving one of your vehicles, or have stolen one you're enjoying and want to repair them, head on over to Wheelies. There's a new second button there, and pay attention! One button crushes, while the other repairs the car inside for a fee. If you're playing in co-op, why not "repair" one of your friends cars. Surely that will end well.

New Car Material System



You'll notice some new paints and wraps on the vehicles of Rockhaven driving about. We've overhauled our car paint system on the back end which allows us to make some pretty exciting combinations. In this update, you'll get to pick some preset paint jobs at Car Dealerships, or notice some new colors on AI vehicles driving about, and that's where it is for now - however, as we tackle customisation, you'll be able to unlock and apply a whole range of colors and designs (among more substantial customizations to vehicles). For now, we hope this change gets you excited and envisioning what kind of crazy car you'll build in the future.

Two Dealerships



Buying cars debuts with two dealerships being opened in Rockhaven. By the south beach boardwalk is "4 Real Automobile", a rather run down establishment that has both the ride on lawnmower and Maximo for sale. If neither of those are doing it for you, Big O's Car Yard in North Beach has both the Jalo Perogi and Chancellor Statesman available. Peruse the disgusting available colors at launch knowing full well in time you'll be able to repaint them. Make sure you have your wallet upgraded from Dr Powicks upgrade station before buying a car though - they're not cheap!



A new mission "New Whip"



To introduce the concepts of wheeling and dealing automobiles, Beggar King will offer you a mission entitled "New Whip". Go meet Big O and stunt drive a Mudbaby 200 through the streets. If you do a good enough job, he'll go ahead and throw you the keys. We're pretty happy with some of the systems we've developed in this mission, and have some more exciting missions to leverage the work done here further in an upcoming update.


Bug Fixes and System Improvements

We've also crushed a fair amount of bugs, attempted some more performance improvements and made some changes to underlying systems that should help traffic and AI navigate better.

Additionally, we've added some more logic and physics to items and set dressing through the city to better improve the driving experience throughout. If you do get stuck, there's now an option on the interaction wheel on all vehicles to flip them right side up.



Oh, and people BLINK now!



HUGE UPDATE.

Last but not least, Cloud Saves are online


We've finally gone ahead and enabled Cloud Saves. If you're a user who's played on multiple PC's, we recommend booting the game on the PC with your preferred saves first, and thereafter letting Steam handle the sync operation. We don't expect any problems to arise, but again, if they do, feel free to hit us up on Discord (or leave a comment here) and we'll fix 'em up.


What's Next?

Up next on our schedule is working on an improved first time user experience that'll better explain the core concepts of the game, and give the world some much needed flavor and substance to Rockhaven. A lot of the work we're doing on that will fallback into usual moment to moment gameplay, so while it primarily targets new players, veterans will have some appreciable content fall out of that.

We're also looking to launch two wheeled vehicles in the next content update, including motorbikes, electric scooters, and more. This is of course on top of new missions, new places to go in the city, and expanding the variety of cars, garages, houses and items to buy.

Once we've accomplished those larger two milestones, we'll start to roll out the customisation update, which'll allow you to modify vehicles into your fleet in all kinds of crazy and dumb ways, including opting out of wearing seatbelts - so if you're a fan of becoming a projectile, look forward to that.

Enjoy the update, and we'll talk again soon!

An update on updates: A sneak peek on what's next for It's Only Money

Hey everyone,

We hope you enjoyed the start of Chapter One, and thank you to all those who've expressed their excitement, helped us nail down on bugs and continued to suggest where they want the future of It's Only Money to go.

We thought now would be a good time to address updates and how we want to handle them post launch of Chapter One. Chapter One was a big update for our team of 5, which we developed simultaneously with over 30 weekly updates along the way throughout Chapter Zero. As you can imagine, not only was it a fairly full-on development schedule making new content, but equally time consuming packaging and testing those builds and quite often tearing it down and starting over when we found a bug (or 50).



While we're proud of our ability to rapidly iterate with lighter pieces of content while working on a more substantial larger chapter update simultaneously, however it also meant we had to scope specifically to hit a weekly target. That meant some of our more exciting ideas falling by the way side. A lot of the suggestions we get here on Steam, or in the Discord community align with where we want to take the game, however, some if not most of those suggestions would take more than a week, so naturally finding time to manifest those ideas can be tricky.

From today, we're going to address what we're working on ahead of time, with a larger picture of what the game should encapsulate by the time we arrive at Chapter 2 and beyond. We're going to release updates with new mechanics, features and content as we finish them, as opposed to holding them off for a larger update down the road. This'll lighten the burden on us as a team having to dedicate days to QA'ing a weekly build, and get content in the game faster. This is not to say we won't move immediately on crippling bugs, or throw in a lighter update here or there if we want add more Weiner badges, missions or clothing pieces. Our ability to rapidly iterate is a strength of the game and studio we don't want to leave behind.



Looking forward, our road to Chapter 2 is going to have a focus on improving the vehicular experience. A long standing request from the community is the ability to buy and customise vehicles. Additionally, we want to add new types of vehicles to drive, better and more robust driving behaviour from AI, including police chases. We want to overhaul the way the vehicles respond to crashes with a new damage system, and improve the ways you can steal vehicles and give you more reasons to care about doing so.

So, let's look at the first portion we're working on: Purchasing Vehicles and Garages

Several garages will become available to purchase in Rockhaven and doing so will be essential to store a huge fleet of vehicles. From anywhere in the city, you'll be able to use a new application on your phone, "Valet", to have any one of your vehicles delivered to you. Be sure to tip the delivery driver, as the more you do, the more his service will improve, and of course, you'll be in for some sweet rewards.





So, where do you get vehicles? Dealerships, of course. Different dealerships throughout Rockhaven will offer different vehicles and vehicle types for purchase. Big O's might have a sensible sedan for the family oriented criminal, while 4 Real Automobile is more than happy to sell you a lawnmower. Customisation will come in a later update, but at the very least, you can select a sweet paint of your choice to start off with.





We're happy with how the system is shaking out, and as soon as we've polished it up with some sounds and fancy feedback elements, we'll put it out with some accompanying general improvements, missions and other minor additions. Then we'll talk about what's next in a blog post like this, shape it up and ship it out to everyone.

Infact, we've already started prototyping out the next phase: Bikes and other two wheeled vehicles. The results? Doing a bunch of sweet stunts through Rockhaven.







Keep the suggestions coming along the road to Chapter Two, and we'll keep you posted along the way.





Hotfix #12 Now LIVE

Hey everyone,

Just another small hotfix to address some issues raised to us over the weekend. We expect to ship out another one either later today or tomorrow to continue attacking several issues we've managed to reproduce.


FIXED:

- Abduction minigame fixes for clients (UI/Handling/General game logic)
- Fixed client controls not responding in Gorb Rush
- Several fixes for Vacuum Cleaner item
- Several fixes for Homies pathfinding and logic when following a player
- Fixed nearby MOVR trucks despawning when a player is close
- Fixed Takeover marker from constantly appearing while doing other content
- Fixed Healing Robot not healing friendly homies
- Added appropriate collision to "Weiner Trophy" so it can be manipulated in AsbestOS
- Dr Powicks upgrades should now replicate properly in Multiplayer sessions

KNOWN ISSUE TO BE ADDRESSED TODAY:

- Sometimes upon completing an abduction mini-game as a client, all Australian Spy Balloons may pop. This seems to happen most frequently when launching the minigame from the Undercity. We expect to have this fixed by the end of today.

Hotfix 11 NOW LIVE

Hey everyone, just a small hotfix coming in to address a few issues with the Chapter One launch!

Fixed:

- Markers should now wrap around the screen
- Toilets removed from the inaccessible prison
- Zeta points should now save between sessions
- Added ability to disable force feedback/vibration

It's Only Money Chapter One Begins



Hey everyone,

As of now, Chapter One is deploying and going live. This is a major milestone and update for our team and for the game itself, but the train doesn't stop here!



The start of Chapter One includes:

- New combat moves available at the Dojo
- New Missions
- A new UFO repeatable minigame with exciting rewards
- An overhaul to the Homies system, which allows them to follow, fight and contribute to your misdeeds in the streets
- New properties
- A new Crookbook game that can be played singleplayer against your AI homies (or with friends online!)
- Dr Powick brings player upgrades to the Undercity! Expanded wallet capacity? More carrying capacity? Teleports to your friends? You got it.
- And our first Takeover mission, including a boss fight against Maude, the first of the Mayors lieutenants.
- Various performance improvements across the hardware spectrum

And more!

Again, this is the start of Chapter One. We're settling right in on new content, bug fixes and of course, attacking the ever shifting performance target. To give new players an idea of how we approach It's Only Money, here's a quick summary of what we achieved and added throughout Chapter Zero (or you could check out our update history!) :



Our game and community mean the world to us, and we're going to keep on cracking. Shortly after the launch of Chapter One we're expecting to ship a few hot-fixes to alleviate any issues we missed while testing, then it's straight back into building and releasing more content.

We plan to post a new blog about how we're going to better approach our content pipeline going forward, and we think you'll all be excited for what we've got in store.

Thanks for waiting and if you're just joining us, Welcome to Rockhaven.

It's a weird place, and it's only going to get more bizarre in 2024.

- The Usual Suspects team