Version 0.160 has a number of changes that make the game more enjoyable in some form, and the community was the driving factor in nearly all of them. I want to thank everyone who contributed ideas, or gave feedback, or just chimed in on random discussions. You guys are all making easier on me to make the game better!
We'll get to the numerous parts, but the Balloon Bomber contest was one of the driving factors for the first big changes I made earlier this week: The camera can now go 10x higher in the sky, and balloons/thrusters are effective up to a much higher altitude. The change was made possible because I finally fixed the shadow draw distance to correctly scale based on the camera's altitude, so the instances of shadows disappearing around your vehicle should be gone.
A much better aerial view of Sandbox Resort, now with actual shadows!Once I could fly high in the sky, I had to check out the "fly way high, smash down fast" vehicle that I made a little while back. I also lessened the drag from air again (and max angular velocity, see below), and it didn't feel very satisfying to hit into the ground at 500+ km/h and get a relatively minor impact. So I added a new big impact effect that triggers for hitting downward on structures/ground at high velocities with a lot of force. It may need a bit of tuning, but it feels pretty good with the numerous vehicles I tried out.
After those things were in, I tried to focus on expanding the part library to address the various requests for a few larger parts, but the most requests were for smaller parts. People mostly want to build smaller vehicles, so this was my main focus for new parts. A number of commonly-used parts received new "S" versions (S mean small), while I also added Mini variations for things such as beams and wedges. To make it easier to build with small/large parts instead of having to push E constantly, there's a new "Size Preference" option too.
Along the way of adding all the new smaller parts, I tried to improve the range of motion for suspensions and pistons. It ended up working even better than I expected, so I updated most of the existing suspensions/pistons while adding a new one of those as well. The new one (Suspension S) was actually the first one I did, and it felt like the most work because I was creating a new system at the same time. Now it looks like an easy add-on when it definitely didn't start that way.
I was also fortunate that someone pointed out that Fast Swivels weren't working with Overdrives, or at least they weren't glowing. Turned out the glowing wasn't working for a number of different parts, but that was simple to fix. Fast Swivels were actually ignoring overdrives completely, so I fixed that first, then increased the maximum turn rate at higher power, and fixed the max angular velocities being way too low. In all, Fast Swivels are now a LOT more useful/unique, and at max power on an overdrive, they're probably spinning up to 5-10x faster than previously (depending on the amount of mass they have to turn).
There are some other tweaks that will be nice in the long run, such as making it possible to adjust the hitpoints of blocks in structures, including making them invulnerable if needed. This rock-em-sock-em robot from a Discord member, and the ensuing discussion, was one of the driving factors in making the change.
So yeah, lots of cool changes driven by feedback and community in general. This is probably the most productive 4 days of work I've had since before the game launched, and I was only working on Instruments about 2/3rds of the time (rest was on a new project). I don't know if I'll continue this level of productivity/efficiency, but I like this update's scale and pace. I'm not going to worry about it too much, and just try to have fun working on stuff.