Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks News

🔧 Dev Blog 08 - Deffkilla Wartrike 🔧

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

The Deffkilla Wartrike is as heavily armed as it is brazen. Built for close-quarters combat, this vehicle’s Speedboss will pull himself in quickly to rip hunks of hull off any vehicle unfortunate enough to be targeted.

Weave in and out of fights as you cut your opponent's vehicles to pieces with close range prowess. Hook onto petrified enemies and blast your boomstikks while reeling yourself in for the kill. Nobody gets away from a Wartrike unscathed.

This vehicle currently has the second fastest base speed in the game, right behind the Shokkjump Dragsta. The Snagga klaw will allow you to latch on to enemies and pull yourself along at extreme speeds, making the Deffkilla Wartrike one of the best racing vehicles.

In Speedfreeks the Deffkilla Wartrike is best used strategically for finding opponents that are unsuspecting, damaged, or both. Take down enemies who find themselves out of position, and punish high value targets to push your team towards victory.

Abilities

Twin Boomstikks
Fire the stubby Ork shotguns mounted on the front of the bike.

Snagga-Klaw
Krump ‘em with the Snagga-Klaw for big damage!

Hook
Shoot the barbed hook attached to the Snagga-Klaw at the targeted enemy and pull yourself towards them to deliver the killing blow.

Dash
The vehicle lunges violently forward and smashes enemies. The direction you are aiming determines where the vehicle will go.

Pro tip: The Deffkilla Wartrike is very front-loaded with its forward facing Boomstikks and Snagga Klaw melee attack – which deals a lot of burst damage. One of the best plays is to find a damaged enough enemy to secure a one-shot kill, and escape battle before the others realize what hit their mob.

Be mindful of your own hit points and be sure to have an escape plan if things get hairy.

Team-Ups

Looted Wagon – This long-range tank will spend most of its time shooting from afar as fire support. Keep an eye on who they’re shooting at, and race in to help finish enemies off before they can repair.

Shokkjump Dragsta – Similar to the Looted Wagon, the dragsta likes to poke at enemies from afar, but also uses its speed to get shots in on harder to reach targets. A combination of the Wartrike’s grapple and high damage klaw along with the Dragsta’s Shokk Rifle make this combo a scary one to be pursued by.

Good Against

Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy – A perfect candidate for a quick drive by slashing by the Wartrike’s klaw to help pick apart the opposing team’s support.

Shokkjump Dragsta – As the Shokkjump Dragsta cannot shoot backwards, you can use your hook to keep up with their speed, and chase them down. A single mistake can mean you stop them in their tracks.

Weak Against

Grot Mega Tank – Don’t underestimate this vehicle as it has a lot of health and is rarely alone. It can also use its repair ability to get an edge on hit points and pivot quickly to smash you down with its plow.

On behalf of Caged Element and PLAION, we’z shoutin’ a big WAAAGH! Thanks for joinin’ da Kult of Speed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!

Join our community-focused game development discussions on your favorite platform:

Steam Discussions Discord r/SpeedFreeks Suggest Features & Report Bugs Technical Support

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

🔧 Dev Blog 07 - Boomdakka Snazzwagon 🔧

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

The Boomdakka Snazzwagon makes up for its lack of armor with unbridled quantities of searing bullets thrown at its enemies. For enemies, first come the bullets, then comes the smoke - then the embrace of fiery death.

Race around in a haze of heat as you unleash an onslaught of bullets from your Mek Speshul, ignite enemies with your burna bottles and drown them in exhaust smoke to shroud your escape.

As far as speed goes, the Boomdakka Snazzwagon falls in the middle of the pack, faster than the Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy and the same speed as the Kustom Boosta Blasta. However, with no special movement ability, mastering the Dash ability that all buggies have is key to keeping up with your mob.

The Dash is a powerful acceleration tool that is essential for the Snazzwagon to close the gap and make use of its deadly but inaccurate main gun. It can also be used to change direction quickly: combine it with the handbrake to whip the vehicle around and point your weapons in the right direction.

In Speedfreeks the Snazzwagon is best used up close and personal, quickly injecting yourself in and out of battle in a flurry of bullets, or supporting your Mob into ferocious battle, dealing sneaky damage while they absorb some hits.

Abilities

Souped-up Speshul
Unleash a roaring wave of dakka. Extremely high fire rate but with extremely poor accuracy.

Burna Bottle
Toss a Burna Bottle that sets enemies on fire and sends them running in fear.

Billowing Fumes
Flood the engine to spew a trail of blinding smoke.

Dash
The vehicle lunges violently forward and smashes enemies. The direction you are aiming for determines where the vehicle will go.

Pro tip: You can only shoot enemies within 180 degrees in front of you, so try to stay near teammates and maneuver in and out of battle. Use your Burna Bottle as frequently as possible, but save your Billowing Fumes ability for a murky escape when someone decides to heavily target you.

[h2]Team-Ups:[/h2]
Grot Mega Tank – Since the Snazzwagon’s armor isn’t the best, using a Grot Mega Tank as mobile cover can be a good strategy, with it also helping you drown nearby enemies in dakka.

Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy – Use your Billowing Fumes ability to shroud any Squigbuggies in need of hiding or an escape, and be sure to spray dakka and smash some Burna Bottles in the vicinity for extra damage to enemies in the smoke.

Kustom Boosta Blasta – The Snazzwagon and Boosta-Blasta are a potent combo, with both vehicles having escape and/or disorientation abilities in Billowing Smoke and the Stikkbomb. This duo can be frustrating for the opposition – and fun for those driving them.

[h2]Good Against[/h2]
Looted Wagon – If caught alone, a Looted Wagon can be circled in smoke then blasted with bullets and fire in a short time.

[h2]Weak Against[/h2]
Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy – With a Squigbuggy generally hiding behind the front-line repairing enemies, it’s hard to penetrate and get close to them compared to other vehicles with a movement ability.

Shokkjump Dragsta – With the speed of the Shokkjump Dragsta they will weave in and out of combat with you, and try to get around you to shoot you from the back. Stay near allies to help deal with them.

On behalf of Caged Element and PLAION, we’z shoutin’ a big WAAAGH! Thanks for joinin’ da Kult of Speed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!

🔧 Dev Blog 06 - Let’s Paint Boomdakka Snazzwagon 🔧

In order to capture the authenticity but also the casual chaotic nature of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks, we felt capturing the stunning style of the 'Eavy Metal painted miniatures could be a great way to drive the aesthetic of the game.

To do this effectively across the vast quantity of assets for the game, we leveraged the power of Adobe Substance Painter and created a smart material that would do a lot of the 'eavy lifting whilst still allowing us to add hand painted touches to the models.

[h2]Research[/h2]
We researched the look of the 'Eavy Metal miniatures. Looked at the painting techniques used by both the 'Eavy Metal painters and hobbyists so we could replicate this process and create a smart material which gives us an authentic painting style.

[h2]Base Model[/h2]
We take the base model. Bake out mesh maps, Normals, AO, Curvature are our key drivers for the material.

[h2]Smart Material[/h2]
Throw on our smart material. This material runs through a multitude of layers which mimic some of the base, shade/washes and highlighting techniques used to paint physical miniatures. We can paint in details in a normal layer which will be computed and given edge highlights/shading. So we can paint in scratches, dents and holes.

When exported as packed textures and imported into our custom Paint Shader in Unreal Engine the Red channel drives our colour ramp, whilst the Green and Blue channels drive dirt and rust respectively. The colour ramp is put through a colour table which has colour gradients set up which reflect the paint colours used on the models.

Where Red is closet to black, the model paint will appear darker, where red is brighter, the paint colours will appear lighter. This gives us the painted shades and edge highlights that are synonymous with 'Eavy Metal's painting style. The Dirt (green) and Rust (blue) are added on top of the paint colours.

[h2]Colour Map ID[/h2]
In order to separate the different painted areas and provide customisation in the game, we utilize an 8 Colour ID map. Here we paint out the areas which will share colours in the game.

We use Red as the primary Asset colour, with Green being secondary and blue being tertiary colours. These will usually be depicted as Gunmetal and Brass/Copper in-game by default. We can also use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, White and Black to cover any other details that may need to be separated out.

When you change paint colours in the game, it the ID map which dictates which colours go where.

[h2]Snazzy Graphics[/h2]
An Ork vehicle wouldn't be complete without some snazzy paint job graphics. We apply these using a graphics texture.

The smart material has a graphics layer stack where We paint any checks, dags, glyphs either by hand or with stencils in substance. These are then applied over the top of the Paint colours in the shader to apply painted graphics on the vehicle.

We are able to change the ID maps and Graphic Maps to provide different patterns and customisation options in the game.

The smart material also provides us additional features for painting in Smoke (for exhausts and gun barrels), Emissive areas for flashy tek gubbinz, as well as other things. Once we are happy we use an export preset to export packed textures and we hook these up in-game. With a few parameter changes to select the paint colours we want, we frequently will reference the official miniatures for this bit, we end up with something like this:

As much as this has been about trying to authentically represent the 'Eavy Metal style of the official minis, a core aspect has also been allowing people to paint their vehicles.

It's been great to finally allow players the ability to customise their paint jobs in the Beta and seeing people being able to be creative with it and even replicate their painted mini's in-game has been really rewarding.

Celebrating the creative heart of the hobby as well as the talents of the 'Eavy Metal folks has been something we wanted capture. We hope you think we've done it justice.

Looking forward to seeing you on the battlefield, until then happy gaming!
[h3]Joe[/h3]
Lead Artist - Caged Element

On behalf of Caged Element and PLAION, we’z shoutin’ a big WAAAGH! Thanks for joinin’ da Kult of Speed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!

🔧 Dev Blog 5 – Da Beta Results! 🔧

You mobbed up with us and krumped your way through the High-Octane Mayhem that was the Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks Open Beta.

To celebrate this achievement, we’ve collected some of our favorite facts and statistics in the infographic shared below. We hope you all enjoy looking through them as much as we did, and it won’t be long till we see you all back in the game for release this summer!

On behalf of Caged Element and PLAION, we'z shoutin' a big WAAAGH! with da mob! Thanks for joinin' da Kult of Speed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!

[h2]What a WAAAGH![/h2]
You krumped 1,624,734 gitz with 1,098,898 assistz. That’s 32% krumped solo and 68% falling to the mob!

75,542 of these krumpz were airborne. Knocking Orkz out the sky like a Fly Swatta!

Altogether, you Freeks played 18,737 matches! 9,386 games on Ded ‘ard Desert and 9,351 on Frozen Dakka

On Average you scored 1,495 points per match and dealt 1,068 damage. No slacking Orkz in our mobz!

To prove it, 43,222 players achieved a kill frenzy! That’s killin’ loads of gitz without dying. Waaagh!

The average kill/death ratio was 1.1, meaning each of you krumped your own worth. Besides we can find plenty more Orkz where they come from.

However, one of you, and we bet you know who you are, is da biggest, ‘ardest and greenest killing machine with a kill streak of 41!

Partz went flying and you greedy gitz scrounged a total 395,942,135 of Scrap, that’s 1,576 on average!

Slap dashing and scrapping it together, while under fire, you fixed 14,804,734 health.

Altogether, this tells us we got nothing to worry about, you gitz love a good stomping!

Wishlist da WAAAGH!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

Wishlist and follow to give Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks the nitro it needs to cross that starters line later this summer.

[h2]JOIN DA WAAAGH![/h2]
Join our community-focused game development discussions on your favorite platform:

Steam Discussions Discord r/SpeedFreeks Suggest Features & Report Bugs Technical Support

With the conclusion of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks Beta, we will take your feedback, polish up and launch full speed onto Steam this summer!

Your relentless energy has been top tier. It’s with that dedication and support that we look forward to sharing more info with you in the coming weeks so stay tuned and join us as we officially start the Speedwaaagh!

Thanks for joinin’ da Kult of Speed in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!

💥 Open Beta Test End 💥

[h2]We git’a grot back to da workshop! [/h2]

[h3]Oi! Freeks![/h3]

The Speed Freeks Open Beta playtest has come to an end.

We at Caged Element and PLAION thank you for playing the Open Beta!

We’ve been thrilled to see all da BIG DAKKA energy come together as you Orkz joined da Waagh! But now we got to assess the battlefield, collect the scrap, and tune-up for release!

This is the home straight and we need to gear up for the final race to the finish line – Ha!, with the Kult of speed there is no finish line - once there, we’ll be launching the game proper like.

Now we’re gathering up all your battle experiences, ideas, and feedback. Your contributions and passion so far fuels us and keeps us going! All the suggestions, bug reports, tips, tricks, screenshots and vids will now help us polish this mean machine of a game.

Still got rubber to burn? Now’s the time to add your input. Help us krump our task line by filling out this survey: OPEN BETA SURVEY

And adding ideas and suggestions to our feedback and bug reporting board: https://speedfreeks40k.featureupvote.com/

[h2]Wishlist & Follow![/h2]

Wishlist to be notified when Speed Freeks releases this summer!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2078450

Wishlisting and following not only helps promote the visibility of Speed Freeks in the Steam store, but also ensures that you will receive our most up-to-date news, announcements, updates, and developer insights.

[h2]Join the Official Discord![/h2]

Mob up and join the Kult of Speed on our official Speed Freeks Discord to become directly involved in our community-focused game development!

Here you’ll find all the latest Speed Freek news and activities. Share your Orky moments and have a direct line to the Devs working on the game.

Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/speedfreeks40k

Thanks again for your early interest in Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks!