TerraTech Worlds News

Ahead of TerraTech World's Early Access launch this Friday (March 22nd at 6 PM GMT), we wanted to give you an early look at the game's intro animation!

Are you ready to create a better future for humanity?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As we get closer towards Early Access (which, if you haven’t seen the news, is dropping on March 22nd 2024!), we’ve been continuing to look at feedback from various playtests to aid the development of TerraTech Worlds.

Here’s some of what we’ve been working on most recently: please note that everything we’re sharing here is very much work-in-progress previews, and may change over the course of TerraTech Worlds’ development as we work towards Early Access. Everything shown below is not necessarily the final product!

Early Access, for us, is the start of a real journey that involves you, the player, from the offset. We’re not interested in just publishing our version of what we think makes a great game and leaving things there: we want our development process to be directly influenced by your feedback as you play. We’ve already done this with some of our recent work like adjustments to the Tech Yard, and we want TerraTech Worlds to continue to be moulded and shaped by its playerbase as we progress through Early Access and beyond.

Now, let’s show you some of the fun stuff!

[h2]Graphical Settings Update[/h2]

The first (and possibly the biggest) set of changes we’ve made are to graphical settings. During our last round of playtesting, we received a lot of feedback from you all about certain things you’d like to tweak or toggle in terms of in-game graphics settings, and we’ve been hard at work to add those options into our Settings Menu.

You’ll now be able to amend the following graphical settings:

• Frame Rate Cap
  
• Clutter Draw Distance
  
• Scenery Draw Distance
  
• Motion Blur: On/Off
  
• Cloud / Fog Quality
  
• No HUD: On/Off
  

[h2]Pausing in Single Player Mode
[/h2]

During various playtests, lots of you were asking for an easy way to pause your games in single player mode, without having to exit back to the Main Menu screen.

We have now added the ability to do this to TerraTech Worlds, and when you open the Pause Menu now, the game will automatically pause in the background.

[h2]Efficiency Budget[/h2]

We’re adding more cabs than the basic/default one you would have seen in the demo: each unique Cab now provides different attributes and also expands your in-game building options, but also has a brand-new feature called the ‘Efficiency Budget’.

Points saved from mounts, axles, cabs or other blocks on a Tech are called ‘Efficiency’. These savings are now capped by a new cab attribute: the Efficiency Budget. Once a Tech has reached 100% Efficiency, it will no longer 'save' points by attaching to a frame, mount or axle as the Reactor has used up its budget. Additional attached blocks will cost their full Reactor Load once the Efficiency Budget has been used up.

Some cabs have almost no Efficiency, but have really big Reactor Caps, whilst other cabs have very high Efficiency Budgets and lower Reactor Caps.

[h2]Honk[/h2]

You may have seen in some of our recent streams that you can now change the colour of your cabs’ liveries (i.e. their skins) at will, but more importantly, Techs now have a horn enabled, so you can alert your friends to danger or simply annoy them over and over again at the press of a button.

We’ll be updating you more as we get closer to Early Access: remember to Wishlist us over on the Store Page if you haven’t already to be notified once the game is live on the 22nd!

When will TerraTech Worlds be released?

TerraTech Worlds will be released as an Early Access title on March 22nd 2024.

Will TerraTech Worlds’ Early Access be available on Mac OS or Linux?

Currently, TerraTech Worlds supports Windows OS, but as development continues we will be looking into the possibility of supporting non-Windows operating systems.

Will TerraTech Worlds’ Early Access be available on console? (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch etc?)

Our focus during Early Access is on PC, and bringing the game to its 1.0 version. We would like to bring TerraTech Worlds to other platforms, but we have nothing to announce at this time.

When will TerraTech Worlds leave Early Access and go into full launch?

We estimate about 18 months to bring all the core features and content to a state we feel good about calling 1.0. That means the game will feel solid and polished, with hundreds of hours of gameplay ready to go - but with thousands more still to come as we embark on a multi-year, post 1.0 content roadmap.

What does ‘Early Access’ mean for TerraTech Worlds?

We want TerraTech Worlds’ Early Access period to be a true community-driven experience: what we mean by this is that we’ll be actively seeking out and listening to the feedback of Early Access players, and adjusting game development milestones and priorities based on what you tell us. Purchasing TerraTech Worlds during the Early Access period will mean the chance to have your voice heard as part of our earliest group of players, and your feedback to us will actively shape the game throughout Early Access and beyond.

How does TerraTech Worlds differ from the original TerraTech game?

TerraTech Worlds is a spiritual successor (not a direct sequel) to the original TerraTech, building on the first game’s foundations with a host of groundbreaking new gameplay features. TerraTech Worlds offers a deep gameplay experience with endless opportunities for creative expression and co-op play at its heart, following a distinct creative direction and development roadmap from that of TerraTech. Payload Studios will continue to develop and support TerraTech alongside TerraTech Worlds.

Can I play TerraTech Worlds offline?

Yes! You do not need an internet connection to play TerraTech Worlds as a single-player experience, and will not need to be connected to the internet in order to launch the game from your Steam library.

Will TerraTech Worlds utilise the Steam Workshop?

Yes! You will be able to upload your Tech Snapshots to the Steam Workshop as soon as Early Access is available.

When will boats/planes/spaceships be added to TerraTech Worlds?

You can view our planned content roadmap below (please note, this roadmap is subject to change throughout development):



Where can I keep up-to-date with the latest news on TerraTech Worlds?

You can join our official TerraTech Worlds Discord server to chat with both developers and players, or find us at the following places:

Instagram Twitter/X YouTube Twitch TikTok

See you soon in Early Access!

We're delighted to announce that TerraTech Worlds will be coming to Early Access on Friday March 22nd, 2024!

If you haven't already, remember to Wishlist TerraTech Worlds over on the Store Page to be notified as soon as the game goes live!

Thank you for joining us for the journey so far, and we'll see you soon in Early Access!

Continuing on from last week’s post about Community-driven development on TerraTech Worlds, we wanted to share some recent changes we’ve been making to the Tech Yard!

The Tech Yard is an integral part of TerraTech Worlds: it’s your home base, where you’ll return to again and again after a tough day of pew-pew’ing enemy Techs and narrowly avoiding being crushed by falling trees. We weren’t 100% happy with the version of the Tech Yard that you would have seen in the Next Fest demo, and so we’ve been working on changing it based both on player feedback and our internal test sessions.

Here’s a look at some of the initial concepts we’ve been exploring, focused around portability and projection (the first image shows some original concepts we had for the Tech Yard’s new holographic function, whilst the second shows the Tech Yard in its ‘stored’ state–please note that both of these designs have since been iterated on and that the Tech Yard will look closer to the screenshot you can see a little further down this page!):





TerraTech Worlds’ Principal Designer Andy Harmon explains some of the thought process behind the recent development work on the Tech Yard:

“The design changes to the Tech Yard have been focused around 2 main ideas:

1. ‘The (current) Tech Yard requires too much work and infrastructure to use.’
2. ‘The Tech Yard is an important structure and it needs to grow in importance as the player progresses.’

First, we’re going to make the Tech Yard a ‘true’ structure, one that’s functionality isn’t dependent on putting down ramps. This new Tech Yard will still have an ‘active’ area as before, but that area will now be a virtual space adjacent to (and projected by) the Tech Yard. This will project on terrain or platforms, and will be easier to interact with. Next, we looked at the progression of the Tech Yard and the features around it that we still want to explore and expand on. The Tech Yard in the demo was functional but not as identifiable/distinct as we wanted it to be, and the experience of upgrading the Tech Yard with more storage and further upgrades wasn’t what we were really looking for.”



This piece of concept art shows what we’ve currently settled on, with the blue beam being the ‘active’ projection area that Principal Designer Andy talked about above. No more needing to build a ramp and carefully drive up it to restore any lost Restore Charges!

And this is how it looks in-game:



Let us know what you think of these new changes/ideas in the comments below: we’re always keen to hear your thoughts in the lead-up to Early Access. And remember to wishlist us over on the Steam Store page if you haven’t already, to stay up-to-date with all the latest news about Early Access!

Until next time!