Scrap Mechanic News

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Calling all Mechanics!
We are back! After spending the last few months in the content mines, it's time for us to report on our latest progress. While we’d love to show off details from the next chapter, It’s getting increasingly harder to do so without spoilers, but rest assured: you will get to see all of it on release.
That’s why we decided to do a bot reveal special for this devblog instead, so here’s a peek at just some of the new bots:





Yellow Totebot
Get ready to re-adjust your base walls or crank your vehicle’s engine a bit higher when you see this new bot jumping into the scene!
Originally designed as a fully autonomous power trowel, the Yellow Totebot has since gone renegade. Now, it stomps its way across the planet, eager to flatten any Mechanic it sees, no matter how many ceilings and floors it has to smash in the process.






Blue Totebot
Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water…Originally designed for offshore drilling, the Blue Totebot has since decided to become an underwater torpedo instead. To make matters worse, it can also move fast enough on land to catch up with any Mechanics that aggravate it, so watch where you dive!






Red Totebot
We’ve teased this clanker before, but we’ve never shown him in action until now. Originally designed to clear away mine shafts using explosives, some of the Red Totebots have since wandered up to the surface.
When they encounter a Mechanic, they will ignite their payload before rushing at their target, and they won’t stop until they’ve reduced their target (or anything standing in their way) to smithereens.






Green Tapebot 
You’ve already seen this little bot on our Twitter. Once, this unassuming clanker would only bubble wrap fruits and veggies, until the latest firmware update made it run amok. 
Armed with a roll of weaponized bubble plastic, it might not pack much of a punch by himself, but a bunch of them can ruin any Mechanic’s day!






Yellow Tapebot
An elegant bot for a civilized age, the Yellow Tapebot was perfectly harmless, designed to keep everything neat and tidy in storages by painting labels with its special four-color ink.
Following the disastrous firmware update that made it run amok, however, this clanker has found a new purpose: now, it uses the same sorting ink to hurt and slow down any Mechanic it sees!






Grow labs 
Ruin runs are great, but we’ve been working hard on populating the game world with additional cool places to explore and loot during the course of your Survival mode adventure.
One of those places are the underground Grow labs! Fit to burst with Green and Yellow Tapebots, these little dungeons offer exciting combat and some cool plunder at the end for those that venture inside them.






Ore Prospector
Get more out of your ore with this latest addition to the game, the Ore Prospector: a machine designed both for Mechanics that love to build automated crafting chains, as well as those that like to do things manually.
With its help, you will be able to filter the finely ground gravel produced by the Ore Crusher, in order to retrieve rare materials like gold and more!






New Glass
We haven’t just been working on Scrap Mechanic’s content. After introducing the new and improved lighting system we mentioned in the last devblog, our elite team of graphics engineers have been working on updating the game’s visuals according to modern standards.
This time, we’re excited to introduce our newest glass shader, which allows in-game glass to shine and distort like the real thing, so your buildings, vehicles and other creations can look better than ever before. And that’s just one of the graphical updates we’ve got in the works!






General rebalance and Item Schematics
We have also been working hard on rebalancing Survival Mode’s gameplay; specifically, the crafting recipes and how items are obtained during the course of the game, so the gameplay can flow better than ever before.
Our latest addition to Scrap Mechanic’s features are Schematics. When found, these collectible items will allow your Craftbots to create additional items.
Furthermore, we’ve been focusing on changing the way farming raids work, while reworking the existing hunger and hydration bars to be less annoying. More on these later!






Woc Outfit
Introducing the wackiest outfit we’ve made (so far): the Woc outfit, complete with a corncob themed backpack!
It might not be up to profession regulation standards, but it sure is a welcome change from all that stuffy workwear. 
What do you think? Will you rock this outfit?  Let us know.




Next Chapter update

At the risk of sounding like a broken bot: while we still don’t have an exact release date for the next chapter, we are still aiming for this year. 
It’s worth mentioning that the next chapter has turned into a behemoth of an update, with a ton of new content. We remain confident that it will be worth the wait. We know that it can be frustrating and boring, but we have to make sure it’s great.

That’s it for this devblog, Mechanics! Stay tuned for the next one!

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Calling all Mechanics!

New devblog, coming though!
It’s been a busy month for us, as we have been moving the Scrap HQ to a bigger and better office; the team out-grew the old space, and things were getting as cramped as a Woc Crate. Not to mention all the exciting new additions we have been making to the game that we can’t wait to share with you!
So let’s get to it!








 Minerbot
What’s that coming up from the mine? It’s a new bot! Introducing the Minerbot: Scrap Mechanic’s first flying bot!
These heavily overworked bots are flying on fumes: after all, they’ve been digging random holes underground in every direction, slowly overheating for who knows how long. If spotted, the Minerbot will spray any Mechanics it detects with a shower of rocks. While Minerbots are not as accurate or alert as the Tapebots, they can become very dangerous, very quickly in large numbers. But even if you do shoot them down, watch out; Minerbots can still crash into you! 
The Minerbot is shaping up to be something that can even top the current bots. 



UV Grow Bed
Plant a farm underground or on your creations, with the aid of the new UV Grow Beds! This new farming item gives you greater flexibility than ever, in exchange for electricity. 
But be careful: bots can still find you and your precious crops, so you’d better encase those veggies in some sturdy material. And while you’re at it, why not make a gun turret, for good measure? 



New Lighting System
This has been a long time coming, and it’s almost done: the lighting system in Scrap Mechanic has been completely reworked for the next chapter.
This significantly improves the game’s visuals and further optimizes the frame rate for players. Now, you can enjoy better performance, even with higher resolutions like 4K. We can now run double the amount of light sources and are no longer limited to 24 cast shadows anymore; any light that casts a shadow can now render in real-time. 
But wait, there’s more: we now also have volumetric lighting in our engine that looks stunning. Even the particles are volumetrically lit! This all helps create the look and the mood that we always wanted to evoke in Scrap Mechanic, especially in the next chapter. 





 Builder Quests 
We know that the world of Scrap Mechanic Survival is very pretty, but that it’s also pretty empty at the moment. That’s all about to change with the new builder quests: while you’re out exploring and collecting resources, you will come across characters that need your help to build a variety of things. Help them out and they will all have some great rewards in return!





 Fire in Scrap Mechanic
Ever wondered what those “flammable” entries in the item descriptions mean? At long last, we have added a fire game mechanic; now, fires will spread if you do not put them out.
And with its introduction to the Red Totebots, we expect that things are going to get a lot more heated. This might be a good time to check whether your base is fireproof. 
We thought it might be interesting to also show you how the fire mechanic in action; fire is a lot of fun to play with in creative mode, and it’s certainly satisfying to watch!




New Warehouse
The new warehouse is finally done! There are new sections, secrets, better rewards, and some really interesting content hidden away on the top floor and the rooftop that are waiting for you to discover it. We did manage to sneak out some images from the dev team that don’t spoil too much, so here goes!






 Outfits
Our digital fashionistas have been hard at work putting a lot of new outfits together and we are getting close to having them done! Of course, we will be leaving a few for you to discover on release. 
This time, however, we will be revisiting two old outfits we had gotten wrong the first time: apparently, the farmhand and farmer outfits had been missing their backpacks, so we fixed it! Which one do you like best?






 Drill Spawner
Even under the ground, there’s no peace for a farming Mechanic. When you’re hard at work in the bowels of the earth, watch out for these burrowing enemy spawners!



So what’s the status of the next chapter, devs?
Time for some dev transparency. 
We are fully aware of all the Mechanics that are waiting for the next chapter to finally come out. We see you on our Twitter, and we really do understand! 
We always try to be optimistic when it comes to our releases. But making quality games is a lot of work. We know that you have high expectations and we want to live up to them with the next chapter.
A new thing that is currently slowing things down is our decision that the huge release of the next chapter is also going to be the update that will take Scrap Mechanic out of early access. So this changes a few things:
It means that a lot of extra polish and optimization have to be in place as well on release. This doesn't mean it’s the last update, however; it just means that Scrap Mechanic will be in a released state. 
So to reiterate, we are polishing up the game, adding a ton of new content on top while also adding more things to our game engine at the same time. The next chapter is shaping up nicely on our end, but we have to let it take the time it needs to become something worthy of your time and expectations as well as something that we can be proud of. 
We are sorry for the long wait, and that Mechanics will have to wait a bit longer but we will deliver Mechanic awesomeness! And that’s a promise. 

We are considering setting up another dev Q&A, so if you’d like us to dig away at your questions, please let us know!


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Hi Mechanics!
The Challenge Mode Update is finally out and we have started collecting bugs and issues reported to us.
If you encountered some new bugs, please let us know down below in the comments. A lot of fixes are on the way.

0.6.5 (June 21):

• Fixed invisible reward customization item when unlocked in the dressbot
  
• Fixed an issue where the lift counted bearings and suspensions twice
  
• Fixed invisible loot objects when dropping the sledgehammer or spud gun in challenge mode
  
• Fixed a shader issue caused by an intel 10gen UHD graphics driver bug
  
• Fixed slow loading times when loading tiles with a very large amount of objects in the tile builder
  
• Fixed wrong shapeset path in example blocks and part mod
  
• Fixed validation issue for json arrays in mod tool
  
• Fixed a crash when modifying the HUD related to the new item pickup display
  

0.6.4 (June 16):

• Fixed an issue that could cause the character to be rotated in the challenge victory screen.
  
• Smoother player character and enemy rotation.
  
• New item pickup display
  
• New images on crashed ship and mechanic station waypoints
  
• Inputs no longer get stuck when entering and exiting seats while holding keys
  
• Fixed bad performance in custom creative worlds with lots of water
  
• Fixed another issue chat caused the stuntman outfit to be unlockable from garment boxes
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause stone nodes to float in the air
  
• Added missing upgrade effect on craftbot
  
• Added missing pick-up sound to the tutorial bucket
  
• Fixed an issue where the loadingbar popup would be misshaped when downloading content
  
• Fixed an issue where the horn pitch did not persist after leaving and rejoining
  
• Fixed an issue where the level intro cinematic would not play in challenge mode
  
• Fixed a bug where some HUD GUI elements were visible during challenge mode camera
  
• Player health resets to full when challenge resets or changes level
  
• Fixed a bug where enemy spawners in challenge mode didn't rotate spawned enemies correctly
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when building joints on shapes that got removed
  
• Fixed a common crash that could randomly occur
  
• Projectiles can now have modded effects
  
• Lua GUIs can play modded effects
  
• Added setColor function for joints
  
• Fixed a bug where tools didn't show up in the mod inventory
  
• GuiInterface's createHorizontalSlider now has an option to invert the slider
  
• Fixed a bug where the showInInventory json setting was ignored by the mod inventory
  
• Changed sm.log logging functions to take a variable amount of arguments
  

0.6.3 (June 7):

• Fixed an issue that caused the Applicator outfit to not be unlockable
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the camera to move when alt-tabbing back to the game
  
• Fixed a performance issue for worlds with many interactable shapes
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when leaving games
  
• Fixed a positioning issue with the Ball Socket effect
  
• The handbook is now visible when dropped on the ground
  
• Mod Tool custom icons checkbox now works
  

0.6.2 (June 2):

• Fixed rendering issues on intel graphics devices causing miss shaped or invisible craftbots and driver's seats
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause beds and raids to not work
  
• Fixed an issue that caused custom worlds to not load properly (You might need to restore the backup found in C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Axolot Games\Scrap Mechanic\User\User_\Save\Backup)
  
• Fixed crashes where lua scripts sent invalid numbers to physics
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the health bar to fill up when rejoining a game
  
• Fixed a bug that caused paint tool visualization to stay after the tool was unequipped
  
• Fixed missing effect when hitting things with the sledgehammer
  

0.6.1 (June 1):

• Fixed issue where some stuntman outfit pieces showed up in garment boxes
  
• Added missing stuntman outfit names
  
• Fixed an issue with the seated first-person camera position
  
• Fixed an issue where old creative worlds would not load
  
• Crash fixes
  

Calling all Mechanics!

The Challenge Mode update is finally here along with a bunch of other exciting additions!

Initially, our focus was just to wrap up Challenge mode. However, we ended up adding a lot more than that. We ended up with a much bigger and better update that we hope has something for every kind of Mechanic.

Here are a few highlights from this update:

Challenge Mode
10 new challenges have been added, for a total of 50. Complete them all and unlock a very special Stuntman outfit that will prove that you have the chops to be a true Scrap Mechanic.

Bots in Challenge Builder
Give your custom-made challenges some more oomph with the new Character Spawner part. Spawn bots inside the Challenge Mode and create your own tailor-made shooter or any kind of challenge you can come up with!

Survival Tutorial
If you’re new to Scrap Mechanic, you might have trouble coming to grips with Survival mode. With that in mind, we have put together an onboarding experience that lets you learn the ropes that’s both fun and easy!
The start of the game now includes a series of quests that teach you the basics, as well as the new Builder Guide part that helps you build a basic vehicle from start to finish.

Optimizations
Ragdoll simulation for knocked-out characters has been greatly optimized. This makes big bot raids run a lot smoother when a lot of them ragdoll at the same time. We have also worked on character collision detection, in order to further improve the game's performance.

Improved Mod Support
We have worked on greatly improving Mod support, so Modders can have a much wider range of options and possibilities than ever before.
Our goal is to allow you to pretty much create your own games within Scrap Mechanic. To show that off, we went ahead and made our own little mod, called Scrap Mechanic Golf. To play it, download it from the Workshop. Then, head to the Game Mode selection and click the new Custom Games button in the upper right corner!
What are you waiting for? Get out there and hit ‘em straight!

Scrap Mechanic Golf

Also! new Mods by talented Mod creators are already starting to show up on the Workshop.

This time we would like to highlight Raft Mechanic. A really impressive mod with quests, new parts, tools, and more! If you enjoy Scrap Mechanic and Raft, then this is a great mod to check out.
Let's give these skilled creators some love!

Raft Mechanic

Enjoy Mechanics!

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