Stormworks: Build and Rescue News

Dear Stormworkers,

This week we bring coaxial and advanced rotor mechanics to the main branch of the game!

Over the last week we have been hard at work, listening to your ideas and feedback, improving, extending, and updating the new coaxial rotors!

We have added a full set of rotors, from small size to large, light and heavy versions, as a similar set to the old rotors.



Some of the new rotors have cylinder and cone versions, so they can be arranged cosmetically as well, with cones stacking neatly on the top of the intermediate cylinders.

In response to player feedback on the experimental branch, we have addressed the balance of yaw force so that rotors drag enough to put a helicopter into a spin, in a similar way to that of a real helicopter with failed tail rotor.

The rotor size slider has been added to allow fine adjustment of your rotor blades, to achieve the exact size and look that you are looking for with your rotary wing aircraft.

All the new features discussed last week are included in this new release including power transmission so rotors can be stacked, coaxial rotors, yaw force and rotor drag, and more.



We can't wait to see the new creations you make with these new parts, and the old aircraft you upgrade and improve with these new parts!

As always, we continue to work hard improving the quality of the game with bug fixes and improvements. Please see the patch notes below.

Stay tuned for future posts on the upcoming modular engines, modular weapons, and other big updates that we are working on!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers



v1.0.33

Feature - New Advanced/Coaxial Rotors
An update to the Stormworks rotors with sleeker designs, anti-torque force, blade size adjustment, stackability, and better support for intermeshing!

Rework - Added mission and Env-Mod as optional tags when uploading addon to workshop (defaults to Env-Mod if neither selected)
Rework - Relocatted Edit Playlist Lua button to the top toolbar, which now stays active while editing

Fix - Radar detection for rotated bodies
Fix - setVehiclePos zero-ing out rotation
Fix - Crash when returning a burning vehicle to workbench
Fix - Worldpsace ui popups always being visible
Fix - Editor warnings breaking when editing a connected microprocessor

Lua Api
========

Added server.save([savename]) function
An issue with the function has already been reported by #experimental Stormworkers and the Devs are working on a fix.

Dear Stormworkers,

Many of you have been asking for better rotor mechanics with rotor drag, more compact rotor assemblies, variable blade length, and torque pass-through to be able to build coaxial rotors. Many of you have even been creating incredible coaxial helicopters despite needing awkward pipes feeding the upper rotors.

We are currently working on all of these new features, and are sharing early versions of the new advanced rotors on experimental branch.

Existing helicopters and the existing rotors will continue to work in the same way as before.



The new, advanced rotors create rotary drag, causing a yaw force. The rotors spinning drag on the air as they rotate. This drag depends on the size of the rotor, and the angle at which it is slicing through the air. Without a tail or other force to counteract this drag, the helicopter would go into a spin. Tail rotors will now be mechanically essential to conventional helicopter designs to balance this force, and damaging a tail rotor will cause the helicopter to enter a spin in a similar way to a real helicopter.

The new rotors remove the blocks at their base, instead connecting the rotor axis directly to a torque pipe. This gives more power and flexibility to vehicle designers, reclaiming vital blocks at a critical area of the helicopter. This will make it easier to fit in other components and produce more compact helicopter designs.



Tweaking the size of your rotors is frequently requested, and an important feature for getting the right scale and feel for your rotors. Blades will be able to tweak their scale in a similar way to changing the size of wheels, where you can adjust the size, perhaps +/- 20% per rotor type.

Coaxial rotors will now be possible by simply stacking rotors on top of each other. Power can be passed through lower rotors to the upper ones, and the lack of block base and new meshes make these new rotors a lot more in-fitting and visually appropriate. Coaxial rotors can spin in opposite directions, creating drag that counteracts each other. They can be yawed by increasing the collective on one rotor set while decreasing on the other to imbalance the drag.



We look forward to your thoughts and feedback on the new advanced rotors! We will continue to test this new feature, as well as others on experimental and look forward to bringing it to the main branch of the game soon.

In case you missed it, a few weeks ago we announced that we are working with Microprose on the sequel to Carrier Command. If you are interested in game design and development, we have a series of posts discussing calling in fire support, the helm, remote vehicle control, inventory, manufacturing, logisitics, and more.

Meanwhile, we continue to work on modular engines, modular weapons, as well as a broad range of fixes and other improvements to the game.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

This week, we are adding new tools for optimizing the physics performance of your vehicles!

Performance optimization tools are something that have been frequently requested, and we have been listening carefully! Thanks to all players who let us know they were looking for better optimization!

Read more about optimizing your vehicles in Stormworks.

F2 Physics Tool

The F2 physics visualization tool is back! This is a developer tool, but we have re-added this as it can be useful to players. When pressing F2, your vehicles will render in physics display mode. Each physics shape is shown in a different color, so you can easily see how Stormworks is building the physics representation of your vehicle.



How Does Stormworks Build The Physics Shapes?

Stormworks uses our own, internally developed technology to turn hundreds of thousands of voxels into a much smaller number of convex physics shapes. This process is lossless, so the physics representation is still fully detailed and accurate.

The algorithm is sensitive to how you have built up the shapes in your vehicle, and some arrangements of blocks are much easier to simplify than others.



Physics Flooding Block

We have added a new block that will flood internal compartments within your vehicles with physics - without adding weight. This is extremely useful for flooding internal areas of your vehicles such as inaccessible areas of your ships hull. Filling these zones makes it much easier for the physics system to optimize your shapes!

Using the block is simple. Simply place the new physics flood block within the enclosed compartment, and make sure there are no wedges or pyramids within the inside of this compartment. The physics system will now have a much easier time creating simpler, faster physics for your vehicle!

Our own testing has shown that just a few minutes placing these blocks can improve physics on most vehicles by at least 20%.



We can't wait to hear what players think of these new tools and what performance gains you can find!

We are also planning another Question and Answer session! Please submit your constructive and short questions here thank you for submitting your questions! We have now recorded the video.

Please see the changelog for the usual list of fixes and improvements.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

v1.0.29

Feature - Physics Flooder Optimisation Block
Feature - Fluid Spawner spawn level property
Feature - F2 Physics Debug Mode

Rework - Scripts are now initialized before Env Mod creation rather than during
Rework - Tutorial Starter Boat Optimisation
Rework - Editor Warnings Speed Optimisation

Fix - Added a heat zone to the Beginner Island House
Fix - Editor Warnings Undo/Redo issues
Fix - Editor Warnings reloading issues
Fix - Mutex issue that possibly caused blackscreen on world load
Fix - Vehicles Twilight zoning due to secondary physics after teleporting
Fix - Crash when object is spawned without its secondary physics
Fix - Solid Rocket Nozzles and Jet Engines often failing to destroy their ghost physics fully (Occasional Crash/Lag)
Fix - Fractional component masses showing as rounded numbers in the component inventory
Fix - Removed Empty option on fluid spawners
Fix - Crash when a vehicle's ghost objects are destroyed in the Addon Editor
Fix - Intermittent crash when disconnecting a rope and despawning the vehicle
Fix - Vastly improved network efficiency for setVehicleButton and setVehicleDial

Addon Lua API Update Changes:

Functions that were directly updated and need replacing in scripts
===
spawnVehicle -> spawnAddonVehicle
spawnVehicleAppData -> spawnVehicle
getLocationIndexByName -> getLocationIndex
onSpawnMissionComponent -> onSpawnAddonComponent

Functions that were combined and may need replacing in scripts
===
getPlaylistIndexCurrent() / getPlaylistIndexByName(name) -> getAddonIndex([name])

Functions that updated but still retain their previous form as an alias
===
getPlaylistPath -> getAddonPath
spawnMissionLocation -> spawnAddonLocation
spawnThisPlaylistMissionLocation -> spawnThisAddonLocation
spawnMissionComponent -> spawnAddonComponent
getPlaylistCount -> getAddonCount
getPlaylistData -> getAddonData

New Functions
===
getVehicleData(vehicle_id)

Dear Stormworkers,

Stormworks is a featured Weekend Deal on Steam with 20% off!

This is the first Steam discount ever for Stormworks, after over 3 years on Steam. We have held off doing discounts and promotions until now, but Valve recently reached out to us, suggesting we be one of the Weekend Deals. This is a great opportunity to get on the front page and let more players know about Stormworks!

If you or your friends have not got Stormworks yet, this weekend is a great opportunity to get it, as we can't say when the next discount will be. Buy now at the discounted price!



Thank you to all the players who have supported the game and made Stormworks what it is. There are over 90,000 creations on the workshop, with many creations having over 20,000 subscribers! The average player has over 75 hours of playtime, which is incredibly high on Steam, and as we all know, many players have several thousand hours.

Your creativity and skill is what makes Stormworks special. Thank you.



We will continue to develop the fixes, improvements, and new features to make Stormworks as great as we can. We are really excited to see what player creations the future brings.

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

Dear Stormworkers,

Happy New Year!

It is time for a minor update! This week we bring light highlights, so you can now see lights in the distance. This is a huge help for identifying runways, vehicles, or seeing distress flares and strobes.

This week, we have also added the long awaited 3 way corner pipe junction in pipe and block form! This component is frequently requested and completes the set of pipe pieces.

Distant Lights



Omni-directional lights now produce small glints in the distance, to better model the appearance of lights when they are far away.

This is particularly useful for Stormworks, where runway lights are very important to be able to see from distance, or where you are trying to locate a vehicle or player who have navigation lights, flares or emergency strobes. In effect, this small change to the cosmetics to lights is actually a very mechanical update, and is all about navigation and locating objectives.

It also makes vehicles and lights look better at distance, and improves the effect of navigation and landing lights, to help communicate your direction and intentions.

3 Way Corner Pipe



The final pipe piece is here! The pipe set is finally complete!

The corner pipe works just like other pipe components, creating junctions for fluids, gasses, or torque to travel along. This piece is useful where space is limited and the layout of other parts makes this particular junction necessary to fit everything in.

Winter Break

It has been a busy winter break! We have moved to our new office and were working hard over the break decorating the walls and reconditioning our furniture. Here in the UK, we are not allowed to use our office yet due to Covid-19, but we hope to move in soon enough. In the mean time, we will continue with our development plans working from home.



Questions and Answers

In case you missed it, we did a Q&A video over on MrNJerseys Youtube channel. It was really fun to talk about Stormworks and share upcoming development info, and we think these should become a regular feature to engage with players and better communicate the development plans.

We plan to keep progressing and balancing the new modular engines, and are very excited to get to new fixes and features in this new year.



As always, there are plenty of other changes and fixes in this update, so please see the full change log below for details.

We look forward to reading your thoughts and feedback on this new update!

Much love
The Stormworks Developers

v1.0.26

Rework - Experimental Internal torque damage is now tied to 'Engine Overheating' setting instead of general 'Vehicle Damage'
Fix - Wheels killing/launching players
Fix - getPlaylistIndexByName() functionality
Fix - Disabled Load button during Saving
Fix - Multiplayer CTD caused by returning a vehicle to workbench that is connected via rope to another object

v1.0.27

Feature - Runway Lights and Distant Light Flares
Feature - Pipe Angle Corner and Pipe Angle Corner (Enclosed)
Fix - CTD on setCharacterSeated with an object with no loaded dynamic object