Trailmakers News

In early 2019, we will be announcing the release date for Trailmakers on Xbox, and we want to celebrate the announcement with a short trailer. With the amount of creativity we have seen from the Trailmakers community, we thought it would be fun to let you make the trailer. Show those Xbox players what they can look forward to!

One lucky winner will receive an epic Trailmakers Goodie Bag!

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What an update we have in store for you today! Two huge new features have made it into this version of Trailmakers: A new multiplayer framework, and a new Sandbox map. Let us know what you think in the comments.

• New Sandbox Map - The Danger Zone!
  • This brand new map is packed with all sorts of new inventions to throw your vehicles at. It is available for both Single Player and Multiplayer games.
    
  • The map includes Catapults, Cannons, Blenders, a Hydraulic Press, a Silodrome, an Aircraft Carrier, a Football Field, Basketball Hoops, a Battlebot Arena, tracks in the sky and much more!
    
  • Here’s a challenge for you: See if you can transport a container from the Aircraft Carrier’s hangar to the container storage on the dock.
    
• We have removed the Dethrone map “King’s Island” as an optional map for the Sandbox game mode.
  

• New Multiplayer Framework
  For many months our programmers have been working on upgrading our multiplayer framework. All that hard work is finally ready to be shared. The performance improvements are far reaching, and not just limited to multiplayer games. Here is an example of the impact of the new framework:
  

We loaded up a 4-player Sandbox game with the old framework, and each player spawned this Bugatti Cheyron from the Workshop. The Bugatti is very heavy on performance because it has many moving parts, and it is close to the complexity limit.


Here is what the performance looked like with 4 players in 4 Bugattis on the old framework:

As you can see, the Server Performance dropped down to 30 FPS which has a significant impact for every player on the server, and causes a lot of lag.

This is what happened when we did the same thing on the new Multiplayer Framework:

The Server Performance stays at 60 FPS.

Of course, not every server is running on an expensive gaming computer. You will definitely still be able to bring a server to its knees if you load in a lot of large vehicles, but this new framework is a huge upgrade.

• Improved Rendering
  In Trailmakers, the rendering of our cliffs, trees, rocks etc is by default drawn indirectly by making your graphics card do all the work instead of a combination of the CPU & GPU (which can be turned on by enabling "Alternative rendering" in the settings).
  We've significantly reduced the work done by the GPU, improved our frustum & occlusion culling, decreased memory and increased occupancy resulting in a much improved performance.
  

• Overlapping blocks by using glitches turned out to cause strange performance and crash issues. Using glitches to place blocks inside other blocks will now be detected by the builder. We have added a system that blocks you from leaving the builder if blocks are overlapping in this way.
  

• NEW: Tube Sloped - We have added two new sloped tubes for the Modular Tube System. A short one and a long one.
  
• NEW: Jack-o’-Lantern - Okay we might be a little late to the Halloween party, but we made this and now it’s in the game. Or perhaps we’re just SUPER early for Halloween 2019?!
  
• Fixed the aerodynamics of some inverted aerodynamic blocks.

• Fixed the broken “Bump into X” daily challenges in Expedition mode.
  
• Fixed the profile level not progressing beyond level 10.
  
• Fixed a bug in block overkill damage distribution.
  
• Fixed a crash that users on older CPUs were experiencing when leaving build mode. To use this fix, you have to toggle the “Disable Burst Compiler” setting in the Preferences menu.
  

It’s the spookiest time of the year so let’s take a look at some of the grim creations made by the Trailmakers community.



Many of the blueprints for these vehicles can be found on the Trailmakers Workshop or in the #blueprints channel on the Official Trailmakers Discord server.

In case you didn’t know, there’s a lot of cool events in and around Trailmakers. Every week we have a Weekly Challenge where we post a specific theme (like HALLOWEEN!), and you guys can submit vehicle blueprints. We look at the vehicles on our Friday Developer Stream and award a special in-game Trophy Block to the one we like the most. You can find the weekly theme on our Discord or on PlayTrailmakers

Some fans of Trailmakers have taken it upon themselves to create their own competitions and tournaments. For example you can join the wheelie challenge, the pokemon battle or the battlebots arena. You can learn more about these events in the #tournament channels on Discord.

If you want to be the first to try new Trailmakers blocks, maps, and other features, you should join the test squad. When we need testers for a new update, we post about it in the #help-the-devs channel on our Discord. We expect you to submit any bugs and issues you find. The most helpful bug-hunters get a special Golden Scarab block as a thank you.

We have a great new update coming out within the next few weeks - it’s something we’ve been working on for a long while. See you soon ːsteamhappyː

Today we're launching a brand new and very awesome update for Trailmakers. As the name might subtly hint at, this update is a big batch of new blocks - 38 of them to be exact. New sensor blocks, aerodynamic blocks, a modular tube system and much more. It's not all blocks though! With the new multithreaded wheel, aerodynamic, and buoyancy logic, multiplayer performance should be better than ever. There's also plenty of quality-of-life changes and bug fixes in this update. Read the full release notes below.

• Added more Daily Challenges! The Daily Challenge system is still in an early state, but we have added some more challenges so it takes longer before you run out.
  
• If you start a Daily Challenge with the Play button, you will get an arrow pointing to the goal of the challenge.
  
• The Block Hunts are now repeatable, but only gives you a reward once.
  
• There are new rewards for the Block Hunts - and the old seat rewards are now available by default.
  
• The workshop has been updated with a new look and the ability to tag and edit your creations.

• Multithreaded Wheels, Aerodynamics, and Buoyancy
  We have overhauled the wheel, aerodynamics, and buoyancy logic to make them multithreaded. Overall, this will give better server side performance, especially when using larger vehicles.

• When you switch camera angle in the builder, the nubs that are available for connection will light up briefly.
  
• The builder is getting smarter. Some blocks are now rotated when dragged out, in an angle the builder predicts you will use it. The angle depends on your camera position.
  
• Improved the way blocks are visualized and rotated in the inventory.
  
• Made it more consistent which way blocks are rotated when dragged out of the inventory.

• NEW: Speed Sensor Block - A block that can be connected to another block, and trigger at a certain speed. Configure it by selecting the block, and clicking the cogwheel.
  
• NEW: Altitude Sensor Block - A block that can be connected to another block, and trigger at a certain altitude. Configure it by selecting the block, and clicking the cogwheel.
  
• NEW: Modular Tube System - A series of pipes and 1x1 connector pieces for them.
  
  • Tube 1x1
    
  • Tube 1x3
    
  • Tube 1x4
    
  • Tube 1x8
    
  • Tube Elbow
    
  • Tube Double Elbow
    
  • Tube Tee
    
  • Tube Double Tee
    
  • Tube Cross
    
  • Tube Double Cross
    
  • Tube Tee Cross
  
• NEW: Aerodynamic Blocks
  • Cylinder 1x1x2
    
  • Rounded 2x4x2
    
  • Rounded Corner Inverted 1x2
    
  • Rounded Inverted 1x2
    
  • Wedge 3x1
    
  • Wedge 2x1x2
    
  • Wedge 2x4x2
    
  • Wedge 2x4
    
  • Wedge 3x4
    
  • Wedge 4x4
    
  • Cone 2x2x1
    
  • Cone 2x2x2
• NEW: 1x3 Block
  
• NEW: 2x2x2 Block
  
• NEW: Tank Cannon - A new “cannon” piece that is suitable for building custom weapons.
  
• NEW: Small Porthole
  
• NEW: Fang
  
• NEW: Small Tooth
  
• NEW: Large Tooth
  
• NEW: Flat Eye
  
• NEW: Eyeball
  
• NEW: Side View Mirror
  
• NEW: Round Side View Mirror
  
• NEW: Large Side View Mirror
  
• NEW: Golden Scarab - Sometimes awarded for finding and reporting a bug to the developers (we prefer reports on http://discord.gg/Trailmakers).
  
• CHANGED: Shield Plates have updated graphics.
  
• CHANGED: Many aerodynamic blocks have updated graphics.
  
• CHANGED: Armoured Seat, Go-kart Seat, Cockpit, and Operator Seat are no longer locked behind Block Hunts.
  
• Many old blocks have been renamed for greater consistency.
  
• Removed the empty “Antennas” category and replaced it with a “Facial Features” category in the accessories tab.

• Fixed a bug where rotating and undoing two blocks could make them clip into other blocks.
  
• Fixed a bug where undoing while not having anything selected would do nothing.
  
• Fixed the welding bug, hopefully for the last time. This bug sometimes caused vehicles to invert hinge rotation after spawning, and other weird stuff.
  
• Fixed the chickens so they are no longer cannon-resistant.