Trailmakers News

Hi Trailmakers!

It’s been a while since we’ve updated Trailmakers. Apart from a nice Christmas holiday, the reason for the lack of updates is because we are working on a larger project.

The project is two-fold. First of all, we are revamping the main “campaign” of Trailmakers. The Expedition didn’t really hit the mark for a lot of players (or for us for that matter) so in the spirit of Early Access we are going to remove it and replace it with something we think fits the DNA of the game a lot better. We can’t wait to show you more about it when it’s ready. We think this update is important in order to make Trailmakers ready for 1.0 release later this year.

In regards to the accessory blocks that are spread out in the current Expedition, there will be a new way to obtain them in the new Campaign mode. If you’ve already unlocked them all you will get to keep them of course. The update will also have a ton of other features, making it the biggest Trailmakers update yet. We expect to launch it on Steam in February.

Secondly, we are also finishing up Trailmakers for Xbox. We decided long ago to do the Xbox version ourselves instead of outsourcing it to make sure the quality was satisfactory. We are launching in the Xbox Game Preview program, so the new campaign and the Xbox launch are not to be confused with a transition into 1.0 and exiting Early Access. That will come later this year. We plan on releasing Trailmakers on Xbox at some point between February and April, depending on how many last minute obstacles we run into. When we finally commit to a release date, we will put out a date reveal trailer.

Thank you for your patience!

P.S. There's always something to do in Trailmakers. Head over to our Discord to participate in weekly building competitions, or try some of the awesome new inventions made by the community.

The holiday season is upon us. It’s time to cozy up with a blanket, some hot cocoa, and maybe the new Trailmakers update? It’s a smaller update than last time, but it has some new features we hope you’ll enjoy. If you need something else to do during the holidays, make sure you check out our Trailermakers competition where you can win a Blue Yeti (how thematic).

• Ho Ho Hoooold up... is that snow falling in the Danger Zone?!
  Take a walk in the winter wonderland, and perhaps you’ll find some presents from Santa. Don’t worry - they are for you ❤️

• NEW: Helicopter Engine v2 - The engineers have finally managed to put nubs on top of a helicopter engine. Truly a groundbreaking innovation.
  
• NEW: 2 *Secret* Blocks - The first present is quite heavy, and it has the same shape as something you already own. The second present is small and shaped like a T. Log in between December 1 and December 9 to find these blocks in the Danger Zone.
  
• NEW: 3 *Secret* Blocks - Three almost identical presents rattle with a metallic clang when you shake them. Perhaps they are part of a set? Log in between December 10 and December 16 to find three new blocks in the Danger Zone.
  
• NEW: 3 *Secret* Blocks - The first two small presents rattle when you shake them. The third present is warm to the touch! Log in between December 17 and December 31 to find three new blocks in the Danger Zone.
  

• Fixed an issue where detached seats would become immune to damage.
  
• Fixed a goal scored in the Carball Arena rewarding two points.
  
• Fixed spawn rotation and mirroring on several blocks.
  
• Removed the underwater cactus in Race Island.
  
• Smoothed out the Danger Zone roads.
  
• Made an invisible ramp in Expedition appear again.
  
• Fixed some blocks returning to default profile colours when becoming scrap.
  
• Fixed an issue with pooled blocks becoming too large.
  
• Fixed a stuck in build mode bug related to repairing and respawning at the same time.
  
• Fixed an issue with structures that had too many weld points.
  
• Fixed a crash when respawning in big structures.
  
• Fixed some collision on the Danger Zone carrier.
  
• Numerous fixes to our new Multiplayer framework.
  
• Fixed occasional server side crash occurring when a client disconnects
  
• Fixed rare serverside crash while starting up a new server
  
• Fixed server side crash when respawning while sitting inside a large structure
  
• Fixed server side physics crash when trying to enter build mode on very compact structures
  
• Fixed server side crash when loading and deleting a lot of structures in the same build session
  
• Fixed a "Stuck in build mode" when simultaneously repairing, respawning and entering build on the same structure
  
• Fixed an infinite loading screen when network times out while joining a remote server
  
• Improved client side load time so that network timeouts occur less frequently when joining remote servers
  
• Fixed the ramp.
  

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!

Read more

Today's Deal: Save 33% on Trailmakers!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Sunday at 10AM Pacific Time

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.