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Pure Rock Crawling News

NEW VEHICLE !

Hi ! I hope you are all doing well ! New vehicle is now available !

Classic Rock is joining the vehicle selection of Pure Rock Crawling. Accompanied by new bumpers, doors and other customization elements. Conquer the trails with this classic, whether you want to build it up, or go for a classic look with old wheels and chrome bumpers.

Either way you will get true rock crawling experience with soft body, deformable tires and physically simulated suspension.



Alongside adding a new vehicle I addressed few of the requests:
  • Fixed bug causing dragging brakes. Now the vehicle behaves more naturally. Fix for engine drag when the manual gearbox is equipped will come soon.
  • Customization items are now previewed before buying. Simply hover over the item name.
  • Fixed bug causing textures to be applied incorrectly when changing items in the garage
  • Achievements should now track properly
  • potential memory leak fix (if you experienced it in the past, let me know if it still happens, its hard to replicate)


Have fun and stay tuned for future updates ! Cheers !

WHEEL SUPPORT

Hi ! I hope you are all doing great ! Wheel support received a massive overhaul.

As you may remember, there is an ongoing effort to make working wheel support, and this update is the next step towards this goal. There were multiple bugs and issues recently. Pure Rock Crawling is still under development, and on some occasions things like updating the engine version or core mechanics can cause other things to have problems. This one was severe, which I was aware of. I put much effort and many development hours to fix most of the issues. I tested it thoroughly on my end and the changes made work fine with my setup. I hope that they will work for you as well.



But first, if you are using a wheel with Pure Rock Crawling, you will have to map axes and buttons from scratch. There is a new save system for that and it requires new bindings to be made. Second, a heads up that the update size is big, which is due to updating the engine version.

Additionally, if you happen to use deadzone options or invert axis in the advanced menu, these may or may not be wrong too. You may want to delete the following save file:

%LOCALAPPDATA% \PureRockCrawling\Saved\SaveGames\controller.sav

Remember, you need to bind every input in the Options menu. No wheel will be recognized and work right out of the box with Pure Rock Crawling.



Checklist to help me help you if you are still having issues with the steering wheel:

  • Did you rebind your steering wheel ?
  • Update drivers for your steering wheel, software and firmware
  • Make sure that your wheel software is running
  • Has your setup changed recently ? try rebinding axes and buttons
  • Does any wheel input work ?
  • Does your keyboard and/or mouse work ?
  • Do input indicators in the advanced menu move at all ?
  • Does your setup work with other games ?

I created a new topic in the forum to track down current issues, please if you are experiencing any, describe it in this topic:

WHEEL SUPPORT DISCUSSION THREAD

Thanks !

NEW MAP !

Hi ! I hope you are all doing well ! New map is here !

Fitting with the rest of the most recent maps, this new environment is made with my own photogrammetry assets. They were all taken in Grand Canyon area. The new map features more vertical trails and narrow paths to explore. On top of that, smaller rocks have physics enabled and your vehicle will interact with them, giving even more realistic rock crawling scenarios.



Alongside finishing this new map, I worked on couple more fixes. The bug which was occurring for some of you, where you couldn't click the UI buttons, even though the buttons were registering the mouse is now fixed. It turned out that this issue was resolution/scaling related. There were instances where the game was running at different resolution than the one registered by mouse. I didn't find the exact reason for this behavior, but the new implemented solution fixes it. The game will double check for your native display resolution and match both game and input resolution. This also fixes instances when the game was starting in 1080p on 4k monitors. It should eliminate the need for manual entering the resolution in the .ini files.

Additionally, the vehicle physics received some polish as always. I have adjusted the curves for gear outputs which were reported wrong. From now on the vehicles feel more responsive and agile.



I am aware of problems with wheel support and other issues that are being reported and flagged. I am working on making additional changes, especially in terms of wheel support, so it would be problem free in the future. However, this is the upgrade that needs a lot of testing and is not a straightforward, easy fix and it will be a separate update in the future.

Hope you like the current update :) Have fun with the new map and see you in the next one ! Happy exploring !

Cheers !

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! - Anniversary Update

Hi ! I hope you are all doing great ! Pure Rock Crawling is celebrating its 6th birthday !

First things first, a few improvements to the gameplay. Thanks to everybody who caught a few things that were not right with the tutorial. Several things piled up and caused problems in completing the tutorial and proceeding to the game:
  • When resetting location to the trailer a reference to the vehicle was being lost, that caused inability to complete other tasks. That is now fixed.
  • You couldn't access the garage if the previous notification window was not closed/confirmed. It is fixed now.
  • Also discovering the trailer required engaging with it to proceed - that seemed unnecessary so it now only requires discovering it.
To avoid these situations in the future, you can now skip the tutorial completely while starting a new game.


If you happen to find any other issues please let me know in the forums.

There are several known issues that I am currently working on, like (but not limited to) vehicles losing power when turning left, weak brakes and other gamepad/wheel related bugs. This should be temporarily fixed but I am in the middle of reworking the whole system for binding steering wheel inputs as it has a conflict with the gamepad inputs causing bugs like these. So the fix should be here soon. As of right now, you might need to rebind your wheel inputs for: steering, throttle, brake and clutch. Apologies for the inconvenience.



Alongside the above mentioned fixes I am working on a new map. It's coming along nicely, but still needs some work.

To sum up, this was quite a year. From drivetrain and physics updates that improved the simulation side of gameplay, through new challenges, missions, garage for modifying your trucks, to a new map. Everything topped with the complete redesign of the UI. I am very happy with every improvement and will work hard to add more. I know that not every aspect of the game works for everyone but I am reading all of your reports, issues and suggestions. Thanks to you Pure Rock Crawling is constantly evolving into a better game, big thanks ! I am going straight back to work on the next update, stay tuned !

Cheers and take care !

GENERAL UPDATE

Hi ! I hope you are all doing well ! Although, this update took more time to develop than expected, it brings many improvements and new elements to Pure Rock Crawling.

Let's run through these changes :)

  • Graphical improvements
    Earlier, the game used a very unoptimized sharpening material in the post-process. This resulted in not as sharp textures and blurring behind the moving vehicle. The new method, which is more engine based, improved greatly looks of the game and gave it much more refined look
  • New UI
    Whole game UI was redone. The purpose was mainly to fix the issues that you might have encountered while switching between the input devices. The other benefit of this change is the new, refreshed look of all the menus in the game.


    After the implemented changes, the buttons stay in focus for the device. This fixes the lost input problem where you weren't able to select any button. Moreover, the whole loop of menus and interact widgets was reorganized and therefore leads to much more fluid gameplay. Now you don't have to back out to the main menu whenever you want to go back to options menu.
  • Garage
    Implementing this feature took a while, but I am so happy how it turned out. You now have access to the garage, which is placed on the main maps and marked on mini map, too.


    The garage is your hub and access point to the customization and vehicle selection menu. It also gives you the option to fast travel between the maps. Again, the garage greatly improves the gameplay by not having to quit the game to main menu to change your vehicle or select a map. Hope you will like it :)

  • Travel points
    Switching between the maps is now integrated into the level design. Inspired by US National Parks' entrances, now you can simply drive to the end of the map and will be presented with the map selection.

  • Physics
    As always there is something to improve with the physics system. The newest changes eliminate shaky wheels when not driving. Also, the whole physics simulation now runs smoother and faster. This also eliminated bugs with tires glitching into the terrain when they were changed in the customization menu.
  • Options
    Alongside UI update, the options menu got solid rework. The wheel configuration was separated for more clarity and easier setup. Again, all of the UI elements now keep track of your input and result in smooth navigation.

  • Other
    • fixed lag spike on startup
    • fixed collisions having wrong properties on the Winter map, resulting in lag spikes on smaller rocks
    • fixed unnecessary assets being packaged with shipping build of the game, resulting in 50% game file reduction
    • fixed loosing input from steering wheel and other devices
    • tutorial is now updated with the new systems and features (if you want to rerun tutorial you have to delete tutorial save file from the game save directory)
    • multiplayer is now moved to separate build (available in beta tab in steam game properties). I hope to get back to it in the future and make it more playable. Sadly, as of right now it blocks further development of the game as it interferes too much with current changes (especially wheel support) causing a whole bunch of bugs. For now, it is too hard to keep it updated and work on these things simultaneously.
    • desert map is currently not playable, I was trying to save it but for now it does not work with recent changes, newly implemented features and graphical improvements. It will see a rework in the foreseeable future.
Hope you like the changes. There is still a lot to come :) As always, if you have any issues or suggestions, please write it down in the forums ! See you in the next update !