Hi folks! Been a while. How's 2021 shaping up for you all? We here at Vector Unit have been busy as bees, tying up loose ends and tuning, tuning. I hope you've been enjoying the game. We have a bunch of small fixes in this update, which you may or may not notice but I'm going to call a few of them out.
It would be REALLY AWESOME if you Early Access folks can pay attention to these changes and let us know if you spot any issues:
Multi-language font for player names. Great news, 해단 and Владимир! We've added support for Russian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese characters to the font we use for player names, so you won't be looking at ???? when you top the leaderboards.
Car self-righting adjustment. There was an issue before where the car would suddenly and violently right itself when you were driving sideways (like wall riding an underwater tube). We've softened that a lot -- but now you sometimes might skid on the side of your car more? Let us know how it feels to you!
B'Zorp finish line mission easier. We loosened up the difficulty a little bit on the Telezorp-before-the-finish-line mission.
Like 100 more little things
In case you're wondering, we're quickly approaching the day when we switch from Early Access to full release. We're trying to squeeze in a few more fixes and get stuff like screenshots and trailers ready before we make it happen. Feedback and change ideas still welcome!
Enjoy!
Version 2020.12.16
Have you ever heard people say the last 10% of the work is 90% of the effort? Turns out it's kind of true. We're at the point in development where we are testing, finding bugs, fixing bugs, and grinding some of the rough edges down to a slippery-smooth luster.
The most significant change in this update is this: We finally got our translations for French, German, Spanish and Italian integrated! If you're fluent in these languages, let us know what you think of the translations -- turns out there's no word in German for "Cluck-na-do".
Also you probably noticed we changed our versioning system. Goodbye, EA-whatever. Hello, 2020.12.16! Technically we're still in Early Access but this is the first step of getting everything synced for the final release, and date-based versions is how we're doing it going forward.
Here's just a few of the other fixes and changes:
Fixed simple lighting for Optimized graphics
Changed time scoring criteria to work off rounded 100th's of a second (and an exact match = success)
Added smooth loading fade transitions to server images in Tournaments
Cleaned up screen transition animations in front-end screens
Paint screen polish
Trophy and star reward polish
Career map optimization
Career fog of war polish
Fixed sign-in & network check scripting and messaging for Tournaments
Added Narrow font for longer localized languages
Fixed squashed UVs on paint cans
Resetting your game now resets everything (including paints and character dialogs)
Icicle smash count stats now work
Car collection stats now work
Really the list just keeps going....
Version EA-5.2
Folks we are closing in on the end of Early Access. We can smell it. The Vector Unit team is feeling that extra burst of energy that comes when you see the light at the end of the tunnel glimmering... although, admittedly, it might be the energy you feel when you think about eating pumpkin pie and gravy and stuff for four days straight.
In any case, we have a pretty sweet update for you. Not a bunch of fancy-pants, think-they're-better-than you, spectacular big-ticket new features. Just a little humble polish items here and there, doing their earnest best to make the game better'n'better.
Stats screen update. We added a ton of stats to track wins, losses, stars, trophies, broken stuff, and more. Some of these are going to start at zero, not representative of actual progress. These will only be completely accurate after resetting the game.
Lots of HUD polish. We're now showing the event type, speed/difficulty, trophy criteria, etc. during the pre-game intro cameras, the pause menu, the post-game HUD. It's pretty neat. Still need to do that slammin' reward sequence!
UI informational polish. That sounds boring, but hopefully you'll appreciate it. We're just going through the user interface, adding as much info as we can to make the game more intelligible. Among other things, we added strategy guides for every Powerup.
Lotsa bug fixes. So many.
Version EA-5.1
This week we have new achievements, Tournament improvements, and a whole bunch of bug fixes and polish.
13 new Achievements. We've added a bunch of new achievements for the completionists among you, because shouldn't you get something special for obsessively collecting every single car and driver in the game?
Tournament UI polish. Added a total player count, improved error handling for connection timeouts, and more! We also added support for themed tournaments like "monster trucks only".
We are trying to track down that bug with gigantic Tournament wait times (18882 days). We think we fixed it? But it's hard for us to test so please let us know if you keep having the problem or not!
We now have an icon for the application on the tool bar! Woot!
Some characters now have special abilities that match their unlocked skins. Pizza Cannon anyone?
Verison EA-5.0
Folks, this is a big one. Like, skip Versions 4.7-4.9 big. It might not seem like much because we've only really got one bullet point, but that bullet's a big one. It's big because we think Tournaments with leaderboards where we can all finally compete with one another and talk endless smack is a big deal. But also because this is the last major feature update we have planned before we are done. ...OK, granted, there's still ton of work to do. Tuning, polishing, fixing. All that. We're not, as our old boss Don Daglow used to say, "done-di-done-done, done", but we're getting pretty close to it.
But until then, please enjoy:
Tournaments - Yes! Compete for leaderboard dominance in races, firework furies, drift competitions, and more. Eventually we'll settle into some kind of regular cadence, probably a tournament or two a week. But for a while we're going to be throwing them up fast and furious to test every idea we can think of. So tell us what you like, what you don't, and show us what you're made of.
Version EA-4.5
Ohhhhhh man. We could tell you about all the super awesome stuff that was going to be in this build, but then our schedule just exploded and it didn't all make it, and telling you about it would probably just make you feel kinda sad, and there's too much of that going around these days, so let's talk about the sorta awesome stuff that actually made it.
But first, some important alerts!
We had to reformat the ghost car data, so your saved ghosts will be lost. But that's actually a good thing because it gives you a great excuse to record them again!
We had to change around a bunch of the unlock and skin mission criteria. The good news is that any cars or skins you've unlocked will stay unlocked. The bad news is that some missions which you were close to completing will have to start over. Sorry, we don't expect to do this again, not on this scale anyway.
OK now the sorta awesome stuff:
Variable rule sets in Adventure mode. We thought it would be fun to vary it up and put different game rule sets into the Adventure mode. You can see the rules over at the right and bring up a little dialog to tell you what those rules are. We would love to know what you think about this.
New Car! Twister is finally ready to be unlocked for your driving pleasure.
Various bug fixes.
We're about 72% sure that the SUPER awesome stuff will make it into next week's build so stay tuned!
Version EA-4.4
Welcome to the latest installment of our game show "Find That Key!" This week, we have a special surprise for all you contestants -- we actually have a key!
The Mr Happy secret Pumpkin Patch is live, for real this time. There is a secret key to unlock it that you can actually find, and all is good. The clues have changed as well, so forget everything you thought you knew about key-finding and give it a try. We're particularly interested in finding the right balance between frustration and fun in this key-hunting-exercise, so try and start fresh and tell us what you think.
Mr Happy's Secret Pumpkin Patch Key Hunt Take 2. Yeah sorry about last week. This time there really is a key. And a new clue. Have at it!
Championship / Quick Event polish. We added new trophy logic so it's hopefully a little more clear what's going on. Also a new, prettier Championship screen.
We sent our robot maintenance crew back into the Biodome to clean up the giant door mess they left last week.
Various tuning and bug fixes
Enjoy!
Version EA-4.3
OK folks this is a fatty. We got your secret Pumpkin Patch, full of mysterious chicanery and the return of Mr. Happy. We've got your fancy blinged out street series cars with neon underlighting, plus the tuff-cute Baja Buster. We've got trophies, mission hints... I mean, an SDK update? What more could anyone possibly want?
Discover the secret Pumpkin Patch hidden somewhere between a nightmare and a dad joke. You'll have to find the secret key and earn a ton of stars to unlock it, but hey you can do that!
Mr. Happy makes his triumphant return as the one and only (so far) super-secret hidden driver character in the game. Can you guess which secret map region he's hiding within?
New fancy street series cars! Big Dog, Gran Corsa, Micro EX and Lightning GT are kitted out with neons, colored rims and so much more bling it'll make your eyes bleed with joy.
And wait! Another new car, the Baja Buster rounds out our selection with off-road fury and a massive spoiler.
First pass of trophies for Championships and Quick Events. You can only win these for Default preset rules.
Challenge Hints. When selecting a car or driver, you can now get little hints telling you which ones have challenges you can complete on the current track/event. You can also press down on the Left Stick thumb button to bring up collection info right there!
Paint cans moved! Be warned that paints and decals you haven’t unlocked yet are probably in different places. You should still be able to get everything you were missing, but you may have to look through tracks you've already explored. Sorry! We (probably) won't move them again.
Oh hey, guess what! We added an option to the presets that lets you choose duplicate drivers. So those of you clamoring for an all-Beach-Bro race can finally do it (with a custom preset).
Update to Steam SDK v1.50
Version EA-4.2
With this release we wrap up the main Adventure mode levels, with the lava-rific Volcano Region. Also a bunch of usability improvements and bug fixes. In the coming weeks we'll be adding Tournament play, plus some more cars and special secret sauce. And then we'll be, um, done? Well at least for v.1.0. Stay tuned!
The Volcano Region brings the pain with hot lava and the Ultimate Cup.
Mix it up with Random Weather for Quick Event tracks.
Added rumble on/off toggle for gamepads
Added scrollbars to all selection grids
The Preset keyboard now works with regular actual keyboard keys in keyboard mode (why was that so hard?) We also put in some shortcuts for gamepads.
Changed a bunch of the smash missions for gold skins. Now they're more like exploration challenges, less grindy, more fun (we hope?)
Retuned Firework Fury difficulty because OK we admit it was too hard.
Plus TONS of bug fixes too boring to list individually!
Keep those comments comin' please, your feedback has been amazing!
Beach Buggy Racing 2: Island Adventure
So as most of you know, there's older version of Beach Buggy Racing 2 on mobile phones. But also as most of you know, the Steam / console version of the game is super different -- in many ways it's an entirely new game, with Adventure mode, split screen and quick race gameplay, customizable presets, etc.
So we figured -- it's a new game, it deserves a new title. Instead of just calling this "Beach Buggy Racing 2", which is kinda confusing, we're going to call it:
OK we admit, we have a thing for long game titles. But it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
We're still working on the exact details of the logo, but this is more or less where its going to end up. Tell us what you think!
