The past few weeks have been tough, but we've been hyper-focused on ensuring that Drive Buy is launch-ready.
In The Past Weeks We Have:
- Worked on localisations - Locked final content - Finished Two Bridges map - Made characters unlockable at levels - Made a bunch of vehicle skins for Season 1 - Fixed some issues with model UV layouts - Tweaked some existing vehicle skins - Made wheels universal items, giving you more customizability! - Added tons of new wheel items to the game - Lots of play testing! - Launched Game Round demo - Fixed Nintendo lotcheck issues
Want To Play Drive Buy?
We have relaunched the Drive Buy demo over on Gameround - the demo is only available until September 16th, so make sure you don't miss out! 👉 https://gameround.co/detail/68/info/EN 👈
New Drivers Hit The Road
Over on Twitter we revealed two more characters that you'll be able to play!
KENNY!
"Where I'm going, I don't need roads!"
HUMDRUM
Your mission hard-coded: FAST DELIVERIES, AT ANY COST
Thank you to everyone for your continued support!
~ Glitchers
August 14th - Dev Patch Notes
With the launch of Drive Buy being delayed until September 2020, we've been hard at work making adjustments and refinements to the title.
The past 2 weeks have seen:
Project upgrade to Unity 2019 LTS (giving us 2 years of support from Unity)
Switch submission ongoing
Nintendo Switch submission fixes
Vehicle handling tweaks/testing for 3 new characters
Added the ability to block accounts if we need to
Finished default vehicle skins for Dr. Tomorrow
'Two Bridges' map testing
Worked out improvements for Two Bridges map
Reduced memory footprint of Drive Buy significantly
"More packages, more nimble and absolutely wild round corners!"
Dr. Tomorrow
"Doctor by day, delivery driver by night."
We hope to have more of these updates in the run up to the launch of Drive Buy! Thank you to everyone for your continued support!
~ Glitchers
Building A Better Game
We know, we know. Where’s Drive Buy?
As all of you may know, Drive Buy launched a demo during the Steam Summer Festival to great review. Thank you once more to everyone who took part and let us know their thoughts. We received some amazing feedback and some areas of potential improvement were pointed out.
This feedback, alongside some other complications surrounding the current pandemic, means we have taken the very hard decision to delay the launch of Drive Buy until September 2020.
This delay has allowed us to focus on a lot of quality of life improvements and more!
So far, the launch version of Drive Buy will include:
Better matchmaking
Improved art and assets
Balance tweaks
6 playable characters with distinct vehicles
3 maps to play
3 game modes - of which we’re currently looking into adding some team-based variations👀
This delay also allows us to update to Unity 2019.4 LTS which will give us better Nintendo Switch support and generally better long term support for Drive Buy
We hope to have plenty of new exciting additions for you to experience when Drive Buy launches in September 2020. These changes will also help us support Drive Buy with juicy updates as we continue to support it post-launch. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter and Glitchers for regular updates and join us on Discord to discuss any and all updates coming to the game.
Thanks for reading! ~ Glitchers
Steam Game Festival: Ask Drive Buy devs about their twist on vehicle combat
Ask us anything about Drive Buy on this laid back stream with the developers: brothers Max and Hugo from Glitchers in London, UK.
We'll be taking questions via Steam chat, Twitch and our Discord, so pull up your favourite selection of vaporwave sounds and set your screen brightness to 1000% - it's time for Drive Buy.
Find out more about Drive Buy, install the demo and join us for our upcoming play session on Friday 19th.
If you like what you see, all we ask is that you Wishlist the game and look out for our twist on vehicle combat, coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch cross-play this July!
Steam Game Festival: Play Drive Buy with the developers
Glitchers developers Max (MASH) and Hugo (Babyman) will be playing the Drive Buy demo with the community, join them by downloading the demo and tuning into this special event.
Look out for the room code on the broadcast to jump into a game session with the developers who will also be answering your questions in the Steam chat!
We come to you today with an exciting announcement, one which should be delivered with the utmost urgency to all your money fountains….sorry we mean….clients!
Drive Buy is coming to Steam in July, ready for our Summer 2020 launch!
[previewyoutube="4u2s8gLa-Gc;full"]
We’re extremely excited to announce this, we’ve been working hard in the background and making sure everything is all ready for release!
You, faithful BuyCorp Employee, can help us in this time! We’d absolutely love it if you could spread the word to all your friends, Wishlist Drive Buy or even come and have a chat with us on any of our social platforms. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Alongside Steam, we’ll be posting a lot of updates on Twitter and on Discord so make sure to keep an eye out on those places too!
That’s all for now!
Thank you for reading,
TEAM GLITCHERS
THANK YOU BETA PLAYERS!
On behalf of the entire studio, a huge thank you to the 1,000+ beta players who redeemed their keys and joined us for the Drive Buy Closed Beta – your feedback has already proven invaluable and will most certainly contribute to a better gameplay experience for everyone who buys the game on launch.
Now the beta’s closed, we’re tuning Drive Buy for launch sometime in 2020
WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW?
Wishlist Drive Buy – even if you already had, the wishlist disappears when you activate a key, so please go back and wishlist Drive Buy on Steam to continue your support for the game.
Join us at EGX at 17th- 20th of October at ExCel London. You’ll find us at the Tentacle Zone where we’ll be riding with you in high-vis delivery driver vests. Come say hi and pick up some awesome Drive Buy merch too.
Watch the weekly stream! – The weekly stream will continue, so join us there each Tuesday at 7pm GMT on Twitch – next week we’re playing Knights and Bikes alongside Drive Buy.
Join the Discord and tell your friends about Drive Buy – it’s like Crazy Taxi had a baby with Mario Kart, but was badly influenced by their pal, Twisted Metal during the awkward teenage years. Kinda makes sense.
DRIVE BUY AT THE BARBICAN
UKIE offered us space to show Drive Buy at one of our favourite locations in London, the Barbican, and we jumped at the chance.
We’re thrilled at how the players at UKIE 30th birthday responded to Drive Buy, and we look forward to seeing more highlight-worthy plays during EGX and future game events.
WHAT ELSE HAPPENED IN BETA?
Apart from all the massive updates to Drive Buy, we took Drive Buy around to some of our developer friends.
We owe a big thanks to all the game studios for letting us bring Drive Buy to their offices
Ustwo Games are our buddies from way back, so it was great to show them Drive Buy and get their feedback.
The Tentacle Zone offered us an opportunity to share Drive Buy with both Payload Studios and Spilt Milk Studios all in one super awesome space and the feedback was amazing.
When a good game of Drive Buy is celebrated with a fist bump.
SHOUTOUTS
Shout out to everyone who played, but especially K.Doctor, BionicVapour, Morbid_Wisp, BatPrince, Crystallised Entertainment, GNious, Druconusx and MilonRouge for sticking with the bugs and playing with us on the stream.
We look forward to seeing you all back in Drive Buy soon and chatting with us on Discord!
An evil retail empire needs an evil CEO. So, let me ask you, who’s that evil CEO? Jeff Sellmore of course! In this development post we wanted to introduce you to Jeff Sellmore and his wild vision for the BuyCorp empire, after all, every player in Drive Buy is an employee of BuyCorp, so you better get to know Jeff in a bit more detail.
THE DESIGN OF JEFF SELLMORE
Now we know the name Jeff Sellmore, I can start to tell you where he comes from. Influences for Jeff come from the CEO of an existing retail giant(s) *cough* but also Hunger Games, Max Headroom and Running Man.
Caesar Flickerman, Hunger Games
The Caesar Flickerman character played by Stanley Tucci was among the references with his glistening smile and slick back hair from his role in the Hunger Games films. His look was a perfect basis to create Jeff, our very own CEO for a Drive Buy world. We wanted a character who could be mistaken for a real-world CEO but in the same breath could just as easily host a bizarre game show. A character who represented the worst of the corporate world: oblivious, self-serving and demanding of your attention and the best of game shows: flashy, faux-friendly and stuffed with overly white teeth.
Proposed Character Sketches
SO WHAT’S THE STORY?
The inherent greed of a psychopathic CEO, Jeff Sellmore, CEO of BuyCorp has pushed BuyCorp to increase profits at the cost of all else. Tracking customer behaviours and encouraging them to buy more through targeted advertising was just not enough. Jeff demanded a technology solution that could persuade customers to buy more stuff regardless of whether they really wanted it. After years of research, Buy Corp have finally introduced brainwashing advertisements: a new way to the guarantee the sales targets Jeff Sellmore has always dreamed about.
Brainwashing advertisements were the brainchild of Dr. Tomorrow, a behavioural scientist that works for Buy Corp. Jeff wields the power to switch any Buy Corp advertisement into a hypnotic video message that will persuade people to BUY. STUFF. IMMEDIATELY. Just look at them around the game map.
Drive Buy emphasises the delivery drivers in this bizarre (not too unrealistic) world, the question that remains is: can you get these packages out fast enough to meet Jeff’s delivery targets? Play Drive Buy and find out.
Variations of Jeff Sellmore in colourful attire
JEFF’S BRAINWASHING GLASSES
Jeff is the unwavering owner of a chiselled jawline, slick back hair, brilliant white teeth and some dominating brows. He accessorises with BuyCorp glasses that give him a persuasive edge over policy makers, troublesome politicians, angry stakeholders or vocal activists. By pumping out the brainwashing signal to get his way, BuyCorp has been able to grow without interruption by regulation. The glasses are a strong image of the control Jeff holds over the world BuyCorp operates in.
References for the hypnotic circles come from Jungle book and the glasses are pulled from one of our favourite films (with the longest fight scene) – They Live.
You should wissssshlisssst Drive Buy…
They’re uniquely paired with a game show style host such as a Caesar Flickerman, but we also went as far as making them into a Snapchat Lens so you too can join the Sellmore family and persuade all your friends to wishlist Drive Buy on Steam.
It’s been a great two weeks in development. We’ve made some exciting edits to the build, including a new package design, map changes and more level lighting changes. We’ve been working on improving the game visuals with a focus on improving player visibility and making the delivery flows much smoother.
CANARY MAP
Canary Map from across the water
The Canary map now flows a lot better, we have introduced larger turns on the edge of the map and increased lights to boost the visibility of shortcuts and highlighted landmarks to help with memorising the layout. Because of those changes to Canary, more of the surrounding water is visible at one end of the map. Certain buildings now emit light which helps with navigation and we bumped up the environment light giving more dramatic light and dark areas.
The delivery locations and customer layouts have all been refined so they’re now more streamlined. Players should find it easier to make deliveries in one smooth motion freeing up their thoughts to concentrate on what’s next.
CHANGELOG (2341)
Map updates for Canary and Kingsland
Updated delivery location layouts
New shortcut from package drop zone (Canary)
Bigger turns (Canary)
UI Updates
Incoming rocket indicator has been updated to be more visible
Removed equipped powerup indicator from main UI
Your eyes are not deceiving you, this is a blimp dropping hundreds of packages into the world. The last few weeks have been really exciting with several large features being implemented for this latest release.
In order to keep you up to date with every tiny detail, we’ve got a changelog at the end of this post – so take a look if just want the detail.
WHY PACKAGE MOUNTAIN?
Following the Payload Studio feedback from the Drive Buy Roadshow, we started working on some of their suggestions. We focused on objective visibility and readability of the task to simplify players first few game sessions.
Introducing the PACKAGE. We started looking into the delivery process again. Among the few issues we identified were the products. It was clear that the gameboy made no sense. It was confusing to players, especially as we’re trying to create a futuristic world about delivering packages.
The gameboy was replaced with the humble box, a highly readable, understandable and logical choice. Full of mystery and excitement, the classic cardboard box represents packages we all receive on a day to day basis so it has become the default delivery item in Drive Buy. Boxes in Drive Buy are called Packages and that’s what players are racing hard to deliver.
Drive Buy is fast paced and every strategic decision you make counts towards taking the lead. Having Packages spawn in rows of four seemed underwhelming when we were asking players to make a huge number of deliveries and it also disadvantaged players who made it to the blimp and had to wait for products to be dropped.
So, Package Mountain was born. The blimp now drops a ginormous amount of packages at the pickup location that forms a mountain. It looks awesome and is really satisfying to use.
All hail package mountain!
AUTO DELIVERY
Having to hold the deliver button is now a thing of the past. Now when you’re close to the delivery zone, packages will automatically be held out and are delivered just like before, when they touch the customers. This means you can focus on driving, lining up your vehicle and sliding round corners to make the perfect delivery without disturbing your flow.
The A button (X on PS4 controllers) is now used as an alternative acceleration button to match Mario Kart. We also added shoulder bumpers to be alternative handbrake and powerup (again, like Mario Kart).
QUICK PLAY OR CUSTOM GAME
With the increase in the number of players online, we had to rethink how players get into games.
Quick play puts you into the best game available finding an open game in your region or the closest region with active players (so you have the fastest connection).
The behind the scenes smarts to this has taken a lot of development so we are particularly proud of how effective it is. Try it out!
Because Drive Buy is played best with friends we needed to make sure invites worked really well too. Now Steam invites and Discord invites are even easier to access directly from the lobby.
REFINEMENTS TO DELIVERY BATTLE GAME MODE
After making big changes to the package pickup and adding Auto Delivery we also made changes to Delivery Battle.
Now players always have a clear objective. Every player has their own Delivery Zones dedicated to them and there’s only ever 1 at a time to save confusion.
To help you decide which customers you are delivering to we’ve put coins above their head and further highlighted their location with alternative coloured bases. To further hit a home run with this there’s a new arrow to help you navigate to your next objective whether it’s a delivery zone or to pick up more packages.
SMASHING UP THE PLACE
With all the manic driving and intense rivalries playing out we wanted to reflect this in the environment as much as possible. In future there will be other environmental changes but this first pass on has made existing damage last longer across the maps. You’ll be seeing a lot of tyre marks and lamp posts flung all over the place. Look up and you’ll also notice autonomous delivery drones flying around.
POWERUPS FLOW & TWEAKS
Powerups have all been moved to major intersections on both Kingsland and Canary. The idea behind this is continuing the flow of driving- no more breaking your flow to collect a powerup and they’re now even easier to spot.
The Ice beam has a minor change reducing the frozen time from 5s to 4.5s
CHANGELOG
Major Updates:
Quick play puts you into the best game available
Packages mountain!
Auto-delivery
Others:
Damage lasts longer across the maps
Invite players through Discord, Steam or add bots
Gave vehicles a smaller turning circle
User reporting now on F1 key anywhere in the game
Moved powerup locations to be more accessible on both maps
Tweaks
Reduced frozen time from 5s to 4.5s
Fixed stats on match results screen
Fixed some Valentino skins (edited)
