Robocraft: Full Spectrum Combat - Now Live! news

A SPECIAL EARLY XMAS PRESENT FROM FREEJAM

• ALL EXISTING USERS GET FREE PREMIUM UNTIL NEW YEAR’S DAY!
• Each day you login between today and New Years Day your account will be credited with an additional day of Premium

• If you already own Premium, you will still get these extra days added to your account

PAINT YOUR ROBOTS

• New ‘Paint Applicator’ gun allows you to paint the cubes in your Robot
• Use shortcut keys ‘1’ and ‘2’ to switch between the ‘Cube Manipulator’ (also new) and ‘Paint Applicator’ guns
• Left click to paint a cube
• Hold left click to fire paint like a machine gun
• Hold right click to fill the Robot, hold until the progress bar is at 100% to complete the fill, let go mid fill to ‘cancel’ fill
• Use the mouse wheel to cycle between cube colors
• Use the middle mouse wheel, or ‘F’ key to ‘Pick’ the color of cubes under the crosshair from your existing Robot
• Push ‘Q’ for the Color Palette swatch when the Paint Applicator is selected
• If ‘Mirror Mode’ is active, color painting is also mirrored
• 4 Colors available for free
• 16 Colors available to all Premium users (remember, all existing users have Premium til New Year)
• Premium Colors on your Robot remain when Premium runs out, so you only need 1 day premium to color your bots
• All Chassis Cubes can be painted
• All Movement, Hardware and Special Cubes can be painted
• All Cosmetics Cubes can be painted, including the Robot Masks

ALL GAME MODES UNLOCKED

• Team Deathmatch, Battle Arena and The Pit unlocked and available to all users and all Robot Ranks
• Additional Leagues game mode for those wishing to enter the League’s separately, so high Rank Robots can now play Battle Arena without being ranked if they wish

ALL GARAGE SLOTS FREE

• You can add extra Garage Slots for free, just click ‘Add New’ to get an extra slot
• You can have a maximum of 25 (this is a technical limit which will be removed when we’ve finished our upgrade to the backend technology in 2016)
• Users who have more than 25 will keep their extra slots, but will not be able to add more
• Any users who owned more than 3 Garage Slots will have GC reimbursed for each extra slot

UNITY 5 GAME ENGINE UPGRADE

• Game engine upgraded from Unity 4 to Unity 5
• This introduces multiple core support which improves the performance for PC’s at both low and high ends
• 60 fps cap removed so fps as high as 240 now achievable
• Our own tests on a low end craptop showed previous fps rates of 30 increasing to 80 fps in Unity 5, with overall game fps comparable to Minecraft or better in many cases
• Improved lighting and special effects
• Physics re-written to support Unity 5 (U5 upgraded required us to rework some of the physics)
• Unity 5 physics and rendering heavily optimised

NEW AUTO-HEALTH REGEN FEATURE

• If you take damage and retreat to cover your Robot will automatically regen after a cool down period of 10 seconds
• The HUD in the bottom left corner shows how many seconds have passed, and begins to beep when you are about to regen
• Taking damage, or firing your weapon will cancel the regen
• So, if you want to regen, you must retreat to a safe place and hold fire

MAJOR CRF UPGRADES

• The CRF has been upgraded
• Now, whenever you spend RP on a Robot you will own it as your own, it’s cubes, it’s Garage Slot, etc.
• The RP prices of bots are equal to the sum of the RP costs of all the cubes used in the Robot
• All Robots without Premium Colors or Cosmetics and within your CPU limit (as per your Player Level) will be available for RP
• Only Robots that have been built from scratch from an empty bay can be uploaded to the Community Robot Factory
• Robots with Premium Colors will be GC only to non-Premium users, and RP buyable for Premium users
• Robots with Cosmetics or higher CPU than you have will be GC only
• All Robots can now be purchased for GC, prices are based on Robot Rank and which Cosmetic Cubes are attached
• There is a new ‘Featured Robot’ section
• Freejam can select your Robots to be Featured
• If your Robot is Featured a duplicate is created and it is given priority of position in searches on the Factory
• Creator will receive all RP and GC revenue share of Featured Robots that they have created
• A new ‘Featured’ robots filter has been added to the filter drop down list
• Hitting ESC now cancels searches (speeds things up when you change your mind)

GARAGE SCREEN UPGRADED

• Thumbnails saved for your existing Robots to make it easier to find your favourite ahead of your next battle
• To save your thumbnails out, simply click on each Robot once to load it
• These thumbnail images are saved locally on your PC, so if you play on 2 PC’s you need to click on the Robots on each PC
• Robot scroll bar upgraded to display more information including the name of your Robot to make it easier to select
• Button arrows added to the ends of the carousel to make it easier to scroll through your collection
• Dismantle button now deletes the Robot, returns all the cubes to your inventory, and deletes the Garage Slot (you can re-add as Garage Slots are free now)

ARMOR UPGRADED AND NEW SHAPES ADDED

• All Armor upgraded to Carbon 6 for everyone
• Just one kind of Armor now based on the style of the Carbon 6 with the same health and mass stats as the Carbon 6
• All users who previously owned Carbon 6 cubes or Hallow Cubes will have their RP reimbursed so they can re-purpose the RP on other items
• Game has been completely rebalanced for one type of Armor, Weapons, Electroplate, Robot Rankings, all rebalanced to match the armor
• Carry masses of functional Movement cubes upgraded to account for the new higher masses of the upgraded Chassis cubes
• Many new 1x1x1 shapes added to the Chassis category – more larger sizes shapes to follow in early 2016
• All S-Type variants removed, with non-S-Type stats upgraded to S-Type stats (non-S-Types looked better when colored, so they were best to keep)
• All removed cubes replaced with equivalent cube to maintain your Robot integrity
• Tech Tree layout reworked to reflect the changes above into a spiral formation

NEW CUBE MANIPULATOR

• New ‘Cube Manipulator’ gun for when you’re building
• Shows the number of cubes of the selected type you have remaining in your inventory on it’s HUD
• Shows the currently selected cube as a hologram on the hilt and the rotation of the current cube also
• ‘Picking’ a cube with the middle mouse button or ‘F’ key will also select its Color for the Color Applicator tool

PILOT SEAT REMOVED

• You no longer need a Pilot Seat to drive your Robot, the Pilot Seat object has been removed altogether to prevent confusion
• All Pilot Seats have been replaced with cubes in order to maintain the connective integrity of your existing Robots
• Robots are still damaged in the same way as previously via damage propagation
• Robots are dead when they have less than 25% of their CPU remaining
• In our tests this has provided more consistency in damage and destruction of Robots and less random one-shot-kills
• Megaseat removed and replaced with the Mega Module which has been designed to occupy roughly the same space with the same connection points to maintain the integrity of your existing Megabots, the Mega Module just gives you extra CPU, disconnecting the module from the functional parts in battle does not result in the Megabot death (Megabots are still 25% CPU remaining as per other Robots)

CRAFTER AND PLAYER SKILL MATCH-MAKING

• All game modes [except Leagues] use Robot Ranking and skill based matchmaking to match Robots fairly
• The game assess your ability to build efficient Robots and your ability to fight and uses this assessment to match-make you fairly with other players – designed to create more even matches for all players
• Leagues uses only League and Star rating to match-make players (with a modification for Platoons) as previously

MANY MAPS REWORKED

• We have reworked many of the maps to improve overall gameplay and flow
• Making it easier to get where you want to go, without having to backtrack
• Improving overall engagement and action within the maps

OTHER CHANGES

• New ‘Full Spectrum Combat’ splash screen
• All in game dialogues tweaked to make them consistent
• Inertia Tensor now correctly calculated when destruction and healing occurs on Robots
• Rail Cannon reload time reduced from 12 to 8 seconds
• Plasma Cannon reload time reduced by 20% across the board (5 sec to 4 sec at 6 plasmas)
• Electroplate recovery time reduced from 15 to 10 seconds
• Icelandic Holoflag added to the game
• Reworked default shortcuts for better efficiency and to incorporate new shortcut options
• TIGA ‘finalist’ badge updated on the Splash Screen to ‘winner’ – Yay! we won
• Numerical feedback next to the enemy HUD removed to clean up the UI now we have a new death rule (i.e. 25% CPU remaining you are dead)
• Instant Heal on kill removed from The Pit (since we now have Health Regen System), which should even up The Pit matches making it less of a snowball
• Robot Ranking bar has been moved up to the top next to the CPU bar, freeing up space at the bottom of the HUD for more visibility
• Leagues entry requirement reduced to 25k (the new Robot Ranking for old T10)
• Improved audio of Rotor Blades
• Improved audio of Walker Legs, which now have a ‘Jump’ sound effect
• Improved audio for Wheels, also with new skid sounds
• New Starter Robot added for new user accounts, also colored
• Windshield have the same armor and mass as Chassis cubes, but are now GC only cosmetics
• Cubes have been renamed with ‘Colorful names’ as Mk’s or Tier’s didn’t make sense anymore (as there aren’t really Mk’s or Tier’s anymore)
• Medic score buffed by 25% to compensate for lost healing due to health-regen
• All players receive 4 additional points of CPU which make up for the added cubes replacing the pilot seat.
• All armor RP prices have been reduced but functional part RP prices have been increased to compensate. Average medium size robot cost should remain roughly
• Hovers now reverse like a car, rather than turning in the opposite direction
• Cosmetics now have the same armor per CPU as armor cubes

BUG FIXED

• Fixed a bug causing players to go under the ground after respawning
• Fixed a bug which caused the game not to end after the destruction of a protonium core
• Fixed a bug which caused the Towers not to respawn after being destroyed
• Fixed a bug which occasionally showed the defeat screen when returning to the mothership after a victory
• Fixed a bug which failed to save graphical settings when restarting the game
• Fixed an issue which caused armor cubes to cut through other objects when held too close in edit mode
• Fixed an issue which caused the default cube to cut through the walls/floors of the mothership when held too close in edit mode
• Fixed a bug which caused helium cubes to become invisible when built around in edit mode
• Fixed a collision issue with the Shoulderpad Electroplates allowing them to clip through other parts
• Fixed issues relating to incorrect masses for electroplates 10.7 and 10.6
• Fixed an issue which caused Mega Wheels to rotate incorrectly when driving
• Fixed a bug which caused some CPU to remain in the CPU bar after removing all parts of a robot
• Fixed a bug which caused the Single Vapor Trail to be invisible while held in edit mode
• Fixed a collision bug with mirrored Mk7 walker legs
• Fixed an inconsistent collision bug when placing parts near Mk7/8 rotors
• Fixed an issue which allowed players to upload robots with no functional parts to the CRF
• Unity 5’s collision engine has been modified significantly, with this change a lot of collision detection of parts have become more accurate. To prevent Robot breakages your Robots collision will not be validated on load, but if you delete a cube and replace it, you may find that in some situations you cannot replace the cube. In short, if it looks like it intersects something else, then you won’t be able to place it as the detection in most cases is more accurate now