RALLY UPDATE NOTES

14/03/2019

It’s been a long time underway, but the Rally Update is finally here. There are a ton of changes to Trailmakers – adding a new game mode, removing another game mode, rebalancing a lot of blocks, and much more.

GENERAL

We have added a new game mode called Trailmakers Rally.The Rally serves as an introductory campaign for new Trailmakers. There are currently ten different rally tracks, but we plan to add a lot more. Each track has a Power Core limit, and a list of allowed blocks. New players can use tutorial vehicles that change for each course. Try to beat the bronze, silver, and gold times to qualify for the leaderboards.

We have decided to remove the Expedition Mode from the game. If you want to read the reason for that, head over to this announcement.
The destruction physics have been improved. Crash your favorite vehicle, and you will probably notice a difference in the way blocks are scattered.
The Block Hunts no longer unlock blocks and have been renamed Treasure Hunt. They now give a small amount of currency that can be used to purchase Accessory blocks.
To replace the old way of unlocking accessory blocks in the Expedition, we have implemented a currency system. You earn the currency in the Trailmakers Rally, by completing Treasure Hunts in the Sandbox, Daily Challenges, Ball Puzzles, and races on Race Island.
To prepare the characters for the Trailmakers Rally, we have equipped them with helmets.
The pre-order monument with the list of people who pre-ordered the game has been moved from the Expedition to Sandbox Island.
You now race against “ghosts” on all tracks on Race Island and in the Trailmakers Rally. The spectral vehicles you will be chasing are real record times set by other players, and the ghosts are images of the vehicles they used to set the record.
We are no longer using Steam Leaderboards for races. We use our own backend instead. That means all race times from before March 22nd are cleared. Leaderboards are shared between Xbox and PC. We have created a page with the Legacy Leaderboards right here.
All races on Race Island now have a template vehicle you can build and use. You can use it to complete the race or as a base for improvement.
Removed the ‘Feedback’ option in the menu. For gameplay feedback or bug reports, there are multiple ways to contact us like Discord or e-mail.
The new “Help” menu shows some helpful infographics for designing your vehicles.

PERFORMANCE

The grass is now much better for performance.
Many performance heavy tasks are now multithreaded to take advantage of multicore processors and ease CPU usage.
Load times are significantly faster.
General memory usage has been decreased by at least 50%.

BUILDER

AIR RESISTANCE: You can now see your vehicle’s air resistance by selecting all of it and watching the green, yellow, and red colored arrows. The direction of the arrows remain the same if you rotate your vehicle, so make sure your vehicle’s driving direction is “against” the arrows.
CONTROLLER SUPPORT: In preparation for Trailmakers launching on Xbox, we have overhauled and greatly improved the controller support.
If you drag a vehicle blueprint into the builder when there are already blocks in the builder, you can choose to have it cleared, removing all the blocks in the builder and replacing them with the blueprint you are loading in.
You can now load in and use a blueprint even if you have not unlocked all the blocks it uses. You can not edit the vehicle, but you can use it in its saved form.
We have shuffled the block categories around, created some new ones, and rearranged the blocks.
New UI colors for each submenu (Blocks, Accessories, and Blueprints).
To access the options of a saved blueprint, you now right click it.

BLOCKS

Note on Changed Blocks:

Many blocks had their properties changed in this update. This will most likely make many of the vehicles you have built behave very differently, perhaps even feel broken. We only change blocks if we feel it is absolutely necessary for the game, and we hope you’ll adapt and adjust your vehicles. This is, after all, an Early Access game so changes are to be expected.

Some aerodynamic blocks have been tweaked to be more aerodynamic if their angle is less than 45°. The description of all aerodynamic blocks have been changed to include an adjective describing their aerodynamic quality. From least to most aerodynamic: fairly, moderately, very, and extremely.
The Cockpit Seat is now more aerodynamic.
All wheels have been tweaked. In general, slick wheels are better on hard surfaces like tarmac and metal while wheels with rougher tire treads are better off-road. Their new descriptions reflect their primary purpose.
The normal Hinge and the Large Hinge now have a slider called “Steering Help” that is set to 100 by default. The value (from 0 to 100) decides how much the hinge’s movement is slowed down when travelling at high speeds. It greatly helps steering at high speeds, but when the hinge is used for something else you might want to turn it down.
The Steering Hinge can now turn 90° (it used to be 60°).
The RAW Jet is now more powerful, but overheats quicker. The intention of this jet is to be used as a temporary speed booster. The overheating visuals are also much clearer.
The Spoiler now has half as much downforce as it used to. It is now more in line with how much lift a modular wing provides.
Every seat now has a toggle in their configuration where you can turn off/on tilting air control. The Cockpit seat has it off by default, while the rest have it on.
The Bulldawg Engine is now a little faster both in acceleration and top speed.
The RAW Engine now has lower acceleration but higher top speed.
The Underwater Propeller has new looks.
When we updated to the new version of our physics engine ‘PhysX’ the upper limit of servo rotations per second was suddenly extremely high. This caused a lot of vehicles that use the Helicopter Servo to… explode. We have set a new cap on rotations per second which will cause some of your vehicles to behave differently. In some instances, adjusting the speed in the servo’s settings will get your desired behaviour back.
The Dragon Jet now has a small charge up time.
The Power Core cost of the Propeller is now 4 (balanced for Rally Mode)

SOUND

Some of the dangerous contraptions in the Danger Zone now have a sound effect.
The Bulldawg Engine has a new sound.
Some of the sound effects have been redesigned.

BUG FIXES

Fixed the ramp.
Fixed an issue where respawning with a multi-seat vehicle would only respawn a single seat. It still might happen when repairing though – we’re working on that.
Fixed many cases where larger structures required “recalculation” by moving or adding a block before leaving build mode.
Fixed a bug that would sometimes turn off your sound after destroying your vehicle and respawning.
Fixed a bug where Helicopter Blades would fall off the Helicopter Servo v2 after repairing.
And many more…