For content update number seven of Wreckfest 2's early access, the team at Bugbear has taken a different route from what we have seen previously. An entirely new class of car has joined the game, the half-car! Alongside this new car, or half of one, are plenty of other goodies to get stuck into!
Wreckfest 2 is deep into its early-access phase, with this latest update being number seven in terms of updates so far. So much has been added since the inaugural update to the game, but this seventh rendition might be one of the more ambitious ones so far!
The half-car also comes with a ragdoll driver, so expect to see many drivers going flying through the air and making all sorts of quasitionable noises and grunts as they come crashing back to earth.
With just two front wheels, expect plenty of sparks and the structural rigidity of a chocolate cake. This half-baked version of the original 'Crusader' car is every bit as fun as it looks!
It is not just the new half-car added in this seventh update, a new European RWD 2000s wagon has been added with the Stahlwagen, Wreckfest 2's version of the Mercedes E-Class estate car. Having more long, wagon-based cars in a game like Wreckfest 2 is never a bad thing, especially when they are European wagons that have prominence in the banger racing world, just like the E-Class does.
The third car shown was the new European FWD 90s hatchback, the Valken, which appears to be a rendition of the Saab 900.
New Content List
- New half-car, with a ragdoll driver!: Half a Crusader
- New European RWD 00s wagon: Stahlwagen
- New European FWD 90s hatchback: Valken
- New US-based racing venue with three layouts: Mora Raceway
- A long, full tarmac track perfect for racing;
- A shorter contact racing-focused sprint track;
- A high-speed tarmac oval.
- 7 new Challenge events for your enjoyment.
Tuning
- The first version of the tuning system is here!
- With brakes, differential, suspension, gearing, and even steering that you can tune to your liking, allowing in-depth customisation of the car.
- Settings can be saved into presets that you can load later, also in the multiplayer lobby.
- You can access the tuning settings either in the Garage or Pre-Race Screen.
System
- Fixed a number of crashes and improved game stability.
- Fixed an issue which caused game settings not to be saved.
- Improved build packaging to allow smaller update sizes for future updates and patches.
Rendering
- Optimised game performance.
- Optimised game VRAM usage.
- Improved texture compression quality.
- Fixed a number of memory leaks.
- Improved auto exposure.
- Fixed car tag jittering.
Vehicles
- Major visual damage upgrade thanks to updating the physics simulation engine to Extended Position Based Dynamics and switching to signed distance field (SDF) collisions for more accurate object collisions and interactions.
- Improved tyre simulation.
- More realistic tarmac tyre model.
- Various improvements to car setups.
- Stability Control assist now works in a more physically correct way.
- Improved Traction Control profiles.
- A big set of new Crap-It decals.
Gameplay
- New Suicide Racing game mode, available for the new high-speed oval.
- Gameplay damage is now more consistent between different cars.
- Different types of dynamic objects now cause more appropriate gameplay damage.
- Mechanical damage is now triggered more appropriately depending on the car's state.
- Improved attacker/defender detection logic to assign status correctly, as a result, score attribution is improved so you get a score when you should and no score when you shouldn't.
- You can now score a mechanical hit on the opponent by targeting their wheels, engine or radiator; these come in two flavours, either a damage state incrementing hit (for example, ENGINE HIT) or a terminal hit (ENGINE DESTROYED, for example).
- Improved the way consecutive (chained) scoring works so no score is now silently throttled.
- RAMMING, HEAD-ON, T-BONE, REAR-ENDER and BARRIER SLAM scores now have three rating tiers, visualised by stars in the scoring notification. To improve the rating, you need to cause more health damage to the opponent's car.
- You can now score 180° and 360° SPIN in addition to the 90° SPIN, classified as stars too.
- The BARRIER SLAM score is now attributed more reliably when you ram the opponent to an obstacle.
- There's now a new TRADING PAINT score for light contact. You will be awarded this score whenever you do any health damage to the opponent car but not so much that you would be awarded RAMMING, HEAD-ON, T-BONE or REAR-ENDER score..
AI
- Improved AI turning behaviour for more accurate and natural racing line following.
- Added more variety to AI racing lines and better track width coverage.
- More natural AI behaviour on the opening straight.
- Improved AI stability and handling during jumps.
- AI can now dodge oncoming traffic.
- Improved Novice and Amateur difficulty levels.
- Fixed single AI cars breaking too far ahead of the pack.
- Added a new "Random" AI Set.
- Improved AI Set generation.
User Interface
- Car selection now displays the car thumbnails rendered with the currently selected design for the car.
- Please note that to trigger thumbnail generation for the existing designs, you need to go into Crap-It and hit save once.
- Tachometer is now displayed with an appropriate RPM range based on the max engine RPM.
- The red zone in the tachometer now starts before the actual RPM limit, like in a real car.
- Compass is now displayed in the derby modes too, showing the other cars and their health.
- Current player position is now shown in the car tag.
- When the car is on low health (under 25%), the car tag is visible from further away, and the health bar is rendered red to make it easier to target these cars.
- When a car is wrecked, the health bar is now removed completely, and the car tag is dimmed to make it easier to avoid hitting dead cars.
- It's now possible to disable car tags with the new "Show Car Tags" setting in Settings/Gameplay, and you can also bind an input (in the Settings/Bindings tab) to toggle car tags on/off during gameplay.
- Player list now has three modes: compact (four players), full and off, configurable in the Settings/Gameplay tab. You can also bind an input in the Settings/Bindings tab to cycle between the different modes during gameplay.
- You can now choose between Metric and Imperial units in the Settings menu.
- Audio Settings can now be reset back to defaults with the Reset to Defaults button.
- Event creation weather selection now defaults to the new "Random" option.
- Chat overlay is now easier to read and scales better across different resolutions/aspect ratios.
- Miscellaneous HUD scaling improvements across resolutions and aspect ratios.
- Many other improvements to HUD visuals and layout.
Online
- New lobby car quick select: you can now choose the car, design, tuning preset and assists in a consolidated overlay at your own pace without being kicked back to lobby when the track is changing.
- Improved chat filter to reduce false positives.
- Shared paint designs are now always correctly displayed.
- Car restrictions can now be configured for an event loop, too.
- Car upgrades and tuning can now be disabled as per server settings for spec lobbies.
- The lobby can now be configured to only allow the use of an inboard car camera.
- Car Class and Performance Points are now displayed in the lobby.
- The player list in the ESC menu and post-race screen now reflects the current standings.
- You can now view more details about networking quality by setting Network Stats to full in the Settings/Gameplay tab, and you can also disable the stats completely as per your discretion.
- High ping warning is now active only for 5s, and is rearmed when the ping is 50ms below the threshold.
- Spectators can now use the spherical camera too.
- By default, the community server now automatically promotes the Steam account that launched the server (if available) to the admin role. This can be disabled by setting "disable auto-admin" to false.
- Empty chat messages are now properly ignored and do not trigger spam warnings.
- Unnecessary "Tag not registered." messages are no longer shown in the server console.
- The build now ships with SERVER_CONFIG_GUIDE.pdf to make it easier to run a server.
- Cleaned up internal data from the server config JSON.
Audio
- Major car audio bus re-structuring and changes to dynamic mixing setups.
- NPC car mix configuration is now adjusted to favour cars approaching from behind the camera.
- Added audio mixing support to toggle off cockpit reverb if the car has no roof.
- Car distance attenuation fall-off range is now longer and less steep whenever the camera is not parented to a car.
- Because of all the structural changes to the audio bus setup, the car mix levels may have shifted a bit. Please check & dial in your game audio mix settings as needed.
Shortly after the update, a brand-new roadmap for Wreckfest 2 was revealed, showing that new cars and tracks are set to arrive in content update 8, alongside some undecided community-chosen features.
What do you think about this latest update to Wreckfest 2? What do you want to see in the future? Let us know in the comments down below!