Apologies or the lateness of this update. I wasn’t able to do Scraps work last week due to some real life events, and this week is going to be the same. Rather than having to push the next update way back, I’ve managed some time to clean up and release a smaller update today that still has the two major features I mentioned last time, plus a few other things as well.

Full changelog:

2015-10 – 0.5.2.9

– ## Added ability to rebuild as well as repair damaged vehicles while in-game.

– ## Wreckage pickup is easier, it kind of “attracts” towards you.

– Some general balance tweaks to wreckage.

– Improved the AI’s weapon selection methods.

– Different sounds for each type of vehicle warning.

– Parts now sell for their purchase value, taking any wealth tax into account, so you never lose money.

– Increased steering speed for keyboard controls a little.

– Refreshing the server list clears the old list when it was user-prompted, just so it’s more obvious that it’s doing something.

– Updated Steamworks.NET and uLink versions.

Bug Fixes:

– Workaround for an issue in Steam where sometimes only the first two lobbies got returned.

– Spawn FX no longer show when creating existing vehicles as a player joins a game that’s already in progress.

– Vehicle labels no longer show on top of loading screen dialogs.

– Fixed AI looking as if they repair right before they evac, instead of after.

– Fixed audio screeches and other silliness that sometimes occurred when entering maps.

– Fixed a bug with part costs and wealth tax when ctrl-placing parts.

– Fixed another bug with wealth tax when calculating estimated repair costs.

Rebuilding

You can now rebuild lost parts automagically after using evac pads (if you can afford it).

There are several ways this could work. As with my general philosophy for Scraps I’ve tried to balance functionality against complexity. At the moment it works like this:

Parts lost in-game count as ones to rebuild. Parts you manually remove on the Build Screen don’t.

Removing a part on your vehicle on the Build Screen doesn’t clear the rebuild list, but if parts in the rebuild list depended on that removed part, they’ll fail to get added back. You won’t be charged for those failed parts.

Adding a part to your vehicle on the Build Screen clears the rebuild list and sets the current vehicle as the “base” vehicle that’ll be rebuilt to. This means you can build on your saved vehicle during a game and rebuild back to your temporarily improved one after you lose parts in battle, but it does also mean that adding a part when you have parts to rebuild will lose you that rebuild list. It’s a compromise because once you start trying to handle these sort of branching trees of vehicle designs the complexity of the system skyrockets.

The Scraps Community

Just a note on the Scraps community in general: You guys are the best. While other people are complaining about their toxic game communities and “it broke plz fix” bug reports, Scraps players are sending me bug reports with a video of the bug happening. Recently I got a bug report that came with a suggested fix that was actually a good solution! In game dev circles that’s usually accompanied by pigs flying.

It was so nice to come back after not being able to check up on the game for a few days to see three new super nice reviews (especially coming not too long after one that began with “honestly the worst game I have ever played…“). It’s always especially cool to hear from people that have been following things since the early Builder Demo-only days. I know Scraps dev can be slow so I appreciate the people that keep checking back even more.