Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Lots and lots of exciting details revealed around the future of Bugbear Entertainment's excellent Wreckfest destruction derby style racing game...
Hot off the back of the recent major December build and subsequent hotfix updates, Bugbear Entertainment have confirmed plenty of development work is still underway back at the studio as the team continue to push for a final version one release later this year.
With updates and development having felt frustratingly laboured since the game released on Steam Early Access back in 2014, these past few months have seen an incredible upturn in fortunes as new content, features and refinements keep coming to the title at an impressive pace. With the big December patch now confined to the history books, the development team are back hard at work as they look to add the final polish before eventually porting Wreckfest over to current generation consoles.
So what exactly do Bugbear have in store over the coming months? Find out below:
NEW CARS
This is really a no-brainer – who wouldn’t want more cars? We know shiny, or in our case not so shiny but awesome nevertheless, new cars are something that everyone always loves so you’ll be happy to hear that we have a batch of new ones in the pipeline, including models inspired some very classic American, European and Japanese cars, some fan-favourites too!
CUSTOMIZATION PARTS
Yes, they’re coming – we’re working on adding customization parts such as bumpers, side protectors and what-not for every car. We’re also currently balancing the gameplay effect these parts will have – for instance, a heavy demolition derby style front bumper will make the car withstand more damage to the front but also make it slower due to the added weight, so these parts will add an interesting aspect of give-and-take to the gameplay.
EXPANDED CAREER
Seeing as the December Update only contained a preview of the career, obviously we’re also working on expanding it by adding the rest of the championships and tweaking the ones already in the game. Also, series restrictions will be shown in the series selection screen so it will be a breeze to pick up an eligible car. To spice up the career we’re also working on special challenge events with some very unique vehicles but more about those later!
NEW ROUTES AND IMPROVED TRACK ART
We’re making the final push to make the tracks look nice and dandy. As you’ve no doubt noticed there are still some proxy assets around, but you’ll be relieved to hear that for example those pesky gray prop vehicles littered around the tracks will be soon gone for good. We’re also adding a few new routes to the old tracks, including something very special that’s going to rival Crash Canyon in the amount of crashes!
MECHANICAL DAMAGE V2
We’re working on taking the mechanical damage to the next stage: the effects of the different damage states will be more meaningful, and we’ll have new visual and audial effects to add to the immersion. We’re also planning to implement a setting to choose between normal and realistic mechanical damage, so those looking for a more hardcore experience can have that.
OPTIMIZATION
Better performance is always high on everyone’s wishlist, ours too, and we’ve been researching ways to improve the rendering performance in particular, so improvements are very likely at some point.
USER INTERFACE
The current user interface is still being heavily worked on, so expect many changes until the final release.
As always, behind the scenes we’re also working on a number of important bug fixes and other improvements, many based on the feedback we’ve received from you. The next update will already contain some welcomed additions, such as a more detailed gamepad vibration effect, track length and surface info in the track selection screen, easier and better-balanced AI on easy difficulty and a new Pause Menu, to name just a few.
And yes, the million-dollar question – when is the new update coming out? We’re still working on almost every aspect of the game and while bumps in the road are entirely possible, our plan for now is to have the update out by the end of January. Stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted.
Wreckfest is available for PC with console versions due to release during 2018.
Check out the Wreckfest Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news and discussions regarding the sim. For added excitement we have an already immensely popular and exciting Racing Club, details of which can be found here.
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Looking forward to the future of Wreckfest? Impressed with the development undertaken so far? Let us know in the comments section below!
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