Hello Everyone!

Today we’re bringing you an update for Besiege, V0.2, which brings the game to the Unity 5 engine.

In addition to Unity 5 we have added a new block into the game called a Pin. The pin can be used to anchor the block it’s attached to, preventing it from moving until you press its hotkey.
We’ve also introduced a new god tool, Infinite Ammo, which prevents flamethrowers from running out of fuel and allows cannons to be fired an unlimited number of times. You can now also place stuff on Grabbers!

Unity 5 brings with it significant improvements to performance as well as some changes to the game’s physics which, on the whole, make for a more stable experience. Our testing has shown up to a 400% increase in performance on some machines!

We put together a quick video to compare the difference in performance between Unity 4 and 5:
https://youtu.be/hYuPNmSnrB4

Unfortunately, due to the engine’s current state, there are some bugs which we haven’t been able to fix or workaround. Whilst these issues are currently unfixable, we will endeavour to speak with Unity and hopefully they will be able to offer a solution in future versions of the engine. We’ve thought long and hard about whether to release Unity 5 in its current state, but we’ve believe the performance gains outweigh the downsides.

The two biggest issues we have named “Wobbly Wheels Syndrome” and “Symmetrical Vibration Glitch”.

Wobbly Wheels Syndrome (WWS) means that in some cases the wheels bend on their joints, often storing up force and then suddenly releasing it or causing enough pressure to break the block that they’re attached to. Most of the time WWS doesn’t impact gameplay what-so-ever but because of this issue, some steering methods can become extremely unstable, especially if used on a very heavy machine.

Symmetrical Vibration Glitch (SVG) normally occurs when you build a symmetrical pattern that is suspended from 1 central block. The engine appears to have trouble discharging vibration energy if a pattern is symmetrical, allowing it to become more and more violent until it rips itself apart. SVG can be prevented by bracing between the opposite ends of a pattern.

There are also several other minor issues that we need to fix (unfortunately we just ran out of time) and perhaps even some that we failed to find during our playtesting. We hope that you, the community, will help us find and identify any other problems through our forums or the Steam forums.

We know that many of you will be disappointed that we haven’t managed to pack more content into this update. Whilst we have been working on several features alongside the port to Unity 5, it has taken up a lot of our time and we weren’t able to get all of them into this release.

Below you can find couple of the things we’ve been working on that you can expect to see in the next update:

Camera Block
We’ve been working on an invisible camera block that can be attached to your machine. You can configure it to behave in a variety of ways, switching to the view of the camera block using a hotkey and it can be used for things like chase cams.

Block Search Function
The block search function allows you to quickly and easily search for blocks across all categories, including blocks that you add to the game using added by mods!

I’d also like to take this opportunity to remind you all of the wonderful and ever growing array of mods created by the Besiege community. Our Forum’s Mod Pages offer the best way to browse through all of Besiege’s mods and they also contain a simple and guide explaining how to install mods. http://forum.spiderlinggames.co.uk/modcategories

We hope that you enjoy the update and we apologize for the delays in bringing it to you.

Von