Today we're unleashing The Creativity Update on the stable branch! For a quick summary check out the trailer below. It includes 3 new levels, a new ability, improved camera, Oculus Rift CV1 support, new editor tools, and more! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-OwcGtGkFk It's been quite an adventure reaching this build, so thanks to those who braved the experimental branch and gave feedback. Though this is a major release, we still hope to hear your thoughts on everything. Scroll down for the full changelog. Also, if you make something in the editor, send it our way! To celebrate, Distance is 33% off this week. If you'd like to download the patch simply fire up Steam and it should auto-download. We hope you enjoy! - Jordan (@torcht for more frequent dev updates)

THE CREATIVITY UPDATE: BUILD 4474 Improvements

• New Levels
  • Added new level Friction which teaches the new Grip ability
  • Added new level Amusement which shows off the new particle system
  • Added new level Uncanny Valley which shows off the new primitive shapes
• Controls
  • Added Grip ability to the car. Gives a high downforce to help control jump timing and sticking to walls and ceilings. Hold the Left Bumper on a gamepad, or Q on the keyboard. Customizable in the Controls options
  • On gamepads the Left Stick now rotates the car while in air, or if the grip button is pressed. This allows for easier transfers, making the thrusters more accessible for less experienced players, and more convenient for all players
  • Improved default behavior for Steam Controller (it now acts like an XInput device)
  • Moved all default controls schemes to unified scheme (removed Advanced / Normal schemes)
• General
  • Updated to Oculus SDK 1.3.2 with Rift CV1 support
  • Self-righting now works when jets are disabled
  • Added small animation when a car ability fails
  • Upgraded menu font to something cleaner
  • Upgraded car trick/stats text with a new font
  • Upgraded EmpirePosterDetourRightHologram visuals
  • Upgraded ability icons with new images
  • Added ability icon system on the car screen which shows which ability has been enabled in Adventure mode
  • Updated many early levels to not have jets enabled until the jets ability is unlocked
  • Updated Wwise to v2015.1.6
  • Added a General option for "All Abilities in Adventure Mode" to turn abilities on/off in Adventure mode (temporary solution until we have a system in place to unlock all abilities after completing Adventure mode the first time)*
  • The car screensaver now randomly chooses between several presets when going into "screensaver" mode*
  • Added support for level playlist saving/loading in the level select menu*
  • Reorganized buttons in level select menu for starting a level playlist or removing a level from a list*
  • Added "+enableMIDI" launch option which enables MIDI output for Arduino (e.g. +enableMIDI "Teensy MIDI")*
• Graphics
  • Greatly reduced visual banding in the Ambient skybox and Vignetting graphics effect
  • Local cars now get priority on rendering the car screen (should make the car screen higher framerate in multiplayer)
  • Explosion colors are now tied to car glow*
• Physics
  • Changed how the air drag force on the car is calculated. non-cardinal(diagonal) directions are now higher drag. This helps with countering the wheelie super speed, and also helps ramps be a little more consistent.
  • The car is also fastest while driving on the road, and the new grip ability allows you to more easily get back to the road after jumps and transfers.
  • Simplified thruster force depletion, now depletes equally, no matter the direction of gravity.
  • Removed hard landings and new drag (both were more problematic than helpful)
  • Added small delay between wheels leaving the ground and left stick rotation enabling (helps if steering when going off a jump)
  • Slightly lowered wing fade in time, and wing drag
  • Added spline smoothing to tunnels and other shapes
  • Added smoothing to camera pitch / upside-down effect
  • Tweaked car acceleration values
  • Adjusted jet and drag values
  • Made exploding on virus ramps less common
  • Car will blow up if it gets wedged between or under objects at high speed
  • Reduced car wiggle at high speeds
• Camera
  • Changed how the 3rd person chase camera functions. It now orients slightly towards up with respect to gravity. This will hint the player which direction gravity will pull them if they leave the surface.

Level Editor

• New Features
  • Added LevelImageCamera, for setting where the level's preview image is taken
  • Added "Change Track Tool" to change spline segments to a new type (press H)
  • Added ability to remove track segments from track calculation
  • Added KillGridBox and KillGridCylinder for custom kill grid positioning
  • Added SetLevelImageToCurrentViewTool (under "Others")
  • Added visual picker for Particle Sprite
  • Added tool for moving a track node along the track
  • Added support for multi-line string inspection
  • Added Track Extrude tool
  • Added Merge Track Node tool
  • Added "Move Node Along Track" and "Extrude" tools to the move gizmo
  • When creating a road piece while selecting a road piece, it will copy the colors of the selected road piece and add it to the end of the selected road piece
  • Added tool to mirror objects across cardinal axes*
• General Improvements
  • The PulseAll component is now an addable component and it’s been tweaked to be a bit more user friendly
  • Track Manipulator Nodes are now transparent when bigger
  • MusicTrigger now uses the list of songs instead of an ID
  • Made it so the level editor now saves out the position and orientation of the cursor and camera with level files. When reloading files, users are placed right back where they left off
  • MoveCarSpawnerToStartZoneTool now adds a car spawner if it doesn't already exist
  • Inspector buttons now work with multiple object selected
  • Material color names are now a little more display friendly
  • Colors are now pickable on glass materials
  • Changed transform scale in the object inspector to use exponential step size*
• Added Simples 2.0
  • Highly adjustable primitive shapes
  • Supports material and texture customization
  • Collision can be toggled
  • Added transparency support
  • Added bump map support
  • Added world mapping support to allow easy combining of simples to make a blob simple of the same look (like rocks and cliffs for example)
  • Added presets to help get started on certain a look
  • Added Randomize" and "Randomize A Little" buttons to help achieve interesting looks
  • Added ability to copy and paste settings
  • Open up and look at the new level Uncanny Valley in the level editor to see examples of the new simples
• Added new particle system
  • Highly adjustable particle system that moves all calculations to the GPU
  • Example presets are in the Decorations->Particles folder (e.g. Snow, Rain, Sparks, DiscoDanceFloor, NeonTower, etc.)
  • Added the ability to use dynamic components TurnLightOnNearCar and PulseAll
  • Added Randomize" and "Randomize A Little" buttons to help achieve interesting looks
  • Added CustomName component so level creators can rename particle systems
  • Added particle acceleration
  • Added Solid, Alpha, and BlendAdd particles
  • Added a few more particle textures
  • Solid particles now are affected by lights
  • When attached to a spline, particles now scale when the road scales
  • Added ability to copy and paste settings
  • Open up and look at the new level Amusement in the level editor to see examples of the new Particles
• Added new placeable objects
  • Roads/EmpireRoadCap
  • Buildings/Infected/VirusBuilding007
  • Buildings/Infected/VirusSpire002
  • Decorations/EmpireGear001
  • Decorations/EmpireGas_Pipe03
  • Decorations/EmpireGas_Pipe04
  • Decorations/EmpireHexScaffold
  • Decorations/RotatingEmpireHexScaffold
  • Decorations/Infected/VirusTriPillar001
  • Decorations/Infected/VirusArch002
  • Obstacles/TunnelCrossBarrier
  • Obstacles/TunnelCrossBarrierRotating
  • Obstacles/TunnelQuarterBarrier
  • Added TrafficPlane and TrafficTube in the Decorations folder
  • Added new environment art: VirusBlockerRev02_Diag, EmpireRoadCap, VirusBuilding008, VirusBuilding009, VirusTriPillar001, VirusTriPillar002, VirusBlockerRev01
  • Added GlassSplineRoadSideless002, a glass road which can be tweaked to be fully invisible
  • Added CooldownTriggerNoVisual, which subtly cools down the car
  • Added VirusTunnel to the Roads/Infected/Tunnel folder in the level editor library
  • All new Simples in the Simples/ directory
  • All new Particles in the Particles/ directory

Bug Fixes

• General
  • Fixed bug where the car jumps further away when pausing
  • Fixed bug that was causing levels to not load properly sometimes if a track node was in a group
  • Fixed bug where the car wheel indicators on the screen could display incorrect information
  • Fixed bug where wheels could act strange on very large roads
  • Fixed bug where controls tutorial prompts wouldn't fade out properly
  • Fixed bug where controls indicator (buttons) weren't showing up during tutorial sections after the car reset
  • Fixed local leaderboards not saving/loading properly
  • Fixed bug where leaderboard times greater than an hour didn't show the hour count
  • Fixed bug where getting squished but not having a strong impact could cause the car to blow up on any impact at any time later*
• Level Editor
  • Fixed bug where the Properties tab would become invalid and unusable if it was closed and reopened
  • Fixed bug with the cancel button in the level editor (this caused issues when you tried to test a level without a carspawner)
  • Fixed bug where Move Along Track tool has issues with moving between segments
  • Fixed bug where ungrouping an attachment didn't work fixed bug where a grouped spline got incorrect spline sibling values
  • Fixed bug where multi-object inspection didn't work on objects containing multiple components of the same type
  • Fixed preview icon for "WorldText" prefab
  • Fixed bug where tracks didn't update with small rotations of the track
  • Fixed bug where splines might not connect when adding
  • Fixed bug where Biodome fogDensity would be set to zero on duplication when fog was disabled in the editor
  • Fixed issue where the level editor's farplane wasn't reset after disabling fog in editor
  • Fixed bug when duplicating a spline with particles attached
  • Fixed bug where Track Nodes wouldn't save their visible and frozen state when going in and out of the level editor*
  • Fixed bug where subdivided track node may be the wrong scale*
  • Fixed bug where level inspector or object inspector values could become garbled*
• Audio
  • Fixed bug where boost sounds would play even if the boost gadget was disabled but the boost input was pressed
  • Fixed bug where boost SFX wouldn't play after coming out of a gravity-less zone
• Multiplayer
  • Fixed bug where network car interpolation wasn't smooth
  • Fixed bug where network car positions could be off after going through a teleport
  • Fixed bug where the Halloween-themed gates could fail to open in multiplayer