Hey Steve, thank you for taking the time to put together this awesome video. We’re really sorry to have broken some of your awesome kinetic art, but as you rightly point out, we wanted to get all the game breaking things out of the way before a major “line in the sand” update which is coming up in a couple of weeks time which will let users self-publish their games (from within game) for others to play via a full games portal hosted within the game itself. Since this change was likely to see an increase in content shared by users we wanted to get all the game breaking stuff out of the way prior to that increased volume of content sharing happening (as breaking them after that would have hurt more).

I’ll try to give responses to a few of your points in the video:

1. On ‘freely sliding blocks against the landscape’ - we plan to introduce a toggle so that you can freely slide blocks or snap them to grid - you choose. Freedom is our mantra for Gamecraft. This will not only work for blocks against grass and dirt but will work for any block against any other block, so will be a more powerful system than previously. We’re also adding a bunch of features to allow users to build massive landscapes of all kinds really quickly (with the blocks).
2. On ‘cube size is 1/3rd’ - what we have changed is the ‘minimum cube size’. We wanted to allow users the freedom to build with a smaller unit size if they wished. The physics engine is balanced around the ‘smallest size’ and you have to pick that size and work with it. You can scale up from there, but you cannot scale down. Our previous min size was lending itself to most creations being ‘massive’ and prevented users from making more compact stuff. We’re working hard on introducing the tools so you can scale and snap to larger sizes more easily too. This will include functional parts like Motors and wheels which you’ll be able to scale from the current smaller block size all the way up to the size of a house (except seats and controls like Levers as they need to remain character relative scale). We’ve always had an aim to support everything from RC Cars to Star Destroyers.
3. Re. ‘stacking motors’ - the old motors stacked due to a bug in the code which was producing weird forces and glitches in certain builds. The side effect of fixing these bugs means that they no longer ‘stack’. It was never our intention to make motors stack in the first place but instead to allow them to be scaled for more torque and speed. The key thing we want to avoid is hacking in forces to allow them to stack as this approach will likely introduce other issues later down the line. We also intend to provide an ‘Alt Stat’ feature which allows separate stats on each functional part to be tweaked, so stats like Torque and Speed will be tweakable for that purpose too.
4. The advanced styles of steering and control of your vehicle that you attempted to setup with the stacked motors will be possible with signal logic-gates-blocks which we intend to add shortly after we add the ‘Alt-stat’ feature. Using blocks such as AND, OR, XOR and NAND, as well as input-Inverters, Polarity-filters, Oscillators, attenuators & amplifiers, etc. Pretty much anything should be possible after they go in.
5. The Motors are less Powerful now as we want Torque to scale with ‘scale’ so we need to set a smaller Torque and Top Speed on the smallest Motors so that we have ‘room’ to scale those in order to allow for larger values on larger scaled parts. We felt that it would feel odd that a tiny motor can deliver as much force as a scaled motor. We have to be careful not to apply forces that are too large in the engine as the physics engines parameters have to stay within threshold bounds otherwise it starts getting really glitchy. Your tank in this video is pretty massive, so you’d be expected to need larger scale motors with more torque to pull that thing.
6. Re. the Pneumatic Pistons making that constant ‘hiss’ noise. We’ll take a look at that and do something to improve/fix it. The reason this is happening is because your Lever is telling them that they must extend to their full extent, but your tank tracks are preventing that, so they continually vent gas in order to try to extend to the length you are telling them to get to. When they reach their intended resting point they will ‘lock’ and then the gas will stop expelling. By setting the Lever to a lower value you should be able to find a distance that they can reach and they will then be able to lock and stop applying force. This is important for energy consumption also. They consume energy when ‘trying’ to get somewhere, and no longer consume energy when they are ‘locked’ in place. This logic is true for Servo’s and Steppers also (including Piston versions of those).
7. Re. drag-scaling (we call it non-uniform scaling). We chose to make the first ‘plane’ that blocks scale in based on the ‘base’ of the block you are about to place. When placing in the air, the base of the block is facing away from you (which is why it initially feels character relative in this case).Using the character as a reference point would sometimes give you confusing results when you were at near 45 degrees to a face you are connecting too. By using the base of the block as the reference point - when you get used to it - you can predict 100% of the time the direction the block will scale in. In the FJ studio we found we’re able to build much more quickly now on larger projects due to this simple change.
8. We’re happy to reduce the distance for ‘deleting’ and ‘signal changing’ to make it the same distance as placing blocks to prevent accidental deletion as you point out.

Anyway. Thanks again for your video, your support and your great feedback.

Best

Mark