The Cold As Ice Update

The latest Drive Buy update (2283) might be our best yet… Loads of new stuff, check the changelog. Our favourite? The updated FREEZE RAY – now you can boost through frozen rivals to take them out.

For the directors among you, there’s a new camera mode for capturing your whip from mind melting angles. It can be really helpful for capturing gameplay footage to use for stream intros, cool screenshots or whatever you need.

The last big one is so cool, a reason to jump around and throw some emotes because you can now advertise games natively in Discord to get players into your game. It’s some slick Discord integration using their awesome SDK. Thanks Discord!

Why is it so cold in here?

Powerups, that’s why. Specifically the Freeze Ray as it’s got an overhaul. Who’d of thought that boosting into frozen players would be so awesome? Well it is, and just like flicking that mine off, it’s a fine art. We’ll be watching your streams for some well timed ice smashing.

The rocket also got an update. A reticle to show who it’s going to aim at (how have we done without it so far?) and a marker to show when a rocket is behind you for all those streamers who play without audio.

Mines detonate faster, we might make them even faster too. Tell us what you think on the Discord #feedback channel.

Playing with the camera controls in various ways

Camera Controls

Capturing footage of Drive Buy is hard! It was for us and it’s definitely true for anyone, the game is just so fast paced, it’s a blur of stuff. But also, the perspective is also the same and we didn’t think it showed of the game properly or even showed off the assets we’d created the best.

So we made a kind of Director mode where you can follow vehicles.

Enable ‘Camera Mode’ in the Options > Game > Enable Camera Mode)
Free camera, follow target and attach camera to target modes
Option to hide UI in camera mode and in game mode for cleaner captures
Different camera speed settings for precise or quick movement in camera mode
Option to auto-attach camera to projectiles for cool kill-shots

Discord Integration

We really like Discord, it’s the place where we get to chat to you all about what’s going on in the game and where we take your feedback into our development sessions.

Now we’ve integrated the Discord SDK you can see other members of the community playing and advertise your matches directly in Discord.

The best thing is it’s possible to press ‘Join game’ right in Discord and it will boot up Drive Buy and automagically connect to the game, wherever it is in the world, regardless of region.

Sales To Timer

We played some more Mario Kart and saw their game modes had much better names than ours, so we renamed “Sell” mode to “Delivery Battle” so it makes more sense. But the big deal is that the sales target is now gone and has been replaced with a simple timer.

Connection Status

Loading screen now correctly shows a live services connection status. This was a major issue on last weeks stream when Steam went down and we couldn’t play with any of you! Now it’s easier to find out why.

We had to slow this down a lot… it happens pretty fast usually.

Boosting into walls

You know when the boost trail got all crinkly? Well, Boosting directly into a wall continuously will now disable boost quicker (which was the problem). That’s now also true if you’re determined to drive through rival players…

Build 2283 Changelog

Updated the freeze ray powerup, players can now be killed by boosting into them
Updated freeze timer to to be less for players who smash the A escape button
Added rocket target reticule
Added rocket marker that shows rockets coming from behind
Updated Mine detonation time, reduced from 4s to 3.5s
Added camera controls (enable in the Options)
Added free look camera
Added follow target camera
Added attach camera
Added option to hide UI in camera mode and in game mode for cleaner captures
Added different camera speed settings for precise or quick movement in camera mode
Added option to auto-attach camera to projectiles for cool kill-shots
Added Discord SDK
Added Discord status message showing players in Drive Buy
Added joining game via Discord request
Added start game through Discord
Renamed “Sell mode” to “Delivery Battle”
Replace product count down with a timer (it just makes more sense, try it)
Updated boost burn rate, it now depletes faster when driving into a wall or other players
Removed tutorial requirement (Thanks BatPrince!)
Added services connection status on game load
Fixed the mouse highlighting menu items when the controller was being used
Fixed loading screen, it now correctly shows level and game mode immediately
Fixed chat options sometimes stuck on screen
Fixed rockets sometimes falling out of the air
Fixed mines could be placed outside of the level
Fixed a bug to stop the shockwave being able to detonate your own mine.
Fixed “New” text on “Drivers” on main menu showing when nothing is new.
Fixed crinkly windows on Valentino’s Hatchback
Fixed a bug when joining a lobby caused an error
Fixed a bug when connecting to Steam fails