Tech Pass Launch: Free Giveaway!

Hotfix 29.04.2022

• Players now contribute 2TP to the pool. We’re planning a slight rework of how the pool is generated to make playing with others more rewarding that will come next week.

• Rebalanced TP cost of the Tech Passes to reduce the total needed.

• Combined with the TP pool change this cuts down the time required to unlock everything by over half on average.

• We’ll also be looking into other ways to allow players to speed up progression.

• Some players may have more Tech Points than are required for a level after this change. If you are in this situation, clicking the ‘spend TP’ button will update you to the correct value on the next level without spending any extra.

• Fixed a bug that prevented the blueprint delete/overwrite popup from closing

• Fixed a bug that could cause the screen to turn black in the World Editor

• Increased the thrust of XL and XXL jets

• Addressed a couple of potential errors and timeouts on the game servers. We’ll be investigating outstanding issues for another hotfix next week

• Fixed some game logic issues that would prevent TP from being awarded at the end of a match

• Fixed the position of wheel dust VFX

Original post

Hello everyone,

We’ve just released a huge update which includes the new Tech Pass progression system as well as tons of new content and features and some great QoL improvements too.

This update also includes a FREE GIVEAWAY of the Supercharged Wheels Pass as a thank you for all your support so far in the early stages of development of Techblox. Read below for more info.

Tech Pass Progression System

This update introduces 4 Tech Passes, the Basics Tech Pass, Wheels Tech Pass, Robotics Tech Pass and Flight Tech Pass:

Users who are new to Techblox will not start off with such an overwhelming array of blocks and materials and will instead need to unlock them via the Tech Pass Progression System by playing online and earning Tech Points.

As you earn Tech Points you can choose which Tech Pass to spend them on to progress through a specific area of Tech and unlock a specific group of content. You spend Tech Points by clicking on the large round TP button in the top right corner of the Tech Pass Progression Screen:

Each Tech Pass contains blocks, materials and characters to unlock and in future we intend to add other elements such as Emotes and Decals. We will also add more Tech Passes to the game, e.g. Battle Pass.

Some of the Tech Passes are shorter in length with less levels, and we intend to expand them over time, for example in the Flight Tech Pass we intend to add more content related to flying such as Wings, Flaps, Rotors, etc.

IMPORTANT: Existing users will find that many of the blocks and materials they once had available are not unlocked. If you want to unlock them again you need to enter this code on the Shop screen:

LGCY-USER-INVE-TORY

NB: Even users who’ve been playing Techblox for some time will still need to earn TP and progress along the Tech Passes to unlock the new content added in this update.

How to Earn Tech Points?

You earn Tech Points by competing and completing games in online game modes which feature the gold TP (Tech Point) icon as shown in the image below:

For this update, all currently available online game modes will award Tech Points.

As you join an online server you will see a ‘Tech Point Pool’ in the top left corner of the HUD. The Tech Point pool shows the pool of Tech Points currently available on this server. When a game starts Tech Points are accumulated in the pool, usually at a rate of 1 TP per second for each player on that server, so more players = more TP.

When games are completed the Tech Points are allocated by the ‘Score to Tech Point Converter Block’ based on the scores in the scoreboard. In team games this is based on team score & player score, in non-team games the allocation is based on the player score only. The higher you [and your team] are in the scoreboard, the more of the Tech Point pool you will receive.

Supercharging your Tech Pass

The Tech Passes feature a free row (on top) and a premium row (on bottom). The bottom row features cosmetic only blocks and characters so you can be unique online without gaining a competitive advantage.

At the moment only the Wheels Tech Pass is available to be Supercharged. We’re working on the content to be able to offer Premium cosmetic content in the other Tech Passes:

In future users will need to pay for the Supercharge Passes with real money but for now we have implemented a code entry system to allow existing community members who have been supporting Techblox in its early development to get the Premium Row of the Wheels Tech Pass for free.

Once users purchase [or use a code to get] the Premium row of a Tech Pass they will also get all future content added to that Tech Pass.

Here is a time limited code so you can unlock the Wheels Supercharge Pass:

WHLS-SUPR-CHRG-PASS

Characters

We’ve also added a bunch of new character skins which you can unlock via the Tech Pass Progression system and can select via the new Character Selection screen:

The Robotics Tech Pass features some old favourites androids from Robocraft known as Cray, Gene and Tianhe who have been updated for 2022 in full Unity High-definition-render-pipeline glory.

Machine Shifting

We’ve added one of the high requested QoL features to allow you to shift your machine Up, Down, Left, Right, Forward and Back with shortcut keys:

The keys for Up and Down are shown in the HUD and the keys for Forward, Backwards, Left and Right appear in the Controls screen. All shortcuts can be reconfigured as you wish.

We’ve also added auto-shift so you can place a wheel such that it would be inside the floor, and the vehicle will auto-shift up so you can place the wheel with ease. All of this auto-shift functionality also works with Blueprints.

Community Builds Featured

We’re now featuring a bunch of cool community builds in the Press A Key Screen when you start the game with a procedural animation showing them being assembled and broken apart. The creators are credited in this screen for each build shown and they are shown randomly. We’ll add in new ones and swap them around over time as you share your new awesome builds on Discord.

New Content

There is a megaton of new content in this update. Here is a big list:

Available on the Basics Tech Pass

• Crash Test Dummy White character skin

• Crash Test Dummy Orange character skin

• Crash Test Dummy Pink character skin

• 2 new Rubber paintable materials

Available on the Wheels Tech Pass

• Vector 7 Hatchback Wheels Standard and Wide variants

• Sporty Hatchback Driver and Passenger Seats

• Racing Driver Blue character skin

• Racing Driver Red and White character skin

• Set of slim Headlamps

• Electric Sedan Engine

• Vector 7 Sedan Wheels Standard and Wide variants

• Pearlescent paint material

• Racing Driver Yellow character skin

• Racing Driver Orange and White character skin

• Bus passenger seat

• Vector 7 Truck Wheel Standard and Wide variants

• Smoking exhaust

• Rad wrap paintable material

• Truck Driver character skin

• Fireman character skin

• Vector 7 F1 Wheels Front and Rear variants

• Glitercoat paintable material

• Racing Driver Freejam character skin

• Racing Driver silver character skin

• Flaming exhaust

• Policeman character skin

• Policeman character skin alternate version

Available on the Robotics Pass

• Cray character skin

• Gene character skin

• Tiahne character skin

Available on the Flight Pass

• Painted aircraft panelling material

• Shiny bare metal aircraft panelling material

• XL Jet

• XXL Jet

Other Changes

• New starter Blueprint - New go-kart blueprint is given to new users based on the new starter inventory

• Updated wire colour system - Changing from Green = Output/Red = Input to a system where Green = ‘float’ ports and Blue = ‘engine’ ports (yellow will be upcoming Vector3 ports).

Bug Fixes & Tweaks

• Fixed an error that could occur when players connect to an online server

• Fixed some collision issues with the Tarmac & Diagonal tiles

• Fixed an issue that caused the scoreboard to display empty names

• Fixed a bug that could cause the character to get stuck when spawning in the World Editor

• Increased Go-Kart Wheel friction

• Adjusted character collision while seated to be more accurate

• Fixed a bug that could cause the cursor to get stuck when closing the ESC menu

• Added a new “Support” popup to the options dropdown