Why Scrap Mechanic Will Never Be Finished

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#scrapmechanic #scrapmechanicsurvival #axolotgames

[IsaacDaBoatSloth]

custom engine, few people, huge ambition
recipe for disaster

[SHREK]

regardless of how much time it takes, I WILL play chapter 2 and I WILL enjoy it.

[malindukumaradasa]

Honestly, if the devs would just release an experimental branch, invite all of us in and finish up features one by one rather than trying to finish it all up at a time, the game would still be very relevant.
I don't think the devs are bad at what they do or is struggling with optimizations and issues, they just have very improper planning. I can imagine that they've started working on one major feature/a graphical overhaul/a major game mechanic, messed it up, and kept on going adding new areas, bots and components without ever fixing them, thus now entangled in a mess of "we can't go back now, but we can't release anything now either".

Hopefully I'd be able to get the nostalgic hit back from this game before I grow old and die. Never gonna give up on this, just like Scrapman won't

[mattycat_]

there are 3 scenarios for the future of the game
1. they come out of the dark and release the chapter but with minimal optimisations, "just to be finished with it"
2. they come out of the blue with a more optimised engine and they go on to update the game but it'll take even longer for the game to be finished but eventually it will
3. we get some article writing axolot abandoned scrap mechanic or it disbanded bc developing the engine is to time and resource intensive

[programmeralexgames]

When we were waiting for survival to release we were getting updates and the developers were communicating now we don't get updates or communication. Honestly it's not looking great for a 2024 release I would have expected them to begin communicating to build hype for the update by now.

I don't understand why they aren't doing minor updates this time around. They could give us the improved physics just drag and drop the improved code then test it, fix any bugs and publish.

They have a number of features they could have dropped during the wait that wouldn't majorly impact the chapter 2 drop and would have resulted in the community not deteriorating.

[higuy]

i think that scrap mechanic devs are waiting till the playerbase gets back to at least a quarter of what it used to so they have a reason to keep funding the game, and the playerbase(the people that own the game but have stopped playing it because of lack of updates) is waiting for the update to drop to come back to play the game, so there's that misscommunication where the devs are waiting for the players and the players are waiting for the devs

[refson]

Yeah I agree, It's pretty sad, I have been waiting 8 years for a proper release, and I have come to the same conclusion, either the game gets popular overnight (which is very unlikely) or development stops after chapter 2.

[Jotrain]

I've been following Scrap Mechanic for years now, even making my own channel around it because I was so invested, going as far as creating an Iceberg diagram to cover it in depth. But I completely relate to the disappointment here.

After so many days without updates and the lingering optimisation issues, it’s tough to keep up the same excitement.
While I still enjoy the game and appreciate the creativity it allows, the lack of communication and progress on the core problems has been discouraging. I hope the devs can pull through, but it’s hard not to feel like the game might never fully reach its potential.

[kyphasdip]

I really hope they get something out eventually. I already got burned by my other favorite game being ksp2 so hoping they dont leave it for dead like them

[wan]

if they are struggling this much, sell the game to a dev team that would actually work on it and have motivation to keep it going.

[goobercar]

Scrap mechanic? Thats a name i havent heard in ages!

[yellingintothewind]

The "custom" engine is not the major issue. It's using Ogre for the heavy lifting, which is a fairly well established graphics engine, with a handful of successful titles. It is mostly lacking the "IDE" experience you get from the big name game engines, but those tend to be over rated, especially by novices. Nor is onboarding new developers that much of a challenge, it's a fairly standard C++ code base, with whatever extensions they've made for scrap mechanic.

No, the fundamental problem is they went with the Bullet physics engine. Bullet is optimized for a few specific things that were needed for games _20_ years ago. It is a terrible choice for a physics based game, but none of the engines trivially enabled in Ogre are very good. Their best bet would be to get the updated Newton working inside Ogre, but that would be a fairly major undertaking needing someone with some technical skills that many game devs lack. Still, it has the raw performance they need, and the previous major release of Newton did work with Ogre. The problem is if they used the abstractions provided by the physics engine without a wrapper, switching that out will require changing the fundamental architecture of their game.

At this point, they'd be well served to follow Turning Wheel's model with Barony, and open source the engine (but not the game files) to get help from the community to get it to a playable state. Alternatively, they could go the xenonauts route of making it source-available, behind an NDA or otherwise. There are enough fans of the game that may be sufficient to get someone to help them, just to get the game functional.

[t.c.sbunch-o-stuff]

I love the Raft Mechanic mod, IMHO it's the most enjoyable to replay. Fant mod is getting better but really doesn't have a storyline yet. Crashlander is very good also, the only beef I have is the travel between locations can be tedious and sometimes downright aggravating. All said, all three of these mods are a huge improvement to vanilla.

[TheVirusWar]

If youre making a game, youre a programmer.
If youre make a game engine, youre an engineer.
Im not belittling anyone, but you need to understand how stuff works on the hardware level if you want to make it work as it should, and thats not a job for a team of a handful of people. Unity for example has 6000 people working on it, lets say a TENTH of that are developers, thats 600. Compared to 10, thats a shit ton of work that not everyone can manage.

[guillermoelnino]

If there was a meaningful alternative to what Scrap Mechanic is I'd be playing that right now. SM is in a market of 1. That's why so many of us want to believe it will be updated. I've given up years ago, but despirately want to be wrong.

[ballachris]

This game was on my wishlist for a very long time, but then I gave up on it over time, as it seems the developers themselves did the same.

[Ekipsogel]

With how long they have been keeping c2 unreleased, I don't think they would then just do a half baked drop and leave.

[Asutonautica]

guys, keep breathing copium, we need to believe.

[megaming]

It is quite sad, how long it takes for the updates to come. Also most of the lag comes from that the game gets calculated by your processor, instead of your graphics card. If they really got the improvements done, they could have given us some updates bit by bit.
BUT: Until chapter2 comes out, I´ll enjoy the game as undone, as it is and after the Chapter2 release, I´ll enjoy it even more. I´m just not expecting them to get it done soon.

[RealPanzer]

I have to fully agree with you, also hoping that you're wrong, but I guess we'll see.