Why Scrap Mechanic Will Never Be Finished

[@IsaacDaBoatSloth]

custom engine, few people, huge ambition recipe for disaster

[@cytrynowykisiel3715]

But it can work. Just look at barotrauma, factorio, no mans sky, minecraft. They all started from custom engine written by small team, i know that its easier fo fuckup but its not a rule that it must fail.

[@chefkochmurat2550]

@@cytrynowykisiel3715 But those guys had passion for it. Iirc Sean Murray sold his house to fund the development of No mans sky. Axolot doesn't really seam to want to make this game reach it's potential, at least not at such high costs.

[@SHREK32344]

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

[@ThePhonax]

Man, even if it never comes out, I’m fine with that. I have over a thousand hours playing this game, and I’ve figured out ways to optimize my creations as to not deal with lag. I don’t need an update for that. I can make hyper-realistic creations without any new parts. I can play survival and enjoy it. IMO, the game is fine. Sure, maybe the devs are being a bit too quiet about their progress and they aren’t talking to their community as much as they should be. But whether the game gets an update or not, I’ll be happy. Cause I don’t need it. And nobody else should, either.

[@SHREK32344]

@@ThePhonaxCouldn’t have said it better myself.

[@floppa_afton6282]

​@@SHREK32344simion ?!!?

[@thecoalcub6012]

​@@ThePhonax The main issue with lag is when you have multiple creations even just idling on the ground. It severely limits how enjoyable multiplayer could be without the ability to have more than 4 relatively simple creations in the world at once without having to play at

[@ThePhonax]

@@thecoalcub6012 as somebody with over 1k hours in-game and a gargantuan ego, I’m gonna tell you that your creations are laggy, not the game.

[@malindukumaradasa3851]

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

[@farrie201]

Yeah agreed, kind of like what subnautica did with the live builds! It would allow immediate feedback from the community and motivate work.

[@3wan279]

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.

[@refson9883]

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.

[@mattycat_5009]

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

[@butlazgazempropan-butan11k87]

I feel like instead of abamdoning it they could seel it to someone else

[@shadows-nj2nh]

If they're going to abandon the game with such a large community I think everyone should get refunds

[@programmeralexgames4953]

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.

[@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.

[@kyphasdip9907]

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

[@Seltsamisierend]

The survival mode update worked INSANELY well for what it was. They didn't even announce half the features, water was a complete surprise. Also, you said that we would never get the experience shown in the survival trailer. They did not promise anything that did not make the cut. Everything in this trailer is in the game right now. Just go do it.

[@goobercar]

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

[@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.

[@kitrod]

I think Axolot suffers from major feature creep/scope creep. They don't know when to mark an update as feature complete. They keep getting new ideas that will take more time and don't know when to stop. This is very obvious to me seeing the sheer size of Chapter 2. It keeps getting larger and larger as we've seen from devblogs.

[@spacegirlproduction9506]

I remember I used to joke that game will be finish after my university… damn I wasn’t mistaken …

[@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.

[@higuy3482]

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

[@chefkochmurat2550]

There is no miscommunication, there is NO communication.

[@KaedysKor]

Games that aren't being updated don't magically _gain_ more players. Every single game, almost without fail, sees a downward trajectory of players over time. Updates, especially content updates, buoy that back up, and then it starts declining again. If they're waiting for players to just magically materialize on a game they aren't publishing updates for, well, I hope they aren't holding their breath.

[@NukularNutz]

Why would the games popularity increase after all these years with no new content?

[@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.

[@t.c.sbunch-o-stuff5907]

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.

[@gianniskikas9428]

Hey doors lvl 2 on roblox was announced 3 years ago and it released on this August so there still hope

[@I_Krypton_I]

Well... at least this video could have some more solid facts... For example, that the developer branch is updated regularly. And by the way updated in this branch is the part related to the game engine, new content is no more being added. Although I am also skeptical of this. But still I have a little hope. My bets that the update will be released in the first half of 2025.

[@imyellowteeth4691]

i still believe in a 2024 release, but other than that, i have absoluetly no hope for a chapter 3.

[@colymoli4311]

2:23 i disagree with you at this point and say, trail makers is like scrap mechanic, but better. you can build vehicles and mashines with less lag and actual air and water physics. like how bad i want to build a plane in scrap mechanic vanilla, in trail makers its only a view wing blocks away. but they first have to improve the performance before adding new content. that shuld be priority number 1

[@0megaming]

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.

[@ballachris19888]

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.

[@thecoalcub6012]

@user-ld2dh7jn2t Then you bought the wrong game I'm afraid, its a sandbox game quite simply. Scrap mechanic will have a "end goal" in the future most likely after chapter 3 or 4 besides Minecraft doesn't have one either, I guess you could make an argument that the ender dragon is the end goal but defeating him doesn't really change anything except rolling the credits. This game has amazing potential but isn't quite there yet in the survival aspect which isn't too uncommon for an early access title.

[@ZockerAxel]

I really don't think the choice of game engine really matters a lot in terms of making things take longer. If they'd made this game in unity, unreal or godot, they really wouldn't have that big of an advantage, as the mechanics and complexity of scrap mechanic would still be an issue they need to figure out regardless of game engine. Big game engines are kind of jack-of-all trades, but master of none. They are very good for a very broad area of use-cases but they will not be a better choice in super specific use-cases like the complex physics simulations of scrap mechanic. Yes, there are useful engine features you could use but a game engine can still hinder your ability to create a game if you are targetting a use-case that is not covered by the engine. They would need to figure out the bulk of the optimizations even if they had used a non-custom game engine. No game engine will magically remove lag in complex physics calculations that aim to be realistic.

[@RealPanzer999]

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

[@NukularNutz]

The games in ea. It makes no sense to go 4 years without any substantial update. The idea of ea is to get feedback and have players test updates. The whole thing seems fishy to me. I hope im wrong and we get the update soon.

[@amateuranimator559]

The problem with not finishing one of their games are that people won’t like the developers and thus their future games, so less people are going to feel safe spending 30 bucks on axolotls new game that might not even get finished

[@tjhedgescout3052]

Yeah i doubt the game would be finished, we are still waiting for Chapter 2... That is the reason why the modding community has to do all the work, that's sadly how it is, Bethesda Normalized that mindset... I wish they made an Experimental Branch, that could help a bit as people could opt into it.

[@fast_cheetah5834]

Space engineers is my goto. Its way better than scrap mechanic but it gives you the same building capabilities.

[@jaakkoannala7976]

I have played craft mod, crashlander and fant mod. I have fear chapter 2 will be too little too late and wont bring back love of the game.

[@guillermoelnino]

If it were to actually come out it would instantly break all the mods we've come to love, most of which the authors won't update because they've abandoned the game just like Axolot.

[@skytrooper3537]

I'm waiting to see if they'll have a "oops not 2023, oops not 2024, we'll say 2025 now" response, or shove an unfinished update because they don't want to deal with the backlash

[@guillermoelnino]

Kickstarter scammers have more communication with their victims than Axolot does with their paying customers.

[@flyingdukk]

They are supposed to have 24 people but that was a year or two ago

[@guillermoelnino]

makes me wish they were bought out ala Mojang.

[@Vit-Pokorny]

Considering survival mode is pretty bad as far as gameplay goes, i have no expectations for Chapter 2 to be any better.

[@NoenD_io]

we just need bugfixes aerodynamics and hydrodynamic

[@VAXHeadroom]

I'm not quite as pessimistic, but...yeah...

[@MrGamer55215]

Yoooo