Dear Stormworkers,
This week we add the new steam piston and steam whistle components!
The new steam pistons come in various sizes. As discussed last week, the steam pistons are designed to work with a similar mechanic to real steam pistons, where the difference in pressure on each side of the piston pushes the piston from end to end. There are 2 ports on each side of the piston, and the valves for these ports are driven by the crank rotation.
Try out the new steam tractor preset, or design your own steam engine! Simply supply high pressure steam to the input ports, and allow the steam to exhaust by adding exhausts or steam whistles to the output ports.
As the crank rotates, the torque acting on the crank varies. The pistons are most efficient mid-stroke, while at the ends of the stroke, the pistons do not apply force efficiently, creating dead zones. To counter-act this, placing pistons next to each other links their crank shafts, and you can offset their crank offset in the properties.
The new steam whistles are similar to output ports, except with the flow of steam, they produce a whistling sound! You can play around with the pitch in the whistles properties so you can customize the tone of your whistle, or just serenade your friends with a musical steam organ creation.
These components have requested ever since the steam and nuclear major update! So we are very excited to bring this update to players.
There is plenty more in this update, so be sure to read the patch notes below for info on all the fixes and improvements included in this minor update.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers
Patch Notes
v1.5.5
Changes that include a #NUMBER relate to fixes or features submitted by the Stormworks community via the Official Issue Tracker which can be accessed via the ‘Report Bug/Request Feature’ button in-game.
Posting a submission to this tracker ensures we review your suggestion/report since we may not see reports submitted via other channels.
Feature – Steam Piston Components (#3043)
Feature – Steam Whistle
A Steam powered tractor has been added to the preset vehicles list.
Fix – #10271 Underwater lighting fog shaders
Fix – Rocket fin mirroring not reflected correctly in mesh visuals when turning
Rework – Add vehicle destroyed mission outcome to relevant default mission types
Rework – Non-urgent mission types now display as orange instead of red
Fix – #11283 Default underwater missions not using zone size offset
Fix – #10322 Weather and Time overrides not persisting between save and load
Fix – #10856 Updated default mission title generation
Fix – #11032 Allow the Kraken to be placed in the addon editor
Fix – #11150 Missing triangle on the medium control surface
Fix – #7705 Added velocity limits to explosions to prevent twilight zoning the player
Fix – #11306 Survivors not updating their constraints when revived in a bed
Fix – #11358 Small fins editor mesh too big
Fix – Minor addon lua documentation QOL changes
Fix – #11381 Weather state reverts to start of game conditions on load
Fix – #11575 Rotor mesh gap issue
Rework – Updated network code to deal with cases where the thread sleeps for longer than expected
https://steamcommunity.com/games/573090/announcements/detail/6312374934978479556
