Wreckfest | 'Backwood Bangers' DLC Available + New Update

[Paul Jeffrey]

Bugbear Entertainment have made available their third DLC offering for Wreckfest - the 'Backwood Bangers' car pack.

Containing three brand new cars to the impressive smash and crash racing game, the Backwood Bangers DLC contains a nice collection of very, very different types of racing machine for the game. From the classic American Hot Rod style Outlaw, to what is essentially a toilet on a golf kart in the form of the Honey Pot - the Backwood Bangers DLC certainly keeps up the quirky traditions of the game.

Available either as part of the current Season Pass offer from Bugbear, or as a standalone car pack for £3.29, the new DLC is available to purchase now.

Aside from the new DLC pack, Wreckfest have also released a rather nice looking new update to the game - including adding two new circuits in the form of the Drytown Desert and Rockfield Roughspot, a rallycross and dirt speedway respectively.

Update Notes:

CONTENT

• Added two new tracks: Drytown Desert and Rockfield Roughspot.

ENGINE

• Optimized loading times.
  
• Added Steam Achievements. Except for "Rocketeer" (Reach 210 Km/h (130 Mph) With Rocket), already achieved ones will unlock retrospectively upon launching the game.
  
• Added support for Steam Cloud. Note that the game's save data is now located in "Documents/My Games/wreckfest" (old save data will be copied over in the first-time launch).
  
• Improved mesh particle culling, improving framerate especially in events featuring large vehicles.
  
• Glow particles no longer appear completely white.

GAMEPLAY

• Added a third damage mode that some have been requesting: "Intense". This is same as the "Realistic" mode with which the console versions launched, in other words, "Realistic" with attacker's advantage enabled.
  
• Added an AI Set for Limo.
  
• Added Big Rig and Limo to the "Special Mix" AI Set.
  
• Increased Wingman strength.
  
• Reduced Limo strength slightly.
  
• Taking the loop on "Deathloop" no longer causes damage to the car.
  
• Improved Honey Pot panel damage so that panels get detached correctly.
  
• Wheels no longer clip the fenders of Venom as easily.
  
• Wheels no longer clip the fenders of Outlaw as easily.
  
• Lawnmower and other small vehicles are no longer invincible against small to medium nudges.
  
• Improved AI raceline on various tracks.

INTERFACE

• Added improved iconography to the garage user interface.
  
• Added new, unique icons for armor and visual upgrade parts.
  
• Added upgrade tier icons for performance parts.
  
• In career heat races, event specific loading screen is now displayed also between the heats.
  
• In custom events, the correct AI Set is now displayed after changing the vehicle.
  
• HUD can no longer appear in the main menu after being disconnected from an online session.
  
• Health bar no longer appears full when the player has 1 health point left.

MULTIPLAYER

• Improved local car prediction precision to reduce input lag.
  
• Increased maximum allowed prediction time for remote cars to reduce warping with high latency.
  
• In lobby, the server name no longer overlaps the track name at the top.
  
• Lobby options are no longer incorrectly grayed out in case the user is in the Tune screen when a track change occurs.
  
• Idling during an online event no longer results in the player being kicked from the server.
  
• Added back the "Add Bot" button to lobby.

AUDIO

• Collision effects are more crunchy now.

MODDING

• In-game modding tools now work again.
  
• Modifying minimap settings (bag filetype "mise") no longer trickers anti-tamper protection.

Wreckfest is available for PC and console now.

For more smashing fun, head over to the RaceDepartment Wreckfest sub forum, and don't forget to check out the awesome RD Wreckfest Racing Club for some contact filled and laugh out loud online racing activity!

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[Marc Collins]

Thanks--I knew RD would have an explanation for the 3.5 GB download I had no idea about!

Two new tracks -- absolutely fantastic that these are being added. Great support from the publisher.

The "Intense" damage mode is something I will avoid like the plague. The worst part of Wreckfest races already are the corner-bombers and people who drive backwards, etc. Giving them a damage advantage just turns the game into a juvenile cluster*&%$. Deathmatch doesn't need an aggressor's advantage, but at least I could imagine some people might want to have that in that setting. "Intense" should only be an option in Deathmatch, and I would still avoid it because the current balanced risk for damage in Deathmatch works well.

Reduced Limo strength!?!?! Oh no, it will now be more appropriate and we have lost the clearly unfair advantage that it had. Fun while it lasted if you knew about it

Deathloop fix -- finally and appreciated.

Lots of other small and not so small fixes that reveals a dev interested in good support for its title. It certainly isn't a drop and then ignore situation.

My only real complaint is the way overdone reflections that I can't seem to tame. Anyone know how to tone them down so, for example, the reflection of the colour from a passing car doesn't look like someone is literally shining a light of that colour? It gets worse as the ambient light level drops. In bright daylight, barely noticeable. In low light, it completely ruins the otherwise plausible lighting in the overall very decent graphics.

 

[blot]

3 cars and 2 tracks for £3.29! Purchased.

 

[Mike Smith]

View attachment 331199
AUDIO

• Collision effects are more crunchy now.

 

I'm sold!

 

[ears]

3 cars and 2 tracks for £3.29! Purchased.

The tracks are free. You get those whether or not you have the DLC.

 

[Magus]

I can't get the game to run any more. Launching it I get the dialogue box of which version to launch, then the settings box Werckfest 1.252065 64bit DX11, then when I press PLAY, Fatal Error: Could not opent file for writing: save/settings.conf

I have gone into Steam/userdata/228380/local/wreckfest and tried renaming & deleting the settings.conf but still getting the same error.

I just uninstalled & re-installed the game but still the same error.

 

[ears]

I can't get the game to run any more. Launching it I get the dialogue box of which version to launch, then the settings box Werckfest 1.252065 64bit DX11, then when I press PLAY, Fatal Error: Could not opent file for writing: save/settings.conf

I have gone into Steam/userdata/228380/local/wreckfest and tried renaming & deleting the settings.conf but still getting the same error.

I just uninstalled & re-installed the game but still the same error.

The steam cloud saves are implemented in this update.

Do you have a special character in your Windows username?

 

[M D Gourley]

AUDIO

• Collision effects are more crunchy now.

Possibly a bit too loud as this overpowers the engine audio...on my audio set up anyway...Absolutely enjoying Wreckfest at the moment in Multiplayer driving Manual H-Pattern with Clutch, it's a fantastic challenge

 

[ears]

Possibly a bit too loud as this overpowers the engine audio...on my audio set up anyway...Absolutely enjoying Wreckfest at the moment in Multiplayer driving Manual H-Pattern with Clutch, it's a fantastic challenge

I would LOVE to do that, but I'm just too far down the VR path now.

I do love playing Wreckfest, but I play it with an Xbox 360 controller.

If it had VR support, and I could use my wheel and shifter .... wow.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Two new tracks for free is pretty awesome.

I wish the AI would use the DLC cars though. Bit of waste if there will be 20 new cars, but you'll see just one of them at a time (your own car) in single player.

 

[Magus]

The steam cloud saves are implemented in this update.

Do you have a special character in your Windows username?

No I don't

 

[ears]

No I don't

Ah. That's the only direction I can point you in I'm afraid.

As part of the update and switch to cloud saves, the game on first load tries to move your profile data from the folder you mention into your My Documents location.

Some people reported that it failed to do so if there was a special character in the logged in user's user name.

Do you have backup folders in your current profile? Could you try data from one of them?

Is it a while since you played the game?

 

[Marc Collins]

Two new tracks for free is pretty awesome.

I wish the AI would use the DLC cars though. Bit of waste if there will be 20 new cars, but you'll see just one of them at a time (your own car) in single player.

You see them online based on how popular they are with players.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

You see them online based on how popular they are with players.

Of course but why not extend that to single player portion

 

[Magus]

Ah. That's the only direction I can point you in I'm afraid.

As part of the update and switch to cloud saves, the game on first load tries to move your profile data from the folder you mention into your My Documents location.

Some people reported that it failed to do so if there was a special character in the logged in user's user name.

Do you have backup folders in your current profile? Could you try data from one of them?

Is it a while since you played the game?

I played it maybe 3 weeks ago? The game's userdata folder contains 3 folders: next car game pre-alpha, wreckfest, wreckfest early access. In the wreckfest folder I have 3 backups, I tried the latest settings.conf from September but still get the fatal error.

Unfortunately Bugbear forums are a bit of a ghost town.

 

[ears]

I played it maybe 3 weeks ago? The game's userdata folder contains 3 folders: next car game pre-alpha, wreckfest, wreckfest early access. In the wreckfest folder I have 3 backups, I tried the latest settings.conf from September but still get the fatal error.

Unfortunately Bugbear forums are a bit of a ghost town.

The devs are a bit more active on the Steam forums.

With your error message saying it's unable to WRITE settings.conf. it seems to me that it's having trouble copying your settings into your profile, which it does do in this version, when you first run it.

If you have any character in your username that's not in the standard 26 character English alphabet this is known to cause it.

They'll probably fix it but something you could do, if you could be bothered, to rule anything to do with your username out of the equation, is to create a new simple user in Windows.

Call it something simple like 'Bob' then launch Wreckfest from there, see if it works.

Maybe copy your Wreckfest user data settings profile in from Steam Appdata before launching to see if it can successfully copy your profile data in under the new username.

 

[ears]

Looks like there's a thread gathering pace on Steam for this error.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/228380/discussions/0/1696095260993334390/

 

[Magus]

Looks like there's a thread gathering pace on Steam for this error.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/228380/discussions/0/1696095260993334390/

Got it working, thanks for the link.

 

[ears]

Got it working, thanks for the link.

Good news.

Just out of interest - what fixed it?!

 

[Magus]

Good news.

Just out of interest - what fixed it?!

I needed to create a Wreckfest folder in C:/User/Document/My Games and in the folder create another folder with my SteamID64 and then place all the files and folders for the Steam/Userdata/228380/local/Wreckfest into it. I think it is effecting people who do not have steam installed on their main OS drive (possibly).