Welcome to this blurb!

I just realized that just as I released this blurb, I forgot to paste in the proper introductory text, so you actually saw LAST week's blurb introduction for a bit. My bad!

In all actuality, it has been 4 weeks since the last blurb. Not fun, I got to admit. But that's what happens when you have to write a column, analyze stuff a little bit, draw two banners, and juggle that with real-life responsibilities and problems that just come out of no where.

In this blurb, we're going to take a look at a lot of the vehicle-based builds a lot of the community has made. On top of that, for speculation, we're finally going to be covering vehicles in Brickadia, wild stuff!

Apart from that, I hope you guys like this blurb's banner, as well as the updated every-Monday banner as well. Making smooth animations can take some time, especially when you want things to be JUST right. I gotta say, after 4 weeks of working on all of this, my hands hurt. Nonetheless, I hope it was worth the wait, because I absolutely loved making both of these banners, especially because of how they turned out!

With this small bit out of the way, let's get straight into things by looking at what the community has been up to vehicle-wise:

The day is finally here, after much long anticipation!

If you remember the last blurb, we went over things like logic gates, wires, and, most importantly, engines!

Naturally, since we mentioned things that are just ever so slightly related to vehicles, it seems the next thing to do would be to cover vehicles themselves!

There is so much developer content of vehicles that, while writing this, I am quite literally afraid that I am going to run out of space in my Dropbox account to host these videos that I may literally have to make a second Dropbox account.

Now the one thing we should talk about just before we get directly into vehicles is the one thing that is basically vehicle-adjacent, the one thing that allows vehicles as we know them to be possible: hinges!

Credit: Sixmorphugus (he actually made this for me after I asked, thanks Six!)

Now we've seen joint connections in Brickadia before, but since the last time we've covered them, it seems like they've recieved a delightful model upgrade! Compared to their white line appearance, they now have a more appropriate brick-appearance:

Credit: Zeblote

Credit: ConfidentBottle

If you want to know which one is which, a member of the community made a helpful guide to show what is what:

Credit: Akane Night

Obviously, this isn't all the joint connections that will appear in the game, as we know of a couple other more that will make it into the game (socket connections, rail connections, etc.), but it is definitely satisfying to see direct joint connections get a change of appearance to fit more appropriately with the style of the game.

We can also see some of the creative uses for them here:

Credit: Zeblote

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

A question to consider in regard to hinges though is if we'll be getting joint connections of different sizes, or perhaps even different pivot hinges as bricks, like door hinges or elbow hinges? I can imagine it'd be a little rough for giant builds to have their rotation solely dependant on tiny little points of rotation for them to work out neatly, but whether or not a larger hinge joint connection even solves that is a better question. Or what about super tiny, micro-scaled builds? Having little mechanisms swing cranes around or having very small scale mechanical movements be brought to life with tiny hinges and joints would be an awesome thing to have.

[EDIT: After someone pointed out to me that I suck at reading (just kidding, I just read a message the wrong way, thanks lime!), the section below has been altered to better fit the quote more accurately. Sorry folks!]

Credit: Sixmorphugus

"All bets are off now that behaviors are getting combined with the joints[.]" - Sixmorphugus

Going along with what I just said, a lot of people are going to want to make a lot of things. The fact that you're even able to make something follow the player in the first place, let alone it be something that works surprisingly well, speaks volumes as to what's possible. With that in mind, it would be good to have variants of mechanically-based bricks to better support whatever it is that players would want to make in the first place, calling back to that idea of little micro-hinges and joints. People were impressed you could build with regular studded bricks, and the introduction of microbricks probably surpassed the expectations of some folk as to what they could build in Brickadia. In the same way, I can imagine that by having a parallel with that for joints and hinges that a lot more crazy things are going to be made that surpasses even our expectations now.

We already know that there's going to be thinner versions of the Engine brick previously seen in the last blurb, and we already have confirmation that you can make a seat out of anything instead of solely relying on big brick pieces for that, so I think it's reasonable to assume that with how mechanical joints look like right now that we'll potentially see size variants in the future.

Now with all that out of the way, let's get into it. Let's dive into the pool that everyone has been dying to touch since the inception of time and space: vehicles in Brickadia.

One crucial aspect to take a look at for vehicles are, well, wheels! Just as it was back in the days of chariots and grain milling, wheels are just as important as they are here as they were of ages long ago. What wheels do we have that we can look forward to? Suffice to see, it seems like we have a good array of options as of thus far:

Credit: remanedur

Credit: remanedur

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: ConfidentBottle

Credit: ConfidentBottle

Now whether or not we'll see all of the ones not seen in-game is up to debate. My only hope is that we get more wagon-wheel variants, if I had to pick something to see.

Having all these wheels are pretty cool, but it is a bit of a shame that they are in their specific color scheme. What if I wanted some wackily colored vehicle, and the vehicles need to have a different color scheme to suit that? If I'm driving lunar rover, I need my tires to have that moon-dusted colors, or if I'm showing off my bling and illegally attained wealth through vehicular means, I need my tires to be golden as well!

Fear not, as it seems like wheels will be able to be recolored the same way avatar parts are! On top of that, the size of wheels can also be changed to whatever size that may be needed:

Credit: Sixmorphugus

"[...]you'll be able to resize wheels to whatever size you need[.]" - ConfidentBottle

One thing that would be really nice to have though is the ability to change out what type of tires a wheel has with whatever rim there is, and vice-versa. Just a thought that's being thrown out there (please add it PLEASE).

Despite the fact that the size of wheels can be resized, that does not mean that the individual parts of wheels cannot be resized relative to each other, nor does it mean that they are something that can be easily modified with the Resizer tool based on this comment:

"Wheels will just have a radius and width slider you can set in the applicator that will rescale the model[...]Procedurally-generated wheel models are outside the scope of the current system[.]" - ConfidentBottle

So while you are able to resize tires and rims with a slider, the ability to do so in a way that is seemingly procedural is not planned for release. But what is meant by "procedural" in regard to resizing wheels? To boil it down, while you can change the width of a rim to be very thin, it does not mean that the model of the rim will change its model to still appear natural or "correct." All the resizing does is rescale the model rather than directly change the model.

Apart from this: physics materials!

"All the wheels currently have a 'Rubber' physical material that gives them increased friction compared to the default[.] I'm gonna be adding more physical materials and people will be able to change which one given [the] physics grid or wheel use[.]" - ConfidentBottle

Given that there are physical materials that changes how a wheel interacts with everything else, it does make one wonder whether or not that's something that could potentially be applied to anything else other than wheels in Brickadia. I would also like to imagine that with a change in physics materials that HOPEFULLY we'll also be able to change the material appearance of wheels as well for the different parts in them.

Adding on to this, we're also clued in on what can be done with physics materials, what's changeable, and whether different attributes of a brick can be changed or not:

"[T]here's no way to just have a slider for how much friction etc. a given object has, but you should be able to pick from a selection of different physical materials that provide different properties[,] i.e. one would be ice, which has very low friction[.] One which most standard wheels use would be rubber, which has high friction[,] etc. etc." - ConfidentBottle

"Will the applicator eventually be able to affect a brick's physical properties? Like it's mass, friction, density, terminal velocity[,] and that sort? Or is that later going to be filed under Behaviors?" - jake

"No, bricks do not have such properties individually[.]" - Zeblote

So while this does deconfirm the idea of changing distinctly different properties in a brick, it doesn't deconfirm being able to apply physics materials onto ordinary bricks.

Materials and wheels aside, what can we do with wheels and hinge connections? Let's take a look at the plethora of development content involving rotating circles:

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Plus: a cool robot!

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Now what about seating arrangements? How do we sit in these suckers?

Recently, it seems as though seats are finally beginning to manifest in Brickadia:

Credit: Sixmorphugus

From what we currently know about seats in Brickadia, there will be whole seat pieces, as well as the ability to make custom seats to rest your plastic bum on in Brickadia (which is as a result of how seats work in the first place it seems like):

"Actually it would be neat if there were just more seat variants in general[.]" - Skerion

"There will be ye[,] the seat functionality is also handled via a component so you can put that component on any brick and use that brick as a seat[.] Different seat types will also have different poses, and you'll be able to change which one a given seat uses if you don't want to use the default i.e. a bike seat would have a different sitting pose than car seat[.]" - ConfidentBottle

So yes, there will be more seat variants, and even the possibility to make your own throne (the golden, royal kind and the white ceramic, bowl-shaped kind)!

I really do like the additional note about there being different seating poses, and the fact that there will be different seat types in the first place, which one could assume is easily modifiable through the component that's applied with the Applicator tool. One thing to think about though is that although there are seats for things like vehicles, will there be seats oriented towards regular, non-vehicle based seating? On top of that, would there be different seating poses for those regular seats as well?

One reason to consider this too would be for different things like keeping a character stationary in a pod going into places, or lying down for things like tombs or surgery tables? I very much so do like the idea of being able to have an transparent, elongated seat piece contain a player on the underside of it, attach wheels on the side, and slide down a cliff while being seated on it. Speaking of which, another very interesting idea to consider is the potential for there to be stock, default vehicles that you can pick out from the building menu. What do I mean by this? While building your own vehicles is a must have, having things that are smaller but more difficult to build, like skateboards and snowboards, would be a very nice thing to have.

Fortunately, it will likely be possible to build small vehicles like that based on this comment:

"One of the contribs has modeled a few casters/skateboard wheels/cart wheels like this[.] I'll be adding 'em soon." - ConfidentBottle

Still though, sometimes you want to build, and sometimes you want to play around, and having just a simple pre-built thing that is small like that (or even a solid brick piece like actual LEGO) goes a long way.

The possibilites of what you're able to do with these new features coming to Brickadia almost seem endless, who knows what else will be revealed in the coming future! But as a closer, I'll just show the rest of the videos the developers have released in reference to vehicles and hinges. In the next blurb, it looks like we'll be dipping our toes again in Logic Gates!

Enjoy:

Credit: Tori

Credit: Tori

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Tori

Credit: Tori

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus

Credit: Sixmorphugus