Here are four gameplay tweaks I worked on in this update while also working on finishing up the volcano level "Volcarnage Island:"

1) Towing Turn Speed

A problem at times has been turning while towing heavier vehicles, and that was made particularly obvious towing the large SUV. To fix this, I first tried fiddling with physics values but the answer....turned out to be simpler than that. All I had to do was increase the turn speed while towing, making it now easier to maneuver while towing.

2) Sticky Towed Cars

I had a new playtester play Carpoon in December, and they would come at the recycling crusher from the sides, leaving towed cars sticking on the outside wall and not really moving. I had no solution at the time, but eventually came across this old Game Maker blog post by Seth Coster from Butterscotch Shenanigans (Makers of Crashlands & Levelhead) https://www.yoyogames.com/blog/432/buttery-smooth-tech-tips-movement that showed a possible fix.

I had  to tweak the code for physics, but eventually got it working to make towed vehicles scoot themselves around walls once they hit them. Another tweak to help speed up the game and remove player frustration. Thanks Butterscotch Shenanigans!

3) Camera

Multiple playtesters had some difficulty making sense of what was going on in Volcarnage Island with a lot of the volcano eruptions happening offscreen. One part of the problem is that while I'm working on the game, it's at 1920x1200 while the standard is 1920x1080. Working at 16:9 later, despite having less screen real estate, has helped me keep aware of these issues.

Part of it too was that the camera only tracked the players. Tweaking the camera to include the lava balls helped, but I also had to  add a camera tracker object for some transitions. And once that base was setup, I extended it to include  towed vehicles as well to keep them on screen.

The camera in single player will likely have to be addressed more in the future as most of the focus was on multiplayer. The single player camera does focus on the point that the player is going to, making more of the area ahead visible, but is jerky at times.

4) No More Tears

Something I added early on in Carpoon's development was Pac-Man ghost eyes after being crushed. Eventually, those evolved to a controllable object that has to be moved back, complete with tears. A friend pointed out they weren't so easy to keep track of in a recent playtest, and considering they aren't central to Carpoon, I removed them. Sometimes removing a feature I worked on for a long time is tough, but because they were made a long time ago, I could look at the problem from a distance.

The Road Ahead

I'll be continuing work on finishing Volcarnage Island, splitting it into two team halves. It might even become a team battle mode. Also, there are a couple parts of the core game that could still be better including the reeling mechanic. Attached is the build update to try, which may be the last or at least one of the last ones before release - enjoy!