Greetings everyone!
The month of June already is in the rear view mirror, and what a month it was - first with the release of V1.2 and the Racin´ USA DLC (which we were thrilled to see so widely well received), followed by a hard push towards bug hunting and further improvements in the subsequent weeks.
In fact this slightly delayed Dev Update is largely because we are still at it, working on a new complementary update due out this weekend - and given we´ve been pushing out complementary updates over the last couple of weeks to get some outstanding issues fixed ASAP, there won´t be the usual big update this time but rather another smaller collection of fixes & improvements to wrap up this dev cycle.
Our focus continues to be on complementing the work on the new features and fixing issues that have come up since V1.2, as well as some older issues which we had been struggling for a while to track down - to this end it´s very important that users continue to submit their Bugsplat reports if they do run into a crash, if possible including information about their previous steps leading to the crash as those are most helpful to track down its source.
This focus will carry on over July for the next big update, as along with trying to resolve any pending issues we manage to track down and generally further tidy things up, we´ll be pushing to add a few more options and quality-of-life improvements that have been commonly requested by users.
So let´s go over what we´ve got on the immediate horizon:
We have further developments to Real Weather and dynamic LiveTrack presets, with some improvements to the system and Multiplayer support hopefully already integrated in this weekend´s update.
By the end of the month we´ll also have live storage of weather data for new days (currently weather from days in between releases is not stored so Real Weather doesn´t work for recent days and weeks since the initial June 4th release of this feature), and also expect to integrate real feed for environment temperatures and humidity data, doing away with the overly generic regional lookup tables for good.
Work continues also on bringing Seasonal Foliage to the remaining tracks - next up for this weekend will be Hockenheim along with its historical variants, making the trips into the long forest straights very different experiences depending on whether your session is run on the fall, winter or spring.
With the addition of Hockenheim, all premium tracks along with Bathurst, Imola and Spielberg will be featuring seasonal foliage, along with the more discreet variations of Brazilian tracks. By the end of the month we hope to have completed this feature and have all tracks in AMS2 presenting their appropriate seasonal foliage.
On the Physics side, the biggest incoming development is the completion of the Traction Control system revamp that we´ve been working on through this cycle, as well as adding input binding to adjust both TC & ABS in-car (and not just via ICM as it is currently).
Still on the topic of input bindings, by the end of the month we hope to offer the often-requested option to map multiple commands to the same key or button.
On the AI front, where we also have some nice further developments - with V1.2 we introduced unique personalities to each AI driver, which means all drivers in the sim (real, fictional or generic) have their own unique personality and skillset not shared with another AI driver. Within the next couple of months we´ll reduce the presence of generic drivers, with most series getting drivers (real or fictional) assigned to each car; their personalities in turn will be substantially fleshed out with several new variables, leading to AI drivers having varied ability in managing tire wear or running on the wet, staying cool when under pressure, keeping a consistent pace without mistakes, fighting back after being passed amongst other cool details - some drivers will also be more skilled on some tracks than in others, with all these elements hopefully leading up to a more varied and organic AI racing experience.
On to UI & HUD Development - while our man @Dave Stephenson continues to push hard in tidying some remaining issues with the Custom Championship tool and adding a few more options, the work should be largely completed after this weekend´s update, which means he´s finally unleashed to catch up with some other UI & HUD updates, including substantial reforms to the Multiplayer Lobby & monitor screens - the former previews below and expected to be ready for the weekend:
Once these are completed we´ll dive into the driver profile page, and with that completing the development of the long awaited Multiplayer Rating System (at least a couple of months still to go there though).
Finally on to the Content - while the focus over the next few weeks will continue to be on delivering more of these groundwork improvements, we still have a fleshy bit of content to brighten up our next release, as the classic Porsche 911 Carrera RSR from 1974 will arrive as a free-for-all initial entry into 1970´s GT racing.
This 3.0L beast was very succesful on the track and remains widely popular to this day for its racey looks, sounds and performance, so we are naturally delighted to be bringing it to all AMS2 users.
Speaking of classics, we are also currently working on a track from Automobilista 1 and hoping to have it ready for the end of the month - no previews yet as we´re still early in the process, so I´ll leave you all to guess which one is it, as well as pitch in as to which other remaining AMS1 tracks you´d like to see brought over next!
That´s all the good stuff we have to share this month - and now it´s time to get back to work and get this next update ready for the weekend!
