Hello - and welcome to the August community update! We’ve again been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work, but we also have some other news to share about the next patch.
Remember, if you want to participate in the discussion directly with the development team - and the rest of the GeneRally 2 community - you can join us on Discord!
Next Patch - Track Editor QoL & Bug Fixes
Alongside the other bigger features we’ve been working on (which, naturally, take quite a bit of time), we’ve also been taking some time to work on smaller fixes and features, so that we can continue to release patches in the meanwhile.
The next patch will contain some Track Editor quality-of-life improvements, as well as a few bugfixes. The Track Editor is something that is not currently much impacted by the multiplayer, UI, etc. improvements - so it’s a sensible area for us to be able to work on in parallel! A few of the things you can expect to see in the next patch are:
Improvements to the display and usability of the masking tool.
Rotation-snapping (at 5 and 15 degree intervals) when placing/moving objects.
Terrain co-ordinates for your mouse cursor (to help with precision placements).
Keyboard shortcuts for certain Track Editor tools.
Separating the player car from the AI cars in test mode, by colour.
Sidebar minimising/hiding.
Orbital camera mode.
Extra variant colour options for some objects.
And other fixes and minor features…
Along with this, we’ll have a fix for tooltip display on some monitor resolutions, and a new “accessibility” option to allow you to scale the height-highlighting effect used in-game (if you find the terrain height hard to read).
The patch is nearing completion - so it shouldn’t be too long before we get that into your hands. There’s still time to tell us about your most-wanted Track Editor QoL improvements on Discord
Spectator Mode, Mid-Championship Joining, Server Hosting Mode
We have made significant progress with the whole multiplayer experience when it comes to both joining races, and participating in them in other ways. As we mentioned in our previous update, the mid-championship joining allows you to hop into a server, and not have to wait for the end of the championship before being able to drive - this allows you to get in and racing a lot quicker.
The improvements this feature required in the spectator mode, also led to an improvement we’ll also be shipping along with the mid-championship joining: server hosting mode. This basically allows for the host of a race to be a spectator, allowing for 8 other drivers to join. This is the first step on our path to supporting “dedicated servers” that can be started and left running continually, which we hope will give more racing opportunities.
UI Update & Menu Keyboard/Controller Support
As mentioned previously, we’re reworking the game’s UI with a few priorities in mind:
Add keyboard/controller support to the whole UI.
Improve the usability of the UI on hand-held devices (e.g. Steam Deck).
Make the UI easier to work on for us as developers, so things requiring new UI don’t take as much time.
Work is progressing well in all of these areas, and we have already reworked most of the game’s menus to support these goals. An additional benefit of the reworked system is the ability for us to significantly improve the framework for our in-race UI as well. What this means is that we have been able to reduce the amount of code and technical work required to change in-race UI, and also opened up support for us to provide more UI customisation options in the future.
Everything Else
We are still working on replays, save games, driver profiles, and other things as mentioned in previous posts. This post is now getting a bit long, so we won’t say too much more about those here - but check out our previous blog posts on the topic!
Conclusion
That’s all we’ve got for you this time - stay tuned for the upcoming patch, and if you want to discuss about this, come and find us, and plenty of players on Discord!