Hello there 👋
It's time for an update about the work going on behind the scenes here at Curious Chicken Games!
As many of you will be aware, we've been focussing on the GR2 Multiplayer update, but we've also been at work on a variety of other things, too. So, we'll start with talking about what you can expect from the next patch!
Next Patch
Despite all the work on the online multiplayer (more about that below), we've been making sure that we have time to work on some of the most-requested features, bug-fixes and new content.
At the moment the next patch is still under development - and it could still be a couple of weeks away - but broadly you can expect to see: the new menu UI; a new car; some new objects; and a variety of small new features and fixes that have been requested by the community over the past weeks and months!
Multiplayer Update
Work on the online multiplayer is progressing well. At the moment, we only have a few more things to finish, before we're ready to start some invite-only beta testing (stay tuned on Discord for more information about that).
Fundamentally, the major things we have left are some UI work (to get the lobby screen, selection screens and in-game screens up-to-date with the new UI we're launching soon); synchronising the host's track files to the clients; and some validation/verification stuff (to ensure everyone in the server is running the same versions of everything).
We want to make sure that we only release online multiplayer when it's stable and has all of the basic features needed for it to be fun to play with your friends (or strangers) online.
We're still on target for our internal estimates for the release of online multiplayer - so, even though we've not had much to say about it in the past month or two, we're still moving ahead as planned!
Live Events
As part of our focus on involving the community in the day-to-day development of GeneRally 2, we'll be trialling hosting some "live events" - initially on Discord.
For the most part these will begin with some Q&As, and maybe even some patch previews - but after the launch of online multiplayer, we hope to be able to do some community races together with you!
Be sure to join us on Discord, to be notified of when we're planning to host such an event!
Social Media Updates
We've had a number of requests to get GeneRally 2 on TikTok or Instagram - so we've decided to try that avenue out! You can now follow @GeneRally.Game on TikTok and, if all goes well with that, we may expand to Instagram at a later date. We're trying our hand at being a little more social media savvy 😊
So, if you're interested in seeing some short-form GeneRally 2 video content on TikTok... follow us!
Of course, being a small team and with a limited amount of time to dedicate to social media, we want to ensure that we're spending our time wisely. As a result, we'll be keeping updates on Facebook and X/Twitter to bigger announcements only.
We'll continue to update regularly on Discord!
Roadmap Changes
Additionally, we've made some updates to the Roadmap page in order to make our objectives a bit clearer and to show a little more obviously what we're working on right now, and how it's going.
As with the previous format of the Roadmap page, the contents are all subject to change, but we'll try to keep this broadly up-to-date even between these update posts!
Community Choice Award - January 2024
Finally, the Community Choice Award for January 2024 - which would normally have been announced by now - is also coming soon. We're going to be trialling featuring the tracks in short-form videos on social media, as well as making the announcement blog posts... so we were waiting to announce all of this stuff together.
Stay tuned here, and on TikTok 😉