Howdy Wreckers,
What’s up, everyone? We hope everyone’s doing awesome and still having a ton of fun with the previous update of the game. It’s now been some weeks since the last update, and knowing how enthusiastic everyone is about the game we thought it would be a perfect time to fill you in and let you know exactly what we’re currently working on, so let’s check it out!
NEW CARS
A racing game can never have enough cars, so yes, we’re indeed working on some new ones. We’re still keeping these ones under the wraps while we’re putting finishing touches on them but in our true-and-tried style once again there will be some much sought-after fan-favourites as well as some surprises.
BACKER CAR
Understandably, quite a few of you have been asking how the backer car is doing (featured in the Deluxe Edition of the game) and when it’s coming, and we’re happy to let you know that it’s alive and kicking! It’s currently being finalized so it won’t be long until you’ll get to take it out for a spin.
NEW PAINT JOBS
To add more variety, authenticity as well as customization possibilities we’re adding more banger racing and demolition derby inspired paint jobs for the cars. We’re also currently looking for a way to improve the way the AI uses paint jobs and liveries during the career so that for example in a banger racing themed series the AI would use banger racing themed liveries.
CAREER IMPROVEMENTS
We’re adjusting the career based on your feedback to make it seem less repetitive, and to that end, we’re adding more special one-off events and challenges to spice it up nicely. We’ve also expanded the reward functionality, so performing well in an event will be rewarded with new upgrade and customization parts for the vehicles that you own. These will be based on the series theme, so a racing series will grant racing upgrades, while a demolition derby series will get you heavy bumpers and so forth. Oh, and it’s now possible to check the bonus objectives in the pause menu, and every time you make progress towards the goal or complete it, you will receive an on-screen notification. Hurray!
MORE DYNAMIC CONTENT FOR TRACKS AND POLISH
To make the gameplay more interesting and set the stage for more spectacular crashes, we’re currently in the process of adding more dynamic content such as tire stacks and billboard to the tracks. In addition to that, we’re also doing a polishing pass to the tracks, meaning adding extra details, fixing remaining bugs and so forth.
SPECTATOR AUDIO
Speaking of tracks, we’re also adding some crowd noises, so that every time you race past a spectator stand you will hear the crowd cheering and so on. In a grand scheme of things it might be a detail, yes, but it does add some nice ambiance and make the tracks seem so much livelier.
USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS
We’re currently overhauling many of the current placeholder menu screens, and for example the garage screen will be completely replaced with a new one, offering more interesting visuals and expanded functionality such as an ability to preview the vehicles with stats before making a purchase. The series selection screen has also been reworked, making it now easier to get an overview of the current championship.
DAMAGE IMPROVEMENTS
Since the last update we’ve been working on further improvements for vehicle damage, and some good stuff is coming. In the next update, the body damage will look more dynamic and the panels will deform in a way that we feel is more natural for sheet metal. Also – and hey, this is actually a big one – the engine block will no longer get horribly deformed with visual damage, yielding more realistic looking results. Check this out:
AI IMPROVEMENTS
We’ve evaluated the AI difficulty based on the feedback we’ve received and made some adjustments accordingly, so that the Novice AI is slightly more challenging with less obvious rubberbanding, and the jump between Amateur and Expert difficulty is not as significant as previously. Also, we’re adding AI players using for example a Class C car upgraded to Class B in order to add more variety to the career events.
REALISTIC DAMAGE IN MULTIPLAYER
This is something that many of you have been asking for, and we’re happy to let you know that yes, it’s been planned from the get-go and it’s coming in the next update. We’re also fine-tuning realistic damage so that the gameplay damage and mechanical damage better matches what you see on the screen.
IMPROVED STABILITY
Thanks to the community pointing us the right way, we pinpointed and fixed two critical cases which caused dedicated server instability, and we’re confident that after the next update the server software will be more stable. Also, to make sure that we can attack any current and future issues as vigorously as possible we’re integrating a handy middleware that provides an easy and powerful platform to trace errors and catch crash dumps even with the public release build. In other words, if the game crashes on you we will be the first ones to hear about it.
So with the goodies out of the bag, when’s when? Like always, before releasing the update we want to make sure we’re happy with what we have but all things considered we’re shooting for the next week. Stay tuned for more news soon!
Thanks for all the feedback and support, we love you! Godspeed everyone.