Hello racers!
It is finally live! BETA channel users can dive straight into a new world full of new track possibilities!
See the following link for how to play it: How to switch to the BETA channel
The update is available ONLY in the BETA channel until players have verified its state. Also if you don't know how to work with files you may screw up your savegame and other settings so be sure to follow the backup instructions very closely and all will be fine!
(Giant list of) release notes:
- Track Editor Beta with Steam Workshop support! Our main event for this update! This means you'll be able to create, share and play each others tracks for the first time! Very early beta, but it works! Your feedback is very appreciated especially in this area as we've been the only ones using these tools before.
- Basic modding support. You can create your own track objects with custom art, sounds and particle effects manually and import them into the editor, just by creating files. This makes it possible to create packages of your own additions and upload them to mod sites for others to enjoy. Many other parts of the game are easily modified as well by just changing files in the main folder. This will be an undocumented feature for a while but if any of you want to dive in immediately you can! (NOTE: Please be aware that modifications of the application folder will be overwritten by Steam when the game updates, so backup your mods!)
- Improved object system. We've rewritten most of the code related to the track and environment which gives several new possibilities for more dynamic tracks, as mentioned below:
- Destruction! Objects can now be made destructible so cars can slam into for example hay bales, crates and fences and they'll blow up to huge effect! This can also alter the routes of the more arcadey tracks over the course of a race.
- Environment sounds and trackside particle system support. Tracks can be made more alive by allowing sounds to be placed in the environment and particle systems to burn, smoke or enhance areas with other effects.
- Animated water! A new animated water layer backdrop has been added to enable more varied environments and give some more motion and life to the tracks.
- Menu animations. We have a rudimentary system in place to make more animated menus to give them more life and make them seem less static. This is very early yet and we will continue to improve this over time to find a good balance between snappy input and visual improvement.
- New skid sounds and particle effect for rough and loose surfaces
- Leaderboards will be reset in this update because the previous ones were only made for official tracks and now everyone will be able to make tracks!
- New race intro creating a bit of atmosphere before race starts and displaying lap record and track name.
- Dynamic race UI makes sure to only display the UI elements needed cleaning up the screen a lot during races.
- New tarmac skid sound. Now sounds a lot more realistic!
- Dirt skid sound and particle effect finally added!
- We now display which buttons are mapped to Back out from menus on the main menu. Further improvements incoming here as well.
- Control mappings are now displayed on the pause menu for faster reference during gameplay.
- Re-race event button now stores all settings so its easy to get back in if you accidentally quit out from a race you wanted to play again.
- Start sequence countdown speed increased to get into the action faster!
- "Laps to go" message added on new laps.
- Improved design of Spy report screen.
Fixed
- Finally fixed nasty bug causing cars to get stuck and send player into space (literally) sometimes during the first race after creating a new profile.
- Finally fixed clipping edges of maps. Sometimes the camera could go far enough over the edge you could see beyond the map.
- Fixed collision boxes on most cars that were extending outside their visual body.
- Many UI cleanups and consistency improvements.
- Removed annoying slipstream sounds.
- Tons of minor stability improvements and performance improvements. (Please note that with many new effects an actual framerate increase may not happen anyway.)
As always, post feedback in discussions or join our discord and post there. We want to hear everything you think about the game and the update, big or small, crash or annoyance!
Have an awesome day and we hope you'll enjoy creating tracks!
/Benny