Hello everyone,
Today we are sharing some important news on Jalopy: version 1.0 will drop on 28th March 2018, marking the end of the Early Access period.
Jalopy has been in development for over three years now, and debuted in Early Access nearly two years ago. Greg has been the sole developer of the project, but along the way we’ve had others help us, including Jeremy, who scored the fantastic soundtrack.
We would like to thank everyone who has purchased the game so far and has helped to support the game’s development for the past two years. We hope that you have enjoyed watching the game grow and have loved being a part of this road-trip.
Jalopy’s full launch on 28th March will also see the debut of full translation into 18 different languages. Thanks to the wonderful community translation project, 28th March will see Jalopy available fully translated into the following languages:
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Brazilian Portuguese
Turkish
Hungarian
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
Norwegian
Finnish
Polish
Slovakian
Romanian
Croatian
At the beginning of Jalopy’s life, and throughout the Early Access period, a number of questions and answers have been present on Jalopy’s Steam store page – and now that we have almost reached the end of Early Access it feels right to revisit those questions.
Why Early Access?
“The instant feedback from Steam players allows us to reshuffle our priorities during development to make an even better game. During the Early Access period the game will most certainly contain a selection of bugs, glitches, and issues that can impact a traditional game experience. If you do buy the game and come across something odd, please tell us in the forums.”
Jalopy has contained many bugs and issues throughout the development period - we’re still ironing out just a few, but believe that the game breaking issues are gone (do let us know if you come across any game breaking issues, though!).
Most notably we saw the uncle removed from the game for a period and then eventually brought him back after we fixed some of the issues that were present because of his role in the game. He has since returned, new and improved, with a stronger emphasis on the narrative of Jalopy and has given the game an ending for players.
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“We are looking to release the full game towards the end of 2017.”
We are a little late on this estimation. It took a little longer for us to handle the localisation than we expected. Jalopy will launch as a full game on 28th March 2018.
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“In Early Access you will be able to drive, explore and trade throughout Germany & the CSFR. Already, the player can make changes to their vehicle with millions of combinations available to affect vehicle performance. As we progress through Early Access we plan to let the player drive through 1990’s renditions of Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey. Early Access will be an insight into the core mechanics of Jalopy and from here we plan to build around this core with feedback from the community.”
At launch we began with just the countries of Germany and CSFR. We have since added all promised countries including Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey. During development we worked on improving the vehicle handling and have added new unlocks to the vehicle like an internal dashboard display, paint and a few other upgrades to the car itself. We also introduced the scrapyard, which allows players to scavenge for goods if they can figure out how to unlock the gate. Jeremy also created new pieces of music for each country as they released.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“The game contains all final countries planned for the final game. Players can upgrade their car, purchase new components, scavenge for items and drive back to the starting area once they reach the final destination.”
This section was adjusted throughout development in order to reflect the current status of the game.
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“The price may increase with significant content updates. We will let everyone know if the price is expected to rise before it increases.”
The game did increase in price slightly during development and we communicated the increase with players. With the announcement of the last price increase, we alerted players that this was the final time the price would increase.
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“Once we get into Early Access we’re going to be looking at the most important features within the first week or two of release. From here we will create a development roadmap so that everyone can visualise where the game is heading and can get involved. Of course, do say hi to us in the Steam forums and let us know your thoughts on the game.”
This may have changed a little since the beginning of Early Access. We responded to several bugs and issues, the largest of which was the uncle causing crashes. Our development roadmap was predominately based around the addition of countries. Greg had a Tumblr blog where he would answer questions directly and share progress and concerns during development. We often had pages of change logs for each update and worked on making these updates exciting events. We additionally set the Beta Branch accessible to all players during some testing phases so players would see advance builds before they were made public. This assisted in locating important issues as we prepared for builds to go public.
What We Could Not Deliver
Now this is an interesting but particularly difficult subject to discuss. However, I feel it’s important to speak about the elements which we were unable to achieve, despite us discussing them in the past or having hopes that these would eventually see the light of day.
Steering Wheel Support
We managed to get the game running well on one type of steering wheel. We did release a build on Steam with the following disclaimer on 20th September 2017:
“The latest build adds steering wheel support, but there is a massive disclaimer we need to mention. We have been performing some tests internally and there are still issues with this. There are still many wheels that are not yet functioning correctly and is something that is being looked at. If you experience non-functioning pedals, or the view rotates without any input, we highly recommend that you continue to use a mouse and keyboard or a game pad instead.“
There were a few questions in the forum asking about steering wheel support over time, and I replied personally to some and said that if they wanted to buy the game because of steering wheel support, I highly recommend that they wait until a later date.
Unfortunately, we have been unable to make any progress on this area and there will be no steering wheel support for Jalopy. It is disappointing, and something we hoped would be in the game, but we were unable to truly support it and get it working for everyone.
Mac Support
We were intending to support Mac early on in development – however, as we were looking towards a 1.0 release, we came across some issues that would make the transition from Windows to Mac much more difficult. In February, I posted the following in response to a thread asking for Mac support.
“Unfortunately porting to Mac would require the game to be rewritten in xcode and new shaders would need to be created. We are also suffering from ram issues due to the version of Unity we're running (Unity 4.6). So it seems like it will be very unlikely for a Mac version to happen.”
A little time has passed since that post, and unfortunately Mac support is not going to be possible for Jalopy, due to issues with the game engine.
So, there we go! Right now, we’re working on implementing translations and fixing any game-breaking bugs for the final release. If you do spot any bugs and can reproduce it 100%, send us over the details of what happens and how to reproduce it - we will look towards addressing any such issues.
We will likely have a launch discount for Jalopy on the 28th of March, so stay tuned for further information over the next couple of weeks.
Thank you once again for joining us on this Jalopy journey. It’s been a road trip like no other.