Hello Arizonian Dudes,
Great news for all you enjoying dirt off-roads, pimping their expensive supercars all along the mountain trails and clouds of the dust.
Really big patch, that was expected a long time ago is done now and it's marking the switching from 0.91 version to closer to final release.
LEVELS OPTIMISATIONS & IMPROVEMENTS ON ALL 31 TRACKS
Cleaned small stones and other obstacles collisions all over levels;
A new layer of ALL level optimizations set, by clearing heavy particle effects;
Removing all small rocks (dynamic) shadows all over levels, so it increases the FPS rate;
Removing unoptimized flags from all levels
Hot-Air balloons impacted 17% or more on overall optimizations, they are removed up to 90% all over levels (somewhere was up to 130 objects in the scene)
Redwood Rush track has some weirdly placed mesh (some dirt) all over and on top of it, it has a collision - removed - this will fix a lot of flying objects in this levels that players reported;
ALL humans aside from the start, middle, and end of tracks are deleted, FPS gain is 33% from this on some levels (somewhere is over 300 objects in the scene);
Atmospheric effects, fogs, sunsets are improved (especially over Siberian levels), so instead pink sky there is beautiful sunsets;
HUD IMPROVEMENTS:
Removing not needed HUD when player not winning, at final standing, so it's left just XP and time count;
Due to askings from many players, Next Checkpoint text (i.e.: "25/52") size is increased to be more visible and wording "Checkpoint" is removed, so players can read and know easily their progress fastly during the race;
SMS info tips during races, which coming from bosses, are displayed with larger font, so can be easier readable. It's appearing will comes later on during races and will last less (before it stayed too long on-screen), now is larger more readable. Also its fixed appearing of the first message, which came by default unadjusted (Boss Name text instead Cholo etc.)
Menu overlay SMS tips widget is adjusted in the same fashion;
Lecturing of the current texts inside to be done soon (it's over 100 tips and all of them are done extremely fast, since of enormous AD content, so sorry for few glitches in texts here or there..), this to be more polished and more increased with more cool tips from bosses, making your AD life better;
Updates to the tips and messages from the bosses, so they come more customized;
Also, more of the pop-ups are refined, featuring blur (like in-game SMS overlay, finish table, final standing/score popup etc.), to make visuals more appealing. In the future, more of the menu's will get its visual refinements.
AUDIO FX
The audio popup has also the number indicator of the current audio level:
Some small fixes being polished and some variables balanced and also, overall packaged additionally being optimized to 26.9GB.
Stay tuned to the finest off-roads & thanks to all your messages, comments and support it's really amazing to make something like this with all of your help. 'Arizona Derby' is your game, we will make it best offroad racer.
So to summarize overall optimizations:
- All of 31 track's been optimized dramatically, removing of some unnecessary objects, as well and doing some other tweaks, FPS is more than triple in some tests;
- Main Menu performance extremely increased;
- Loading time was already recording, in comparison to other racing games, but with overriding loading scene, now direct racing scene being loaded first, which it literally takes second(s);
- Graphical settings from start were not on ultimate but on moderate settings, and they been stored, so upon playing again and restarting the game, you will not get ultimate settings again, but your predefined and upon new patch, your stored graphical settings will be loaded;
Greetings!
M1KE
PS. "To optimize old code, first get rid of the fancy stuff" - Bjarne Stroustrup's, creator of C++, the great language behind the creation of the AD