Hi Ridaz,
First of all, thanks for all your feedback, which helps me to see issues, the scope of the work is huge and there is tons of stuff to be fine-tuned to such game. So I tried to sort them one after another, in order to make something really fun to play.
Currently, 'Arizona Derby' gets to the 0.94 version, which means more functionality and smooth gameplay. And it's about the right time to make all more challenging, so overall skills of the AI's were set to a higher level, and playing on a higher level will bring you more XP/AD$. You need to compete in order to get to the top. Once you played and open all the tracks, defeating boss levels (32 different track altogether), you can increase skills and play on harder settings, finally, you can set on the 'Total Madness' skills which are almost unbeatable (yours is to prove that is possible, getting best cars and packing your rig to the max).
1) LEADERBOARDS OF BEST TIMES AT 32 TRACKS ARE LIVE
Exclusively, for all of the 'Arizona Derby' tracks (takes me just week for retesting it), leaderboards are finalized and you can fill out results worldwide and see how others perform in it. It is possible to see the player country, ranking and time results of the best races. In the future, there will be also XP leaderboards, for those who scored more, but for now, we're focused on presenting best performances. They are fine-tuned, balanced over the period and really hope that will bring one extra level of depth to the overall 'Arizona Derby' game experience. Also, time in milliseconds gets from 2 to 3 digits, so you can compete in 1000th part of the second for the top!
(this pic is for testing purposes, the final version is changed to 3-digits and some more details on it)I been testing this 32 leaderboards for more than week and playing tracks till the end 247, and all seems to works legit, hope you will have cool experiences (btw, some results, as will be written in notice need server clarifications to prevent cheats, so may not be written immediately, but will be seen later on in that Leaderboard standings and in future version AD Spaces in Garage menu where will be overview of all 32 leaderboards (that I making this days).
2) SMS notifications
During the race had in a previous patch some annoying vibration (reported by players) so this is changed and due to the fact that it is fast-paced gameplay, SMS will not be played for now during races, just in garage, so the player will not be distracted in-game. Also further on, there will be options to mute those notifications sounds, fine-tune other things in HUD, etc.
3) Flying objects at Tropical Storm tracks
Fixing of the flying bushes and trees in some places. This happens due to the fact that those maps were widened a lot, during the period of 3 years or more, since I released that wider the tracks, fun was greater for players, so, unfortunately, some bushes stayed in the air and it's so hard to locate it in editor (just imagine 31 tracks looking every single bush around..). But due to the help of some gamers, like iGame (cheers bro), who shared screens with CP numbers I find and fix (it was so hard to locate flying things, since of different perspective in editor and while playing, so many iterations are needed, still any flying bush or tree will be fixed).
4) Cars at the start ("Sunray Lane", "Sun Line") were underwater - this is now fine-tuned and they start from above.
5) 'Let's Dance' tuning
This option at ADriver menu, now having chosen avatar dancing smoothly blending and between hundreds of different dances, this part of the menu to be tweaked in future, making it really dance podium, with more dynamic camera angles, etc. Even those can generate some XP. Further on, there are planned more different and interesting characters and outfits, so this is a place for their best display, before the track.
5) New Dubai track 'Sandy Ridges' is available
As promised 'Arizona Derby' will offer you exclusively free DLC contents. This time, there is one good reason to have fun at Sandy Ridges. The track is about the ultimate jumping experience and drifting on the sands.
You need to take care of the slope of the hills and angles all the time, otherwise, you will easily turn over, your ride for Dubai deserts is always automatically tweaked more and it's lowered more than at other races. There is oasis all over, filled with swamps, so you need to adapt to the environment differently than for the other tracks.
Explore Dubai off-roads, have fun and do amazing stunts.
6) New Optimisations
Overall game package size has been additionally optimized to 25.6GB, despite the fact that a lot of content been added. 'Arizona Derby' was a very complex setup and ongoing optimizations are underway, to have all always smoother for you to have great fun.
7) Daily rewards voices - overlapped if you choose rewards card too fast, that is now fixed
8) Addressing some player's feedback:
"But... what should be good fun racing... is actually pretty good apart from a) hitting invisible (?) rocks or terrain that spins your car around out of control. Wow, annoying. b) AI cars that hit you from behind and end up 'grabbing' you, turning you sideways, taking you from first place to last. Wow, super annoying. c) Buzzing text messages, with tiny text, with no reason or purpose to read DURING YOUR RACE. Wow, amazingly annoying."
a) Will smooth out terrains more, but again main difference at AD is that its realistic off-road drive with all is pro's and con's, so every part of the terrain need to have strategy for it's own, invisible walls (guess some parts of the grounds above that you hit and gets turned around..yes it is annoying and some to smoothen off for sure (it's already done) but still to keep it challenging, it will not flatten like in mostly (off-road) races at other AAA titles, it will lose its idea of mastering off-roads and skills. However I agree that some parts can be smoothed out, so 'invisible walls' will not reappear
b) Ai players are in recoding to behave less intrusive when it comes to the hitting from the back and turning you sideways, I fully agree. Still, Ai's in ongoing testing & updating, so the patch will come further on. Anyways, you have 3 ADrones (in future there will be updates and upgrades to the skills of the players, so some drones will be faster, more flexible etc.) and you can use those drones ('Q' key or left shoulder button) to get out to the safe position and respawn and continue ride (that's the main usage of the ADrones)
c) Done, no more distraction SMS messages during races, sorry for the issue (now, instruction from the bosses can be read in Garage only)
8) Some people having an issue with the long loading, it's because the Garage still requires lot of space for loading, video's inside are super-optimized but the initial load (on mid and lower rigs) can take some time. This to be optimized.
Anyways, once loaded in memory, the game will should very fast (in the matter of few seconds) loading tracks and getting back to the menu.
9) Track Level Name, was visible in the final menu prior launching (when you choose desired track to race):
(version still in work)
10) A lot of small UI polishings, like loading screen visual improvements and other details and explanations all over menus.
11) Introduced 'Total Madness' difficulty level
Better not try these settings at home! lol
You will see how Ai racers are dared to win. They'll do all kinds of crazy things all over tracks and rushing for the win, like mad dogs. You should be happy if you finish 7th at this level. This is an experimental difficulty (Ai can rush even much better over hills) and still be tuned further on, but in some circumstances, skills and upgrades you will have some minor chance to get to top three. This is a real off-road rush!
Difficulty settings can be changed in the Options and more difficulty, more XP/AD$, which means more upgrades, more cars, and customizations.
12) Finally, only one invisible wall, which was on Siberia first track, and that's why someone reported in the plural ('invisible walls') was located and fixed:
Now those part looks like this:
Also, this track was polished from launching a few times and now is extra-optimized so FPS increased over 15%. Also, it's visually very appealing and nice, so hopefully you'll enjoy Siberian offroads (when I remind that I first started to add these levels back 4 years ago :) and now all of you guys can enjoy those tracks. They're widened many times to fits the logic's, btw. that's why some flying objects were here or there..since of many times terrain reconfigurations.
13) Accuracy of all the track results is increased to the 1000 ms, so now looks likes, which will help to the overall leaderboard time comparing, since EVERY millisecond is worth! So get your rig tuned and keep pedal to the max:
14) Rest of deep waters, which is harder to get over, in Tropical Storm tracks is made to be less shallow, so it's easier to go over them
Btw, some random cool car
This time 'The Combiner', rigged for the off-roads:
Some random, cool scene, The Gold Digger, from Brass Badger's gang, competing against our player:
And:
This is at 'Forest Ride' levels, which was inspired by real-life Alpes landscapes like:
That's all for today. See ya' off-roads, folks!
M1KE
PS. The leaderboard is pretty empty now, do your best to write your score up there.