Current Priorities
We wanted to give you a clearer update this week of where we are currently focussing our time.
As we reviewed where we were with Blackspots, it became clear that some of the core foundations needed more work first. As you've seen already, we’ve shifted focus towards strengthening those areas before layering more systems on top.
What you’re going to see from us over the coming weeks and months falls into two parallel tracks.
The first is Physics improvements and fixes that we can push live for everyone. The first set of those changes are already underway and we’ll share what’s included below.
The second is about building new gameplay on top of those foundations.
Get Involved
Through this Patreon we've already shared behind-the-scenes plans, polls and early access to information and features, and we'll continue doing that.
But for those of you who want to get more directly involved, we’re going to open up applications for people interested in helping us shape and test some of these new ideas as they develop.
This is not simply about giving people 'beta' builds, although that will likely form part of it, as it did with the online beta tests recently. Some people may end up testing things directly, others may help react to ideas, feed back on designs or simply represent different types of players and perspectives.
We'll build this out gradually. We’ll be looking for a balanced mix of players, hardware setups, play styles and viewpoints, so this won’t simply be based around Patreon tier level.
If this sounds like something you'd like to be part of, please fill in the form below. Note this is only open to Patreon members - a thank you for your ongoing support.
Next Update
In the meantime, we are currently prepping Update 18 that includes a whole bunch of improvements. You’ll probably recognise a number of community-reported issues and suggestions in here already, and as always the videos, clips and reports you’ve been sending over have been useful in helping us track some of this stuff down.
Current changes for the next update include:
Added finish times onto race results screens regardless of whether you beat your best time
Fixed audio muting in online games when someone uses Voice Chat
Fixed crashes caused by swapping events on the map if you remix a public event while your vehicle is also in the trigger
Remapped the Rate button to prevent accidental ratings when swapping events
Fixed incorrect reporting of “Other Stats”
Optimised shaders to help reduce stalling
Added warning not to remap arrow keys
Removed “Experimental” label from LiveMix buildings
Fixed broken HLODs on Lanois Bridge and Observation Towers
Physics / AI related changes:
Reduced glitching when AI hit the player car during takedown camera
Fixed AI getting shot forwards when grazing the side of your vehicle
Fixed a bug where AI vehicles could drive inside one another (but we have found another when they respawn in Road Rage so will add that to the list)
Fixed an issue where traffic could fly around at extreme speeds or move laterally across the road
Made AI slightly tougher against walls and each other so the slightest touch doesn’t immediately result in a crash/takedown
Here's a video compilation showing some of the things we've been working on in terms of the AI not shooting forwards and the AI being able to battle without intersecting each other. There's a lot more we want to do here (reduce the ping pong, more impact when hitting each other as 2 examples) but its going in the right direction.
That's it for this week.