Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing fine. As you can probably see, the Slipstream 1.2 update I promised at the beginning of the year is not available yet. My initial deadline was the middle of the year, but with all the stuff happening around all of us, the plans had to change. I decided then to set the deadline for the winter sale, but again I couldn't make it in time. I'm really sad for that, because the winter sale is a huge deal for everyone on Steam and it would be the perfect opportunity to present an upgraded version of the game and hopefully get some extra sales, but unfortunately it didn't work. That said, I have a lot of new stuff to show you guys. If you are still interested in Slipstream, I hope this update will be worth the wait. I'm working very hard to polish the game as much as I can, and solve the problems in the current version. Here's a short summary of the new stuff that's coming to the game shortly.

• A Full Rewrite Just to give you some context before I get into details, the 1.2 update isn't just an update, it's a full rewrite of the whole game's code. Of course the game will still feel almost the same, I "translated" all the player-facing parts of the code using the same exact values, so for the player it will feel like a normal update, but under the hood everything has changed. That's why it's taking so long, basically.
• New & Improved AI I think this is the most critical issue in the game in its current form. The AI is just not good. The races aren't thrilling enough. It was, for the most part, the result of me not being a good enough programmer when I wrote the original version. For the new version, the AI is 100% brand new, and it's a lot smarter and more interesting than before. Getting a little bit more technical, the AI cars and player cars used to follow different rules. You can notice, in-game, how the AI is kind of stuck on a railroad path, breezing through the curves without any trouble. The AI and the players are exactly the same now. Instead of the AI being a special kind of car under special rules, it is functionally equivalent to a player, so all the rules apply: the AI can crash, use the slipstream, make mistakes, bump into each other, etc. It's impossible to stress how much this changes the gameplay, you have to play to understand. it feels like an entirely different game now, and it's probably the biggest new feature in the update. It's not completely finished yet, but here you can see it in action. A positive side effect was me being able to remove all the rubberbanding from the game, which was another thing that always bothered me a lot. In summary, the single player races are now closer, more consistent, more thrilling, better in every way.
• Modding! The second biggest new feature is modding support. There's been interest in modding the game since the original release, but there was no official support for it besides adding music to the in-game radio. The new version will support user-provided tracks (including scenery props, backgrounds and textures) and cars, which will open the opportunity for unprecedented customization and creativity. It will also allow me to easily add more content to the game in the future, if necessary. Here's a demonstration.
• Time Rewinding The last of the big new features is an entirely new mechanic, time rewinding. Slipstream used to be very... uh... intolerant of error. If you crashed a single time in a grand tour mode run, for example, it was pretty much impossible to beat the rival car. Now the player can go back in time for a few seconds and maybe undo the mistake that led to the crash. The fact that the player can now undo their mistakes, combined with the fact that the AI now can make mistakes has flipped the game upside down. There is now a more strategic depth in how the player has to think about the race. The time rewinding ability will be a limited resource, I still haven't decided on a precise value yet but I'll make it so the player can undo one mistake per lap at most (more in easy mode, less in hard mode) and managing the resource will become an actual gameplay feature. There's also a short demonstration of this feature in the video linked above in the AI section.
• Other Minor Changes & Bug Fixes The most noticeable visual change is that the camera now tilts on curves, which adds a more dramatic look to the whole thing. It's optional of course but it will be enabled by default. The entire game will be rebalanced, some cars will be nerfed/buffed because, without rubberbanding, having all the cars equally balanced becomes a lot more important. There will be entirely new leaderboards for the new version because it wouldn't make any sense to compare the new, post-balancing times with the old ones.

The current version of the game will be kept as a separate 'legacy' branch on Steam so you can still play it if, for some reason, you like it better. The old leaderboards will also remain in place. I'm working very hard to bring this to public as soon as I can, I'm realistically expecting it to be finished by the middle of january 2021. It will probably also take some testing as a public beta before the full release. So... that's it for the news. I wish you all a happy holiday season, stay safe and thanks for the continued support, you are a wonderful community and I'm trying my best to make you all happy with my game. If you want to follow the development of Slipstream (and future projects) more closely, follow me on twitter. Thanks a lot, see you soon.

[ 2020-12-22 20:08:00 CET ] [ Original post ]