Peter
who cares
It’s time for another dev blog. We will have a big patch in 2-3 weeks that also includes the Multiplayer Alpha for Season Pass Holders. Let me talk a bit more about what’s coming with this patch.
Multiplayer ALPHA
For testing purposes we opened our Test environment to a lot of players. First I would like to thank everyone who joined and helped us test MP Alpha. Based on our test results, observations and your feedback, we are adding a few more things to MP Alpha before going live. Some of these will be included with the launch while some will be patched in later. But here’s a small list of things we’re adding.
- We’re adding start lights in HUD as players could not see the actual lights on the tracks from distance.
- The MP Browser is now sorting by player count in a server. A lot more filtering/sorting options will come later.
- We’re adding an information box to the MP Browser which shows the settings (flag rules, fuel usage, tyre wear, mechanical damage etc.) and if you have any friends playing on that particular server.
- We’re implementing new cut track rules that will have 3 different levels.
- We’re going to add an information screen (e.g hold TAB to see who is on the server, their ping times etc.)
- Various improvements to our Wrecker Prevention system.
- We are making some small HUD changes to better inform the player about which session they are in.
- And a lot of fixes.
What’s in the Big Patch?
The MP Alpha patch includes a lot of improvements and fixes, along with some very nifty functionalities behind the scenes. I’ll just list some of them here. The full patchnotes will of course be released with the patch.
- We’ve made a lot of improvements to our water and road shaders.
- We’re adding the ability to adjust the amount of head movement in cockpit. We know a lot of you asked for this as it was disorienting for some.
- We’ve made various improvements and fixes to steering. Fixed jittery/jerky steering when taking corners.
- We’re adding the ability to scroll the car/class/livery selection wheels in the main menu. We ran out of space so we had to add a scroll
This of course will be replaced with WEB based menus in the future. - We refactored the code further and improved the performance issues that occurred when certain overlays appeared.
- We refactored the AI code to improve their performance and to avoid having to have “workarounds” to get them to behave properly on certain occasions.
- Various fixes to the sound engine.
- Various art fixes to cars and tracks.
- Various improvements bug fixes in the code.
What’s Next
With MP Alpha patch getting wrapped up, some of the team started focusing on the next big planned improvements.
We are still working on the temporary R3E UI that will include MP Alpha to all R3E players. Apart from MP, it will also include Single Races.
We are preparing the code base and the structure for the big switch to WEB technology based menu and interface system. This will also replace the temp UI mentioned above.
We started looking deeply into the code for force feedback and road feeling improvements. There are some major changes which will need extensive tests but we hope to be able to share them with you before the summer ends. Along with the ffb changes, we will also update the default controller profiles.
The holidays are coming soon and the studio will take a few weeks off in July. The break will slow things down a bit but we hope to share these changes with you as soon as possible.
