Monday Update - May 18, 2026
Yo! The playtest has been going really well. We hit 10,110 wishlists and peaked at 197 concurrent players in the playtest! We've been listening to your feedback. The biggest complaint is performance issues and lag. Here is what we plan to do.
Extend the playtest by one week (it will end Tuesday May 26)
Work on optimization this week
Update the playtest before the weekend to test the new optimization improvements
Here are some specifics if you're into that kind of thing.
Michael
Reducing how much data the server is syncing for each player's position and movement — less network chatter should mean smoother gameplay when the server is packed
Pulling back the distance at which character and bike models are fully rendered, from 100 meters down to 50 meters, to take some load off the GPU
Other bug fixes
Damien
Generating LOD settings for the new bike model — this means the game will automatically use lower-detail versions of the bike when it's far from the camera, which cuts the polygon count significantly when many riders are on the server at once
Digging into the animated character model setup to find where the performance drops are coming from
Finishing up some details on the rider and bike models
Maggie
Working with Damien on the LOD implementation for riders and bikes
Helping get the wrist joint polished up to look more natural
Start work on decorating and boxing out art assets for zone 1
Cedric
Trail work in the upper regions of the map
Joe
Tweaking the bunny hop section of the tutorial — players are still getting stuck, so making that smoother
Covering social media while Julian is on vacation
Monitoring community feedback from the playtest
Julian
Much-deserved vacation after graduating from university!
Bryan
Continuing bike shop outreach
Whistler Crankworx planning
Andreas
Welcome to Andreas Bergman, our new art intern! Andreas is a character modeling student from Futuregames Malmo in Sweden and starts this week. He'll be getting up to speed on the project and jumping in on character work.
Hope you all have a great week. Thanks for everyone who has tried the playtest so far. Get in there before it's taken down! Here's a photo of Jake chilling in Ruidoso, NM, from a couple of years ago.