Development Update #38
Hi everyone, this update shows the 24/7 car storage, visible engine swaps, and full downhill race gameplay. The AI is driving a JDM 964 911 Flatnose with a TBK front bumper, and the player is driving an RB26DETT-swapped S15 with a full EC-I Veilside kit and single turbo conversion.
Engine swaps will be included in the first version of the private alpha. Engine swap options are currently limited to only the RB26DETT, but more will be added soon after. Models and sounds are ready for 1JZ swaps, but there’s no time to import them at the moment.
The car storage area is based on the garage from Tokyo Drift where the Hulk car is revealed. It can be accessed at any time during freeroam, and you can store an unlimited amount of cars inside it. You will have to pay a small rental fee at the start of each night, depending on how many cars you have stored inside it.
At the end of the race, you can see the new unlock system, which works on a global rep level. Global rep is roughly the same as crew rep/player rep rewards, except it can only go up (i.e. you don’t lose global rep for losing races). Most Circuit and Prototype parts are now locked behind this global rep system. It’s not very grind-ey, but it adds a nice sense of progression to high-tier parts and gives stock/street-level parts much more importance. Car upgrading feels a lot more balanced now.
There will be other ways to obtain locked parts before they are unlocked, through bribes and race fixing. This system isn’t quite finished yet, and there are more important tasks before testing starts, so the first version of the Private Alpha may not contain this. I’ll keep you updated on it.
You can also see the new “Jump back to PA” option immediately after the final race screen, which, as implied, sends you back to the PA you started the race from for free. It speeds up gameplay a lot. This does mean that the old fast travel offers you get after a race have been removed.
The last month was the most difficult month of development yet. The version of Unity I used up to this point kept getting slower and slower as more new cars and models were imported, to the point where it would crash or freeze up to 10 times a day during regular use. Updating to a newer version wasn’t a guaranteed fix, and I really didn’t want to port the game to a newer version this close to launch, but I tried every fix I could before the only thing left was updating the editor version. The initial process took me one all-nighter and about one full day after that to get everything baseline working again, but updating did cause a bunch of new “quirks” which made the game visually unplayable for about two more weeks.
This is why there weren’t any updates in January. I’ll do better next time, with at least a text update or something similar to keep you all in the loop with what’s going on. It was a very chaotic period of sleepless nights every week, trying to catch up with new bugs caused by the update while also fixing old bugs in between. Updating core software like this is exactly what I was trying to avoid doing, but the older editor version had become completely unusable and forced my hand.
Testing for the Private Alpha will start soon. There is no specific date, but it’ll be sometime between Valentine’s Day and the end of February.
Work that remains, in order of current priority;
Lots of small bug fixing
Full Car Bodykit customization option; Needs it's own menu and logic.
New Crews (Endless Appeal and G-company are fully playable with their new cars models, other crews will come in a few weeks. Doing minimum amount to enter testing as fast as possible).
Global crew rep ranking; I'd really like to add this as quickly as possible before testing starts, It'll really give the Demo a better gameplay loop.UI was prototyped and work started, but not enough time to implement system as needed. Will come soon after Priv Alpha launch.
See you in 2 weeks, I'm getting back to work :)