LouveSystems' TrackMasters News

Hello! 😃
A year after the last update, I'm bringing forth this new content update that adds 11 cosmetic track elements + 1 new circuit element, per biome!



[h2] Highlights [/h2]

- 🏡 A lot of custom track elements have been added to make your city, western town or arctic landscape feel a bit more alive and vibrant!


- 🐱‍🐉 Among those are a long jump over a giant shark, a dinosaur or a dynamite blast! Will you be fast enough to avoid getting thrown out of the track?


- 🔥 Added a high performance mode for computers that struggled with the stroke & blur shader, which simplifies some screen effects to increase framerate on low-end configurations


[h2] Bugfixes [/h2]
- 🔈 Fixed a recurring sound issue where restarting a game would mute your own car
- 🗼 Fixed a major issue with the Broadcast multiplayer network that prevented users from joining games
- 🕳 Fixed display issues when putting hollow elements over blocks
- ⏩ Various performance improvements with the material generation & handling for track elements

[h2] Future support[/h2]
From now on I will focus mostly on my next project and it is unlikely TrackMasters receives any further updates. However, I will be active on the discord and will submit minor updates to fix any eventual bug that may come up!

I hope you will enjoy the new track elements & free content, and I can't wait to see what you will make out of it! If you're not part of the community yet, come join us at https://discord.gg/y7zKv3N !

Have an excellent day, and happy racing! 🙋‍♀️🚗

Hello everyone! This update comes with a lot of new content and features to make your experience richer and smoother overall, give more possibilities in the track conception both via the new assets and via modding 🙂



Here are the highlights of this update:

[h2]❄ The arctic biome is here![/h2]
A whole new biome is coming to TrackMasters, inspired by the landscape of greenland and the arctic pole in general! It features alternative visuals for every track element, two new musics and a few never-seen-before features like snow particles or northern lights depending on the time of day!



[h2]👻 Play against your ghost![/h2]
In addition to storing leaderboards and best times in the tracks, TrackMasters now stores a ghost for you to play against! On each track, you can play against the best finish time as if it was here racing with you 🚗



[h2]ːmissingː Mod it! Add everything you want![/h2]
This update features the new ModPack system, with the included mod packer and an example mod that you can start tampering with immediatly! You can now add any new cosmetic track element to the game as your heart commands, and play with other people who have the same mods as you. Modpacks can also be used to replace or add new musics, sounds, languages, et caetera!



[h2]Other changes[/h2]
A lot of other improvements have been made in almost every area of the game! Here comes a more detailed list of these changes:

- A new track element, a giant fan that pushes players upwards, has been added to the game!
- The different track editor catalogs have been redesigned and work more smoothly overall
- The track downloading, aswell as the file browser, are much more stable and show progress bars
- Tracks can now be rotated entirely, and you can preview your track's image at any time 🎥
- The network stability regarding joining/leaving games has been very much improved, same goes for the endgame lobby
- Online leaderboards for every track can now be found on the official website! https://trackmasters.louve.systems/
- Optimization and visual fixes have been applied on the track rendering, which should remove the white lines between track elements that appeared from time to time!
- Headlights! 🚗🔦 The cars now feature headlights at night
- The game comes with a Lego Stunt Rally™ track converter, that should be able to convert any track from LSR to TrackMasters 🧱
- The handling of the Rustic and the Racer have been enhanced a little bit, and the Rustic is now slightly faster
- Various bugs regarding the leaderboard, the track editor, have been fixed 👏


TrackMasters will receive more minor update in the future aswell as occasional fixes, but it's unlikely future huge all-in-one major updates like these will happen. They're too much work and stress for me, and I prefer to add content to the game little by little over time rather than to plan huge seasonal updates 😰

I hope you enjoy this new update and all the additional content that comes with it ♥
Even though this update could not come as soon as I wanted it to, I still wish you a merry winter and a happy spring!
I'm grateful for every player, every track, every race that gets to happen on TrackMasters and I'll beat records myself when I find the time...so you better watch out! 😎

If you're not part of the community yet, come join us at https://discord.gg/y7zKv3N !

Hello everyone! This update brings in a lot of requested changes aswell as numerous improvements for the overall game experience 🙂
Here are the highlights of this major update :

[h2]🛰 Everyone should be able to connect to anyone now, always[/h2]
...and connection issues should be gone! People who previously could not connect directly to each other should now be automatically switched to a relayed connection, handled by the LouveSystem's server, which will allow anyone to play ♥

[h2]📝 Leaderboards have been added to tracks[/h2]
...and store up to 10 best times/players! I will also make a leaderboard on the TrackMasters website later to show them online, probably in the following weeks.

[h2]🌐 Added waiting room at the end of the race[/h2]
You can now change the map and adjust other settings without having to go back to the menu! That also means people can join you directly ingame, as soon as your race is finished.

[h2]🛠 Modding is now supported![/h2]

You can mod certain files of the game, and modify the AI behaviour via the use of Modpacks.
You can currently replace any sound in the game, any localization file (or add your own), and also code your own AI behaviours for the CPU cars using Lua!
It's a simple and accessible language, close to english, and the code can be edited with Notepad!

Once you've made your own AI, you can host a game to have it play against other players too 🤖
The game comes with a mod packing tool, PAK, that you can find in the mod folder (My Documents/My Games/TrackMasters/Mods) and use simply by drag & dropping a folder on it.

[h2]Other changes[/h2]

More minor changes have happened too, but they have their importance - here they are!

- Halloween assets! During halloween, spooky assets will appear to decorate the existing track elements 🎃
- The game now comes with a basic set of tracks if you have none (two of which have been made by community players, Galax and Neroxis !)
- Menus flow better, especially the file browser, in which a lot of bugs have been fixed
- The overall UI and Frontend should be more responsive and less power-hungry
- You can now quickly restart a multiplayer map at the end of the game, without downloading a new map at all
- The editor has been slightly improved, and a few sounds have been added
- The initial frontend loading does no longer intermittently freeze
- You can now honk in lobby 🦆
- The track validation system has been improved lots, and will detect exploit attempts or loops to prevent impossible tracks from being uploaded 🕵️‍♀️
- The server will now present a selection of 20 random maps, changing every day!


Thanks everyone for the support and your amazing tracks!

So far the game vault contains about 40 maps, which is incredible - among which I have a few favorites, like Highroad and Circuit 0. 🚗

It has been fantastic to see everyone play and dispute records, and I can't wait to see what the leaderboards will look like in a few days and weeks from now!

If you're not part of the community yet, you can join it at https://discord.gg/y7zKv3N !

[h2]I wish you all a happy and spooky halloween 👻[/h2]
[h3]If you're reading this post before the 2nd of november 2020, the game is actually on sale at half the normal price![/h3]
And if you live in the US, don't forget to vote in 3 days ✏!

[h2]TRACKMASTERS IS OUT![/h2]
[h3]TRACKMASTERS IS OUT![/h3]
TRACKMASTERS IS OUT!


The indie MicroMachines-inspired multiplayer game is out!
Although feature complete, I will be adding more content with future updates - maybe other biomes aswell as modding capability ⚙


You can join the discord at https://discord.gg/y7zKv3N to participate to discussions, talk with the developer (i have no friends :< ) and exchange tracks with other people. You may also participate to design decisions and get a say in the focus of the next update! 📣


The track editor is here and allows you to build all sorts of tracks, of varying lengths - the race duration will be kept approximately the same by an automatic adjustement of the laps based on the length of the circuit 🏁


The server has been updated to support record submissions without overwriting the track author and informations, so you can now beat your friends' time on their own tracks for real and compete for the best time! 💔


Next on the list are:
- Implementing a scoreboard for maps instead of just a single best time, and maintain online leaderboards
- Add at least one biome (arctica/polar)
- Add modding support for cars and maybe track elements?
- Finally implement the Stunt Rally TRK importer! :>