GeneRally 2 News

Today's blog post is going to cover the upcoming Christmas Update, as well as talk a bit about our progress towards online multiplayer, and what you can expect from the next couple of months!


Before Christmas, we'll be launching the GeneRally 2 Christmas Update. This update will include a variety of small features and fixes, but also some themed additions to help you celebrate the holiday season in style.



Most notably, we'll be adding a new track, and a selection of new objects (including static cars, vans and trucks) and some winter-themed variants of existing objects.


Work continues on the online multiplayer feature, which is coming along nicely and is beginning to have all the features and functionality we envisioned it having at its initial release.

At the moment it's possible to race with your friends (or complete strangers) in single races - or in championships - online. We still have some way to go and our focus at the moment is now particularly on the additional functionalities like synchronising tracks between players, and handling mid-race disconnections.

After this, we'll have some UI finalisation to do - and then we hope to conduct a couple of invite-only tests before launching multiplayer sometime after the New Year! Stay tuned here, and on Discord, to find out more about the invite-only tests 📧


We're continuing to follow our roadmap and our plans for GeneRally 2's Early Access period - and we're on-track with where we expected to be at this point. It's our intention to launch out of Early Access within the first half of 2024 🏆

Still outstanding on our pathway towards a Version 1.0 release are the online multiplayer, a couple of cars, improvements to the AI, and a variety of smaller bug fixes and features.

In the year leading up to the launch of Early Access (and for a couple of months afterwards), we were really lucky to be able to have such a large team working on GeneRally 2. Now, our team is much more modest in size (only three of us are working actively on the project) - a result of the basic realities of independent game development.

However, as we saw the possibility of this from afar, we set our Early Access goals conservatively, to ensure we could reach them even with a smaller day-to-day team.

What this means is that prioritisation becomes the most important factor for us in delivering content and feature updates. Right now, our focus is on delivering the online multiplayer, and then we'll be able to turn our attention to the other items on the list!

Of course, this also makes now a great time for us to say thank you to the team members who have helped us along the route, but are no longer working with us on a daily basis: we are so grateful to you guys for your contributions to GeneRally 2 over the past couple of years 😊

This update includes some performance improvements, as well as a few minor features and fixes. At the moment the team’s focus is on the upcoming online multiplayer update, so this update is a little smaller than usual.

• Improved performance related to skidmarks and terrain shading in race mode.
  
• Adjusted wheel damage to be a bit less vicious.
  
• FIXED: Tree stumps now behave correctly when colliding.
  
• FIXED: Corrected several objects UV mappings.
  

• Added Polish language localisation (thanks to Salami/Scorpion).
  

• Added new size variants for trees and bushes.
  
• FIXED: UI models for the second house type are now displayed properly in the UI.
  

• The main menu sometimes experiences distortions or other rendering issues - changing resolution, or restarting the game may rectify the issue.
  
• Occasionally, when in Windowed mode, changing the language multiple times in quick succession can shrink the game window.
  

This update fixes an issue with terrain physics calculations.

• FIXED: Terrain normals are now correctly calculated - and cars behave properly on slopes again.
  

This update fixes an issue with the Formula and General.

• FIXED: Formula and General no longer pull to the side on banked tracks.
  

A couple of weeks ago, we launched the August Update, which included some significant improvements to different parts of the game, including the car physics, general game performance and some aspects of the AI.

As many of you have noticed, the monthly updates so far have been quite a mixture of fixes, general improvements and new features - general updates, so to speak. Going forward, we'll be shifting focus to making these updates more specific to certain areas of the game and certain features.




Fundamentally, we're going to be giving each of the upcoming updates between now and GeneRally 2's v1.0 release a particular theme or main feature focus.

In addition to this, we want to make sure that we deliver smaller fixes and features more often than once per month. As a result, you can expect smaller patches, hotfixes and updates as-and-when they're ready to be launched, and the bigger features on a monthly basis.

Today's update improving the AI and physics, is once such example of these smaller patches!


At the moment, we have four or five major feature updates planned (and many more thoughts about updates for the future). In this blog post, we'll briefly cover just a few of them...

[h3]September's Update - Objects, UI & Miscellaneous Features[/h3]
September will be the last of the "a bit of everything" updates that we've had so far. It will be a little smaller and more concentrated than the July and August updates - but it will still contain some significant upgrades and improvements.

You can expect to see:

• The first round of the updated menu UI, making the game nicer to interact with, and fixing a bunch of small bugs that have crept up over time.
  
• A bunch of new objects, to round out our "first batch" of additions.
  
• Keyboard key rebinding.
  
• Other small features, fixes and updates.
  

The September update will likely arrive towards the end of September.

[h3]Online Multiplayer Update[/h3]
This is a big feature, and one that lots of people have been waiting for! We've been hard at work on this feature for months now. After the release of the August update, we've now moved more team members to focussing on this, so that we can bring it to the state where it's ready for you to play.

We'll have more information about online multiplayer, and what the update will contain, closer to the time.

[h3]AI Update[/h3]
Another big focus for us are the AI drivers. As many of you know, the AI are not yet as competitive as we'd want them to be - and we are planning to have a significant update to them in the coming months.

This update will include improvements to their basic functions and skills, and will also see the introduction of the additional parameters and "profiles", which will allow you to customise their behaviour to suit you.

[h3]New Cars and Tracks[/h3]
Of course, along with future updates will have new cars and tracks at regular intervals! Stay tuned for more information about these.


We haven't yet set an exact date for leaving Early Access and launching GeneRally 2 v1.0 - but we do have a set of features and updates in mind that we want to finish before we get there. Stay tuned for more information on this in the coming months!


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If you want to support us and the game's ongoing development, and purchase GeneRally 2 in Early Access, you can buy it here on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2104920/GeneRally_2/

If you've already purchased and would like to help us out, please consider leaving a review for GeneRally 2 on Steam!