Slipstream News

This past sunday, September 1st 2024, was a very special day for me. I had planned this announcement for that day, but due to me not knowing how to properly add a tool package to an existing game on Steam technical reasons, I had to delay it for a bit. Why was it special, you ask? Well, on September 1st 2014 I posted this video on youtube:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This video is the oldest record of what would become Slipstream. I had been working on it for just a week or two. And now, (almost) exactly a decade later, I'm here to announce its final major update.

Fittingly, this game took me on a long and unexpected journey. Ten years ago I was a hobbyist in my bedroom, learning the absolute basics of gamedev, hoping to create small mobile games just for fun, on my spare time, and maybe even earn a little side money from that. Then came steam greenlight, a kickstarter campaign, two long and painful extra years of development, an independent release, a contract with a publisher, a full rewrite of the game's code, a second release on consoles, localizations, the DLC after five years, and finally the content of this update, which I'll talk about soon. I went from amateur to professional with this one project. It pushed me to improve my skills as an artist and programmer, and to learn more about the whole process of making and releasing a game. I learned so many things. I had never even driven a car when I released the game in 2018, and thanks to the earnings from the game I bought my first car (and the second). My childhood dream of making games professionally came true, thanks to this project and to all of you who supported me.

But it's time to conclude this journey. I've been talking about it for years, I mentioned it in all of my previous update posts. I want to make other things, other games, and I think I did everything I wanted and could with this one, it's time to let it go. However, as the title of this post suggests, I don't want the this project to just fizzle out silently. So I prepared one last major update for the occasion, the biggest one since last year's Blue Hour DLC.

If you've read my previous announcements, you know I've been working for a long time on a modding system for the game. In fact, the modding system itself is already in the game, but a real user content ecosystem requires more: specialized tools and, most importantly, a place where users can share their content. And this is exactly what I bring to you today.

[h2]Slipstream Workshop Tools[/h2]
I'm releasing, today, a new package called Slipstream Workshop Tools. It should be already in your Steam library (in the "Tools" section) by the time this post goes live. It includes four tools I created to aid with content creation for the game.

The four tools are:
* atlas, a command-line program to pack multiple images in a single texture map.
* slipstream-car-template, which is not a program but a blender file. You can use it as a template to generate car sprites from a 3D model.
* bride, a graphical track editor for Slipstream.
* swt, a workshop upload tool. You can use it to share your content on Steam.

With these tools, users can create and share new tracks, cars and music for Slipstream. For the tracks, you can create your own set of new graphics or use the ones from one of my content packages. The documentation for these tools is available at the Slipstream Workshop page. I will also post a video tutorial with a demonstration of each tool in a few days.

And of course, workshop tools require a workshop. So, I declare the Slipstream Workshop officially open.

But before I published my modding tools, I needed to test them in the real world to make sure they work properly. And there's no better way to test content creation tools than... creating content, right?

[h2]Supernova[/h2]
As a parting gift for my community, along with the content creation tools, I'm also releasing a new content expansion called Supernova. It includes only two new tracks, two new cars and two new songs. If Blue Hour was a fancy and luxurious trip to Europe, Supernova is a lighthearted and fun camping trip to the woods. There are lots of mushrooms there.

A supernova is the colossal explosion that happens when some types of stars die. While the star ceases to exist in its original form, most of its mass is spread out into space by the explosion, as cosmic dust. And, from that dust, new planets or stars can be born. As the project reaches its conclusion for me, I'm giving you, the community, the tools to create more stuff if you want. I'm not expecting it to be a big hit, it's an old game and creating content for it takes a lot of work, but who knows, maybe a small community will keep Slipstream alive in the future?

Also, big thanks to my buddy Zacabeb, who helped me immensely testing these tools and giving me useful feedback. The first package in the workshop is a track he made before the tools were available, called Rural Run, check it out too!

[h2]Slipstream v1.3.3[/h2]
And finally, there were some minor updates to the game itself. They're nothing major so there's no point to list them here, the new content and tools are the stars of this update. Now that the Workshop is open, I'm gonna keep two separate branches for the main game, the default and one called 'workshop'. They will contain exactly the same builds, the only difference between the two branches are the launch options on the Steam client. The default branch will just open the game as it always did, and the workshop branch will offer an option to open the track editor instead. If you plan to use the editor a lot, stay on the 'workshop' branch. If not, just leave it on the default one.

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
I guess this is where we say goodbye. Of course I won't leave the project hanging, I will fix bugs if necessary, but the modding system was the last major thing I wanted to add to it. Maybe I'll come back to make a new content package in a few years, especially if the game is somehow kept alive by a modding community, but the chances are slim.

Slipstream is, at the moment, the biggest thing I've ever created in my life. I spent a whole decade with it, it brought me a lot of pain and suffering but many times more joy and excitement. I hope I can make even bigger things in the future, and I hope all of you who are reading this (and even those who aren't) come along for the ride. I want to make more games, I have lots of ideas, both in the racing genre and elsewhere. And I hope you all had a good time with my game. If it brought you joy at least once, I'm more than satisfied.

Thanks, forever thanks.

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great and enjoying the new content in the Blue Hour DLC. If you haven't installed it, please check it out, it's free after all.

I'm publishing a minor update, v1.3.1, which fixes some historically problematic things and, sadly, removes a feature. But it's for a good reason.

Feature removal: MP3 support.
I'm not sure how many players use this feature, but Slipstream allows you to add your own music files to the game. If you put a music file in '[user config dir]/ansdorGames/Slipstream/music', it will be playable during gameplay and treated like any other song in the soundtrack. Up until now, the game has supported three formats: ogg, wav and mp3. When I rewrote the game in version 1.2, I switched the underlying game library from libGDX to FNA, and FNA does not have native support for MP3. For the whole v1.2 cycle and v1.3.0, I used SDL2_mixer as an alternative, but this created new problems, mostly on macOS. Supporting the macOS version is extremely hard for me because I don't have a Mac computer and the OS isn't trivially virtualized like Windows and Linux.

In this new version, I removed the dependency on SDL2_mixer, so now the game only requires FNA and should run exactly the same on every PC platform. But, sadly, MP3 support had to go. The game still supports user-provided music, but only in the OGG format. If you use this feature a lot, I suggest you to convert your Slipstream playlist to the OGG format, it's a free format with many conversion tools available for every system. If FNA adds support for MP3 in the future (maybe I'll add it myself, if I have the time), I'll bring back support. But for now, it's goodbye to MP3. This should fix the recent audio problems on macOS. If you still have problems, send me an email.

Audio Improvements, Engine Sounds
The whole audio system has been refactored, and this brings back a feature that was lost in the v1.2 update: The engine pitch shift. Now the car engine sound is slightly more realistic and a lot more pleasant to the ear.

Leaderboard Improvements
The leaderboard system was one of the last things I implemented in Slipstream v1.2, when I was already tired of the whole rewrite and far beyond what should be my deadline. It's always been buggy and weird. Now I took the time to rewrite it properly and it should work better in general. One tangible improvement is that it doesn't show "Leaderboard Empty" when you don't have a entry on the Leaderboard.

Also, two tracks from the Blue Hour DLC, Transylvania and Pompeii, had a bug that prevented them from being added to the Leaderboards system. That is also fixed, and the Blue Hour Cup now has its own Leaderboard too.

UI Change: Navigation Arrow
The in-game radar now displays an arrow, like a compass, indicating the direction of the next curve. This should improve QoL on low-visibility tracks like Mystic Cave and Pompeii. The arrow becomes red when the next curve is to the right, and green when the next curve is to the left. This should allow players to predict the next curve without having to take their eyes off the road, just seeing red/green in the corner of the eye should be enough to feel where the next curve goes.

And that's all for this update. Thanks for playing!

Blue Hour, a free DLC expansion for Slipstream, is now available!

The expansion brings 3 new cars, 5 new tracks and 5 new songs. More details can be seen on the Slipstream: Blue Hour DLC store page.

To install Blue Hour, right-click Slipstream on your library, select "Properties", then "DLC" and check the Blue Hour box. It will eventually be added to the default install, but at the moment I'm asking for manual installation so I can measure the number of installs.

I'd also like to recommend players to use the game speed adjustment setting! Slipstream can be too hard to control at the default speed, and this setting exists to make the game more comfortable to play. Don't be afraid to use it, the game is still very fast at 80% speed, and everything in the gameplay and physics remains exactly the same. If I were to release the game today, I'd probably make the default speed closer to 80 or 75%, but now it's too late to change the defaults. So, please, check this option out, it can make the game a lot more fun and enjoyable. The setting can be found on the settings menu and the pause menu.

Some other notes:
- I am aware that the macOS version has some audio problems since the last update. I'll look into it as soon as possible, expect a patch to fix the issues in about two weeks, maybe less.
- A bug with the user content loading system was fixed in version 1.3.0-01
- There are no new achievements for the DLC. It was an oversight, new achievements will be added in the near future.
- I'm still working on the modding tools

Thanks for the bug reports and support, I hope you enjoy the new content!

Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great. I have big news to share with you today.

Slipstream is now five years old! Time flies. The original release feels both like yesterday and a long time ago. Since then, I've worked (almost) continuously to keep this game afloat. I've done a full rewrite of the code, added many new features, and fixed all the bugs and problems I could. It's still not perfect, I guess it will never be, but I've tried my best to make it good and enjoyable. Once again I want to say thanks to all of you who played the game, gave me useful feedback and support in general.

Today I bring you a new version of the game, Slipstream v1.3. As with the previous v1.x updates, I'm gonna freeze the latest v1.2 build on a separate branch (legacy-v2), so it can still be played in the future. There are major changes, so let's get to them.

* A new rubberbanding system
For those who don't know, 'rubberbanding' is a type of dynamic difficulty adjustment that's very common in racing games. It basically makes the AI cars more or less powerful depending on the player's position relative to them. If a player is far ahead, the AI gets faster, if it's far behind, it gets slower. A great example of a heavily rubberbanded game is Mario Kart 64.

Slipstream v1.1 had a lot of rubberbanding too. In the v1.2 release cycle, I tried to remove it completely, but that created a series of new problems. It's very hard to balance a game like Slipstream, that doesn't take place in a fully 3D space where minor adjustments to the racing lines can be the difference between winning and losing. In Slipstream the cars' raw attributes matter more, and the AI got out of control because it drives in a very optimized way. To mitigate this, I had to add artificial speed limits to the AI and the whole system became more complex, ugly and cumbersome than the v1.1 solution I was trying to replace.

For v1.3, I decided to bring rubberbanding back, but in a very different way. There are two types of rubberbanding, let's call them 'power-based' and 'skill-based'. Power-based means the AI cars get physically faster or slower depending on their position relative to the player. That's the kind I used in v1.1. Skill-based rubberbanding feels a lot more natural, the cars don't change physically at all, the only thing that changes is the AI's skill level. It might hold the brake a little longer when it's winning, or make more precise turns when it's losing. This is the kind of RB I've implemented in v1.3. In my own experience it feels pretty good, the game still has its challenging difficulty but it doesn't feel impossible to win some races like it did in v1.2.

* Car attributes, rebalanced
I really like the way the difficulties are handled in v1.2, with three different weight classes like in Mario Kart. However, that system was still too tame. In v1.3, the differences between the weight classes are much more noticeable. Heavy is still the 'classic' mode, with the highest top speeds. Medium is a little slower than before, which I feel is a more sensible default setting for experienced players and beginners alike, and Light is beginner-friendly, more relaxing and less challenging.

On the topic of balancing, ever since the original release, Top Speed has reigned supreme as the most important attribute. Again, due to the game not taking place in a 3D space, it's impossible to make Top Speed less important. All else equal, the car with the highest top speed will inevitably win the race. That said, I tried to mitigate this issue a little. Now both Handling and especially Acceleration have a stronger effect on the car's behavior in the race, and that should make the low top speed cars more viable.

Finally, since everything was changed, a whole new set of online leaderboards will be used for v1.3. The v1.2 records will still remain accessible from the legacy-v2 branch, but it wouldn't make sense to preserve them for the new builds. Time Trial ghosts and individual records will also be cleared, but the save file progress will carry over from v1.2 to v1.3.

* New modes, more randomness
When I added the Battle Royale mode to the game in v1.1, it was intended as kind of a joke. Back in 2018, when PUBG and Fortnite were starting to become massive hits, people joked that "now every game needs to have a battle royale mode" and I decided to actually do it. I didn't expect people to give much attention to that mode, but as the years passed I noticed experienced Slipstream players seem to really love that mode, and I think I understand its appeal: It takes almost no configuration, unlike Cannonball, and it's perfect for a relatively long, relaxing and varied race. The randomness is an important part of the equation, Battle Royale was the only "true" randomized mode (you can shuffle Cannonball tracks, but you can still see the track list before the race). Well, not anymore!

The update brings randomized versions of Grand Tour and Grand Prix modes. Both follow the same rules as the default versions, but with a random pool of tracks. I'm also trying to give a little more love to the Reverse versions of the tracks, they have been in the game since v1.0, but always stayed tucked away in just two modes, one of them probably the least played of all. Now all the random modes (including Battle Royale) will reverse half of their tracks, for maximum unpredictability. That means 7 out of 15 possible Grand Tour stages will be reversed, and 2 out of 5 Grand Prix tracks.

Also worth noting that, for these modes, the game can pick any of the available tracks, including the ones from diamond cup, and also...

* Modding v0.1
The user content system is now finished and stable. There was a version in v1.2, but it was a little buggy and not properly tested. Now it's 100% functional, save for the occasional bug that's probably still hiding in there. However, I'm calling this "v0.1" instead of v1.0 because there are still many parts missing.

A real modding system requires three things:

• Support in the game code itself. [finished]
  
• Specialized tools, like a track editor. [in alpha]
  
• Documentation on how to do it. [not started]
  

The tools are still not finished. I have preliminary versions, but they're not ready for a public release yet. I will release them as open source before the end of 2023, but that's all I can say for now. And the documentation hasn't even started, but that part will be easier than programming the tools themselves, I think.

Still, if you are a tinkerer and likes reverse engineering stuff, you can look at the content package provided by the game (under Slipstream/assets/content/vanilla/) and see how things are done. It's all just JSON. User-created content should be put in the "content" directory of the game settings folder. If you're on Windows, that's [user home]/AppData/Roaming/ansdorGames/Slipstream/content (keep in mind the names are case-sensitive).

* Some graphical changes
All the cars have new sprites, with more vivid colors and a slightly different perspective. I just felt like they needed a bit of a punch-up. The verticality of slopes in the game has been very noticeably reduced. Reverse tracks don't invert slopes anymore, the reverse track is now an (almost) exact mirror image of the regular version. The Slipstream engine got some new features, one of them is a new fog system, used in two of the diamond cup tracks, Aquatic Ruins and Mystic Cave. Aquatic Ruins now has a more underwater-y feel and Mystic Cave gets dynamic lighting provided by the cars' headlights, instead of just shortening the draw distance as it used to.

These are the major changes. I hope you enjoy the new version, and thanks again for these five years of continuous support and appreciation. And that's all for today, see you later!

...oh, wait a minute. I almost forgot something.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Blue Hour, the first DLC expansion for Slipstream, will be available for FREE this summer. It includes 3 new cars, 5 new tracks and 5 new songs. More details on the dedicated steam page for Slipstream: Blue Hour. Free DLC for a 5 year old game, bet you weren't expecting this one!