Hello everyone, long time no see! It’s been a while since the last proper dev diary, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been sitting on my hands. I have plenty to share so take a seat, a warm cup of coffee, and let’s dive in.
What’s up?
It’s good to be writing a Dev Diary again! Just think that the last time I attempted writing one was on a train trip in May 2025, during a visit to a convention in Turin. I started writing, but eventually the train gave me dizziness so I stopped. I wanted to continue after the trip, but the sense of urgency to get back to work overwhelmed me so I ditched what I wrote, and went back to development. Today I felt like writing again (comfortably at my desk!) because many info I shared are available only on social media and Discord, and I want them in a public post.
The last proper Dev Diary was around the launch of Downtown Club. So much stuff has happened since then, both positive and negative, as it is expected from life when you’re on your own. Downtown Club is still paying for my food and bills, which is a huge accomplishment on itself, and it also barely managed to let me buy a small house last Winter- the times of having to move every 2-3 years are finally gone. Then, in random order… Good friends are still around and we’re supporting each other, while a few others parted ways after some unpleasant events. My girlfriend broke an ankle very badly the day after I bought the house, and that caused three months of horrid work-life (un)balance, with no free time. I joined a weekend club for 1/28 RC racing and it’s been a joy and a passion to look forward to, especially because it’s a hobby away from any screen. The few good things help me deal with everyday news and events fueling my depression and existential dread, but I’ve been living with those for very long now, so I’ve learned to be good roommates.
It’s a terrible world but I’m doing my best to find my spark. It helps having objectives to reach and things to look forward to- this is something I luckily have never enough of. I’m generally well, and I feel good working on my projects; the journey continues as usual. Truth be told, I’d love to start working on a new game, but it’s still not the time for it. I’m still committed to Downtown Club as I’ve always been.
Where’s the new content?
Jokes aside, I really mean that! I’ve been keeping a “no-ETA” policy for a while now, I don’t explicitly give any release date before I’m 100% sure I can commit to one. I hate repeating this, but there are just too many variables in play that can change how quick the game makes progress because I am mostly solo: if I stop one day for any reason (be it a short break, a broken bathroom pipe, urgent paperwork, an ill relative, etc etc… All stuff that really happened in the past 6 months anyways), everything about the development stops as well- that’s just how indie (actually, “kei“?) development works. But I’ll never change this for anything else, I still like this life.
With this said, the next three cars are mostly complete and need physics tuning and testing, but that’s been like that for a while now. The next map is work in progress and the artists are crafting the environment props right now, while I’m working on some tools to fix and speed up my workflow- more on that down below.
I don’t want to leave you with nothing so here’s some work in progress pictures of the Japanese touge map props! Cool fact: almost all textures are created from photos took by one artist from his recent trip to Japan.
What’s cooking?
Right now I’m quite busy with update 1.4.0 for Downtown Club, coming relatively soon. While there won’t be new cars and maps here, it’s by no means a small update! Here’s a rundown of the major features:
• Rain
Time to go racing on wet roads! I’ve spent some time making sure rain looked and sounded good in motion, while still keeping the game performance in check. Rain will affect the grip of your car, but as long as you drive under a covered road like a tunnel, wheels will slowly dry and the grip will return to normal. Check out this preview I shared some time ago:
Here's another quick clip of rain racing in Downtown Club! 🌧️ This time rain physics is in but opponents are not aware yet lol. But we love how it looks and feels! Can't wait to launch this in the next major update. #vr #metaquest
— Commuter Games (@commuter.games) January 16, 2026 at 2:30 AM
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• Slipstream
A critical part of motorsport for sure, this will change the race dynamics quite a lot! Slipstreaming works as you would expect: drive sufficiently close behind another car, and you’ll get a small but decisive speed advantage. If the car ahead is leaving thin air trails behind, then you know you’re slipstreaming! I shared a preview for this too:
Finally adding slipstreaming to Downtown Club! 🚗💨 This will be available in the next major update, together with Rain and other features. #vr #metaquest #picoxr
— Commuter Games (@commuter.games) January 21, 2026 at 12:56 PM
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• Player body avatar
Buying a new driver suit finally makes sense as you can finally see it on your body and in the mirrors, head to toes! This brings together the overall immersion of the game, but it’s built to gently hide to prevent odd stretching or unexpected movements. It’s also optional and you can just keep it off if you prefer.
• Multiplayer voice chat
Quite self explanatory! Voice chat also comes with deaf and mute options, and a new menu to show and manage all the players you’ve muted, and those you encountered online recently. That also allows you to mute/unmute players comfortably outside of online play.
Update 1.4.0 will soon be in open Test for all existing players, like I did back with the Multiplayer Test. Stay tuned for more info on that!
Early Access progress
Update v1.4.0 will also mark the end of the Early Access phase. This went a bit different than planned, and the objective is to finally put Downtown Club out of its discoverability limbo on the Quest Store caused by just being an Early Access game. I think I can do this confidently as the game is in a very polished state right now.
Back when I started developing it, I thought Early Access would be concluded when all of the planned content was added. Over time, I realised two things. First, new content could not be produced at the pace I hoped, for many different reasons. Second, the game was heavily penalised in discoverability for being an Early Access title, which is something that was probably A/B tested to hell and back, multiple times. It was even non-discoverable for the whole first month after launch, and didn’t appear in the “Racing” category for various months after launch. Of course this affected sales quite negatively.
I want to make sure Downtown Club gets the place on the shelf it deserves, so I’ve decided to close the Early Access phase as soon as 1.4.0 is out. Development will continue as planned! This really just means the game stops being an Early Access title. All the future updates will continue to arrive as they would have, the roadmap remains unchanged.
Tools of the trade
I mentioned above that I’m working on some tools to speed up development. For the sake of staying transparent with everyone, I’m building these tools using Claude AI for a few reasons:
- The tools I’m using now are bugged, sometimes unreliable, and support is lacking. One of them is literally abandoned and the Mac version is lost media.
- There are no modern tools that can work with my workflow. Most of them are overkill and yet still miss various essential features I need. Most are not available for Mac.
- There are Unity plugins that can do a similar job, at the price of a bad UI, Unity version dependency, unexpected bugs, lacking support, and you never know when you’ll lose access to plugins.
- I have to replace my tools as soon as possible so I can keep the momentum. If I had to code those on my own, it would take months.
As I expected, building these tools with AI is not exactly straightforward: plenty of hand holding, guidance, testing and a clear vision of the end result is needed. In any case, the AI is involved exclusively in the making of these standalone tools. All the game brainstorming, design, code and art is still made entirely by me and the artists involved. We could compare this situation to having someone creating for us a better set of rulers, pens and drawing compass, which in return we use to create the actual design. I’m still conflicted, but I believe this is a fair use- time will tell.
With this said, I’d like to show you a bit of the tools:
• 3D Atlas Packer
A small app that loads any number of separate models and textures, and exports them with all the UVs and textures nicely split and rearranged inside a single atlas. Handles sub-meshes, texture scaling, and any number of texture channels. Atlas packing is an old and well known concept in game development, essential for performance optimisation, but not many tools do this in a reliable and streamlined way.
• Quick Road Network
A very elaborate app that lets you create complex road networks without headaches and export them as plain meshes or for Unity import. Lets you draw roads with variable shape and detail, create junctions with any number of roads, draw and extrude profile meshes, place roadside objects, model multiple terrains that adjust to the road, add road lines, and much more. It’s surprisingly feature packed and lets you fine tune literally everything while keeping a streamlined interface that is pleasing and quick to work with. Contrary to other similar tools, this one is built with low-spec videogames and performance optimisation in mind, and the mesh density can be adjusted at will. This will be battle tested first with the Japanese map!
This tool deserves a special mention because I’ve always been fascinated by road networks, maps and tracks (you have no idea how much- this dates back to my childhood). After some years in game development, I started thinking about building this kind of tool, with the intent of making it fun, reliable and effective. In fact years ago I attempted something similar in Unity, but after a couple months of mind-bending math and trigonometry, I gave up as it was beyond my comprehension. I couldn’t get even a single cross junction to form properly! So I’m happy that now I can get this done infinitely faster. Yes, I am just directing this and not coding it myself, but I feel like a lot of my knowledge and experience is still poured into this tool, so I am extremely happy with the result- it completely fills my need.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve checked the current state of things, here’s a look at what is coming later to Downtown Club:
• v1.5.0
This update will finally add the much awaited JDM cars, including quick cockpit interactions to control functions like headlights and retractable rooftop (for one of the JDM cars). The physics of all cars and opponents AI will be revisited to make the driving snappier and more satisfying.
• v1.6.0
This update will mostly focus on the Japanese touge map, and extended online functionality. I will have more news on this update later on!
• Ports
This was in the air for a while and I’m sorry that I still don’t have proper confirmation yet, but two ports are definitely planned, and hopefully will be available sooner than later:
- Steam Frame: I’ve announced this one on socials, and the only thing keeping me from starting is that I’m still waiting my devkit request to be confirmed. The global RAM shortage has made everything worse with new hardware, so things seem to be uncertain.
- Nintendo Switch: this seemed like a no-brainer to me. I’ve always wanted to develop something for Nintendo consoles, and now it’s the chance as I got my devkit. This one implies adapting the game for flat screen, so it will be more of a technical challenge. Please wait for more news!
Wrapping up
I hope this Dev Diary was a satisfying read. There is so much I want to do and so little time in any single day… I’m one of those persons who could benefit from a 48-hours day for sure. I’ll try to have another Dev Diary out in due time, I’ve been missing this and there’s more I’d like to cover. Have a good weekend!
Danjel Ricci “SkyArcher”