Welcome back players! This month we don’t have glamorous screenshots to show, but more progress happened under the hood instead.
What’s up?
Things are not too bad lately. The vacation I took earlier this month definitely helped me getting back on track and refreshing a few ideas. Some lingering issues still persist but this month I’ve been trying to dedicate my time entirely on game development, so to get things done. I will resume looking for a rent at a later date- it’s really exhausting to do and I need a pause from that.
V-Speedway
Once again V-Speedway manages to get in the way of DTC, but this time for important reasons. If you remember, some time ago I found out that Chinese players from Pico and Qiyu platforms couldn’t connect to leaderboards at all. Shortly after, I also casually discovered the game was running at very low resolution on the recently released Pico 4. I wasn’t happy to discover that so I decided to spend some time between October and November to fix all these issues, plus improving Discord implementation, adding the option to invert the accelerator/brake triggers, and fixing a few general bugs. This took me quite some time, but now players from all over the world are able to play V-Speedway the way it was meant to be. I just hope nothing else breaks out of the blue…
Quick reminder for V-Speedway: leaderboards are split between Meta, Qiyu, Pico International and Pico China, no cross-platform is happening. This is because due to the free nature of the game, I had to rely as much as possible to each platform proprietary leaderboard systems which are always free to use in a platform-exclusive way. DTC will be completely cross-platform though.
Downtown Club
Some of the changes made in the latest version of V-Speedway were ported from the latest DTC developments, most notably the new cool Discord implementation and some connectivity improvements. We’re still a bit behind with the graphic progress, but I worked on plenty of other things in game code, under the hood. A few highlights:
- Implemented five different control schemes
- All control schemes can be used with physical or non-physical controls
- All control schemes support inverting pedal and/or gear buttons
- Unlocking items by buying them in the Shop or after reaching certain criteria
- Found a workaround for FFR no longer working
- Experimenting with Vulkan API for a couple of additional optimisations
- Testing multiple hardware SDKs together in a single project
Plus a couple of points I will discuss later in more detail:
- Major update to mirrors and reflection systems for more general use
- Testing neural networks to generate city skyline backgrounds
Most of this doesn’t sound like much, but it still plays a major part in the game as a whole. On a different note, I’d like to remember something I mentioned in the Discord server some time ago: despite all the optimisations I’m fitting into the game, DTC will run at 72 fps with a maximum of 8 cars on the track. Given how much more detailed the game is compared to V-Speedway, it’s no longer possible to keep it at 90 fps with 12 cars on track- basically all of the original extra performance room has been used and more is needed.
One last note- you might have noticed another hardware vendor mentioned on Commuter Games website, and in fact Downtown Club will be released on YVR devices too!
Wrapping up
Development continues despite everything. I’m still working to complete that internal Alpha version I mentioned last month, for private use and feedback. Later on, once the game reaches a more completed state, I will launch a closed Beta (details about this coming in due time) and I’m planning on a key giveaway too when the game is released. That’s all for today, thanks again for your patience!
Danjel Ricci “SkyArcher”