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 '/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!