Slipstream v1.3, 5th Anniversary, and something more...

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.
• Specialized tools, like a track editor.
• Documentation on how to do it.

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 /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.

Watch on YouTube
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!