Hello everyone! It's been a while since our last community update - so now we're here with another one. In this post we'll talk about what we're working on, and what's coming up in the not-too-distant future!
Remember, if you want to participate in the discussion directly with the development team - and the rest of the GeneRally 2 community - you can join us on Discord!
Online Multiplayer - What's Next?
It's been a few months since the launch of Online Multiplayer into beta - and thousands and thousands of races have been completed since then 😊 We're really happy to see that the community has been enjoying the update so much.
Naturally, though, we have been working on the things that are needed to bring the Online Multiplayer to full functionality. Some of those have made it into the game already through patches, but a few of the bigger ones are still in progress.
👓 Spectator Mode - we are currently in the process of testing spectator mode. At the moment, in our internal build, it's possible for the host to spectate instead of participate in the race directly, and we'll be extending this as part of the "mid-season joining" feature.
🎯 Mid-Race Joining - sometimes it's tough to see a race in progress in the server list, and not know when it's going to end - so we've also been working on the ability for you to join a race that's in progress and spectate until the start of the next race!
We'll have some more information about these features soon - they're still in active development, and need to undergo testing before they're ready to release.
Other Improvements
Of course, we're not only working on Online Multiplayer updates, we're also working on other features and improvements, as part of our road towards our v1.0 release.
🎨 Driver Profiles - soon you'll be able to save individual drivers with their names, colours and skill settings - and use them in your races (either as human drivers, or as AI). Along with this, we're significantly expanding the available colours you can assign to drivers!
🏁 Custom Points Systems - similar to the above, you'll also be able to customise the points awarded to each finishing position (and the fastest lap), and save those points systems to use again.
🎮 Controller Support in Menus - this one has been a long time overdue, but hasn't been straightforwardly possible for a variety of reasons. Now, though, we're happy to say that implementation of this is underway, and it should reach you before too long 🙌
⏱ Time-Trial Mode - another long overdue feature is a proper time-trial mode, with fixed track grip, no tyre wear or fuel usage concerns, and an easy display of timing information for hot-lap afficionados (such as those of you who participate in BBA's weekly hotlap tournament on the Discord server). This feature will also form the basis for our upcoming leaderboards and online-ranking system, which is still in the design phase.
Again, this isn't everything we're planning nor is it everything we're working on, but these are the things that we hope to get into your hands in the coming months, all being well! Alongside this post, we've updated the roadmap to reflect the state of progress!
Conclusion
That's it for this Community Update post - if you have any questions or want to discuss further with us, come and find us on Discord! If we missed talking about your most hoped-for feature - come and let us know.