In this Update I am adding some changes to the level design.
In the past there has been a lot of complaints about the brightness in the game, which I try to fix as best as I can. Just increasing the brightness in general was no option cause it would completely destroy the visual style I was going for. So I thought about what Information of the level and the track is important to convey. The corners at intersections and the walls at the end of a street where the main points where I would imagine players getting confused. The first step was to rework the intersections and make sure that all corners you can drift along are actually curved now. That means they follow the natural motion of the player instead of being a sharp edge. This allowed me to add billboards to the areas covering the corners. These advertising billboards help players to navigate around the level better while still preserving the overall aesthetic vision of the game.
Some additional change to the level is the removal of the little alleys that would be covered by a fence. Combined with the low brightness I could understand how they mislead players into thinking they can actually drive in there. Lampposts have been removed as well. While I think they were a well put obstacle to make the track harder to drive in general, I noticed that specifically when trying to dodge a police car near a lamppost it almost always meant that I either crashed into the wall or the police. The problem was that the lamppost often limited the options of dodging a police car on either the left or right side to only being able to dodge on one side. If the police car was now already driving closer to that side of the road to begin with it was way harder to successfully dodge it.
As for the traffic light system: The distance as in how far a police car is being detected has been set to two blocks/intersections now. I initially intended to have it this way, but I accidentally had it only set for one intersection. There was also a bug where the signal stayed red although there is no police car in that street. That issues has been resolved now.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
reworked fences
added rounded corner buildings
reworked intersections
reworked car interior
fixed cinematic bars
fixed score formatting
fixed traffic light system
reworked lamps
adjusted board computer font sizes
Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.2
In this Update I am addressing most of the issues that have drawn my attention since the past update.
Including Downtown Drift in the Jingle Jam 2019 (Humble Bundle) obviously drew a lot of attention to the game. First off, I am very grateful for being able to help out such a great project. To be honest I did not think that I would be able to participate, therefore I am even more happy about the opportunity. That being said, up until that point Downtown Drift was and still is now in a very raw and unpolished form. In addition to that I made the mistake of pushing a game changing update the day Downtown Drift was featured on the Jingle Jam, so there was no time to actually test things prior; some reasonable negative feedback followed. Lesson learned, good thing I was able to get a decent amount of feedback.
Now for this Update I reworked the game rules once more. It seemed like the changes I made last time where a bit too harsh for new players, something I could have figured before... but well. Anyways, from now on you no longer lose the game when you crash into something, instead you lose when you run out of health. Your health does not regenerate, its limited. Each time you crash you lose health, the damage you take is in accordance to your speed and how exactly you crashed. Driving straight into a wall will deal more damage than bumping the side of your car. An important note however: the damage you take is tied to your multiplier! That means once you stack up enough drifts you will take significantly more damage. That way the game gets more difficult the better you get.
Another important change is the new traffic lights system. From now on there is no more poles at the intersections, the cause for probably most crashes. This should make it easier to drift around corners and less frustrating for new players. There are two lights at each intersection now and the color of the lights actually matter too. The way it works is that the light tells you whether there is a police car in the cross street, so the left light for the street going left and the right light for the street going right. If the light signals red it means that there is a police car, while a green signal means no police car. This signal works for the following two intersections on that street, if there is police after that the signal will still be green. This should help to make a more informed decision whether to turn at the intersection or not.
Some small change is the addition of a quick restart button. This should help to offer a quick way to reset once your run has been ruined. Also slow motion has been removed. I might add it back sometime in the future, but at least right now it did not serve any particular purpose, was pretty random and was causing crashes.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
added continue button to tutorial section
adjusted building color
added new traffic light system
added intersection to tutorial
adjusted game over screen duration
fixed option menu in game/tutorial
adjusted police car speed and acceleration
removed slow-motion
added quick restart button
added total ranks to main menu
added health display to board computer
added multiplier damage factor
added controller recommendation
adjusted damage calculation
added opening cinematic
fixed police car headlights breaking
fixed police cars being stuck when rolled over
fixed intense bloom on car doors
fixed police cars spawning in close proximity
Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.1
In this Update I finally got to improve performance and reworked some design flaws I have noticed in the past.
First off and most important: The game rules have changed! Before it was all about creating a highscore by drifting and police would try to chase you. If you hit anything with your car, your multiplier would reset but you keep your total score. So the game was not over and you could just keep on playing pretty much forever. The only way to actually lose was to get get caught by police if they were in your proximity for too long. The solution could have been to add more police cars or make it harder to get away from police in general, but that is not what the game is about. When I played the game and started to master the drifting I set myself the challenge to play the game without hitting anything at all and as soon as I hit something I would restart and try again until I got a new highscore. After playing like that for a while I noticed the game is definitely harder this way, more frustrating, but way more fun aswell. The rush you get, when your multiplier is super high and the next drift will get you as many points as the first 100 drifts did, is just amazing. And the rush comes from the fact that you can lose all that by making a small mistake, so you have to stay focused the entire time though. So I adapted this challenge I have created for myself to be the actual game. From now on, if you hit anything, let it be a lamppost, a wall, police: The game will be over immediately!
Performance has been a major issue ever since I implemented more detailed buildings. I made a very dumb mistake when it came to actually modelling those details which caused a very heavy load on both the CPU and GPU. So with this Update you should see a better and more stable framerate.
Also I made sure to add automatic Input recognition. That means from on there is no need to go into the Options menu to play with a controller. I do have to add however, that not all the navigation in menus etc. is working well with a controller, so I would fallback to using the mouse there.
Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.06
In this Update I finally got to rework some visuals and fix some major bugs.
The visuals have been a problem right off the start. Up until now the map was only made up of intersections, traffic lights, street lights and some grey cubes that were supposed to be buildings. My intention was to create a very simple but yet intriguing art style, but unfortunately I did not deliver that at launch.
Now after most of the important bugs and issues were fixed I had time to invest into the graphical fidelity. I have now added multiple types of buildings with different sizes and styles to make the game really feel like its Downtown! Also I have added multiple subway lines that run above the streets to add to the urban feel.
With the sky-high buildings the game now has a lot more verticality, at least visually speaking. That way the player finally gets the feeling of being chased in an actual city.
Finally I have been able to fix a bug that has been around since the launch back in may. Sometimes the player's car would start jumping out of nowhere, which caused total lost of control and often lead to the player crashing and losing his multiplier or even getting arrested. That problem has now hopefully been fixed. If the issues remains I would appreciate a post over in the community group about it!
Other noteworthy changes are the decrease of the repair kit spawn time. Before, a batch of repair kits would spawn for 15s then disappear and after another 5s the next batch would spawn. Now repair kits are spawned with no time inbetween to increase the chance of being able to repair.
Also, the way how police approaches the player's position has slightly changed. From now on all police cars do not drive straight to the player's position, but instead try to surround him or drive towards the area he is in. That way the police force gets less predicable and more exciting encounters are created. In addition, the maximum speed for the police car has been increased.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
fixed main menu police cars
added proximity leaderboard formatting
added building models
added subway lines
increased maximum police car speed
decreased repair kit spawn time
fixed player car behavior
added police car target offset
adjusted police car despawn
reworked main menu
reworked tutorial
Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.05
In this Update I tried to fix some minor issues.
One big complain with the game was the intense bloom. The Post processing has been adjusted with this update. The bloom has been reduced by 50%. Also some color grading has been changed to create a more realistic feel.
The way how the player gets caught by police has been slightly changed. Before, the time it took for the player to get caught was dependent only on distance to the nearest police car and speed of the player. From now on the player can not get caught when moving at a certain minimum speed, this means if the player is making an effort to escape he won't be arrested. The bloom effect from getting getting arrested however remains until the player gets away from police.
Head on collision with a police car does no longer cause the player to jump over it. From now on crashing straight into a police car will most likely cause a game over, so it should be avoided at all cost.
Until now stuck police cars would not always despawn, which means that they would block potential new police units from spawning. That ultimately makes the game a lot easier, as there are less police units chasing the player. This has now been fixed.
By default the audio was set to be at full volume when you open the game for the first time which was too loud, now the default audio volume is set to be at 75%. Also the sliders for the audio volumes in the options menu were not working quite properly. Putting the slider in the middle did not actually turn the volume to 50%, instead to around 10%. This issues has been resolved.
Leaderboard Highscores are now displayed in a more readable format. That means now 1000000 is shown as 1.000.000.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
fixed options menu audio sliders
improved tutorial track
added leaderboard highscore formatting
adjusted police custody
added police despawn
changed post processing
adjusted player camera
Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.04
This update includes quite a lot of changes.
First off the new Tutorial Track:
I included a written tutorial section in the main menu last update, but I feel like the average player does not actually care to take the time to read through it. So now I included a Tutorial Track where you can actually drive and get familiar with the game while small hints are displayed for help. The written tutorial section however is available.
With this update a small prompt will show up when you play the game for the first time suggesting to drive the Tutorial Track. If you want to drive it again after that you need to click the "Tutorial Track" Button in the Tutorial Section.
A Leaderboard has been added to the main menu as well. There are two sections: Top Rank and My Rank. Top Rank shows the Top 10 Highscores on the Global Ranking and My Rank shows the 3 players above and below the current rank.
In addition to the main Leaderboard there now is a proximity Leaderboard visible every time you get a new Highscore. It shows the player's rank and the rank of the players directly above and below.
I hope the Tutorial Track helps new players understand the game better and the Leaderboard brings some competitive incentive to the game.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
added a guided tutorial track
added a leaderboard
improved the game-over screen
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.03
The first and most obvious problem I have noticed from launch is that the game gives no hints how to actually play. I have worked on a Tutorial section that explains different parts of the game through primarily text but also video sequences.
I would love to get some feedback on how helpful this new addition is and how I could improve it further.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
added in-game tutorials
added current rank to main menu
fixed various UI related issues
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.02
Here are all the changes for this Update:
fixed Steam Achievements not working properly
Best,
ThatMadProgrammer
Downtown Drift Update v.1.01
Since the rate at which you get points has been changed the leaderboard is going to reset for this Update.
Here are all the changes for this Update:
fixed options menu being disabled
adjusted drift score multiplier from 1000 to 100
fixed an issue causing a new highscore not to be properly shown
