My plan for 2023 was to definitely release a new update for Downtown Drift... so now here we are one day before the year ends. Just in time!

I had been quite bothered with the state of the game from the previous update. I made some pretty hard changes to the map design and overall flow of the game. Looking back at it now I have now idea how I just published those changes without reflecting further on the consequences. The game lacked intensity and was overall just really bland. I deeply apologize for the ruining the game... I hope to bring back the exciting and thrilling Downtown Drift we used to know!

There are a few changes here I could talk about, but the most important one to me is the redesign of the map generation system. The city still has that uncanny, empty feel that I very much like. But with the last update there was way too much open space that was not filled with anything that made sense or had structure to it. The new design allows for smoother and more guided drifting routes. In addition, the police is now better at navigating these spaces, which brings me to the next important point: the police AI. With the update 2.0 I completely butchered the action and thrill that came with police chases. That was mostly due to the map increasing by a huge factor, which meant the same amount of police units were not able to apply the same pressure on the player. On top of that, the police were extremely bad at maneuvering these off-road spaces. This would lead to them getting lost or stuck. Long story short: police finally are a threat again and it is much more thrilling to drive around now!

Talking about threats, there is a new one: the police helicopter! Every other minute a police helicopter will fly in to hunt down the player. The helicopter will start shooting at your car and if you stay inside the light cone for too long it might hit you and inflict damage. This will add an additional challenge, since the damage also scales up with your multiplier.

At last, but certainly not least: the #1 achievement. It seems like the number one complaint about the game was either that its too dark, or that this shitty achievement is still a thing. I never quite understood the problem at first, but after giving it some thought it did make sense to finally get rid of it. So instead, there now is a new highscore achievement that is set quite high, but can atleast be unlocked by everyone. Lesson learned!

Here are all the changes for this update:

• redesigned map generation system
  
• reworked police AI
  
• added new achievements (removed #1 achievement!!!)
  
• added police helicopter
  
• fixed performance
  
• fixed lighting
  
• fixed controller/steering wheel input
  
• added loading screen to start up
  
• fixed tire screeching
  
• fixed camera render issue
  
• reworked icon

Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below or over on the discord server.

A happy new year to everyone and I wish you all the best for 2024! To hopefully yet another update in the year to come. Thank you to each and everyone that still is playing Downtown Drift and following the process, very much appreciated!

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

It has been a long time since the last update for Downtown Drift, also it has been quite some time since I had initially announced this update to come out... my bad. I suppose I've gotten a bit rusty when it comes to estimating how long the final stretch of an update can take. A lot of bugs came up somewhat last-minute and there were certainly a few other things I wasn't completely happy with. This led to me delaying the update and even having to delay the delayed update once more. I did release a somewhat stable release on the beta branch two weeks ago and thanks to the feedback from the community over on discord I have been able to catch a handful of bugs and get rid of them. In the end, I think I have learned my lesson to not under-estimate and over-promise. Will not happen again!

With that out of the way, now onto this update: There is a new map, a new music system and a hopefully better new Input System.

One thing that had definitely bothered me before was the very limited map versatility. Having the map as a strict grid of roads was a decision I made in order to simplify the development of an early prototype, but I ended up sticking with it because it did somewhat work fine. However, my initial idea was to have a far more interesting map with different districts and areas to drive through. With the new map generation system I have come a great deal closer to this vision. From now on you can still drive on the roads but also take turns into different city blocks with exterior and interior areas. The only current problem is that there is just one finished district: the industrial district. So while offering a lot more physical space to drift through, visually speaking the space might still seem a bit repetitive and bland. Do not worry too much though, there will be more districts in the future. So more to come here!

Another thorn in my side had been the pretty bad input. I partially blame Unity for this since their Input is quite shitty to say the least. I have now migrated the project to use their new Input System, which is shitty in its on ways, but should offer some more flexibility when it comes to Input devices. So I hope with the new Input it is now easier to play the game with Controllers and especially Steering Wheels!

At last, but definitely not least: the music. Up until now the music in the game consisted of a 2 second loop that would repeat without any variation for however long it took one to find that there is a way to mute the music. I can't blame anyone for it, I myself enjoy playing the game much more with the music muted but sound effects on. However, I still wanted to improve the music in the game so I came up with a dynamic music system that allows for greater variation with little additional effort. At least so I thought... I ended up having to completely switch the audio engine from Unity's own to a middleware called FMod. This migration took a good amount of time, but was certainly worth it in the end. The new music system now transitions between different instruments of the music track based on how close police is to the player, and in addition each instrument has a selection of different loops now. It is far from perfect, but definitely far better than what there was before.

Here are all the changes for this update:

• added new map generation system
  
• added new input system
  
• added new dynamic music system
  
• added new police pathfinding
  
• reworked police radio
  
• adjusted Post-Processing and Lighting
  
• migrated audio engine to FMod
  
• added new icon
  
• fixed various UI bugs
  
• fixed rear mirror material
  
• fixed road material

Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below or over on the discord server.

I want to especially thank everyone who played Downtown Drift throughout the last years and struck around despite such a long hiatus. It has been really amazing to see so many people enjoy the game and give lots of positive feedback. Equally I am happy with the often constructive critics that have helped make the game better over time. There is actually more average daily players right now than there has ever been at any point in the years prior, so I am super motivated to continue working on the Downtown Drift and deliver the best possible experience.

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

After having to postpone the initial release of Update 2.0, I unfortunately have no other choice than to delay its release once more. However, there are good news: the current state of the update is playable on the beta branch right now! The reason for the delay is that there are still some bugs and issues that need fixing. So if anyone would like to help out finding more of them, please go ahead and play the beta.

You can switch over to the beta branch by right clicking Downtown Drift in your Library and selecting Properties. Next head to Betas and select beta - beta in the dropdown menu.
Now Steam should automatically update Downtown Drift to the newest beta update. If there is no update available restarting Steam can help with that.

Once all bugs are taken care of Update 2.0 will roll out immediately. If you want to report bugs please consider joining the Discord!

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

Well well well... it has been awfully quiet around here for a while now, for a good reason: Downtown Drift hasn't seen an Update for almost 2 years. So finally, after a long hiatus, there will be a new Update coming this Friday Monday, the 27th 30th of May 2022!

For a lot of reasons I unfortunately haven't gotten around to working on Downtown Drift earlier, but mostly it was a lack of motivation. Especially during these past two years it had been quite hard to find the drive to work on the project, but I always felt like there was unfinished business here. So over the past weeks I have been putting in some hours to finally fix those issues with Downtown Drift that have always bothered me in the past.

Beyond this next update I intend to continue with adding more content to Downtown Drift over the next weeks. So I hope everyone is as excited as I am to improve and develop Downtown Drift further to make it the truly great game it deserves to be!

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

Postponed the release date because I underestimated how much work still had to be done... Sorry!

Downtown Drift Devblog #4 is out. Go ahead and check out what I am currently working on!

I am doing most of the development for Downtown Drift live on Stream now. If you want to drop by and see how I am working on the game and what I am doing, head over to my Twitch Stream.

Streams will usually go from around 5pm-7pm CET. Sometimes might also go live sporadically when I feel like working on the game.

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

I believe this is long overdue, but there now is a Discord Server for Downtown Drift! I think it is important to create an easy and intuitive way for the community to get involved in the development process and give much needed feedback.

So for anyone who wants to take an active part in deciding what's next for Downtown Drift and also get involved early with new games coming from me/SiliKöln Valley Games:

Join the Discord Server

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

This Update introduces bonus multipliers. Also there is now a new tutorial track that focuses more on mechanics instead of pure information.

Up until now each drift would increase the overall multiplier for all drifts coming after that. However its somewhat unrewarding for each drift to be equally valued. For example if you dodge a police car and
almost hit a wall while still drifting the entire time you get the same amount of points per second as if you were just doing a simple drift around a corner. The only factors used to be the speed at which you drift and the overall multiplier. Now there is something called Bonus Multipliers. They are not added to the overall multiplier but instead are applied to the current drift only. Right now there are three:

• Police Dodge: adds 1 to the bonus multiplier for drifting when close to a police car
  
• Close Call: adds 0.4 to the bonus multiplier for every second when drifting close to an object (e.g. police car, wall)
  
• Swerve: adds 0.1 to the bonus multiplier for every change of direction when drifting

Also the tutorial has been reworked. It just did not feel straight forward as there was too much information in a small timeframe. In addition, the tutorial did not quite reflect the actual game itself, for example it completely missed the crucial lesson of how to dodge police cars. I feel like the tutorial still needs a lot more work but going towards a more mechanics based instead of a information based approach seems more natural. Surely the tutorial will be further adjusted and extended in the future.

Here are all the changes for this Update:

• added bonus multipliers
  
• reworked tutorial
  
• fixed intersections

Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

Downtown Drift is going to be Free starting on the 13th of June 3PM PST!

It has now been a little bit over a year since I have released Downtown Drift. This has been the first game I have published on Steam so I am very thankful for everyone that bought the game, seriously very much appreciated! For everyone that owned the game up until now there will be a small badge next to your name in the leaderboard and also if I am able to implement a multiplayer mode in the future those badges will be present there too.


I was able to learn a lot along the way so I hope can make even better games in the future. Until then, I hope everyone will enjoy playing Downtown Drift. Stay Safe!

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer

In this Update I am adding some much need settings to the options menu including custom controls for both keyboard and controller and also introducing the dashboard with meters for speed and rpm.

Over most of the past year a lot of complaints have been made specifically about the very hazy or foggy visual of the game. I finally decided to add the option to adjust two quite prominent visual effects that are responsible for this problem. From now on there is a slider for both Bloom and Motion Blur, this allows to control the intensity of those effects and even turn them off completely. However, notice that even at the lowest setting there will still be a slight bloom. Still this should make a noticeable difference and allow for a more enjoyable experience. In addition there now is an option to turn v-sync on or off.

Another issue that bothered me was the inability to customize the controls. It seemed like this was not an immediate problem for most players, but it still felt like an important feature to have. In the Controls menu there are now the Bindings for both Keyboard and Controller than can be changed if needed.

Over the past Updates I have noticed somewhat of a decrease in Performance which is obviously always bad. In particular the newly introduced ads that would show up at intersections caused quite a drop in frames. With this Update the ads have been removed again, not only for performance reasons but also because of the fact that they did not really match the overall aesthetic. On top of that I remodeled and retextured the buildings while making sure to only use one material to speed up the rendering process. In addition real-time reflections have been greatly optimized so there should be a noticeable performance boost on higher quality settings.

The UI Color scheme has been reworked simply because the very bright white seemed too much of a contrast to the overall dark visual of the game. The new colors are now dark red and dark blue. Also the Leaderboard has been extended with a Friends Ranking, that way Highscores can be easily compared among Steam friends.

Here are all the changes for this Update:

• fixed back mirror
  
• added friends list ranks
  
• added speed meter/rpm meter
  
• increased real-time reflection performance
  
• added custom controls
  
• extended graphics options
  
• reworked building and road models
  
• reworked UI color scheme
  
• fixed proximity ranks format

Feel free to leave any feedback for this update in the comment section below.

Best,

ThatMadProgrammer