Developer Blog

Where to discuss the official sequel. Developers blog, kickstarter, your experience with pre-alpha demo, ideas etc.
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RudyOosterndijk
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by RudyOosterndijk »

Dear developers,

I must admit that I have been following the development of GeneRally 2 with relative indifference lately. But on behalf of some of the last remaining members of PGR.de, I would like you to know that there are still people who care. It's been one year now since the last blog post and all I'm saying is:

It is about time for another update - whether or not there is much to talk about.

Last year you appointed a dedicated communications guy (in what I hope was not only a symbolic act) who, as I assume, had nothing to report about ever since he made his debut in April 2018. I am worried that this might have cost you a lot of credibility.

See you around when there is news to talk about!
Rudy
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Scholl
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Scholl »

Dear Developer,

I support Rudy and I don´t want his post to stand here all by itself.
Please let the community know about any updates. No matter how small they might be.
I´m sure there are still lots of people who are really looking forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards,
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Txizzle
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Txizzle »

Me too, i'd love to see a GR2, so i'd be happy to hear of any step getting closer to it. Do hope as well that the tracks working in GR1 will also run in GR2.
To finish first, first you have to finish!
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

New update on the official GR website, yay ! :goal:

Was thinking about it recently, and then it falls. So happy to hear from you even if it's little.

Well it's an update to receive updates but "testing phase" ? "user survey" ? Seems the beginning of something.

I wonder how many updates we will receive by email in the future. :scratch:

Thanks for the update, glad you're still working on it. :goodvibes:

PS : Do we receive a confirmation by email that we have sign up to the newsletter or not necessarily ?
Last edited by Kikwik on Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

The Unofficial Archivist of GR1 - Founder of the GR Database
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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

It won't send you a confirmation email (you'll just get the confirmation in-browser). However, if people find this confusing, we can start sending confirmation emails!

Either way, thanks for signing up :bg:
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

If it don't bother you too much yes I would like to have a confirmation email. I have multiple email accounts and sometimes they're very similar so I may make a typo or mix several emails. Having a confirmation email is reassuring, at least for me, that I typed the right email adress for the sign up and I would be sure to receive the updates and surveys even if the first update takes a long time to come.

Eager to receive more news about you and GR2 in a near future.

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Crowella
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Crowella »

Oh whew, another update. 😁 I have signed up.

Genuine question, will you plan on having something like a Discord for community updates during development? I feel like the era of forums for updates are coming to a wind down.
View my archived circuits/cars here
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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

Yup, a Discord server is somewhere in the not-too-distant future :up:

And we’ll sort out adding a confirmation email to the list sign-ups, too (after the weekend)!
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

And we’ll sort out adding a confirmation email to the list sign-ups, too (after the weekend)!
Thank you, it's really nice. :goodvibes:

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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

Confirmation emails should now be being sent on sign-up :bg:
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

I knew TuomoH was up to something, little secretive. :P

Great to hear about the Track Editor, so much time was spent outside it in GR1 with external editors, constantly opening GR aside to test your track like 50 times, opening up to 4 softwares to create one track, ...

So reading about all those quality of life improvements that will be in GR2 is exciting and comforting. :goodvibes: I like everything I read and see so far about it.

I'm happy that the team took TuomoH to make the default tracks of GR2, like he did in GR1, and to give him an insight in the dev process. It's a good way to thank him for all those years of dedication and creations.

Eager to see the future dev posts ! :hyper:

Cool new website too. :cool2:

Edit : Oh great, the news are displayed on Steam too !

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TuomoH
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by TuomoH »

Kikwik is talking about this blog post of mine, on the brand new GR2 website :)

https://gene-rally2.com/blog/2022/11/tr ... roduction/
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Mad Dan
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Mad Dan »

As a former? trackmaker I have looked at the trackeditor both in this post and the steamapage. I am wondering if there is still possibility of using external lmap editors? :)
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Jonny683
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Jonny683 »

I have one question that I didn't see answered in the game details

How many cars can be on track at once? Standard 6 or up to 8? 12?

Regardless, I wish listed it.
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

Jonny683 wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:38 am I have one question that I didn't see answered in the game details

How many cars can be on track at once? Standard 6 or up to 8? 12?

Regardless, I wish listed it.
I think there are ten cars at once possible at the moment, according to the latest news about the Track Editor ; if you look at the first picture, you'll see 10 arrows on the green map that are the starting locations for cars.

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Jonny683
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Jonny683 »

Kikwik wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:03 pm
Jonny683 wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:38 am I have one question that I didn't see answered in the game details

How many cars can be on track at once? Standard 6 or up to 8? 12?

Regardless, I wish listed it.
I think there are ten cars at once possible at the moment, according to the latest news about the Track Editor ; if you look at the first picture, you'll see 10 arrows on the green map that are the starting locations for cars.
Absolutely love to hear that! I love doing AI races, so this is fantastic to hear! Looking forward to more news! :D
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TuomoH
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by TuomoH »

:!: My new blog post about painting tools in GeneRally 2 TE can be read at https://gene-rally2.com/blog/2022/12/tr ... ing-tools/
Rendy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Rendy »

Really love the two posts you've posted! I honestly am looking forward for the game, but most definitely the Track Editor, because I feel like it's miles polished from the original!

I did write my thoughts on my blog but I decided that I quote what would my thoughts be for the GR2 Track Editor.
I don't hate the original game's Track Editor, but some of the functions kinda aged badly in that regards especially coming from creating tracks on another game. I kinda wish you could select and rotate existing objects, something that can't be done in the original Track Editor, not to mention a more free approach in the zooming department. Though by the time TuomoH posted his blog entries, I feel like it's possible that we might get these privileges, along with others that will come as the game enters Early Access phase
Y'all, I just woke up... what did I miss?

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TuomoH
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by TuomoH »

Thanks, Rendy! And cool to see you here. :)
Rendy wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:13 amI honestly am looking forward for the game, but most definitely the Track Editor, because I feel like it's miles polished from the original!
That's exactly my feeling after playing around with the TE. :cool2:
I kinda wish you could select and rotate existing objects, something that can't be done in the original Track Editor, not to mention a more free approach in the zooming department. Though by the time TuomoH posted his blog entries, I feel like it's possible that we might get these privileges, along with others that will come as the game enters Early Access phase
Ah, I see I haven't mentioned these clearly in my first blog. Yes, these are featured in the GR2 TE. :bg:
Rendy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Rendy »

TuomoH wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 4:37 pm Thanks, Rendy! And cool to see you here. :)
Rendy wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 3:13 amI honestly am looking forward for the game, but most definitely the Track Editor, because I feel like it's miles polished from the original!
That's exactly my feeling after playing around with the TE. :cool2:
I kinda wish you could select and rotate existing objects, something that can't be done in the original Track Editor, not to mention a more free approach in the zooming department. Though by the time TuomoH posted his blog entries, I feel like it's possible that we might get these privileges, along with others that will come as the game enters Early Access phase
Ah, I see I haven't mentioned these clearly in my first blog. Yes, these are featured in the GR2 TE. :bg:
NOICE! Good to hear about it! Honestly I can't wait to try the GR2 TE myself to see how my trackmaking experience can improve from here!
Y'all, I just woke up... what did I miss?

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James
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by James »

We've posted a small developer blog on the website, which contains a trailer and some important information at the end of it :goal:
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Trigger Happy
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Trigger Happy »

One thing I dislike in TE all the time - due making a layout by "painting on the surface", I can no way tweak it later in its whole (e.g. rotate, resize) a little, only option is "hard" erasing whole the section (or whole layout :faint: ) and drawing it again. Any chance it's going to improve thanks to Surface masks mentioned by Tuomo?

Nice video. :up:
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AleksiNir
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by AleksiNir »

Hey all, it's really nice to see that GR2 development is getting along! And I'm glad to see that it is remaining faithful to the original GR in many important ways (although based on what I have seen, I do feel that you could be a bit more brave in modernizing the game :scratch: ). I'm curious, what has enabled the accelerated development of the game? Seeing as you previously ran a kickstarter campaign, and now you have a team of 5 devs, did you receive funding of some sort?

There is some specific feedback I'd like to give regarding the aesthetics of the game. There seems to be some inconsistency in the sense that some of the colors are kind of earthy (e.g. the house object, vegetation), and others are very bright (e.g. grass, the sky, the blue of booths/stands/office blocks). I think toning the saturation of the brighter colors down would make the game more pleasant for the eye, and overall I think more attention should be given to the palette of the game and how all the colors match. Perhaps trackmakers could be given more freedom here, i.e. each track could have its own palette (such as the palettes in original GR1) without complicated adjustments of settings. Secondly, many of the objects appear quite smooth while the lmap appears highly pixelated, which is another source of inconsistency. IMO Circuit Superstars achieves an aesthetic that is faithful to the spirit of the original GR but looks modernized and very nice.

Furthermore, I think it would be important to be able to adjust the width-length-ratio of tracks, i.e. we should be able to make tracks in rectangle-shaped boxes, not only in squares.
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Kikwik
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by Kikwik »

I think that the side GR2 developers took is to keep the spirit of GR1 as much as possible without many changes to it, as some may wants to keep the aesthetics and simplicity of the first game while being slightly better. If I remember correctly this point was also discussed during the Kickstarter few years ago. So they may be shy with graphics and keep some saturated colors to be as faithful as possible to the original.

Me too like Circuit Superstars graphics and the follow camera is great to make bigger tracks while you have your car well visible all the time.

But we have to remember that the strong point of GR1 was the ability to create tracks with the most little file size possible and to create them (quite) fast. If you have more complex graphics, and more polys, it will bring the cost of a way bigger size file and you may have 1Go took for only 10 tracks on your tracks folder as a result.

Circuit Superstars don't have a Track Editor yet, and it's a hint to how complex it must be for the team to create one and manage to make it accessible while keeping a reasonable track file size.

The simplicity of the graphics of GR1 still attracts me until this day though. I don't know if it's because I had the habit of playing crappy games on my potato pc for years and years with minimal graphics, or because it gives me some space to fill it with my imagination.

Also I don't know why you want to have rectangular shaped tracks ? The only reason I see to do this is to make rally stages and it would be a really cool idea, drag tracks or tracks for ultra wide screens, but a follow camera would be essential to race on those kind of tracks as you may lose the view of your car from each side or don't see it well because the track have to be seen from far away if you want to see it entirely. Oh, I remember your aversion for the sky in GR, to make it the less visible so maybe it's linked to this.

Just my :2c: . :)

Edit : After re-reading your post and mine I think I missed some points though, sorry for this. For objects it don't bother me too much to be honest, but regarding lmap after a closer look, in some places and particularly on grass on the first track shown on Steam, it's pixelated and it don't renders very well, that's true. Maybe it's because of the spray brush that makes those not good looking pixels, but I think some lmap are simply beautiful (the muddy and snow tracks are gorgeous, don't like the snow/ice spray on the road though but I can live with it). Also it's only Alpha, it will certainly change with time and we will certainly put our insights in beta tests, soon. :goal:

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RudyOosterndijk
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Re: Developer Blog

Post by RudyOosterndijk »

AleksiNir wrote: Mon Jan 02, 2023 1:10 pmThere is some specific feedback I'd like to give regarding the aesthetics of the game. There seems to be some inconsistency in the sense that some of the colors are kind of earthy (e.g. the house object, vegetation), and others are very bright (e.g. grass, the sky, the blue of booths/stands/office blocks). [...]
Secondly, many of the objects appear quite smooth while the lmap appears highly pixelated, which is another source of inconsistency. IMO Circuit Superstars achieves an aesthetic that is faithful to the spirit of the original GR but looks modernized and very nice.
I would like to add to the visual aspects: The new traffic bollards are amazing. But the first thing that caught my eye was the bright-red and uber-detailed house object that does not match the rest of the objects in terms of its color and level of detail. It reminded me of that kid from elementary school who came over to play and insisted on having his Playmobil sets incorporated into my Lego city. Needless too say we are not on speaking terms anymore. :D

Anyway. Considering the state of development, this is a minor thing, and I want to rephrase it as "please make sure that the artstyle is consistent". This also applies to the UI. I love the baby blue colors, the orange highlights, and the logo's font is great, too.

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