Shortly after the beta update we noticed something was off with the AI. Sprite cars weren't accelerating on higher difficulties. This is now corrected.

The cause was an insane amount of coincidences making the engine of these cars go into safe mode to not stall and the AI wasn't smart enough to get out of neutral gear when that happened. Doh.

This also includes a couple of minor fixes to text that didn't look good in case you noticed before :) Hopefully it all looks good again now! We'd love to hear from ya!

​/Benny

The final beta round for Roadclub: League Racing is out very soon! This marks the first complete version of the game with all features and content complete, hopefully coming to Steam Early Access later this year (still not making any promises - you know, gamedev and life happens all the time in this business).

So without further ado, here's what's new, what's updated and what's squashed!

​New!

• Added game ending challenge and credits sequence.
• Added new track Pinewood Lakes. First track with ice!
• Added new track Highway Chase.
• Added Semi-pro difficulty (and rebalanced all of them)
• Added new menu and race music.
• Added slipstream trails that gradually shows the slipstream effect on your car.
• Ultra-widescreen 21:9 screens are now supported! Perfect for splitscreen races :)

Major updates

• Improved look of all weather effects.
• Skidding now sounds a lot better.
• Skidmarks now looks better.
• Improved local multiplayer UI when selecting profiles and controllers.
• AI cars are now faster in fog conditions.
• Cars nitro flames now changes colors more drastically depending on their power.
• Opponent health, name position overlays are back and looking much better! (Make sure “Full information” is selected in Options->Game)
• Redesigned how difficulty affects AI cars, upgrades and grip for everyone.
• Time table when lapping is back!
• Balanced cars and tweaked physics. Cars have slightly lower top-speeds because maxed out cars were impossible to keep up with and physics broke above 300kph causing cars to slip.
• Optimized race position calculations for all running cars and updated positioning UI. Calculations now only run every 200ms. It should work much better and be easier on the CPU hopefully increasing framerate on some low-end machines.

Squashed major bugs

• Fixed terrain not rendering if alt-tabbing out on race summary screen.
• Fixed crash that could happen after ALT-TAB and then hitting an object.
• Fixed crash sometimes happening when crossing the finishline
• Fixed not being able to accelerate when multiple controllers were connected in a single player race.
• Fixed splitscreen when going to options menu and back.
• Fixed local multiplayer games ending when only one player was wrecked.
• Fixed camera boundaries being offset in local multiplayer games.
• Fixed players getting rewards for several scenarios when they shouldn’t have like when getting wrecked or aborting races.
• Fixed not being able to continue if time upload to steam failed on results screen after a race.

Minor updates

• Select Track screen now intelligently selects Select button to help player continue faster.
• Slowed down reward counter so its easier to keep up with what happens. Reward sequences can still be skipped.
• Improved minimap cache to minimize load times and trouble showing them.
• Many small improvements to UI like coloring titles and moving things around to make things easier to read.
• Fixed issue on Farmers Folds where laps sometimes would not count depending on where you drove.
• Fixed price and car class text overlapping on pricey/valuable cars.
• More fixes to rare crashes and general code quality and file cleanup.

​As a bonus, here's some fresh screenshots from our new tracks:
Highway Chase and Pinewood Lakes!

If the game crashes on Windows, a big help to us developers to solve crashes is sending us a so called minidump. Here's how you do it:

1. If possible, do NOT close the Windows crash dialog (it removes the dump file) on some systems.
2. Press WIN+R to open the run dialog. (Or open an explorer window and paste the following folder.)
3. Paste the folder that is correct for you into the dialog or explorer window:
   
   Windows 7
   %AppData%\Local\Temp
   
   Windows 10 (it is probably the same for Windows 8)
   %AppData%\Local\CrashDumps
   
   
4. Locate the .mdmp or .dmp file matching the program name and time of the crash.
5. Send it to the developer. (In the case of Roadclub: League Racing, send it to us!)

If you've gotten an invite to test Roadclub but aren't sure how to get started. Here's a detailed step-by-step guide to help you along!

1. Go to http://store.steampowered.com/about and choose "Install Steam Now".
2. Start the installer and log in.
3. Activate the game on Steam. At the top of the window a small menu should be visible looking similar to this: "Steam | View | Friends | Games | Help".
   Choose "Games->Activate a product on steam".
4. Enter the key. Follow the instructions in the popup that appears until you reach a screen where it wants a key. Enter the key you've received from us and finish the wizard.
5. Download the game. The game should download.
6. Play! Go to your Library och press Play!

New to top-down racing?
Roadclub is played from a top-down perspective and it is a common issue for new players that it is difficult to understand how the steering works at first.

​The game is controlled like other 3D racing games where you only steer left and right, NOT by steering in the direction you want to go on the screen, that is four directions - up, left, down, right. This can be hard for new players and it is actually more common for women to struggle with this, so if this applies to you it's no problem, you're not alone and it's possible to learn quite quickly. Here's a few tips on how to get racing fast:

1. Use a gamepad to play! Testing has showed that its much harder to learn on a keyboard.
2. Turn off opponents. Choose 0 opponents on the Custom Event screen.
3. Choose the "Rookie" difficulty. Opponents are much slower and it is easier to catch up.
4. Choose the "Sprite" car. It is the easiest to handle.
5. Drive very carefully until you get the hang of it. Release the throttle when it starts going too fast and just steer the car.
6. And know you can do it! Those who have stuck with it has picked it up after a while!
   
   

We are looking into trying new camera modes but nothing is official yet so if you give up, let us know and we'll prioritize adding a rotating camera which is much easier.

Hello!

In case you missed it on my Twitter. The reason the game is taking a bit longer to show up on steam is..well I made some experiments during christmas break and managed to make pretty convincing proof-of-concepts for both Steam leaderboards and 2-player splitscreen multiplayer. These are two huge often asked about features that will add tons of fun to the game. So I decided to go for it and complete these features before early access on steam to give it a greater kickoff!

I'm sorry it's taking longer but I really think this will add a lot to the game. I don't have a date yet but I'm hoping to have a closed beta out to a few people within a couple of months. The beta will be sent out to friends and anyone who I pick that follows me and ask for beta access on Twitter (@bennysce).  

I'll try to be better to update the blog, but I'm very busy working the game and working full-time during the days and gathering energy and motivation the rest of the time. Let me know if you look forward to the game, it boosts me a lot!

​Later!

Hey everyone! Wanted to give you a quick update as we're moving closer to the end of the year. As you've probably figured out already we won't able to finish the beta before 2015 transitions to 2016. It may look like we haven't made any progress, but that's not true!

We have a 95% complete version that is soon ready for Steam early access as well as an update on itch.io. "Soon" may still be a few months though as our time for the game is limited by the little spare time we have after our full-time jobs and families are taken care of. But we're (slowly) making progress all the time!

The next version will include the single-player career mode, more cars and tracks in a shape that really could be released as the final game (although not with all the bells and whistles we'd like yet). However we know we can do better and hopefully we can get this up on Steams early access program early next year and continue improving it until its ready, giving you the chance to help shape the game by giving us feedback along the way!

We've updated the Roadmap section with the current plan.

Happy holidays retro-racing fans!
/Benny

An early access build of Roadclub: League Racing is now available on itch.io! It is a stable release with limited content that should give you a great taste of what's to come for Roadclub. And better yet, it's free! As the amount of content increases we will increase the minimum price so be sure to check it out now while it's hot AND free.

Do you want more?
Of course, even if the game is free at the moment we really do appreciate if you use the pay-what-you-want feature on itch if you do like the game and want more! We will release content updates and release a full single-player experience no matter what happens but supporting us will help us do so much more with the game! We want to port the game to Unreal Engine to support more platforms and we want to add multiplayer components to the game. This won't be possible without your support as it takes a lot of time and effort to do. So please consider that option!

Roadclub Difficulty Trailer
A release wouldn't be complete without a video so we've created a video showcasing the 3 difficulties currently present in the early access build. It ranges from complete Rookie to the hardcore Elite setting where seasoned players will meet their match! Check it out below:

We will soon release a public first build of Roadclub: League Racing everyone can play for FREE! This is a polished version of the alpha version we teased earlier with the video below. It features several improvements we received feedback on in our internal alpha build our friends got their hands on earlier this year. We will release this version on itch.io and will continue to improve on it before we have everything ready for the release on Steam. Check out this video while you wait, the release on itch may happen sooner than you expect!

We have also added two pages to this site "The Game" and "Roadmap" which further details the game and our plan ahead. Enjoy!

It took a month to iron out the worst kinks from our alpha but now its done! We will send the alpha build to friends and family this week and hopefully start receiving feedback from initial player tests soon. Meanwhile we'll look over the plan for Beta due later this year and start working on it as soon as we can. We are spending our holiday in july and august so depending on weather and family and other factors things will move along at a normal or faster pace.

If I know you and you want to test, don't hesitate to contact me using the contact form or @bennysce on Twitter.

Screenshots and a alpha gameplay video should be coming soon as well.

Over and out!

We are feature complete for alpha! All features are now implemented according to plan and after we've ironed out the last few bugs we will send it out to family and friends for a first feedback round.

We're thinking about making this an early access version on Steam since its stable and has enough to play with. What do you think? Should we wait for the final version or let you guys help us test and give us feedback on the game soon?

Stay tuned!