Hi all,
We're happy to announce that Speed Dreams 2.0 is out. A listing of what's new is attached below.
We've uploaded the stand-alone installers (which are awaiting virus scanning) and aim to get some Desura packages up soon. If anyone wants to help out with the Desura packages please drop us a note at our developers mailing list (speed-dreams-devel@lists.sourceforge.net)
If you really can't wait you can get the stand-alone installers from our Source Forge page:
Sourceforge.net
Happy Racing,
The Speed Dreams Team.
Main changes since 1.4.0 (overall sum-up)
--
Menus
* New "shinning" menu style with blurry backgrounds and button animations
* More user-friendly menu system, through improved labels, tips and control behavior
* Improved options menus (mostly graphics and display)
* New Garage menu to get preview and technical data about the chosen car
* Reworked / enhanced Driver Select menu with preview image for all cars / liveries
* Many fixes / improvements to the various race results menus
Graphics :
* Realistic dynamic sky dome (with background landscape) and rain rendering
* Improved world reflexions on car bodies
* New skinning system for all car components (body, driver, wheels, ...) and pit door
* Added glance left / right commands / views
* Added support for ultra-wide screen configurations (dual/triple panel)
* Reworked graphics and Open GL capability detection, with crash recovery
* Added support for JPEG textures (when relevant, for reducing package size)
Input control
* Improved throttle and clutch management when shifting
* WIP optimum auto-shift engine speeds
* Allow gear shifts to override auto-gearbox
* Fixed speed-correction so that is does not alter when car is spinning (easier recovery)
* Added e-brake command (might get useful for RS cars ;-)
* Fixed non-symetrical joystick calibration
* Added support for button/pad grid shifting
* Added support for gamepads with pressure sensitive buttons
* Added support for Mouse Wheel and extra buttons
* Fixed Mouse calibration lost in Ready-Set-Go stage
Robots
* USR, Simplix : Reworked setups for LS1 and 36GP cars
* Kilo2008 : New robot driving TRB1 Taipan and Cavallo
* USR : Improved avoidance, Situation-aware headlights
* Simplix : Better skilling and faster opponents for the Career mode
* Simplix : Optimized loading time
* Simplix : Added support for wet track (but no change supported during the race)
Physics
* Simu V2.1 : a better Simu V2
* added emergency brake
* added gyroscopic forces
* added bump and rebound limit velocities to dampers
* improved engine brake calculation
* fix the downforce calculation for the rear wing
* fix the handling of gear and differential efficiencies
* fix the cars roll on highly banked tracks
Sounds
* Reworked sounds by Audio Berlin profesionals
(but all LS1, 36GP and half of Supercars engine sounds left untouched :-)
* Pause sound when pausing a race, however
* Open AL back-end : Simulate low-pass filter for engine sound by
simply lowering the gain when releasing the throttle
Race engine
* New career racing mode (limided contents for the moment)
* New TRB1, LS1, 36GP and MP5 championship, and LS1, 36GP and MP5 single-event race modes,
* Added support for real life championship race session layouts
* Dual-threading support for improved frame rates when many opponents
* Added support for saving, loading and resuming a race / race mode to / from a file
* On-screen "wrong way" notification
* Not released : network racing mode (does not work correctly)
Cars
* From scratch rework of LS1 and 36GP car physics, for more realism
* Slightly Updated physics for TRB1 (Simu V2.1 compatibility)
* Supercars physics left untouched (Simu V2.1 compatible)
* New MP5 car set (kind of Formula Ford) with 3 models and realistic physics
* Many new / reworked HQ liveries for LS1, Supercars and MP5 cars
* Improved 3D models for LS1
* New WIP LS-GT2 car set (WIP physics and USR robot setups)
* New WIP RS car set (Rally Series, WIP physics and Simplix robot setups)
* New WIP TRB1 Vieringe 5 RB (WIP physics, copy of Silber RBLK)
Tracks
* New tracks :
* Road : Salty,
* Circuit : Brondehach, Goldstone Sand
* Speedway : Arizona Mile Speedway, Long Pond Superspeedway, Caddo Speedway,
Sunshine State Superspeedway
* HQ texture rework for most tracks (a huge work !)
* Gave better and fictive names and locations to many tracks
* Reworked preview images for all HQ tracks
* Added support for no-building / low-wall pit "building"
* Fixed too high friction coefficients in many tracks (towards realism)
Build system / Packaging
* Moved to CMake-based build system
* Multi-package deployement scheme, contents based
* New Windows binary multi-package system :
* the small base package is enough for trying the game (kind of demo)
* it can download and installation the other packages, for much more contents
* Fixed non GPL 2+ compatible bundled code
+ other steps towards official packaging by 100%-OSS Linux distros.
Other
* New command line options for straight starting of a given race, with or without a GUI
(suitable for headless computers, for robots tuning, as an ex.).
* Improved overall code modularity (separating the race engine and the user interface,
making the user interface a loadable module)
* New C++ API for loadable module system (only robots left untouched)
* New tgfdata library for isolating the menu code from the XML files
* Replaced GLUT library by SDL
* Moved Windows build to modern DLL interface (no more .def files)
