This week in development we have focused on some visual enhancements and cleaning up some of the rules of movement.
https://youtu.be/HR67-7S1QZgWe have implemented a terrain slope shader which applies a shadow to positive slopes and a slight brightness enhancement for negative slopes, depending on the steepness. That works astonishingly well to make the terrain feel more "3D" and makes it easy to see drastic changes in steepness without even looking at the terrain section info below.
The second shader we've implemented is producing the weather mood. Is it wet? Then add contrast and saturation. Is it cloudy and raining heavily? Then make it darker and shift the color temperature towards blue. Working great for getting across the feeling of a proper awful weather to ride in!
The rule changes are pretty straightforward and about how groups merge and catch-up to each other. This will make the game feel less harsh and unpredictable. For example, when the peloton overtakes any rider now, using attack or not, that rider gets the chance to catch up and is then placed in P1. That is so much less volatile than the rider now all of a sudden being behind the peloton.
Demo Update 6 Improvements
- Implement slope shader
- Implement weather wetness and mood shader
- Revised group merging and catch-up rules in general for better, more realistic gameplay
- Any rider can now catch up to any peloton relay move when overtaken (attack or not)
This update was the originally scheduled Update 5, so now we're back to schedule. That means you can expect the next update in about 3 weeks with a big update to the finish zone layout and graphics. Of course there is a lot of career mode developments ongoing in the background as well. More on that soon!
Note: Due to specific changes in this update, the game might not start when you have played it before. To solve this, please delete your %LocalAppData%\Cyclist folder and try to start the game again. You can copy that path, including the %, into the windows explorer path bar and hit Enter to get there.
Cheers