Hi all,

A new build is up on the EXPERIMENTAL branch.
There are a LOT of new changes in this build, but there are two of particular significance that we'd love to get your feedback on.

CART RACING

Basically, we've touched a LOT of things with the cart racing.

• The default controller controls are now right trigger to accelerate, left trigger to brake, A to jump/powerslide and X to fire weapons (and similar for the fourbie)
• Cart handling (turning), powerslide, boost out of powerslide, jump height, acceleration and max velocity have all been tuned
• Cart camera positions and FOV have been tweaked
• We've added in the option to do split screen vertically as well as horizontally (currently in the camera options screen)
• Cart camera smoothing for vertical "bumps" so it doesn't jitter all over the place

The long and short of this is that the carts handle a LOT differently, and we think a lot better.
The "downside" to this is that part of us making things feel better has resulted in the overall speed being somewhat reduced - so people will more than likely not be able to beat their previous best time, or get top of the leaderboard, compared to the old code.
The plan is to get peoples' feedback on all these changes, and make adjustments.
Then, once adjustments are made we will be resetting the leaderboards for the carts, as well as resetting peoples' best times.
Feedback very much appreciated!

BOSS FIGHT CHANGES

In addition to making the boss fights replayable, we've made some changes to BUSTER the Nanobot boss fight.
We don't want to go in to too much detail here (that's spoil it!) but in short:

• Attack ranges reduced to make him attack more
• Pauses between attacks removed to make it flow better
• Added some extra "boom" to some of the attacks ;)

Feedback would be awesome!

OTHER CHANGES

• ACHIEVEMENTS: 11 new achievements - should be awarded off loading a 100% save game and going to the game totals screen. See the achievements information for the game in Steam for details on what these new achievements are!
• ACHIEVEMENTS: Race achievements (come first in a race, come first in all races) should now award if you load a 100% complete save game where you've completed those races.
• ART: fix for alpha issues with the oil rig textures used in the buster boss fight
• ART: Envdome upres for Southern Rivers (overworld)
• AUDIO: added SFX for throwing a frill off a bunyip
• AUDIO: updated main menu SFX
• AUDIO: added new glide SFX loop
• AUDIO: Updated some cart racing SFX
• CAMERA: fixes for the camera clipping through the roof (eg stand on a crate in between bush rescue HQ and town; and double jump)
• CART RACING: Brand new in-game race UI for single player, split screen, and Chocker's shops.
• CART RACING: split screen races now draw the props on both views, if "Cart Prop Detail" is set to High (new settings option in screen settings)
• CART RACING: music for races starts on start of flythrough now
• CART RACING: fixed issue where some objects wouldn't shatter during cart races
• CART RACING: lots of cart camera fixes to smooth things out
• CART RACING: added vertical split screen option to multiplayer cart races (in camera options UI)
• CONTROLS: jump with ty is now on by default on a fresh install
• CONTROLS: Change default controls for vehicles for left trigger = break, right trigger = accel; X = throw/fire; A = jump/slide
• CRASH: fix for crash if exiting level/to main menu; while in the middle of a boomerang throw
• GRAPHICS: fixes to fading in of objects when SSAO is enabled to fix some of the "pop to black" issues
• GRAPHICS: omni lights update while changing rangs from rang selection popup
• GRAPHICS: net fixes for m12 to make it more like the original release
• GRAPHICS: reflections are fixed for clipping and draw distance
• GRAPHICS: fix for helicopter mission ssao issues (1cm nearplane and 1km farplane!)
• GRAPHICS: fixed edges on invincibility texture particle effect
• GRAPHICS: added road shader specular
• GRAPHICS: fix for graphics corruption if both SSAO and Bloom are disabled on boot
• GRAPHICS: fix shadow setting not initialising if shadows were set to "off"
• GRAPHICS: tweaked all shadow settings for all races
• LEVEL DESIGN: Added some decoration props to the beach area.
• LEVEL DESIGN: Set some per-level grass detail settings for Burramudgee to improve performance
• MISSIONS: Grindstone Cowboy control and camera fixes; and graphics fixes
• MISSIONS: boss fights are now replayable
• MISSIONS: Buster the nanobot fixes
• PERFORMANCE: grass now runs on the gpu
• UI: Added per-level collectable information pages to the pause screen (scroll through on the game totals tab)
• UI: new race shop UI updates (chocker's) with trophy visible if you've won
• UI: Added a scroll to the race win flag background to make it a more dynamic looking.
• UI: added map for Canopy Capers
• UI: sped up speed of scrolling button groups on the UI (for long menus eg shops)
• UI: fixed the "press start to play" text for the race intro to reflect your last used control device
• UI: race hud now displays the name of the race during the flyover
• UI: boss fights now have a different icon on the map; once you've finished them
• UI: fix for sound options not being able to be changed on the main menu
• UI: added animated dunny to the "you've lost" screen for races
• UI: new location banner system (only used for shop entries ATM)
• UI: All of the shops have new UI, icons etc