Rattus Velocitas anniversary update part 1 released!

G'day Rat Racers, and welcome to part 1 of the Anniversary update!

This was originally going to be released as one massive update in April/early May but due to extended development time, I wanted to get these changes out to you all early. In particular, online mode and race variety will benefit the most from these changes!

Replays from past versions of the game will completely break as track generation was overhauled.

Currently the game manual is out of date; this will be rectified with part 2.

WARNING: Save files created/saved on this version of the game will not work on older versions! A backup of your original save file will be present next to your save once this update is installed and launched once.

This also concludes the earlier server maintenance; the Matchmaking Server should be back up!

Highlights:

• Races can now generate with more than one lap! Depending on total race course length, you'll get either a 3-lap race, a 2-lap race or a 1-lap race.

• The Cheese Supreme item has been added to the game. This big Cheese wheel takes longer to eat but boosts your speed significantly more for a shorter time than the standard Cheese.

• Audio in Rattus Velocitas has been remastered! now audio volumes across most of the game should be more consistent.

• Track generation variety has been improved; in particular, some races will commence clockwise as well as the original counter-clockwise direction.

• Added a new stage hazard to Desert: Prickly Pears. Avoid them or be sent flying on collision!

• The in-game visuals have been updated across the entire game to improve visual quality and performance.

• Water in Beach now has reflections if you have the Realtime Reflections setting enabled. (Visible in this announcement's banner image!)

• Online mode has been improved in a number of ways; see below for detailed patch notes.

• Adjusted39 new Achievements have been added to the game. NOTENot all icons have been updated yet.

• An all-new Goggled Helmet is now granted to all players who finish their onboarding races, with new variants of the Helmet unlocking with every rank-up. These Helmets can be selected in the Player Profile Menu, under Hats.

Improvements:

• Added a new HRTF setting; this utilises Steam Audio(R) spatialization to enhance all audio cues in races. Requires Stereo Headphones.

• Added a new setting called "Client-side prediction;" this trades smoothess and item hit accuracy for better predicted race positions in online races:

After installing this update, while you're close to and physically in front of a player on your screen in an online race, you may appear to be a rank below them (e.g. you're physically in 1st but appear to be in 2nd). This is intentional as it means your "real" position is behind them in the network resolved ranking. The experimental "client side prediction" setting attempts to work around this by attempting to predict the future position of a player based on their latency but this isn't perfect either yet!

• Reduced the requirements for unlocking all rank tier Steam Achievements and related items:

  • Rat Racing Apprentice: unchanged

  • Rat Racing Conoisseur: 128 races

  • Rat Racing Champion: 512 races

  • Rat Racing Legend: 1024 races

• The Tussock Shrubs originally present in the Main menu... have returned! The menus should also run much better.

• Made track cuts more lenient on Desert.

• Improved general CPU performance.

• Improved CPUs' dash ring targeting behaviour.

• Improved CPUs' turning behaviour; now on some race courses they'll actively avoid obstacles where possible.

• Optimised CPU usage of racer AI.

• Cheese (and the new Cheese Supreme) when successfully baiting an opponent will now explode in a big Cheese Dust cloud as a new unique visual cue.

• Missile targeting has been completely reworked. This fixes Missiles desyncing in online multiplayer when the target's very close to the thrower.

• The precision of some network information has been increased; this should resolve some thrown Bomb desyncs in online multiplayer.

• Improved stability of race loading in online multiplayer.

• Improved bandwidth usage in online multiplayer; players with less reliable upload speeds should enjoy better hit registration.

• Added latency compensation for the Cheese item. This also affects the new Cheese Supreme item.

• Race rankings in online multiplayer now resolve more accurately during races. (See known issues for an explanation on how this affects you in online races)

• Fixed the DNF timeout not always synchronising across clients correctly in online multiplayer, resulting in some players apparently DNFing when they actually didn't.

• Fixed a massive hitch that would occur when opening the Player Profile menu.

• Slightly improved physics determinism in some fringe cases.

• Fixed a large hitch when loading into a race in some cases.

• Fixed the initial loading transition from the HEDGEHOG ARTS animation to the main menu sometimes being broken if the game was played on a slower system and/or off a HDD.

Changes:

• Item balance has been adjusted:

  • Added the Cheese Supreme at a drop rate of 5%

  • Cheese drop rate reduced from 21% to 16%

  • Removed the tiny boost obtainable from Cheese after being baited.

• The Reduce Buffering setting has now been removed.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the Main Menu background sometimes being blurry on some systems.

• Fixed an issue where a thrown Bomb was incorrectly sent as being dropped to other clients in online multiplayer.

• Fixed a bug where toggling Private Lobby race courses would briefly pause on Beach when pressing the button again instead of wrapping around to Desert.

• Fixed a bug where, if the matchmaking server connection was lost mid-race, the menus would be corrupted and non-functional upon returning to them.

• Fixed a bug where controller navigation stopped working completely if the player dropped out of an online race then reconnected successfully to a matchmaking server.

Known issues:

• If a player falls off-course during a replay and the camera angle is switched during the fade-out to black, the fade-out may get stuck until the replay is exited via the pause menu and/or another player being spectated falls off-course and is respawned.

• 5.1/7.1 audio setups vs Stereo/Steam Audio(R) HRTF may be quieter than intended.

• The new Rank Helmet with some Rat animations sometimes clips into the Rat's head slightly.

• Some items may sometimes make a very faint "pop" sound with HRTF enabled when used by an opponent.

• The achievement "Has this guy even touched grass?" may appear to erroneously unlock if already previously unlocked right as a race exits. This is purely cosmetic and doesn't affect your save data.

• Players that DNFed when played back in a replay may appear to not exist at all on the race results scoreboard at the end of the replay.

• The "Parry this you filthy casual" achievement is currently broken; this will be resolved in a future update.

• Sometimes firing a Missile while an opponent is very close behind you targets that opponent instead of who's in front of you.

• Finishing a race in online multiplayer sometimes briefly shows the incorrect finishing position in the top left before the scoreboard is shown if there were opponents also finishing their race nearby.