Hi all!

Thanks to everyone who has picked up the game recently! We've had lots of feedback and therefore decided to push this hotfix update.
We've addressed several bugs and issues listed below. Since we were feeling the christmas spirit, we've chosen to give you a little teaser as our holiday gift to you.

- Resolved errors related to the twitch interface.
- Creating a duplicate manager object, when only one should ever exist no longer occurs.
- Issue related to saving your time trial ghost is now resolved.
- Bug related to restarting previously played track, slow motion wouldn't trigger should be fixed.
- Resolved issue with showing trophies, after a rematch, being assigned to another player.
- Fixed issue with Glacier where it was possible to escape the start area.
- Updated networking DLL to fix error spam on disconnecting players.
- Added fallback for rare case where players couldn't explode...
- Fixed introduction not properly releasing identifier, giving issues in Local Clash screen.
- Fixed audio/video issues with the introduction video, no more sudden distortion!

Based on all feedback we've received, we found that the most requested feature is AI opponents. Since we were feeling generous, we decided to give you a little teaser to show this work in progress.

Our goal is to release this new feature somewhere around the end of January*. For those of you having trouble finding players online, try joining our discord[discord.gg] to help you find someone to play with.

* Could change, but we're feeling very optimistic.

We're very excited to bring you a new set of tracks. As we've teased before, these tracks are in a winter setting. We have also added forfeiting, a new track mechanic, private lobbies and more things we hope you'll enjoy. Let us know what you think!

• As our early holiday gift to you, we have released a new area: Snow. Three new levels in a yet unexplored setting are now playable in both local modes and online clashes. Be careful on the ice, things may get slippery!
  
• A new mechanic: Slip Barriers. Make your opponents Go Berserk and give your teammates a boost with these new barriers in Curve Creek (Forest 1).
  
• Tracks now have names! Instead of the boring ol' "Desert1", "Desert2", etc., we've named them to better capture the atmosphere and character of the tracks.
  
• Custom matches are now available! Decide on which area you want to play, how many players are able to join, and whether you want a public or invite-only match.
  
• The Trophy system has been revamped and actually makes sense now. Let the hunt for bronze, silver, gold, and diamond begin!
  
• Games are more fun with friends! You can now invite friends to your match.
  
• Since all areas are fully 3D, we have chosen to show it off. At the beginning of races (and time trial), there is a quick spin around the track. Don't like it? There is an option to turn them off in the gameplay settings.
  
• You can now forfeit in online matches. Is your current match a hopeless cause? Forfeit and quickly find a new game without losing your team.
  
• The HUD in multiplayer had gone a little wonky. We've changed the position, which should be easier to keep your eyes on while playing. Additionally, we've improved the UI colors and a few fixes with connected boosting.

• Several people have asked us for a restart button in Time Trial. Most of you might not have known, this feature was already implemented, just not visualized. We have added a little UI text in the left bottom corner to make sure people know about it.
  
• The launch icon has changed. Let us know what you think!
  
• The loading screen is now themed to the type of area you're going to play. Additionally, you should see less to none behind-the-(loading) screen action happening, especially during the local clash screens.
  
• Team data caching has improved and loading times have been reduced. Also, multi-invites are now a thing.
  
• Time Trial now remembers which track you've played last during a play session instead of having the memory of a goldfish.
  
• Track names will be shown in the little preview window when hovering over the navigation bar on the bottom and in the track scrolling.
  
• Training can now be accessed using a controller.
  
• When there's a lead change within a team, the team gets notified so everybody knows who should be racing.
  
• The screen-overlay from the last update now fades in instead of popping up in your face.
  
• Quick-chat is now mirrored in text chat, for your team's eyes only.
  
• We've told the leader trail to calm down when the leader is standing still. He agreed.
  
• When there is one single team left, you will still be able to finish the race (given that the host hasn't left).
  
• Local clash now looks a little more organized.
  
• Some optimization. Stuff should run a little smoother, especially on slightly older machines.

We hope you enjoy the new update! Let us know what you think in the comments below, or on the Team Racing League community forum. Stay tuned!

Our main focus this update is to improve on the new player experience. When starting the game for the first time, you will be presented with an intro level. The purpose of this intro level is to get familiar with driving around. After completing a simple objective, you will be shown a video with some more advanced game mechanics. In case you want to revisit you can always do so by navigating to the local menu and selecting Intro. The entire intro can be skipped via the start/escape menu if desired.

Major changes
- Added an intro level and video.
- Modified forest tracks.
- Added Steam Achievements.
- Added Steam Trading Cards.
- Updated Team pages to include sorting.
- Personal ranking! You now have a leaderboard to compare yourself with others.
- Improved level select. Level select now offers a preview of the track.
- Trophy animations. Trophies have gotten an overhaul and now pop in with an animation when earned, instead of just appearing.
- Added button to visit our uptime monitor website.[stats.uptimerobot.com] This page shows all services related to Team Racing League and their status.

Minor changes
- F1 to view all stats between matches.
- Explanation overlay for teams page. Gives you a rundown of the Team system and what it offers.
- Added synonyms for chat commands. Instead of just /a for all and /t for teams, you can now also use /team or /all.
- Added help and tips to chat commands. Type /help in chat to get a list of possible commands. Type /tip to receive a random tip about the game!
- Roasting duration for blocks set to 1 second instead of being almost instant.
- Fixes to stats not being tracked correctly.
- Fixes to trophies displaying incorrect numbers.
- Twitch Mode UI fixes.

As we've teased before, we have a new area on the way. This time it will be a snow theme!
Stay tuned to find out more on the next updates.

Enjoy the new update and let us know what you think in the comments below or on the TRL community forums. Stay tuned for more updates!

• Rematch functionality: after a match has concluded, a rematch will automatically start. Less waiting, more racing! 
  
• Not a full lobby yet? Start up a Time Trial race and keep your waiting queue active while racing!
  
• We've added Time Trial weekly leaderboards on top of the existing all time leaderboards.
  
• The Forest area comes with three new booming race tracks that are now playable both in Time Trial, online AND local multiplayer! (Note that we will polish the tracks both visually and functionally, so there might be some small collider issues at the moment. Let us know what you think of the new tracks!)
  
• Local multiplayer? That's right! You can now play the Team Clash game mode locally with up to 6 players! You can combine various controllers and also use your keyboard.
  
• You can now easily go out of anchor by simply hitting the accelerate button.
  
• Anchor became more powerful: it's now invulnerable for solo boosts. Block away!
  
• Roasting with your Afterburner or Flamethrower is now more effective. You can roast blocks and players much faster now, making roasting a powerful tool, even on-the-go.
  
• Blocks no longer have a cooldown.
  
• There is now an Abilities HUD in the top right corner showing the available player abilities. The solo abilities are replaced with either the Driver or Co-Driver abilities when you connect. We're going to experiment further and iterate on this HUD, so let us know if it helps you to better make use of all abilities!
  
• We improved some fonts, visuals and colors. For example: your player name is now visible in the progress bar with your hovercraft identifier, the player names are visually improved and the leader trail (the trail behind the cars that are racing in front for each team) is slightly bigger and longer to make it stand out better.
  
• You can now switch between All chat (/a) and Team chat (/t), so you can freely discuss strategies without your opponents reading along. The color of the chat indicates whether it's a team- or all-message. Red for red, blue for blue ;-)
  
• We optimised the search when inviting new players to your Team.
  
• We updated Twitch mode with several minor fixes and improvements.
  
• Controls are now remappable! Visit the settings and customise your perfect controls-setup.
  
• Minor UI fixes and improvements, like more understandable subtext for UI buttons, a blinking hexagon when winning a race during a Best of Three, longer time in Team Results to check out the stats after a race and more.
  
• Confetti in the winning team color after completing a race, hooray!

Wait, so there's more? Well, of course there is! With all above mentioned and implemented features, we believe the game is getting better and better every day. The core gameplay (mechanics, balancing) is pretty solid. So are the available functionalities with local and online multiplayer, team creation, time trial, leaderboards, tutorials, etc. We will continuously improve and polish these existing features, and are very excited to open the door to new content and features:

• We're working on ideas that help improve the first introduction for new players. We believe that a lot of players who try out the game, don't all experience its full potential. A first-time-startup training area or faster way to introduce new players to the Training Grounds might be a great way to welcome more players to the TRL community.
  
• While we're quite happy with the different racetracks and both the diversity and balance between them within each area, we are toying with the idea of adding more interacting level elements. Think in terms of bumping into a tree to make it block the road and burn it away to clear your path again. We have loads of ideas for this which we'll experiment with the coming weeks.
  
• Our first priority is to polish the Forest tracks so they will race as smooth and fun as possible. While we're working on the polish in this area, the next area is also in production. Spoiler alert: ittt mmmmight bbbbe cccccoolddddd. ;)
  
• Player Trophies are a fun way to experiment the different areas of the game, like racing, blocking, trolling or supporting teammates. Team Trophies is an idea we're working on that will do this on a Team based level. In other words: teaming up with your friends will become more and more appealing and fun!

Enjoy the new update and let us know what you think in the comments below or on the TRL community forum. Stay tuned for more updates!

While it was the fourth year in a row for Gamious, this years Gamescom was our entertainment/consumer area debut. Team Racing League had an awesome booth across the Indie Arena, where two teams of three could battle each other sitting on theater chairs, staring at a 78" screen. There was a line constantly and nearly all players who tried out the game where hyped to play some more. It strengthened us in seeing and believing in the potential of the game. We got back to the Netherlands with good feedback and a drive to improve the game as good and as fast as we can.

The current update we're working on is about fixing existing 'issues'. For example, we noticed some gameplay features aren't balanced well enough. Also, we want to make it as easy and fun as possible for players to enjoy the game, even without a big player base. Here's a list of stuff we're working on to improve the Team Racing League experience:

• Rematch functionality: when you have found opponents, the whole lobby is placed in a new match after a match concludes. You can still opt out to return to the menu and look for another group of players.
  
• We're adding individual leaderboards to see how your win% scores against other players globally. (There's already a team leaderboard.)
  
• Deactivate anchor when giving accelerate/decelerate input. This should help (first time) players that accidentally lock themselves into the ground with anchor.
  
• The roasting abilities from the Afterburner and Flamethrower are being powered up. You can roast blocks and players faster now, to hopefully improve the balance and dynamic between the available mechanics.
  
• We removed the cooldown on blocks. Blocks can be burned faster, so it made sense to remove the cooldown. This means less work to keep your blocks active and more room to focus on obstructing enemies :)
  
• Anchor (former "anchor mode") is being amplified as well. You cannot break it anymore when using a (solo) boost.
  
• Made some visual improvements to make certain states more clear, like the leader trail (behind the racer racing in front), flame colours during boosts and when activated the anchor.
  
• Minor copy changes to make it clear to players that you're racing a Best of Three, not a single race, and that the vehicles of the losing team can be blowed up by clashing into them after winning a race.

We noticed that connecting with teammembers can be quite tricky and that there is some confusion about the dual abilities it unlocks. It works like this: when you connect two vehicles, the vehicle racing in front will become the DRIVER. As a driver you control a slightly faster/stronger vehicle and can use a boost once it is charged by your CO-DRIVER, the other player. As a co-driver, you cannot control the car, but have three abilities you can use:

• Boost Charge: you can charge a boost that your driver can use. Charge by using your accelerate button and release it in time. A blue connection between both thrusters means you charged a boost successfully. Black smoke means you failed the timing.
  
• Flamethrower: by activating the flame thrower two fiery-hot flames will come out the sides of your vehicle, burning all in its path.
  
• Roadblock: the roadblock will extend your two vehicles creating a barrier in between. When your teammate passes through, he will be granted a boost charge. Enemies will blow up their engine and slip for a few seconds.

We're creating a HUD once you are connected that explains the controls and shows players which abilities are active and which aren't.

We were quite hesitant to add local multiplayer, because we want as much people playing and enjoying the game online as we can. We do however believe that Team Racing League offers a great couch-co-op experience. Gamescom confirmed this as well. We're bringing local team racing to the game very soon so you can enjoy racing with your buddies even without players online!

There are a lot of things we want to improve. Keeping in mind that our team is very small, we have to prioritise tasks and cannot improve everything all at once. The stuff that's on the top of on our list:

• Searching queue for online match in the background. It's a tricky one, but a huge improvement on the game if players are able to activate a searching queue while playing locally (time trial or a playground arena or something). We're hoping to be able to add this feature asap.
  
• Expand Twitch mode to make the game even more interesting for people to Twitch. (More Twitch = more views = more players = more matches = more fun :))
  
• Improve menu's and loading times of pages like the Team Ranking.
  
• Work in some animations to better communicate stuff like Trophies and Best of Three scores
  
• New tracks!
  
  Should you have any questions or suggestions for the development of the game, please reply here or say something on the forum. Stay tuned for the next update when a new build is live!

While we're very happy with the fact that Team Racing League is now available on Steam Early Access, the launch didn't go as well as we hoped for. The player numbers aren't high so finding a match at this moment isn't easy.

No worries!

We're doing all we can to improve player numbers and make the game more appealing to play, both for people who already own the game as for new potential players.

We designed the game to be played with two teams of 3 players. This formation gives the most dynamic and teamplay options (connecting with teammates, dividing block/race/troll roles, etc). However, since we don't have a big player base at the moment, we're introducing a new feature to be able to play matches without the need of a full 3v3 game.

It works quite simple:

• When 4 players are in a lobby, a countdown will start after 30 seconds of waiting. A 2v2 match will start when a 5th and 6th member aren't found.
  
• At all times, the host of a game has the option to force start a race. This can be done in any formation: 1v1, 2v1, 2v2 or 3v2.

So in short: the chance for you to play a race, even if its not in the ideal 3v3 setup, has grown enormously! Hopefully lots of you can experience great races. From our own experience we can say that even races in this setup can be very exciting ;-)

We're organising daily cluster meetups to get people online simultaneously. These events are daily at 8pm CEST and 8pm PDT. Join our Discord Channel[discord.gg] to find players and join the daily events!

To reward players who believe in this early version of the game, we're giving away 2 Steam Keys for your buddies to players who bought the full game and played for 2+ hours. Post your name in our Community thread. We'll verify and friend you with our dev account to send you the keys. Join the daily events and race some matches to complete your team with your best buds!

Of course we've already fixed some bugs and changed minor things based on the first days of playing:

• Added mouse hover for Team Flag to show Team Name
  
• Overlay/tutorial related bugs
  
• Removed hanging start barrier sound
  
• Fixed dev hosting issues
  
• Auto search text appearing in party
  
• Trophy bugs
  
• Reset stats trigger
  
• Party display update fixes
  
• Nav bar issue
  
• F1 overlay either with controller or keyboard resulting in loss of car input
  
• Added communication at start/loading of level
  
• Daily server purge # players online

While we are quite happy with the stuff that's currently in the game, we have big plans to expand on it. Next week we'll share our rough ideas and vision on the further development of the game.

In the mean time, please enjoy the game. Still hesitant to buy the game? Try out the free demo first. It doesn't contain the online multiplayer, but you can at least experience the gameplay and neat racing physics.

We hope many of you will join the race and help us create the perfect team racing game!

Gamious

It's official! Team Racing League will rev onto Early Access on August 11.

Mark your calendars!

Hey there!


Don't have access yet? Sign up on teamracingleague.net. Also, there are multiple keys up for grabs at different websites that are helping us out with the test tonight. In preparation of this Beta test, the game got several updates and tweaks:

New

• Player Stats – Live stats on the number of players and games.
  
• UI – Improvements for the joining/hosting process.
  
• Backend - various optimisation in both code and art to smoothen your race.
  
• Trophies – Earn Trophies for everything you do, every race. (still in development!)

A bit further down the road:
We're working on various cool features for the game, like Teams (a guild/clan system), Twitch integration (vote on your favourite team or player) and improving the Trophy system with Tiers and how to earn them. These features are nearly done, but not polished and turned off for tonight’s Beta test. But rest assured, all will be ready for the Early Access release this August.

Happy racing!