- Retro racer Slipstream has a final update with new content, mod tools, and Steam Workshop support - 6 September 2024
Released originally back in 2018, Slipstream is a retro racer in the spirit of games from the late 80s and early 90s. The developer came back for one final update to finish it off. Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/retro-racer-slipstream-has-a-final-update-with-new-content-mod-tools-and-steam-workshop-support
- Going out with a bang - 5 September 2024
This past sunday, September 1st 2024, was a very special day for me. I had planned this announcement for that day, but due to me not knowing how to properly add a tool package to an existing game on Steam technical reasons, I had to delay it for a bit. Why was it special, you ask? Well, on September 1st 2014 I posted this video on youtube: This video is the oldest record of what would become Slipstream. I had been working on it for just a week or two. And now, (almost) exactly a decade later, I'm here to announce its final major update. Fittingly, this game took me on a long and unexpected journey. Ten years ago I was a hobbyist in my bedroom, learning the absolute basics of gamedev, hoping to create small mobile games just for fun, on my spare time, and maybe even earn a little side money from that. Then came steam greenlight, a kickstarter campaign, two long and painful extra years of…
- Slipstream v1.3.1: Audio, Leaderboards, QoL - 12 July 2023
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great and enjoying the new content in the Blue Hour DLC. If you haven't installed it, please check it out, it's free after all. I'm publishing a minor update, v1.3.1, which fixes some historically problematic things and, sadly, removes a feature. But it's for a good reason. Feature removal: MP3 support. I'm not sure how many players use this feature, but Slipstream allows you to add your own music files to the game. If you put a music file in '/ansdorGames/Slipstream/music', it will be playable during gameplay and treated like any other song in the soundtrack. Up until now, the game has supported three formats: ogg, wav and mp3. When I rewrote the game in version 1.2, I switched the underlying game library from libGDX to FNA, and FNA does not have native support for MP3. For the whole v1.2 cycle and v1.3.0, I used SDL2_mixer as an alternative, but thi…
- Slipstream: Blue Hour - Free DLC, Now Available! - 28 June 2023
Blue Hour, a free DLC expansion for Slipstream, is now available! The expansion brings 3 new cars, 5 new tracks and 5 new songs. More details can be seen on the Slipstream: Blue Hour DLC store page. To install Blue Hour, right-click Slipstream on your library, select "Properties", then "DLC" and check the Blue Hour box. It will eventually be added to the default install, but at the moment I'm asking for manual installation so I can measure the number of installs. I'd also like to recommend players to use the game speed adjustment setting! Slipstream can be too hard to control at the default speed, and this setting exists to make the game more comfortable to play. Don't be afraid to use it, the game is still very fast at 80% speed, and everything in the gameplay and physics remains exactly the same. If I were to release the game today, I'd probably make the default speed closer to 80 or…
- Slipstream v1.3, 5th Anniversary, and something more... - 23 May 2023
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing great. I have big news to share with you today. Slipstream is now five years old! Time flies. The original release feels both like yesterday and a long time ago. Since then, I've worked (almost) continuously to keep this game afloat. I've done a full rewrite of the code, added many new features, and fixed all the bugs and problems I could. It's still not perfect, I guess it will never be, but I've tried my best to make it good and enjoyable. Once again I want to say thanks to all of you who played the game, gave me useful feedback and support in general. Today I bring you a new version of the game, Slipstream v1.3. As with the previous v1.x updates, I'm gonna freeze the latest v1.2 build on a separate branch (legacy-v2), so it can still be played in the future. There are major changes, so let's get to them. * A new rubberbanding system For those who d…
- Slipstream v1.2.4 Now Available - Patch Notes - 1 August 2022
Hi everyone, hope you're all doing well. I have an update for you today. There are few visible changes to the game, mostly bugfixes, with the notable exception of a new feature: A Photo Mode. Here are the notes for Slipstream v1.2.4: Photo Mode. When activated, the screen will be frozen and the HUD disabled. This will allow players to take better screenshots of the game. Pressing the CONFIRM key will toggle the HUD on/off, and pressing up/down will switch between some photo filters: normal, pixelated, CRT, NTSC, VHS. If you had a save file prior to this update, the photo mode will probably be assigned to the F7 key. This is because this feature used to be available only in my personal Debug/Test builds, and I used the F keys for debug-only stuff. The new default/recommended binding is TAB. If you restore the default controls or create a new save file, the game will restore the correct m…
- Console Release, Localizations, QoL: Slipstream v1.2.3 now available - 16 March 2022
Hello everyone, hope you're doing well. The news is out: Slipstream is finally coming to consoles, thanks to a partnership with BlitWorks, the company behind the modern ports of Sonic CD and Jet Set Radio, among many others. The release date will be April 7th, the base price will be the same as the PC version. It will be available for PS4/PS5, Xbox One/SS/SX, and Nintendo Switch. If you like the game, any kind of support is, of course, welcome. I haven't got my hands on a Steam Deck yet, but I believe the game will run fine on it, since it has a native Linux version and full support for Xbox-like controllers. In preparation for the new release, I come to you today with a new update. Here are the changes: Localization: Slipstream is now available in Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. The language can be changed from the Settings Menu. The U…
- Update: Slipstream v1.2.2-01 - 20 February 2022
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well. A new update to Slipstream has been published, with a few relatively small but significant changes: The whole Automatic Drifting system has been reworked to be more ergonomic. The autodrift controls used to be a little stiff and too different from manual, but now they work almost exactly the same and should be easier for everyone to use. Text descriptions were added to the Main Menu and Car Select screens. Fixed a bug in Time Trial Mode where the ghost car would get desynchronized. The bug was strictly related to how the ghost plays, not to how it's recorded, so your existing ghosts should work without issue. That's all for the update. The game has reached a very stable state, I think the difficulty is now at a good point, especially with the accessibility features, so further updates will probably be focused on bug fixing only. I've seen some u…
- New Year, New Patch: Slipstream v1.2.1 Now Available - 4 January 2022
Hello everyone, hope you're doing well. First of all, I want to say I'm sorry. In November I published part of an update I was working on at the time, but the work had to be interrupted and the game was left in a very problematic, buggy state for two months. That earned me quite a few negative reviews and emails, and you were right, I shouldn't have left it that way, especially for so long, in such a critical time of the year. I hope this new update can serve as an apology for that mistake. Here are the major changes in version 1.2.1, now available for all platforms: Difficulty Balancing When I originally published the 1.2.0 version, I said there were still problems to be solved with the game's difficulty thanks to the new AI, but they were never as bad as in the previous patch. Now I believe I've reached a good spot, where the AI is challenging and consistent but not excessively hard l…
- Slipstream v1.2 - Public Release! - 15 September 2021
After a year and a half of work, the new version of Slipstream is finally here. Calling it "1.2" is almost an understatement—it is a full rewrite of the original code. Calling it "2.0" would make more sense. Initially, it was supposed to be just a "simple", straight rewrite of the original code, in preparation for a re-release (more on that later), however, as I rewrote parts of the code, I noticed there was a lot of room for improvement and decided to take a little more time and do the right thing, fix and add everything I thought was necessary. A 6-month project became a 1-year project that, as expected, took more than a year, but now it's here, and I'm very satisfied with the results. It's hard to even write a "changelog" because everything was changed, but I'll try to list all the major new features. New AI, and no rubberbanding The one change that set the ball rolling for all the o…
- Slipstream 1.2 [Beta] is now available! - 23 May 2021
First of all, I want to say thank you, again, to everyone who's supported the game since launch. May 21st was the third anniversary of Slipstream, and I'm really happy to have all of you here. I hope you enjoy the news. It took me a lot longer than expected, as expected, but the 1.2 version is now playable. It's not complete (more on that later), but it's good enogh to advance to the next phase of testing, and you're all invited to try. It is currently in an optional beta branch, and only windows builds are available, but I'll eventually add builds for other platforms. (Also, let me know if you can run it with Proton, it didn't work on my computer but maybe it will for some of you.) So... what's new? First, let's get the negatives out of the way: Only 3 game modes are available: Grand Tour, Cannonball and Single Race. No achievements, the secret tracks are unlocked by default but the wh…
- About the 1.2 Update - 22 December 2020
Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing fine. As you can probably see, the Slipstream 1.2 update I promised at the beginning of the year is not available yet. My initial deadline was the middle of the year, but with all the stuff happening around all of us, the plans had to change. I decided then to set the deadline for the winter sale, but again I couldn't make it in time. I'm really sad for that, because the winter sale is a huge deal for everyone on Steam and it would be the perfect opportunity to present an upgraded version of the game and hopefully get some extra sales, but unfortunately it didn't work. That said, I have a lot of new stuff to show you guys. If you are still interested in Slipstream, I hope this update will be worth the wait. I'm working very hard to polish the game as much as I can, and solve the problems in the current version. Here's a short summary of the new st…
- Re: Issues with Intel HD Graphics, Maintenance - 14 January 2020
Hello everyone. First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of maintenance on this game in the past few months. I had personal problems and couldn't get the right amount of time and energy to do much productive work. I hope it's all settled now and I can resume my usual activity.I have received lots of bug reports lately but didn't respond to any. Again, I'm sorry for this. I said on the last update that some compatibilities may break, and they indeed broke. From what I could gather, the game isn't working anymore on older generations of Intel HD Graphics processors. Even though HD4000 and below are not oficially supported, as per the minimum requirements page, the game did run on those previously and stopped with the last update. I'd like to restore that, if possible. However, it isn't possible. At least not in the current state of the game. Slipstream was programmed in Java, and th…
- v1.1.11, back-end update, compatibilities may break - 30 July 2019
Hello everyone. After a silent update from 1.1.9 to 1.1.10, which was just a bugfix release, here comes another one. The only change made to the game itself was: bug fix on time trial mode that failed to register your best lap if it was not the last lap (how did I miss this one for so long? I'm sorry!) Other than that, I updated pretty much all the back-end software runtimes used by the game, so I expect that some people might have compatibility issues. If you have any problems, please send me an email: me at ansdor dot com Another important notice is that I raised the minimum linux compatibility version from ubuntu 16.04 to ubuntu 18.04. I tried my best to keep the compatibility with older versions but some libraries used by the game (specifically Jamepad, the input library) do not support any linux version with glibc lower than 2.27. If you are running ubuntu 16.04 or older, the only…
- v1.1.9, improved controls + other small changes - 10 May 2019
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing fine. Slipstream's 1 year release anniversary is coming soon and I wanted to update a few things before then. Here's version 1.1.9. The biggest change is the addition of a new control option: Automatic Drifting. It's similar to the 'simplified controls' that were already available on the multiplayer mode, but now it's a lot more intuitive and responsive. It's also available on all modes, single and multiplayer. That's probably the biggest quality of life update this game has ever had, and I hope it improves the experience for people who didn't like the drifting controls. For those who did like them, manual drifting is still the default option and works the same way it has always been. Other changes: difficulty has been adjusted across various modes, most notably cannonball and battle royale the game camera is now a little closer to the ground than it…
- v1.1.8, tutorial fixed - 12 March 2019
another minor update: - fixed the bug in tutorial mode. due to an oversight, the car speed was being reset to zero when you restart a part of the tutorial. now that doesn't happen anymore and the tutorial can actually be completed again - reduced the difficulty of easy mode a little. I've seen a lot of complaints from new players (including some negative reviews) that the game is too hard. being a little hard is intentional but easy mode is supposed to give a more relaxed experience. the normal/hard difficulties remain the same that's all, thanks!
- v1.1.7 update, xbox one controller bug fixed - 8 March 2019
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well. Slipstream was updated to version 1.1.7, with a fix to the Xbox One controller vibration bug. I was able to reproduce the bug on both of my windows machines and the changes made to this version fixed it on both of them, so hopefully this will apply to all cases. You can re-enable controller vibration if you want. Nothing else was changed on this version. I got some other bug reports (which I'll look into now), but this was the only problem that was reported by more than one user. So... That's all. Thanks for playing Slipstream!
- about graphics settings, FPS drop issues [temporary fix] - 4 March 2019
Slipstream was featured in the humble monthly march 2019 package and that brought in a lot of new players to the game. And with the new players, new bugs are found. Some users reported huge FPS drops when using a bluetooth Xbox One controller, specifically when the game tries to make the controller vibrate, such as when you start to accelerate the car. This issue seems to be happening exclusively on windows, with a wireless xbox one controller. Unfortunately I don't have a working xbox one controller with me at the moment, and we're in the middle of a holiday week here in Brazil. The earliest time I'll be able to send a definitive fix to this problem will be wednesday (march 6th), but thursday is a more realistic estimate. For now, the only temporary solution I can suggest is to disable vibration on the settings menu. This seemed to fix the issue for everyone who reported it. I hope to…
- About Controllers & Keybindings - 15 December 2018
Some people wrote to me asking various things about controller support and keybindings, and since I never documented this feature very well, I'll try to do that now and maybe answer other potential questions. Keybinding (hopefully) works as you might expect: you select an action, press a button and that button is mapped to that action. But there are a few quirks I'd like to explain in more detail. The new keybidings start working immediately, as soon as you map the new key to an action, it is the only way to perform that action. So if you rebind menu actions like up, down, confirm or cancel, the only way to exit the menu is to use the new bindings. Keyboard and Gamepad work slightly differently. On the keyboard, confirm and accelerate are always mapped to the same key, and so are cancel and brake. So the menu keys and game keys are always the same. On the gamepad, "menu keys" (confirm a…
- v1.1.3 - minor bugfixes - 8 November 2018
as expected, a lot of unexpected bugs surfaced since the 1.1 update. I've been trying to fix them one by one, and this is the third minor update since 1.1. some people were experiencing crashes when the game tried to re-set vsync on, so I removed the vsync confirmation step. this game is designed to run with vsync always on, it will match your monitor's refresh rate and keep the physics consistent no matter what framerate it's running. I tested it on all my systems and the game stayed at 60fps, as it should. if you notice your GPU is making too much noise and/or the framerate looks choppy after the update, please send me an email (me ansdor dot com).
