TDU World Update: August 2022

[xXBeefyDjXx]

 

TDU World News: August 2022

Hello Everyone!

Yes we know it’s been a while however Team TDU World has a whole lot of news to cover, so let’s begin!

 

What’s going on with Team TDU World?

The first half of 2022 has been a bit of a crazy time for Team TDU World, and we're aware that there've been lots of rumours, controversial moments and changes both within our Team, and across both the TDU World and general TDU2 communities.
 

For those of you who haven’t been following the news as it happened across the TDU World Community Discord here’s the rundown:

April 2022 saw Team TDU World experience a significant change in management and staff:

A discussion was held internally which raised some important points within the team, primarily around management and timings, but also around the work being carried out at the time since it was quickly becoming a point of contention.

Unfortunately, whilst an agreement was extremely close between the team as a whole, plans fell through and some of the team decided to part ways.

 

This meant a majority of the talented members working on the Website, Game Server, Launcher and the ModPack had moved on to form various groups of their own, which have now subsequently become competitors within the TDU2 Community.
This change ultimately reduced the amount of time the team can put into the project as we now have the same workload but a smaller team, however we are still well invested into the project and are keen to deliver on our promise to the community:
To provide an improved experience for the TDU2 Community that provides the most stable and secure Game Server, a fluid Mod Pack with some of the best hand picked mods, reinvented physics/handling and much more into the future, and a well rounded Launcher to provide a quick and easy solution to manage your game.

The remaining members of Team TDU World came together, reformed under the same name, and currently consists of the following members:

xXBeefyDjXx -  Founder of TDU World, Launcher/Server/Website Project Manager + Developer

Xarlith - Co-Manager of TDU World, Mod Pack Project Manager + Developer

GeeTee - Beta Project Manager

Esurient - Website Developer/Design Manager

Introvert3D - Mod Pack Clothing Designer

Kurya - Mod Pack Vehicle Skin Designer

25 Beta Testers and counting!

 

So, What has Team TDU World been working on?

We’re pleased to say that over the past few months the team has been hard at work across all areas.

Whilst this is not quite ready for release, we’re getting ready to move a significant amount of changes to Beta shortly and anticipate that testing shouldn’t take too long.

Without further ado,  let’s get stuck into one of our biggest updates yet!
 

TDU World Game Server for TDU2

Current Status

As of right now, the following is available on TDU World’s Game Server:

Free Roam (Port Forwarding 8889 Required)

Friends including searching for players to add and basic presence

Basic Multiplayer Racing (Known bugs, start ASAP to bypass issues)

 

Whilst we are well aware that this seems a little basic at the moment, Team TDU World are pleased to announce that our resident developer Beefy has been hard at work over the past few months and the following will be coming out of Beta in our next update:

Lobbying 2.0

Lobbying 2.0 has been in release status since April, and since then we have identified the remaining issues, which have been related to the current version of the TDU World Launcher.
As such, the next Lobbying Update will be released, and subsequent improvements will be worked on after the launch of the new TDU World Launcher later this year.

Free-Roam Lobbying has been improved and should be more reliable.
This will further be improved by the release of the new TDU World Launcher (explained below)

Racing has been overhauled: Matchmaking has been overhauled and now completely works as intended for Public/Private Races and Mini Games such as Follow the Leader.

Map Tracking has been improved and should no longer result in random game crashes caused by tracking players who have gone offline

Support for 32 Player Casino Lobbies has been implemented in preparation for the release of TDU2: Casino Online DLC

 

 

 

Clubs

We’re also pleased to announce that Clubs in TDU2 will finally be making a return!
As of this news release, players in Beta have been testing out the Club features and we’re able to confirm that creation and management of Clubs in game is working as expected.

In the next update you will be able to:

Create and Manage your Club as the president

View your Club Statistics in detail and compare with others

Invite up to 32 friends to join your Club (Max Level Clubs only)

Search for and Join or Switch between a Club if you’re already a member elsewhere

Manage Club Ranks for all members

Earn XP and Donate to your Club

Upgrade your Clubs once you earn enough XP and Donations

Purchase all 4 exclusive Club vehicles with enough donations at Level 3

 

We haven’t yet been able to confirm if we will have Club vs Club Matchmaking ready in time for the next update, and know that there is also work still to be done to ensure the appropriate news notifications pop to Club Members, however we will keep everyone updated as soon as we have more information.

 

 

DLC

The DLC Service on the TDU World Server has been overhauled however we are still experiencing issues with DLC Vehicles unlocking on players running DLC2 v034.

As a work around until it is resolved, all DLC Vehicles will be unsupported by the server, meaning that they will show as regular vehicles and will not turn into Miami’s Mustang if purchased.
The Casino Online DLC has been fixed, and will be available in the next update.

 

TDU2: Casino Online

TDU2: Casino Online will finally be opening its doors on the TDU World Server very soon!

We have been hard at work with our beta testers to ensure that the Casino Slots Games are working at their best, with multi line bets, variable payouts, winning animations and more all now working as originally intended by the developers.
At it’s launch, the TDU World Casino Server will be able to support up to 32 players per Casino Room, however only the Casino Slots will be available.
Roulette, Poker and the VIP Tournament area will be locked upon the initial release, and will open up as soon as each game mode is ready.

Work in progress, showing final Beach Slots, and the rest of the Slots Games being tested during development can be found on Beefy's channel here

 

More Features

As of this news release, we can also give some more updates about some features that won’t be ready for the next update, but progress is being made…

MyTDULife/Statistics

Unfortunately we haven’t yet been able to get MyTDULife working stable so this is currently on the backburner until further notice.
This means that at the moment, only very basic statistics in the game will work, such as Player Money, and Vehicles/Houses owned.

On the subject of Statistics, we have managed to get the Leaderboards working in game; as of the next update, all the Leaderboards will temporarily show a placeholder until we’re sure that the appropriate anti-cheat measures are in place to avoid people cheating their way to the top.

 

 

Official/Community Racing Centres

Whilst they will not be opening their doors on the next update, We’re pleased to announce that solid progress is being made on the Official and Community Racing Centres.

As of this update, we’ve been able to successfully upload races to the Community Racing Center and browse the available challenges, however downloading Challenges has not yet been completed.
So close, yet so far!
The lack of ability to download races means that we’ve been unable to test out the Official Racing Center yet either, however we’re anticipating this can be fixed up relatively soon.
Leaderboards will spring into life alongside the Statistics update for general races in game, however the same issue stands where we must ensure that appropriate Anti-Cheat is in place before the Community Racing Center can be opened or this will have a negative impact on the competitive aspect of this feature.

 

In Game News

Progress has been made on In Game News and we are hopeful that towards the end of the year we will be able to fully implement this feature.
It will cover quite a few online aspects including Clubs as mentioned above, several reports for the Racing Centers and in the future, custom news for TDU World.
Most notably, it will be used to push notifications if the game server is due to reboot for an update, as shown in the sneak peak below

 

TDU World Launcher

Team TDU World have been hard at work preparing the next major update for the TDU World Launcher and we’re pleased to announce that in the next update, the following will be coming:

A new, improved and simplified Installation experience

Support for Automatic Updates to the Launcher

Improved NAT Detection to improve support for newer/locked down network devices

TexMod support

Improved Settings: Offline Mode, and the ability to switch between Game Servers

Improved Discord Presence
 

In later updates, we will be implementing even more options into the TDU World Launcher such as a dedicated Troubleshooting tool, Mod Manager supported by TurboDuck, and even support for launching the original Test Drive Unlimited.

Stay Tuned for more to come later in the year!

 

TDU World Website

After months of long work between Beefy and Esurient, we’re pleased to announce that in the next update,
We will be releasing the new TDU World Website to the public!

Whilst our current website gets the job done whilst looking rather sleek, we’re very quickly outgrowing the current back end that runs it, meaning we’re having to spend longer working on making sure that everything on our Launcher and Server works with the current Website code.
Rather than stretch development time and make the community wait longer for a release, we went back to the drawing board, completely rebuilding the Web Server and planning the Website Design from scratch.

The rebuild has helped us to move forwards at a significant pace, allowing us to incorporate a more interactive experience between the Website and the Game Server.
For players, this will come in many ways, including but not limited to:

Quickly and easily manage your TDU World Account and Game Profiles

Get Password Resets, Email Changes and Recovery Requests faster

Improved API Support for Game Server Status, Launcher Updates + Mod Downloads

View Leaderboards and Statistics across the TDU World Community

View Photos taken in game online and export them

Manage your Friends, Clubs and Community Challenges

(Some features will be released once the appropriate feature is released on the Game Server)

For Moderators, support for In Game Reporting and General Management will also be improved significantly, making sure we can provide the best experience for our community where clean competition is strongly encouraged!

 

 

TDU World Mod Pack

Since we launched the TDU World Game Server for TDU2, we promised to develop the ultimate modpack/expansion this game deserves.
It's a big responsibility and not an easy task.

Over the last 2 years, we started three times from scratch. For many reasons. The former team did not have much experience at modifying TDU2.
Our internal tools were also acquiring more and more new functionalities, which meant that what we created earlier was not as good as it could be now.
New modders also joined us, The concepts have also changed, and not everyone was keen on that which presumably became one of the reasons for the original team disbanding, so on and so forth. 

The bottom line is that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Currently, the work on the mod is at an advanced stage and we are very proud of the outcomes.
Thanks to our efforts, the game looks and feels more polished than ever and soon its condition will allow us to just freely focus on expanding the vehicle selection.

 

Current Status

Better physics, better tires & better steering assists

Thanks to the experience of our modders and the effort they put into learning how physics in TDU2 actually work, we managed to overcome many of its shortcomings while maintaining the spirit of TDU2.

 By selecting full assistance and default settings, the driving experience is similar to the original but by choosing hardcore the physics changes dramatically, is more challenging, much less grippy and unlike original it actually allows you to have some control over the car while drifting.

 Yes, with some practice, drifting/power sliding is possible. It's a tribute to the TDU1 fans but of course, due to the engine limitations it is not the same, one would say not even close.
Anyway, we are having a lot of fun with it and hope you will have also. It is not only a global change. Each of the 180 cars have been tested and tweaked accordingly!

 

Real-world performance of all vehicles

First, with the help of our beta testers, we did a huge amount of research and collected very detailed info about the in-game vehicles such as stats and real-world performance tests from reliable sources. 

Then, within the game's limitations we did our best to reproduce that. No more artificial speed limiters, no more weirdly fast or slow cars. No more underperforming gearboxes.

 

Balanced vehicle classes

Our top tier beta testers thoroughly tested the vehicle's performance and with a help of a well thought set of rules we reorganized the vehicle classes.
If you are curious how we are doing this here is a sneak peek from our testing sheet. We did censor some stuff and won't show the new vehicles because we don’t want to reveal all of them just yet. After all, the best part of the new stuff is first hand discovering which car is the best and what's at the dealers.

 

 

 

Balanced time trials and harder AI opponents

We have spent time playing through all the events in the game, including driving schools, cups and championships to make them more challenging but fair. Forget about difficult license tests and boringly easy championship time trials. We made the AI opponents significantly faster. Winning is not a piece of cake anymore. A little sweat won't hurt while winning those millions, right?

 

New vehicles

TDU World's Modpack will be modest in the regard of the amount of new vehicles but that will change with future regular content updates.
Modest means over 40 hand picked additional community sourced vehicles with our tweaks at your disposal (including vehicles introduced with the Unofficial Patch) right after the release.

Here's a selection of the vehicles that you should expect to see in the upcoming pack:

Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z

Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato

Jaguar XJ220

Mclaren F1

Porsche Cayenne GTS

Jeep Wrangler

Koenigsegg CC8S

Pagani Zonda R

Porsche Cayman R

And many more

 

Optional graphic overhaul mods

A set of optional graphical and ease of use mods will be adapted to work flawlessly on top of our basic, mandatory patch. Mandatory because we do not want you to experience any injustice in competitive play modes. Thus each of the players will have to run the same TDU2 version to be able to compete.

Optional mods are optional because they do not interfere with the vehicle's performances.

 

So, Release when?!

We hear each and every one of you who come by to ask when the next update is coming to TDU World.
We’d absolutely love to promise a specific time frame for the next update however due to the limited resources of the team and the amount of work required to squash the final bugs that we may find, we cannot do so quite yet.
We’re hopeful that we can provide a major release by the end of the year, we’ve smashed out a significant chunk so far and believe that this is easily achievable.

As always, continue to stay tuned here on TurboDuck, and on Discord over at the TDU World Community for the latest updates, we promise we will provide future news on a semi regular basis!
 

Patreon

A huge thank you to anyone who still continues to pledge as a patron to Team TDU World!

Without our Patrons, Team TDU World would be in a completely different situation.
If you can, consider becoming a Patron today to show your support for the team, it helps us to cover the costs of hosting this project and continue expanding to ensure that we can provide the best experience.

All Patrons get access to “The Quiet Zone” on the TDU World Discord where you can chat to fellow Patrons, have direct chats with Team TDU World, access to the TDU World Beta including early access to the newest features and TDU World Mod Pack.
Super and Ultra Fan Tiers also get merchandise, A Sticker and a TDU World T-Shirt as an extra thank you!
 

Click here to visit our Patreon Page