August 2024 Update

xXBeefyDjXx · 2024-08-17T17:06:34Z

News Update: August 2024

Long time no see, eh?
It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 months since our last news update, and you bet a lot has changed over this time, so without further ado, let’s get caught up, and then discuss what’s coming next!

What’s the latest?

We’ve made several updates to pretty much everything since we last published any news, let’s start with what you see the most…

TDU World Launcher + (Un)Installer

Since our last news update, the bundled Installer, which doubles up as our uninstaller, has been tweaked several times based on public feedback to ensure that the process is as smooth as possible.

Post the initial v1.0 release, we’ve released multiple patches to bring us to Launcher v1.0.2.5. To sum everything up:

UI elements and messages were improved to prevent bugs with how things showed up on screen and intermittent issues with things not responding properly

We’ve improved our language support with help from the community

We improved our installation detection, improving reliability if you installed TDU2 correctly and ran it at least once!

We reimplemented UPNP support on top of our NAT Detection code to ensure that we can correctly report your connection reliability for connecting to other players

And finally, we’ve ironed out any bugs that caused general reliability issues, and false positive reports on NAT, and Game Installs.

TDU World Mod Packs

The TDU World Base Pack received a few bug fixes after our last news update, most notably:

A Camera issue was resolved which was causing the game to crash when referencing Camera Database.

The Chevrolet Camaro Synergy Special Edition was introduced to the Ibiza US South Showroom

The Nissan 370Z price was increased from $3,300 to $33,000

The Male “Eden Hawaii Shirt” was patched to stop it being transparent.

Fixed an issue with the Clothing Database that was causing Haircuts to crash the game/break saves.

The TDU World Car Pack was released with positive responses from the community after a very long wait, and for the most part only one issue was identified and resolved with the Jaguar XJ 220, where it had misaligned damage and door panels.

TDU World Servers for Test Drive Unlimited 2

Onto the Server Updates!
Notice we said “Servers”?
That’s right. As of December 2023, the TDU World Servers for PS3 have also been opened to the public.

When we released the PS3 Server, we made a promise to the community to continue working with a preference on the PC Server.
This means that the PS3 edition sometimes falls behind in terms of features and bug fixes, but once we’re absolutely sure that it is working correctly on the PC first, we then port over to the PS3 edition.

If you want to find out more on the PS3 Server, check out the TDU World Discord.
We will update the website as the server continues to mature.

The changes highlighted below are available on both the PC and PS3 editions of TDU2.

Time and Weather
We finally cracked the code on how TDU2 calculates and synchronizes in game time with the server and other players, allowing us to have a stable day/night cycle across both islands.
The decision was made to permanently set the Weather to “Sunny” until further notice, as the original cycle we had that made it possible to achieve all the photo opportunities across both islands was deemed too difficult to work around when trying to race.
We appreciate everyone’s feedback on the weather system and hope to work with the community in the future to get a perfect balance that mostly everyone can enjoy.

Leaderboards

Further work was carried out to identify and implement a majority of TDU2’s Single and Multiplayer event Leaderboards.

We implemented support for all the Casino Leaderboards, every Single and Multiplayer event in Ibiza, and have continued working on implementing the leaderboards for Hawaii, too.
For now, only the initial Single Player Leaderboards in Hawaii are guaranteed to be working as expected, however we aim to have the rest finished soon.

News

The in-game News Services that keep you updated on what your friends are doing, what’s going on in your Club, and with the Racing Centre have been implemented and are fully supported on the TDU World Servers.
With this update, we also implemented the notifications that allow Staff members to nudge you or broadcast when the server is about to go offline, which are considered pretty important!
This system is also used for moderation, so if you get yourself banned from any aspect of online (minus a permanent, or full ban), you will see what you’ve been banned from each time you load the game.

Lobbying

Throughout the months, we’ve continued to monitor data around connectivity between players and the Lobbying System in general.

Through trial by fire, we have stabilized lobbies significantly and implemented improved algorithms along the way to help players get connected and stay connected whilst cruising in free roam, as long as you either have port 8889 Forwarded or UPNP Enabled on your Network.
Support for “Location-Based” Lobbies was also implemented, making sure that you’re more likely to be paired with drivers that are relatively close to you rather than across the other side of the Island.

Race Lobbies were also improved, with bugs around joining/leaving races being resolved quickly allowing everyone to enjoy Ranked, Unranked Races, and Mini Games.

We also released support for the Invite/Tracking System, which allows you to invite or join any friends, or recent players who are online and you’re able to connect to.

Club Houses

Our next focus was on improving the Club House functionality we had released previously.
A few things were updated to improve reliability for the Club Members lists and we cracked support for up to 32 players in a fully upgraded Club House, and we started a set of 5 fully upgraded “Official TDU World” Club Houses to allow people to use the Club Vehicles as a temporary measure until we release Club VS Club Races.

Support for the “Join a Club” feature was also released.

My TDU Life

Towards the end of 2023, we released full support for “MyTDULife”, which finally allowed players to:

Take Avatar Pictures and set them as their Profile Picture, Featured Pictures, or House Photos

View, and select from up to 8 “MyTDULife” stats to show on your profile from:

General and Enhanced Profile: Your general Stats as shown in the mini profile

Competition, Collection, Discovery and Social: Your total Level/XP

Driver/User "About You": Several Profile Specific Statistics

ClubHouse: Shows a quick overview of the Club Stats

TDU Addiction: Tell someone how much you love TDU!

Vehicles: Most Driven Car/Riden Bike, Fastest Speed Achieved

Free Ride: See how far someone has driven

Casino: Poker, Roulette, Slot Machines and General Stats

TDU2: Casino Online

TDU2 just isn’t the same without its Casino Online DLC, and we’ve made several advancements to ensure we bring the most enjoyable experience to the table.

Slot Machines

The Slot Machines have been spun vigorously since their initial release by quite a few players on the servers, which helped us to identify and fix several bugs around the Payouts and winning result calculations across all the machines.
The Video Poker machine also got a total rewrite to help demonstrate and gather data for a future Poker release, but we’ll cover that later.
Finally, the Classic Jackpot + Winners sign was implemented, which allows us to mark the Slot Machines Room as “Feature Complete”!

Roulette

After months of scratching our heads, we finally figured out and implemented everything needed to get the Roulette Rooms working in the TDU Casino.
The complete Roulette experience was achieved in record time vs the other areas of the project thanks to extensive testing by the team, and at this stage we consider this room also “Feature Complete”.

What’s coming next?

Now that we’re all up to date on the latest TDU World changes, let’s talk about what’s coming next!

TDU World Mod Packs

The TDU World Mod Packs will be getting a significant update that will be released today! (17th August 2024)
The Base Pack update will contain many of the changes outlined below for compatibility, but the Car Pack will still be a separate item to install if you haven’t done so already.

You will not need to reinstall anything. The TDU World Launcher will notify you when the updates are available, and they will be required to play online.

TDU World Base Pack

The Base Pack will be getting a significant update, reflecting feedback from the TDU World Community on Discord, reviewed by the team. Having agreed to your requests, we reduce the difficulty level of some challenges. We also prepared other changes you awaited. And they are:

General changes

Increased cornering speed of motorbikes
Increased grip on wet surface by 10%
Increased grip on dirt and grass for offroad and non-offroad vehicles independently

Difficulty changes

Increased difficulty of off-road AI races
Traction control during racing school's licence tests is always enabled (fixes issue with completing them on keyboard)
Extended time threshold of the final A5/4 racing licence test from 2'35"00 to 2'40"00
Extended time threshold of the timed Golden Bomb convoys by 6-7%
Extended time threshold of the timed Blue Bomb convoys by 3%
Additionally extended time threshold of the "Careful with the road verges" mission by another 3%

Balance changes

Audi R8 Spyder 5.2 FSI moved from A3 to A4
Ferrari California moved from A3 to A4
Ferrari F430 moved from A3 to A4
Nissan GT-R moved from A3 to A4
Ryan Wilder now drives Audi R8 5.2 in A3 championships (Nissan GT-R previously)

As far as our possibilities, we also tried to remove the most frequently reported problems. We fixed the chase cam!

General fixes

Fixed an error that positioned the pursuit camera too close to the vehicles

Fixed inconsistent tyre physics of some C class vehicles (they now use the same tires)

Fixed formatting error of credits file

Fixed a bug that caused old reward cars to appear in cutscenes

Fixed a bug where timed Golden Bomb convoy in Shelby GT500 had an extreme convoy flag

Vehicle fixes

Audi Quattro E2: enabled paint shop (stickering will improve with later updates)

Audi R8 V8: Fixed pink Grid2 material (engine bay)

BAC Mono: fixed automatic gearbox skipping of 5th gear when shifting up from 4th

Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z: Fixed wheel scaling

Dodge Viper Police: The base price has been increased to consider the cost of RSI TT upgrade

Ferrari Enzo: Fixed wheel scaling and offset

Ford Mustang V6: Fixed medium quality LOD missing bumpers

Jeep Wrangler: Fixed damage offsets

Jeep Wrangler: Increased ride height

Koenigsegg Agera R: Unified licence plates

Mclaren F1: Improved stability

Mercedes-Benz G500: Fixed black windows

Mercedes-Benz G500: Fixed steering wheel offset and hand positioning

Nissan 370Z Nismo: Fixed incorrect engine type data

Nissan R34 GT-R: Unified licence plates

Pagani Zonda C12S Roadster: Enabled black interior option which was missing in the original

Porsche 911 GT3: Fixed damage and wheel offsets

Porsche Macan: Fixed damage offsets

TVR Cerbera: automatic gearbox RPM thresholds adjusted for better performance

TDU World Car Pack

The following new vehicles will be available in the TDU World Car Pack update:

BMW 1M E82 (A5)

BMW M3 E92 (A5)

BMW M5 F10 (A4)

BMW M6 F13 (A4)

BMW X5 M E70 (B3)

BMW Z4 E89 (A5)

Ferrari GTO (C2)

Lamborghini Murcielago LP 670-4 SV (A2)

Mazda RX-8 (A7)

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X GSR (A6)

Pagani Zonda R (A1)

For the first time, all newly added vehicles have a unique well-reproduced manufacturer's colour palette. Over time, we will also improve the palette of previously added vehicles. In the end, we want to give you the best, complete and coherent version of TDU2. This game deserves it. Thank you for all your suggestions on our Discord channel and keep them coming. It’s a demanding task to please everybody but we will do our best in the upcoming future.

TDU World Servers

As we look forward to the future with the TDU World Game Servers for PC and PS3, we’re pleased to announce the following items will be released today (August 17th 2024)

Friends

As part of this update we have resolved the issues previously experienced with Friends Lists.
TDU World’s Servers now support up to 100 friends (the in game limit), and no longer bug out if you do manage to hit the limit.

Leaderboards

The remaining leaderboards across Hawaii’s Single Player events have been identified and brought live as of this news release.
This marks the completion of Leaderboard implementation on the TDU World Servers.

TDU2: Casino Online

We’re pleased to announce that after several months of long nights scratching our heads and working with our testers, we’ve finally cracked the code on Poker!
The Casino Services across TDU World have had a major rewrite to allow us to reopen ALL the Cash Game Poker rooms, allowing everyone to rank up to VIP and unlock special cocktails and achievements previously considered unobtainable.

For now, only the Cash Game Poker rooms will be available.
The Sit & Go Public/Private Rooms, and the Poker Tournament rooms including spectators views are currently a “Work in Progress” and we hope to be able to release them soon.

Alongside the release of Cash Game Poker, this release also contains a significant rewrite to the Casino Code which is still ongoing.
Optimizations are being worked on every month to ensure we bring the best experience possible to the table (pun intended ).

Other Features

As we look to the future of the TDU World Servers, several features that are still classed as “Work in Progress”, including but not limited to the unreleased Racing Centres and Club VS Club Races, and much more are being worked on each month and tested with the Alpha Team to ensure we are able to complete our goal of a feature complete game server for TDU2 completely from scratch.

We will continue to prioritize efforts based on whatever is causing the most negative effects to the TDU2 Online Experience, according to community feedback, starting with another major review of the Connectivity code (Lobbying in particular) to help get people connected to cruise, and ultimately participate in events across Ibiza and Hawaii.

As always, you can check the TDU World Website for the latest rundown on what’s supported and you can also keep up to date on the absolute latest as we continue to release incremental tweaks and major updates on a regular basis and provide news to our community on the TDU World Discord.

Conclusion

As we continue to look towards the future, Team TDU World wishes to thank everyone who continues to support TDU World, be that through playing with us, supporting us on Patreon, or just by sharing our content.

We remain committed to our goals of continuing where Eden Games left off, by bringing you more content in the future via the Mod Packs, as well as the initial goal of achieving a feature complete Multiplayer Server and Launcher.

Whilst we continue cooking behind the scenes to take your TDU2 experience to the next level, we can only achieve these goals with your support.

Team TDU World is a small collaborative team consisting of:

Xarlith
Managing and creating the Mod Packs, working with data and reverse engineering

xXBeefyDjXx
Managing and creating the TDU World Launcher/Installers, Game Servers and Websites, reverse engineering + infrastructure management

Esurient
Assisting with Website design/development

The TDU World Alpha Testing Team
Reviewing every update to the Mod Packs + Server Updates on an ad-hoc basis

As such, we greatly appreciate everyone’s patience as we continue to work on our promises and extend our invitation to join us on our mission.
If you feel you have what it takes to collaborate with us, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Xarlith or xXBeefyDjXx on Discord.

Patreon

A huge thank you to anyone who 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 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 Alpha 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!