Update Speculation thread

oh...

 

So WCUSA now being separated into different meshes means that we will probably see a big performance improvement? Having separated meshes means that the game will only load them at full detail if you’re near them. I’m eager to try this, as I’m tired of playing in the dragstrip at 20 FPS lol

 

Figured I'd quote my post from another thread here since people like talking about how we have so many 1980's cars and start fights about what other decades should be focused on:

 

i wonder what this teaser tuesday's teaser will be

 

Potentially, but only really if they make LODs or have pop in. If so, then yeah it'd be cool. I don't really around with it much because it runs poorly.

 

Don't think there is one this Tuesday. That or they're doing it a bit late

 

H-Series Restyle? Maybe the Wendover?

 

I hope we some more photos of the Gavril D15 1994 facelift. Going by the leaked files from 3 months back ,it almost looks like the 1991 to 1996 F150 model but slightly newer.

 

wendover facelift kek

 

and then it is literally ONLY the facelift and not the rest of the car.
So you only get a few pieces of plastic bumper trim and 2 headlights or something

 

exactly just like a pile of facelifted parts with nothing else

 

No, you get the 2000 Roamer fascia and taillights

 

Cursed

Do you guys think it's more likely that they'll put the refreshed photomode and Gavril stuff and everything else in the next update or dripfeed the smaller stuff until we get the Gavril update?

 

my guess is that the D series facelift and superpig/prerunner will be in this update, they might also have remodeled the van's existing front fascia like they did with the roamer (but no van facelift yet)
I also wouldn't be surprised if the bolide and legran reworks are held off until the wendover is released, perhaps for an 80's themed update?

 

It's rather difficult to say what we can expect to make it in this update as I can't think of anything being actually confirmed aside from mysterious handling improvements

-Updated 12-15-2020-

Photomode: Functional new photomode shown on September 15th.

1990's Gavril Trucks + Derivatives stuff:

*Update 12-15-2020* Due to a recent post showing a lot of new stuff on CarKiller's Imgur, I'm just going to rewrite this section and archive what I had in a spoiler below... See that link for the imgur stuff and links in the spoiler for references to everything else. Note that imgur posts by devs are always personal stuff and often contain mods or content that otherwise will not make it in.

• Interior improvements: We've seen a couple of WIP shots of the reworked standard interior and multiple teasers have shown a round dashboard hump and relatively modern bucket seats with headrests, reminiscent of the Roamer's interior. It makes sense that they would put that interior in the 1994-2000 facelift since the trucks share so much already. One imgur shot showed the high end late facelift with a bench seat lacking headrests, which was mandated on American light trucks in 1991. That could be a result of imgur shots being unofficial and thus not an official config, or they just didn't make a facelift bench seat.
• Facelift/Trim changes: We are getting two variations of the 1994-2000 facelift. We know at least one version has the 2000-2006 Roamer's rear bumper (not exactly the same but very similar) and a new tailgate. In the imgur photos we have also seen new door handles, rims, caps for the HD wheels, and so on. It appears that fleet models will have the pre-facelift mirrors and get a version of the front end with headlights similar to the pre-facelift and the H-Series, while normal trims will see a version with more modern headlights. There was also a shot of a flat bed with wheel arches that looks like the trailer in game, but it is unknown if this is official of a personal mod.
• D45: Analogous to the H45, just an uplift frame for the 35 model. Box uplift and roll back flatbed have been confirmed and we've only seen a single cab version, no hint at a crew cab. It's safe to say that the D45 will also get the H45's static flatbed and ambulance uplift since the differences between the frames are minor. It also seems safe to assume that the H45 will get the rollback for the same reason, even though a van based rollback would be weird.
• Prerunner: At this point we have seen the pre-facelift, mid-facelift, and fleet late facelift front ends for the widebody (Only the mid-facelift on the dove-nose). We know it will have options for 4WD IFS and were told to not expect twin-I beams but it also isn't off the table. We have not seen any sign of a Charro version. We were told it was on the table but a time concern. As the truck did get delayed for the interior updates, maybe they found time for it, or maybe not. Ferrettank seemed to like a suggestion for flag poles but it came too late to have the time for this update.
• Note: We know the model years of the 1990's Gavril trucks will be moved around so the lineup's make more sense. No idea how significant the changes will be. Also no word on new engines, but it sounded like drivetrains were a big reason for the model year changes. On a similar ntoe, they removed a fair number o focnfigs last time the D-Series got a lot of configs, no word on how they will deal with config spam. Even if we only see conversions of existing configs for the facelift, we still have the prerunner/crawler with multiple frame length options and the D45.
• There is a bed liner in game, maybe we will see that.
• The H-Series was seen in the teaser for the facelift D-Series alongside the facelift Roamer we already have. The H-Series had some changes such as integrated rear door hinges. We know she will be getting a lot of content someday, but we don't know how much, if any, will be in this update. Rear lights have been done for all of the 1990's Gavril trucks.

Spoiler: Original Speculation

• We've seen multiple shots of the new interior with the most recent (October 20th) looking to be fairly far in development. Also worth noting that the D45 rollback teaser (see below for details) had a round dash hump, which is much more reminiscent of the Roamer's interior than the D-Series interior.
• We know the Crawler/Prerunner is tied to that, so it seems safe to say we will be seeing these released together.
• We also saw a single teaser of a facelift Roamer, a D-Series with new rims/tailgate/door handles/modified version of the 2000-2006 Roamer's rear bumper (this is confirmed to be a 1994-2000 facelift), and a van without obvious rear door hinges all together and we all know about the D-Series facelift in the files, so it seems that we will be seeing the facelift D-Series and at least some new H-Series parts soon. Also, the rear lights have been redone for all of them. Maybe front lights too based on the D45 teaser. See here for a moc up of the parts that are already in the files
• We've seen a D45 and box truck and rollback in a teaser. It's probably analagous to the H45: just an uplift version of the 35 model. Possibly with the other 2 H45 uplifts? (Ambulance and static flatbed). It is yet to be seen how they will deal with this concerning the vehicle selector UI. It has a fair number of new parts, including a fourth fascia which is very similar to that of the H-Series (We got a better look at this in the prerunner teaser on Dec 10th, this H-Series like one seems to be a variation of the facelift we already knew about), new caps for the HD steelie wheels, a front bumper with integrated lights, and so on. Since the HD uplift frame now has a mini version of the T-Series' rollback uplift, the H45 may see it as well since it is on an similar frame.
• There is this bedliner in game

West Coast USA Improvements: We've seen multiple instances of WCUSA with some improvements to roadside stuffs, more to the highway interchanges, and we know that WCUSA in the dev build has at least some underground features, less roadblocks, and city meshes are about the size of a block instead of everything being one mesh as they currently are. (Personal note: How cool would it be too have a full system of sewers/underground trains like Utah's mineshafts? Dream come true for me, but it sounds like we are just getting a couple of tunnels)
Mystery Handling Improvements: See here and here
Edit: Updated Brake Noises: See here. We have no idea when to expect this to see public release, but it seems to have unintentionally sneaked it's way into previous updates so it's probably close enough to put in the green section here
Jungle Rock Island Remaster: We have only officially seen concept art, though apparently there was a picture of it posted to Imgur... Still, we haven't officially seen the thing properly and it is a big project compared to the other remasters, so I'm doubting this one.
Edit 12-15-2020: I'm moving this to orange due to how many imgur shots have been posted of it by devs.
Driving Dynamics/Electric Systems/Etc...: Soon after the last update we saw a teaser with updates to the eSBR, and there's always stuff to tweak with this stuff. But it also tends to take awhile as it can get complicated, so we can't say for certain when to expect it
Triple Screen Support: "Technically working" as of August. That could mean anything and doesn't say anything about how close it is to being ready for a public release.
Bolide, Legran, and Covet Updates: No official word on when to expect these. I'm mentioning it because the Bolide was definetly was different in the last official media we've seen it in, the LeGran had a redone third brake light and reworded rear window collision, and the Covet had a teaser with new body work and suggestion of a new drivetrain which is being worked on by the creator of the Covet Blitz mod. However, the Covet teaser was given nearly 2 weeks after 0.21 was on feature freeze. Has this been finished for 2 weeks or is it WIP? There was a Covet shot on the imgur list which had some bodywork additions but not the hood bulge from the Twitter shot
Hopper Additions: We've seen unofficial shots of a police skin/light bar and a park ranger skin, as well as a config that uses the Beam Safari skin that we were supposed to get a config for but never did. These are unofficial shots, but a park ranger and sheriff config would make sense, and that Beam Safari config has been in dev limbo ever since the Hopper was released. It isn't the first time we've seen it unofficially used though, so I'm not really expecting these.
The usual development limbo stuff: H-Series side door, Ibishu 200BX Gavril 4.5 swap, D-Series tow truck, dyno etc... Of note, the mystery UI that was mentioned once in August 2018 and never again. We really could use a revamp of the UI. The FCV and D-Series selectors are rather messy but there's little that can be done due to how the current UI is coded.
Note: Wendover; effectively confirmed to not be in the update. We saw a teaser back in August but it clearly was far from finished. This would be the first time since December 2018 that the pattern of a ground up new car every other major update has been broken. We've seen 2 teasers of it in various discord chats on Dec 9th showing it far from finished but technically in game, or at least able to show the "user is driving Soliad Wendover" tag in discord.

Another note: That imgur dump included pics of a new version of the ETK-800 Driving Experience skin, one for the K-Series with TTSport logos (even though it doesn't have TTSport configs currently, which is interesting), and a Grand Marshall interceptor. Again, no idea what is official and what's a personal project of CarKiller. There was also a very strange LeGran wagon that slightly different from released mods and was immediately removed when this thread discovered it. Maybe a WIP mod or something, it's impossible to say.

 

I think brake squeal noises was a feature that was accidentally leaked in the last update, probably has a high chance of being included in the next one.

 

oh nice!

 

On a note completely unrelated to the next update... I've been thinking about a way to implement a barn find like game play mechanic in career mode.

It's no secret that I love barn find mechanics in open world racing games. I love that games like Forza Horizon and NFS Payback give a "rare" vehicle as a reward for exploring the map. These would be especially cool in Beam since our maps may be small, but the vehicle/physics model means that there's still plenty of hiding spaces where you may only be able to reach by using a small vehicle, or one especially good off road (or just be skilled with off-roading), or one with some other special feature... However, this still wouldn't work well in Drive's career mode, at least at the current rate we are getting vehicles. With only 29 vehicles even if we include platform cousins, we just can't spare enough entire cars for this in career mode. Maybe the Bolide would fit, but it's rather silly to have an entire game mechanic like this just for one car *NFS Heat Black Market*. Perhaps rare versions of cars like the Barstow would work as well, but it would be pointless when the player could just buy a Barstow and spec one to be more or less the same as the hypothetical barnfind.

It's also no secret that I wish we would see more special vehicle parts in game to really show off how special the physics/vehicle model is. Think swivel frames, v-drives, swing axles, early electric drivetrains like the C130-EV Nissan Laurel, and so on. I think these sort of rare/special car parts would be a really cool stand in for barn find vehicles in game. Imagine being deep in the Jungles of JRI and stumbling across an old car wreck or shed or something that has an otherwise unobtainable unique part. It would be a neat way to give the player something special and cool but not necessary as a reward for really exploring the maps in career mode.

 

I think barn finds could be executed with rare versions of normal cars.
driving to that barn in Hirochi raceway, and finding a bluebuck stock car, or finding a GTz miramar in the port warehouse in belasco.
Even if you can buy them normally, getting an otherwise expensive car for free would be a neat feature.

 

Maybe finding something with significance to the story, like Pete Burnside's stock car, would be cool, but I feel it wouldn't be as interesting for most of the playerbase compared to finding something that actually effects gameplay.