Hello Drivers!

We’re now Back to the Streets from holidays. It’s been two months already and it’s about a time to bring next patch!

AI improvements

I’ve been busy improving ActiveLife AI - the most complex part of the game code. As a result, AI is now able to better navigate in tight spaces, do better traffic overtakes, keep up with the player speeds, better navigate streets, do more shortcuts on open fields - chasers are now way more competent on achieving their main objective - smash player car :) There’s still room for improvements - stay tuned!

NFS 3 Hot Pursuit tachometer and speedometer addon

It is kinda sad that this style of tachometer display was abandoned after NFS High Stakes never been used in any other games. I decided to add this recognizable element as a litte letter of love to this game.

Zap Mode addon - Your eyes on the city!

Second addon is quite special as it lets you change cars in unusual ways:

Directly inspired by the DRIVER San Francisco’s Shift mode - where Tanner being in coma has a magic ability to change cars on the fly. You can take any car and start pursuit, or with a little help of concerned citizens lose your tail.

Also Syndicate and Miami Classic campaigns missions were adjusted accordingly for it so while you out ouf your car, AI takes your place and completing objective for you.

Controls can be assigned in settings menu (accessed from addons menu), default settings are:

• X - action
• Z - return or cancel
• WASD - movement

Launch on Steam Deck?

Due to the shortcut I’ve taken and engine is currently running on WebGPU Dawn the game is not able to work properly on Proton. With Patch 2 it is now possible to run game on Linux. Just unpack 7z archive and run AppImage.

I hope it works, and if doesn’t, please contact me here or in our Driver Madness Discord.

And that’s it! I hope you enjoy this update.

Patch 2 full release notes

Addons:

• Added ZapMode addon
• Added NFS 3 Tachometer addon

Changes:

• Improved AI driving and expanded behaviour
• Adjusted Cops pursuit and respawn logic
• Adjusted difficulty settings
• Added controls binding from game pause menu
• Added controller buttons showing up when controller is used
• Added separate controller deadzone settings for steering, camera and accelerator/brake controls
• Added map viewing in pause menu
• Adjusted Vette suspension
• Minor performance improvements
• UI improvements
• Film Director UI improvements

Fixes:

• Fixed Addon not shown up in addons menu if folder name had non-alphabetical characters
• Fixed random game freezes
• Fixed animated textures played on pause
• Fixed SDL_GetWindowWMInfo error
• Fixed cases of inability to bind controller axes
• Fixed objects appearing out of place on screen
• Fixed many minor bugs and crashes