Patch notes

0.3.0 doesn’t race with 0.2.x: everyone needs to update to play together. Replays from every earlier build still play.

Highlights

• Custom machines online: build your own machine in the launcher’s new Garage and race it.
• Rejoin: if your game crashes or you close it mid-race, you can jump back into the same race.
• Practice mode with a one-minute rewind, save and load, and your own lobby rules.
• True widescreen: a wider view with nothing cut off at the top or bottom.
• A new course map, and a new observer view for watching races.
• Mines come back after they go off, so the whole pack gets to use them.
• GX Unleashed in full: its machine stats and its rule changes (boost energy, no speed cap, dash plates).
• High refresh rate (experimental): 120 Hz, 240 Hz or your display’s rate.

Online racing

• Rejoin: if your game closes or crashes during a race, Rejoin puts you back into it. The computer drives your machine until you’re back.
• Closing the game window mid-race offers Rejoin too.
• A short network drop no longer ends your race: the game reconnects and carries on.
• Custom machines race online, with their own parts, pilot and colours. Everyone sees the same machine.
• Server rule changes show in the lobby straight away, without leaving and rejoining.
• The race server now only sends a race to the address that joined it.

Racing

• Mines come back 0.2 s after they go off and fade back in. Lobbies can change the time or turn it off.
• New course map: every racer as a dot, with the start line and race direction marked in yellow. Hold the C-stick left, right, up or down to turn and tilt it; it springs back when you let go.
• Hits and lunges look and feel like the console, rumble included.
• Your place shows at the finish, and the finish order follows versus mode’s rules.
• Name tags show only for players, only up close, and fade quickly.
• Knocked out, the results camera now watches your wreck, or the winner if your wreck is gone, not an empty spot.
• Recovery strips change colour with distance, as on a console.

Speed

• A frame that would be late anyway skips its drawing, so the race keeps its timing.
• Replays no longer slow down while they load on heavy courses such as Story chapter 1.
• Fixed a rare freeze where the game stopped after the finish while drawing.

Picture

• Settings, Game, Refresh rate (experimental): 60 Hz (default), 120 Hz, 240 Hz or Display. Extra pictures are blended between the game’s own 60. It adds about one frame of input delay; 60 Hz has none.
• Settings, Game, Widescreen: Off, Game’s, or True.
  • Game’s is the game’s own 16:9 mode, which trims a little off the top and bottom.
  • True keeps the full view and widens the sides, drawn at full width with no stretching.

Stat packs

• GX Unleashed now plays exactly as the mod does: its machine stats, plus its three rule changes. A boost uses less energy each frame, there is no speed cap, and a dash plate’s boost lasts half a second plus a quarter of the machine’s boost time. Used with the permission of AKC12, and of Twilight for the code.
• A stat pack can now carry these rule numbers as well as machine stats. A race without a pack is exactly the game.
• Lobbies can let each racer choose their own pack (server rule mixed-packs, off by default; Quick Play always uses one pack for everyone).

Practice

• New Practice on the Play tab: a solo run on any course, with your machine, setting and laps.
• Start pauses. The stick rewinds up to a minute, D-pad right saves, D-pad left loads.
• Practice has the same rules as a custom lobby, for one player: stats or a stat pack, machine setting, boost from the start, Restore, and mines (on with their delay, or off).
• Every run is kept as a replay.

Replays

• Every replay plays as the race, from any racer’s camera, with the scrub bar. The old Replay mode is gone.
• The Replays page has tabs for all replays, races and practice runs.

Watching races

• New observer view when you spectate, are knocked out, or watch a replay:
  • the order and gaps on the left;
  • camera choices top right;
  • the racer you follow at the bottom;
  • the course map in the corner.
• Z switches between the observer view, the game’s own HUD, and a clean picture. In the clean picture a faint “Show HUD” button brings it back.

Garage

• Build your own machine: pick a body, cockpit and booster, any of the 41 pilots, and colours for each part. Use the four stock colours or your own paint with the colour wheel, brightness bar or a hex code. The name comes from the parts, as in the game.
• Three shelves, Favourites, Stock and Custom, with search and filters for grades.
• The Stats choice shows any stat pack’s numbers, with each changed value marked next to the stock one. In a lobby you see the lobby’s.
• In a lobby, the Garage shows the machines the lobby allows. “All 41” shows the rest greyed out.
• Custom machines show their body, boost and grip grades, and the left column shows the machine you race in its colours.

Launcher

• Works with a controller (gamepad or GameCube adapter):

  • D-pad or stick to move, A to press, B to go back;
  • L and R switch tabs, Z switches a tab’s pages;
  • Start for RACE, Ready or Play.

  Typing still needs a keyboard.

• Discord shows what you’re doing in Piconet. Turn it off in Settings, Online, “Show on Discord”.

• The launcher notices if the game freezes and offers to close it, keeping the replay.

• If your processor lacks AVX2, the launcher says so instead of the game crashing at start.

• Chat filter: slurs are never delivered, links aren’t allowed, and repeated or rapid lines are refused. Two refused lines in a minute mute you for five minutes. Settings, Online, “Hide swear words” (on by default) masks swearing in what you receive.

For server hosts

• 0.3.0 games only race on 0.3.0 servers and relays: the race protocol changed.

• New rule mixed-packs: each racer may pick one of the server’s packs.

• New rule mine-regen: how long a mine stays gone, 0 (gone for the race, as in the game) or 50 to 5000 ms. The default is 200.

• The machine setting rule can be a range, for example 80-100: each racer keeps their own setting, brought inside it. One value still fixes it for everyone.

Security

• Packets from the race server now carry a key for each player, so nobody else can send your game race data.
• The race server refuses controls that no controller can make.
• Fixes on the servers against crashing, freezing or flooding a lobby on purpose, and against a few crafted files that could crash the launcher or the game.

Fixed

• With Restore on, a crash or fall no longer sends you to spectating while the game puts your machine back.
• A machine out of energy is only out once it stops, not while it still coasts. The energy meter and HUD stay up while it coasts.
• A race no longer waits forever for a stuck computer racer.
• Custom racers’ portraits show their own pilot.
• A custom machine’s colour sent in the wrong form used to show as white parts for everyone. It’s now refused instead.
• Boosting a lot while the game re-ran steps (after a rollback, while rejoining, or while scrubbing a replay) could freeze the game. Fixed.

Known issues

• Ultrawide screens (21:9 and wider) aren’t supported yet. Widescreen goes up to 16:9.
• High refresh rate is experimental and adds about one frame of input delay. A version without the delay is being worked on.
• The first start of a new version can take a while as Windows Defender scans the new game files. Later starts are faster.
• Rare: very frequent rollbacks right after a race starts can corrupt the game’s memory and freeze it. A fix is planned for a later version.
• Multi-core physics is built in but switched off for now. It comes back once a rare crash it can cause is fixed.

Details

Rejoin. The race server keeps the race’s inputs. A returning game runs the race again from the start, out of sight behind LOADING, until it reaches the same moment as everyone else. Control comes back a few seconds after it catches up, at the same step in every game. A rejoined game’s replay holds the whole race.

Mines. In the game, a mine that goes off is gone for the rest of the race, so the first machine to touch it takes its push away from everyone behind. Now it’s armed again after the lobby’s delay (0.2 s by default). Machines that reach it in the same step as the first all get the push, as before. The delay is the same in every game of the race. The rules line shows it only when it isn’t 0.2 s (“mines back after 0.5 s”, or “mines stay gone”).

High refresh rate (experimental). The game still runs 60 times a second. Each extra picture is a blend between two of the game’s real frames, so the game waits for the next frame before showing the one before it: about one frame of input delay. The race itself is unchanged. A version without the delay is being worked on.

True widescreen. The game’s own 16:9 mode narrows the view from top to bottom by about 13% and stretches a 4:3-wide picture sideways. True keeps the 4:3 height of view and widens the sides, from about 76° to about 86° across, and draws the picture at full width. It changes only what you see, never the race.

Observer view. The tower’s gaps are times behind the leader at the same point on the track, or laps behind. A knocked-out racer also sees that they’re out at the top.

Practice rewind. While paused, the stick moves back or forward up to a minute: slowly with a little tilt, up to eight times as fast at full tilt. You can also press or drag the bar under the picture. Start resumes after a second from the moment shown, and what came after it is gone. The replay keeps the run as you finally drove it, without the rewinds.

Replays. The game’s own replay mode played some races differently from how they were raced (a knocked-out racer, mines that come back, Unlimited laps). Every replay now plays as the race instead, and replays from every earlier build play exactly as before.

Custom machines. Your machine’s parts, pilot and colours travel with you into the match and the replay. A stat pack applies to its parts the same way the race adds them up.

The boost freeze. When you boost, the game frees some memory one frame late, through a short list of 32 slots that it empties once a frame. After a rollback, a rejoin or while scrubbing a replay, Piconet runs several of the game’s steps in one frame, and with a lot of boosting that list could fill up and freeze the game. It’s now emptied after every step, the way a normal frame does. Normal play is unchanged.

Security. A security review went through everything new since the last one: the servers, the launcher and the game. The problems that matter today are fixed in this version, each with a test that shows it. A few that would only matter with many more players are planned for later versions.

Races with 0.2.0, 0.2.1 and 0.2.2.

Game

• Fixed: in some races every player’s picture broke up into garbage at the same moment. Pictures still reach the screen at the moment a console would show them.
• Replays open straight at the race’s start: LOADING stays up while the course intro (cut short) and the countdown run unseen, then the first picture is the start with the bar ready, and the sound begins there. Both views.

Launcher

• The four story stages in the course vote have names: High-Stakes Jumps (chapter 3), Championship Circuit (chapter 7), Emperor’s Trial (chapter 8) and Dimension’s Edge (chapter 9). Chapter 8’s card shows the story’s own picture of its place.

Server

• The new build is added to the builds that race together, beside 0.2.0, 0.2.1 and 0.2.2.

Races with 0.2.0 and 0.2.1: one set of lobbies for all three on the official server.

Launcher

• The lobby’s racers list shows every machine in a column of its own, lined up beside the names. The launcher’s window is at least 1280 x 720 and opens at that size.
• A softer look across the launcher: calmer colours and lines, buttons and rows that ease in and out under the pointer. Settings moved to the bottom left, above the connection.
• A player’s tag (“NAME #4F2A”) shows when the pointer is over the name, in the left column, the lobby’s racers, the chat and Quick Play.
• Lobby lists show what a lobby is doing and how full it is: “Gathering · 14/30”.
• The Garage stays open all through a lobby, not only while machines are chosen.
• The Garage, Replays, Settings and the first screen in the new look, with short labels instead of sentences. A knocked-out racer’s replay says KO, in red.
• Problems in the left column are short labels with their reason (“Could not reach the server · refused”, “Desync detected”).
• Clicking a machine in the Garage no longer marks it as a favourite by accident.
• The lobby’s chat opens at the newest messages, also when the page changes.
• Loading into a race, the race page shows the course you are going to, not the one of the race before.
• Messages from the server: a band in the chat marked SYSTEM, a banner for the important ones, a taskbar flash for warnings, and a short sound for urgent ones. A bell beside the tabs lists the last 100.
• Settings, Online: “Notices”, Alert or Silent.
• Settings is split into Game, Online, Controller and Launcher, and opens where you last left it.
• Settings, Launcher: “Interface scale”, 50% to 250%. Ctrl+plus, Ctrl+minus and Ctrl+0 work anywhere in the launcher.
• The race map shows the right course under the racers on Multiplex, Loop Cross, Split Oval, Surface Slide and Double Branches.
• Play and the lobby in the new look: the course vote as cards with a dot a vote and each course’s chance; the draw hops from card to card. “KO” for a knocked-out racer everywhere on Play.
• The Garage fits the window at every size.

Game

• When a rival is nudged back into place after a lag spike, its sparks, boost and energy effects stay on the machine.
• Fixed: a race could freeze for good a few seconds after you boosted while the game was correcting for lag, most often at input delay 0 or with a high ping.
• Spectating is smooth: once you are out or over the line, you watch the race a moment behind live, and the machines move as in a replay.
• Before a race the game shows LOADING with the energy meter filling as it loads, then WAITING FOR PLAYERS.
• A race loads faster.
• A game that freezes in a race, or stops, says what happened in its log, and the last 20 games’ logs are kept.
• Replays: a bar under the picture. Hold: scrub. Click: jump. Space: pause, play. Left, Right: 5 s. Home: the start. End: as far as loaded. Marks: each lap of the leader.
• Replays, frame by frame: . one frame on, , one frame back.
• Replays, race view: [ the racer before, ] the next (as the D-pad’s left and right).
• Replays: the intro runs fast and silent; at the end the last picture stays, and Space plays it again.

Server

• When everyone’s controls for a moment of the race have reached the server, it passes that moment on at once instead of waiting a fixed two frames, so rivals are corrected less often.
• The server gives every player a short tag, like ANA #4F2A, so two players with one name can be told apart.

Races with 0.2.0: players of both builds share lobbies on the official server. Nothing a race computes changed.

Launcher

• Settings has “Input delay”: 0, 1 or 2. It is your own game’s; 2 is what everyone had. A lower delay trades evenness for response: at 0 or 1 in a full race your game may skip a picture now and then when a rollback is deep, most at a high ping. Nobody else is affected.
• Settings has “Full screen mode”: Borderless or Exclusive. Exclusive is the one for G-Sync and FreeSync displays.
• Settings has “Vertical sync”: Off or On. Off unless you switch it on.

Game

• Each picture reaches the screen about 3 ms sooner, at the moment a console would show it, and far more evenly.
• G-Sync and FreeSync displays: with “Full screen mode” set to Exclusive, full screen (F11, Alt+Enter, the window’s button) is the graphics card’s own, and the display follows the game’s 60 pictures a second.
• The game’s window opens where you left it: its place, its size, maximised or in full screen.
• The line each online race leaves in race-summary.txt also says how evenly frames and pictures came.

Known issues

• Exclusive full screen was tried on one NVIDIA card only. If full screen misbehaves on your card, set “Full screen mode” back to Borderless.
• On a display without G-Sync or FreeSync, Exclusive shows a tear line unless “Vertical sync” is On.

A new game build: it doesn’t race version 0.1.0.

Launcher

• Controller page: “Set up in the game” opens F-Zero GX on its own controller options. The game closes when you leave them.
• All 41 machines can be chosen: Dark Schneider and the ten AX machines are added.
• Garage: each machine’s stats, and sorting by any of them.
• Lobby machine choice: the arrow keys move between machines and Enter is Ready.
• First screen: CONTINUE prepares the game from your disc image, with progress and Cancel. Once only.
• RACE and “Play F-Zero GX” are off, with the reason, while the game cannot be started.
• The copy is started by one program, named after the launcher.
• Replays follow a “data” folder that is moved into a new copy, or a copy that is renamed.
• A lost connection says so, also during a race when the server restarts. The race goes on.
• Lobby: a server’s stat pack is named on the lobby’s line, and the Garage shows that pack’s stats.
• Settings: a volume slider for the game, and volume and Mute for the launcher’s own sounds.
• Favourite machines: a heart on each machine, and a button that shows only the marked ones.
• Lobby: one line across the top shows the stage (gathering, course vote, draw, machines, starting, race), with one clock. The start vote and the CPU vote show their counts.
• Course vote: each course shows its chance of being drawn.
• The machine selected in the Garage is your machine: shown in the left column and raced.
• Three short sounds: the course vote opens, the machine stage opens, your race starts.
• Lobby chat: text can be selected and copied.
• Each player’s ping in the lobby.
• Local network: the tab lists servers on your network and joins one by address.

Game

• Online races use your own controller options from the game’s Options screen: button settings, stick calibration and dead zones.
• Steering wheels are not supported online: an online race uses a standard controller or the GameCube adapter.
• The D-pad changes your camera view while you race online, as on a console.
• Spectating: D-pad left and right pick the racer, up goes to the leader, down steps through the camera modes. The C-stick sets the camera height and A hides the HUD.
• Other players’ machines no longer dip into the road in curves, and their shadows stay under them.
• A race ends for everyone 90 seconds after the first machine crosses the line. A racer still on the track then gets the place they hold and reads DISQUALIFIED.
• Every online race leaves one line of figures in race-summary.txt: ping, frame rate, rollbacks, late inputs, how the race ended. Send the file with a report of lag.
• The game can race on a stat pack: changed machine stats that every player’s game loads for the race, when the server has one. GX Unleashed, a rebalance of every machine, is the first, used with its author’s permission.
• The game’s window has a thin strip with the name and four buttons in place of the title bar. Full screen is also F11 and Alt+Enter.
• The game’s window is sharp on a screen scaled above 100%.

Server

• Machines 30 to 40 are allowed, and computer racers drive all 41.
• Four story stages join the course pool: chapters 3, 7, 8 and 9.
• A player can change their name while connected.
• The machine stage lasts 40 seconds.

Known issues

• After leaving the controller options the game sometimes stays open on its Options menu. Close the window.
• A rumble setting made in the game’s controller options does not apply online.
• Your camera view cannot be changed during the countdown, only once the race has started.

The first copy handed out to testers. A second build the same day fixed the name’s Save button.

Launcher

• Controller page: four ports, the GameCube adapter, a live picture of what the game sees.
• Changing your name works with the Save button. Before, only Enter saved it.

Game

• FINISH! shows at your own finish, and the results highlight your own machine.
• A race ends once.
• Players’ games are locked down: no cheats, no saved states, emulator settings fixed.