AI Learns To Drive news & patch notes

• Development (Now): I'm just working on the new features and content.
• Test Branch (SOON @Tester ): If you want to try the new (unstable/buggy) stuff early, I'll put it here. Check Discord for info.
• New Videos (Before Launch): I'll start posting clips and trailers to show you what's coming.
• Full Release v1.0 (Late Spring - Est. May): The big release.
• Post-Release Events (After Launch): We can organize some events such as tournament.

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• Elite Preservation: Select preservation mode: Off, Auto, or Custom preserve best cars without mutation
• Auto-Save Modes: Save on Every Generation, Best Lap, or Best Distance + notification when auto-saved
• Editor Weight & Biases Initialization: Choose Random or Zero initialization for new weights when adding layers or resetting
• Sorting Options: Sort networks & tracks in the selector menu

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Improved Save Button: Choose to save highest-reward car from previous or current generation prevents accidentally saving a bad network
• Reward Sliders: Improved UI with more ticks and wider layout
• Parameter Reset: Reset parameters per group General, Reproduction, Rewards - not all parameters at once
• Time Display: Training and last save times now show as readable duration e.g. 2h 15m

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Various minor bug fixes

🎮 WORKSHOP

• Upload Content: Upload custom tracks and networks to Steam Workshop
• Subscribe: Subscribe to Workshop items easily

🏆 LEADERBOARDS

• Workshop Leaderboards: All Workshop tracks now have leaderboards
• Modded Network Indicator: Shows if a modded network was used
• Challenge Stars: Stars now visible on leaderboard uploaded automatically after starting track
• Full List Link: Added link to Steam Community page with full leaderboard list

🎯 CUSTOM CHALLENGES

• Challenge Creator: Add custom challenges to any track and upload to Workshop

🧠 NETWORKS

• Network Size Limits: Increased max neurons to 16 from 12 and max layers to 12 from 8

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Leaderboard UI: Improved loading, uploading, and UI
• UI: Various UI improvements

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Raycast crash bug
• Fixed: Lap completion issue on smallest track

💙 Community Thanks & Price Increase

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• New Content: 3 tracks, 4 challenges 54 stars total
• New Sensors: Front/Side Acceleration, Wall Distance
• New Achievements: Drift Master, Terminal Velocity
• Lap Notifications: Shown when completing new best lap

🧠 NETWORKS

• DriftMaster: New network specialized for drifting
• Updated Networks: Eagle, Rhino, Sleipnir with brake control
• Removed: Cheetah network

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Distance Display: All units now metric (m, km/h)
• UI Scaling: Better scaling across resolutions
• Sensor Editor: Better descriptions and naming
• Population Settings: Higher default population size
• Decimal Precision: Unified across all displays

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Reward Sliders: Values no longer reset when saving
• Fixed: Leaderboards: Upload rate limiting issues

NEW OUTPUTS

Added optional neural network outputs:

• Handbrake: Apply handbrake for drifting Train your AI to drift!

• Brakes: Apply regular brakes

REWARD SYSTEM OVERHAUL

• Reward Editor: Customize rewards and choose what behaviors to train

• 7 NEW Reward Metrics:

• Drifting: Time spent in a sustained drift

• Actual Distance: Actual distance the car's body has traveled

• Wall Distance: Distance from the nearest wall

• Center Distance: Distance from the track's center line

• Momentum Change: How much the car's speed changes

• Throttle Frequency: How much the throttle input changes

• Braking Frequency: Total time spent braking

• Partially multi-threaded physics updates.
• Rewrote Godot's raycasting system from scratch (testers estimate 100-300% performance improvements)

• Fixed inconsistencies in the first generation, newly created cars, the wheel sensor, and after pausing the simulation.
• Improved determinism to ~99% (collisions remain non-deterministic).

• Added "Maximum Parallelism" setting to control thread count.
• Increased default max population to 800 (up to 3000).
• Added a "Lap Time" reward (set this to -100% if you want fast lap times)

• Standardized terminology (e.g., "Score" is now "Distance").
• Fixed lap time rounding issues.

🚀 NEW FEATURES

Car Details Panel: View detailed real-time car data, including:

• Last lap times

• Live reward breakdown

• ...

Car Status Icons: New icons display car status for:

• Parent from previous generation

• Highest reward (next parent)

• Was driven

• Is idle

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Reward Sliders: Increased precision for more granular reward tuning

• Challenge Tooltips: Hover over challenges to see detailed descriptions for better clarity

⚖️ BALANCE

• A07 Challenge: Updated to require completing a lap with the Truck

• Collision Physics: Reduced wall friction and crash penalties. Leaving collision elimination off might be a viable tactic

🚗 NEW VEHICLES

• Rally Car: Excels on dirt with 4WD for better drift control, decent on other surfaces
• Snowmobile: Dominates on ice but struggles on asphalt
• Truck: A heavy vehicle that is slow to turn and hard to stop
• More info about vehicles is available on the wiki

🏆 CAMPAIGN IMPROVEMENTS

• Network Updates: Updated default networks (Rhino, Cheetah, Polar, Turtle) with new vehicle assignments
• Challenge Updates: Rebalanced some challenges for new vehicle speeds. Further rebalancing and more B-series tracks are coming soon

📚 NEW WIKI GUIDE

• Training Strategies: New wiki guide with four distinct strategies for evolving your AI:
  • Starter Strategy: A simple approach for easy tracks, ideal for beginners
  • Selective Breeder: Manually select promising cars to guide evolution
  • Improved Starter: An advanced strategy for better performance on harder tracks
  • Endurance Trainer: A long-term method for steady improvement on difficult tracks

🎨 VISUAL & 🎵 AUDIO IMPROVEMENTS

• Vehicle Icons: Displayed in selection menus and leaderboards now with color
• Engine Sounds: Added custom engine sounds for each new vehicle
• Collision Effects: Improved collision sound and particle effects

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• Tutorial: Interactive guide to teach new players the core mechanics
• Hall of Fame: View all-time best players in the new leaderboard section

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Leaderboards: Now display track names and entry counts for better context
• Leaderboards: Improved loading & uploading
• UI: Improved UI

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Display Bug: Resolved issue where game would crash if setting too large resolution

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• Leaderboards: Compete on campaign track leaderboards with your best lap times
• Game Speed: Control simulation speed with 0.5x, 1x, and 2x options

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Lap Time Precision: Now displayed to two decimal places for more accuracy
• Content Descriptions: Improved descriptions for tracks and networks, and now visible for locked cars
• New Car: Added a new default car trained by community member @cjramos22

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Dialog Layering: Corrected how dialog windows overlap
• Fixed: B06 Track: Resolved incorrect ID for the B06 challenge track

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• Charts: Display evolution history with multiple data types including Speed, Score, Population, Time, Track Timeline, Lap Time, and Settings
• Evolution Save Files: New settings tracking and GZIP compression - same structure but smaller files
• New Godot Version: Migrated to 4.3
• Leader Following: Follows car with highest current reward
• Best Car Saving: Now saves car with highest current reward
• New Settings: Options to show/hide car sensors and car outline

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Selection Methods: Removed novelty from selection methods
• Fixed: Car Movement: Eliminated cars no longer move
• Fixed: Linux Fonts: Fixed font fallbacks on Linux
• Fixed: Collision Count Reward: Corrected counting when elimination enabled
• Fixed: Filename Case: Resolved saving filename case sensitivity bug

💡 NOTES

• GZIP compression may break existing scripts
• New Godot 4.3 version might have unexpected bugs
• Some of the new information might be missing in existing save files

🚀 NEW FEATURES

• New Track: 6 new tracks with 18 new challenges and new tile types
• Reward System: New evolution settings tab for customizing car rewards and penalties
• Parent Preservation: Option to keep best cars unmutated during evolution
• New Tiles in Track Editor: Select different tile types using scroll wheel or number keys
• Active Population Counter

🛠️ IMPROVEMENTS

• Achievements: Add 36 and 45 star achievements
• Icons: Enhanced icons, should be working on Proton

🐛 FIXES

• Fixed: Volume Control lag: Eliminated slider lag, crashes in audio settings
• Fixed: Display Settings crash: Resolved crashes related to fullscreen, borderless and screen size options

💡 NOTES

• Only compatible tracks can be saved in track editor

• Manual Weight & Bias Editing: Fine-tune your AI by directly editing neural network weights and biases. Simply click on them to adjust!
• Network Editor Overhaul: Improved user experience in the network editor, fixed inverted weight colors (red, green)
• Expanded Window Settings: Added resolution options and borderless window mode (should resolve resize-related crashes).
• UI Scaling: UI now scales for better visibility on larger screens.
• Dynamic Backgrounds: Replaced the static background with dynamic backgrounds that adapt to the average color of the track tiles.
• Simulation Accuracy Option: Boost FPS during training by reducing the accuracy of neural network updates. For optimal performance during evaluation, set accuracy to 100%.
• Maximum Population: Raise the maximum population number up to 1000 (works best with reduced accuracy).
• Steam Auto-Cloud Support: Automatically sync your custom tracks and neural networks between devices via Steam Cloud.

• Auto-Save: Optional auto-save feature saves best cars after each generation.
• Idle Elimination: Option to automatically eliminate cars idle for >8s.
• Direction Sensor: New sensor outputs 1, 0, or -1 indicating forward, stationary, or reverse movement along the track.
• Fixed: Precise Time Sync: Times now synchronized to 1/10th second, fixing rounding errors.
• Control Panel Shortcuts: Added shortcuts for play/pause, skip, etc.

• Added 13 challenging Steam achievements
• Added 4 new basic sensors:
  • Front Velocity
  • Side Velocity
  • Angular Velocity
  • Wheel Angle
• Added options to restore network state from auto-saved snapshots
• Speed is now displayed in km/h

• Fixed bug where lower FPS would cause faster lap times
• Improved stats precision
• Fixed skidding at high speeds
• Fixed "09 Sharpest" ID

• Near-Deterministic Physics
  • Setting the mutation rate to 0 should result in all cars behaving identically. (Selection size 0)
• Improved stat accuracy.
• A warning is now displayed before overriding your network.
• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed difference between best lap times and challenge completions.
  • Fixed scrolling issues.
  • Corrected excessively long skid marks.
  • Fixed the vehicle sound playing before generation starts.
  • Attempted to fix font issue for Proton users.

• Added a new top-tier unlockable network: Eagle (trained by Gaborlink on Discord)
  • Trained for over 800 generations.
  • Costs 22 stars.
• Reduced the star cost for unlocking several networks.
• Track and neural network names are now displayed in the top-left corner.
• Improved UI hiding behavior.
• Bug fixes.