XF Extreme Formula news & patch notes

The whole game is here, I’m not kidding. But we’re not out of early access yet, there’s still a few things missing which I will list below.

> Final boss music is missing.

> Ending music is missing.

> Credits music is missing.

> Rare story softlocks may occur. (please post about it if you find any)

Known Issues:

> A few minor visual bugs.

> You can restart events you shouldn’t be able to. (IMPORTANT) if the menu icon says “---” plus the amount of resets, then that icon is bugged, resetting may cause a softlock.

I’m really glad to be almost done with this project and I am excited for whatever I get to make next! Thank you everyone who decided to participate in the Early Access program, the game would not be the same without you.

"Chapters" 6 & 7 & 8 (aka months of May, June and July) are finished and I will be starting to work on the final two months shortly. ︀︀June and July are sparse in events, but have major story developments alongside August and (maybe) September.

I should note that August is quite content dense with September being (in spirit) the endgame.

Once the story is complete, I will focus on the last feature: Arcade mode progression. What I'm thinking of is this:

• Vehicle unlocking remains the same as it is now.

• The arcade mode won't change, but a feature will be added instead.

• I'm thinking this feature will be unlocking concept art and lore pieces that can be accessed on the right side of the main menu.

• Completing a cup with a vehicle gives you 1 point and 1 more point is added for each difficulty up to special, where it counts the same as completing the tournament in beyond. (so, 3 or 4 points if you finish at beyond or above),

• Finishing up to 3rd place still gives you the points, an Initial philosophy that I went in while designing this game was that first place would never be required for the completion of anything. I personally find the insistence that you should always come first in a racing game annoying and overused.

• To get all the points you have to beat every cup with every vehicle on the hardest difficulty and there will be a menu that tracks such completion.

• However, you will only need a fraction (lets say half, or a third) to unlock all of the "Gallery". Overall completion percentage will not be counted and there will not be an achievement.

• (May not happen) Completing the story mode unlocks the "Story Kestrel", were you are able to play as the vehicle you built in the story mode. For now it is unclear to me if this should be its own vehicle or a variant of the main kestrel.

What do you guys think?

Chapter 4 and 5 are finished but they won’t be released just yet. As the story develops I see myself getting closer and closer to the finish line, but before we do that, I want to get rid of the “chapter” naming scheme I've been using so far. Chapters 4 and 5 will now be referred to as April and May as those are the in-game months that they represent in the actual story.

I’m not very good at writing those sorts of updates so I’ll get straight to the point, there are only a few more months of the story to write and make content for, around june or july certain parts of the story will reach their peak and it will likely end by August. I previously wanted to feature the entire year but there’s just not enough content to fill it so the game will end before the in-game month of December.

Depending on the in-game month, it takes about an average of a real life month or so to finish all content for an in-game month, this means for a while now, I’ve been gunning for the finish line, I want the next update to be a beta for 1.0, complete with a re-work for the arcade mode progression system.

I am predicting that this game will reach a 1.0 beta in a few months or so. I won’t give out any specifics as I don’t want to give myself a concrete deadline, but I definitely want XF to be released this year and as soon as possible.

The two softlocks that would happen if you quit the game in the middle of a story event have been fixed. And all "Red Carnival" tracks have been added to single race and time trial menus.

Major update not> Your save file will be erased as usual but there are cheat codes to get you up to speed in the arcade mode.

> There’s a cheat to skip the arcade mode tutorial, hold S, T, and U at the same time in the main menu until you hear a sound.

> Chapters 2 and 3 have been added to the story mode. (February and March)

> Multiple card and animated cutscenes.

> Two new story events, a on foot stage and a racing event.

> Racing event (March) takes place in a sudo open world exclusive to story mode and feature 3 new race tracks.

> Story exclusive tracks have been added to tournament mode.

> Note: The “Red Carnival” Tracks have not been added to single race mode yet, this is a known oversight and will be fixed in the future.

> All vehicles and pilots have been added to the game, this area is considered complete.

> Changes to story progress where certain activities will give you bonuses and some will be closed on certain days.

> Some very obvious bugs and typos from the previous (or new ones) are still present and will remain for now, the goal is to finish story mode as soon as possible

With this update a lot has been included, here’s some patch notes:

> Your save file will be wiped > Changes to internal systems and progression made it inevitable. > Your records will be wiped as well, since… > All major vehicles have had their stats adjusted very slightly.

> Story mode is now available. > It works in a calendar system and features all events from 1st of December 2999, to 25 of January 3000 > The Story mode includes a lot of new features, here’s a few > Night races mode. ( adds a total of 6 tracks + reverse variants) > Story event races. ( total of 3 new tracks) > No-Go zones which totals 8 on-foot levels > All story exclusive racing content was added to the single races menu. > I’m still unsure of how to place those tracks into a tournament format so they only exist as single races for the time being. > Fully playable Shell (main character) third person gameplay, platforming and combat. > Note: Some special moves are more or less placeholders and this area of the game is very likely to change in the future. > Beware of some visual bugs. I intend to address them as other “chapters” (or more accurately, months) get released. > Lots of new music, including some arcade tracks as well. > There’s a cheat to skip the arcade mode tutorial, hold S, T, and U at the same time in the main menu until you hear a sound. > To unlock all of arcade mode, hold "U, L and K".

Developer note: All of this is extremely experimental, the story mode itself has been a major downsizing in scope since it was originally planned. Some areas of the game, like Shell’s apartment or his work have been fully modelled but remain un-used aside from a few cutscenes. Those places were intended to have some meaningful content as well but were cut as part of the general cut in the game’s scope. Regarding the story mode and the future of the game, I’m going to make a “ask me anything” thread in the discussions at some point. Remind me if I forget.

It's what it says on the title.

If there are any issues with the game please reply here.

On another note, I will only be applying the patch to the most up to date version of the game.

Older versions are available but not supported, but you should be able to apply the patch yourself if you desire to play them.

So, I've been calling them "Chapters" but a better word for them is "Months". The game uses a calendar system and you have to chose which activity you want to do in that day, as time progresses, the story moves forward and story events will happen. There will also be a few optional events you may be able to trigger by talking to other racers, the only one currently implemented is the "Night Race Invite" where you might be invited to a new race track or an illegal street race.

The plan is to release the months of "December 2999" and most of, but not all of "January 3000". For January most of the month will be included right up until the final few days.

The reason for this is that not all of the pilots have received their new models yet, and there is a planned story event where all of them should be present. Speaking of pilots, you can interact with them in the proving grounds, but for this release, only some will be available. Whenever we get more chapters, they will also show up in the proving grounds as well.

IMPORTANT: Your save file will be deleted whenever this update comes out. I will provide a cheat code to skip the arcade mode "tutorial" for those who wish to get straight into racing. The arcade model will also slowly be getting more content and will feel more complete as the story develops.

Developer Thoughts: Ok, now that I've spelled all that out, I need to come clean and say that making this story mode has been one of the toughest game dev challenges I have ever taken. I've never done something like this before and I cannot promise most people will enjoy the experience. I'm really not sure if the content I'm making for it is any good at all. I've been driving blind since I started to work on it earlier this year and it's been really hard to develop something like this. I've never played a racing game that did something even remotely similar and I also have no Idea if any of this is a good idea at all. The inclusion of combat in the Spark the Electric Jester series has proven to be controversial already and I am somehow doing the same exact thing but for a different genre instead. I have my reasons for including it and they are unrelated to the Spark TEJ series. But as the game was developed it ended up straying away from that original "reason" and I can't help but feel like I've dug myself into a hole.

• Mobinaria and The Kasei City tracks have new songs.
• All stages have preview animations now.
• There’s now a jingle for getting disqualified, don’t run out of fuel!
• A new mechanic has been added, the OVERDRIVE
• It works by holding the Y button on a controller, while engaging it your vehicle cannot accelerate for a brief moment and then it starts. The longer you stay in it the stronger it will be. This mode consumes a lot of fuel and some of your hull, using it is dangerous. Note that this mechanic is subject to change in the future.
• New combat option: Omni Directional Swipe Attack.
• Now pressing the analog stick + RB will do a swipe attack.
• To do a spin attack, simply let go of the analog stick.
• Note that the swipe attack has a longer cooldown then the spin and consumes a tad bit of O2.
• The white kestrel has 4 new variants, using parts from the story mode, they are balanced around the other vehicles and with that the cheat kestrel has been removed.
• Note that the ATK variant might be a little weak at the moment and might be reworked in the future.
• Fixed an issue with windowed mode, you can now play in windowed mode with little to no issue.
• The Forgery has been “replaced” by the Forgery LB, a slightly weaker vehicle that lacks the sliding of the regular version. The old version can still be selected as a variant.
• Most vehicles now have decals.
• Sonic booms are quieter.