We really enjoyed our launch-day hands-on with cute racing Circuit Superstars, when the game was first released into Early Access in early March 2021.
Now, the game – which is constantly evolving on the march towards a complete game – has hit v.0.1.0 thanks to an update on the 1st April.
The new Interstate venue is the biggest news here, as the Grand-Canyon based track includes both asphalt and dirt surfaces. To go with the new theme, an off-road super-truck by the name of the Agitator has also been added.
From a gameplay perspective, there have been further improvements to the rival AI behaviour as they will now try to use tyre strategy to their advantage and the Time Trial mode has been thoroughly revised with the leaderboards now immediately displaying the updated times.
Finally, there are now new livery and character cosmetic customisation options. We’ve listed all the changes below and we’ll keep you updated as to what else comes to the game in the future as it nears completion and console versions.
Circuit Superstars v.0.1.0 changelog
Time Trials
- Leaderboards now immediately display updated times.
- “Next ahead” and “Friend ahead” ghosts now generally update immediately upon completing a lap.
- Times shown on leaderboards should now match the actual time of a ghost.
- The name and time of the chosen ghost are now shown in the “fastest lap” display in the HUD.
- The friends leaderboard no longer displays leaderboard positions.
AI improvements
- During race starts, AI incorporates into the racing line less abruptly.
- Improvements to AI performance on all cars. The amount of improvement varies depending on each car.
- Changed the way AI difficulty gets tuned to increase the consistency of AI performance between car categories.
- Remapped difficulties for AI and expanded their performance range per difficulty level. This change creates a wider variety of performance, so players can progress through a difficulty rather than beat every AI or be beaten by all AI in a binary way.
- Implemented AI Strategy. With this new strategy layer, AI drivers judge the race duration and their degradation to try and find an optimal pitting strategy. This change makes it easier to find an appropriate challenge when racing against AI with degradation enabled.
Degradation Adjustments - Lowered the influence that wheel-spin has on tire degradation and fuel. This change was introduced to bring keyboard and gamepad competitiveness closer during races. Consequently, this change makes it less effective to modulate the throttle during a race to save fuel, but lifting and coasting should still yield the same results as it used to.
- Tuned fuel and tire degradation values.
- Improved tire degradation calculations to better reflect load on the tires. This change will reduce the degradation cars would get when wheel-spin was a result of an unloaded suspension.
Additions
- New track, Interstate
- New car, Agitator
- Several new car and helmet livery designs have been added
Other fixes
- Rumble not switching off after a race .
- Online – Standings no longer flip when two cars cross a checkpoint with a small distance between them.
- Added Bloom Settings to Video Settings.
