Welcome to Kenya! It is over 10km long, the longest stage in Shakedown Rally yet, and by quite a margin! A true endurance test. In the map you will find fast dirt roads, hard to plow through dusty patches, muddy and slippery turns while driving through savanna flats, twisty bushy forests, next to acacia trees, and even a volcano!

Meet the new old spec17

I've also FINALLY updated the spec17 car (the default one)! This model goes back to when I was working on INFINLAND (back in circa 2018), I modeled it as a crude first draft model, and was never really supposed to be THE model of Shakedown Rally. It was just a model that "I had" and could just drop it in any game. It was very quickly modeled and procedurally painted, to just be something I could put in INFINLAND for nice screenshots and gifs that vaguely resembled a 2017 specification World Rally Car (hence the name). It was also lacking a lot of details like rear-view mirrors and the wing was just sort of few boxes floating there barely attached to the body. It also had mirrored UVs, so it wasn't possible to even make a custom livery with text on it (since the text would be inverted on the other side). So, during the previous month I slowly started remodeling and re-UVing it.

I've added a lot of details this time, including rear-view mirrors, antennas, front brake ducts (through which you can see the rolling tires), roof scoop, seats and an entirely new rear wing, and a bunch of details painted in on the livery.

Another cool thing is that I've also exposed the spec17_body.png, and added a white, unpainted version of the body texture in cars/spec17/textures folder so anyone can make their own! Just overwrite the spec17_body.png and releaunch the game!

New features

Surface improvements

The game now supports multiple splat materials! I talked already many times about them, but until now you could only have one set of 4 surfaces, which I used in Finland to blend between different gravel and mud surfaces and in Sweden to blend between snow, ice and gravel. But now, you can have many sets of surfaces that can all have different parameters, which influences both handling and visuals. In this first release of Kenya map, I'm using two: one for the road and one set for the grass field around the road.

Not only that, but you can also now have different particle parameters for each of the surface. So, the reddish loose dust will emit reddish particles with very long lasting dust trails, while mud will emit dark particles that last very shortly.

Aaaand, I've even added a little in-game utility so that modders can modify all surface parameters in game.

Navigable in-game menu

A few updates ago I've added a little "board" when pressing Esc that gave you info about what to press to restart, replay or quit the game. I used to call that a "menu" but to be honest, that wasn't really a real menu.

Well, now I've added one! When pressing esc, now you can navigate through it with arrows. There are a few basic options like setting the volume and changing automatic gearbox mode. But it is still very WIP and I will be adding a lot more features to it in the future.

Many other updates

Not only is the Kenya stage longest yet, but the changelog is too! You can see the full list of changes here.

Modding corner

Since I announced I'm wokring on the Kenya map, it sparked inspiration among modders on my discord server. HWTsuchiyaNathan and C1RCUi7 have made beautiful mods specifically for Kenya! You can find and download them on the discord server.

Enjoy the new update!