Turbo Sliders - plans for the near future

[Whiplash]

Yo. This is what I'd like all the community members (especially the admins) to be focused on in the near future. We should, basically, have these few goals and I'm expecting you all to be part of achieving them:

1. Encourage the game developer to work on these tasks:
- Enabling the game to get a sustainable platform of being permanently advertised to new players.
This is a really important thing and should have been done already a long time ago. We need a way to make a game permanently visible to a new potential players. The only way new players join us now is by Google, or by word of mouth. So, feel free do do your own investigation and see what would be the best solution for a game such is TS. I'm seeing Windows App Store as a great solution, but I'm not sure if its sale requirements will be acceptable to Anti (I guess they're asking for 30% of each sale). And I'm not sure what the rules are when a developer wants to combine multiple solutions. Because, it would be great to avoid being stucked to one platform, but combine at least 3 of them. Another great solution could be ITCH.io, because it supports different OSes and, afak, it gives a lot of freedom to a developer. Have in mind, our goal is still to keep the game fully independent and free, and paid optionally. I'd still contact Ande to hear his opinion about this, but our earlier experience says that forcing people to pay the game right a way - makes it losing the members rapidly. But, maybe times are changed?
- Working on a new game version which would prepare it more for a publishing mentioned above, and also to integrate changes which will be mentioned bellow. After the recent F1 championship, I feel like the most important features at this point should be those related to "driving orientation" (we need sectors, blue flags, gap notifications to drivers in front and back etc.) - apart from tons of other features I plan to ask for.

2. Keep working on default cars handling redefinition and handling definition of new custom cars of different types, which we need to include in standard game installation package finally too.

3. Be ready for the other changes which will follow changes mentioned at number 2 - editing default tracks, preparing custom tracks packages, preparing driving lines for each etc.

If anyone wants to add something to this, feel free to do it.

[Pingu]

Ghost car feature with your own PB. When new players join and see the skills of veterans it is quite overwhelming. Players need easier ways to work on their own skills and progress.

[Will]

Ghost car feature with your own PB. When new players join and see the skills of veterans it is quite overwhelming. Players need easier ways to work on their own skills and progress.

I agree, this should be the single most useful feature to help improve the competitiveness. Sometimes, many players (me included) simply don't know where they can improve.

[Whiplash]

That's on the list, together with tons of other things related to it. But, the current priority is getting the game published in some game store.

[Jurgen-NL]

im just gonna drop my thoughts in here seeing this was the most recent topic with a post regarding making TS known.

idk if im just talking and no one even reads this here anymore but recently last 6 months orso i suppose i saw activity dropping and my motivation to play TS aswell.

Can someone with contact details and a little influence push Anti to put TS out somewhere through steam gog.com etc searching for new games,
i came across ultimate 2D racing and downloaded it got it to work once then steam made it unplayable corrupting some of my files.
but i wasnt impressed with UR2D kept thinking TS is so much better off if only it could be seen by more people.

thus my thoughts.
hoping to see the serverlists rise with some players again

[Whiplash]

I kinda feel bad always to be the one who's bothering him, even though he never complaned. Try to send him a private Faceebook message with that request. Last time I suggested itch.io, he answered with a question "Isn't Steam a better place to do it properly?". That means he is about to release the game on that platform. He's just probably too busy (or lazy) to work on it.

[Azev]

Does anybody still play this? I check the server page sometimes, but I don't see any activity...

[Mike Nike]

Activity in TS hasn't been so low, ever, it feels like. We had some Slider action the other day though. TS addicted junkies, like Whip and me, will probably always find a way to revive TS at some point.

[Jurgen-NL]

glad to see the website back up and running thought that was the end of it but since i still was able to connect to servers i had hopes

[Rub]

Ill back too

[joevicentini]

Hello community. I used to play this game a long time ago (10-12 years) and was half happy to see it is still alive, but half sad to see the online community apparently dying out.

This game is great even for today's standards. I downloaded and installed it yesterday and it still delivered the joy I used to get when playing it.

So, I'm making this post to make a statement.

I think you guys realize how hurtful it is for this game to be out of Steam. Putting this game on Steam should be Priority #1 for this community. This is the only way to get modern audience to enjoy this game like we - the old folks - did, and keep it strong and going. Please notice that a very similar game called "Ultimate Racing 2D" is fairing reasonable well within Steam for the past year without having the history, community or cult of Turbo Sliders.

With little to no marketing I can almost guarantee a revival of online community within weeks of posting this game to Steam as free to play. This game IS still very good and will have an audience on Steam.

Someone closer to Anti Mannisto should emphasize this to him, I think he still have feelings for his pet project. Probably he doesn't want to put it in Steam so he won't have to spend more time with the game (remember Steam has communities, sends you email, etc., is an ongoing relationship).

If this is the case, so better try and make Anti Mannisto change the License so you guys could put it on Steam yourselves and carry the burden of managing its Steam profile. If the Trademark is already liberated for Total Conversions than someone can already make a "Super Turbo Sliders" mod with their own trademark separated from Turbo Sliders and put it on Steam.

Once there, it will appear in the list of racing games that is queried by millions of people daily, it will appear in the "more games like this" section of Ultimate Racing 2D, and sorts of.

People will find it, will download it and will love it.

It just have to be there.

Cheers guys.

[Whiplash]

...

Believe me, we tried so many times to convince Antti to publish it on any site. He confirmed that the Steam is the only right place for the games to be placed these days, but he's still resisting to do it due to his other obligations. We hardly forced him to release new game versions in past 2 years, which was a great step forward for the game. The game still needs some changes in order to get into 21. century, and then it can get to Steam even as a non-free game.

[joevicentini]

I understand.

How is the license for total conversions of Turbo Sliders?

If the license is permissive enough we can wrap Turbo Sliders into a MOD that satisfies Steam requirements by ourselves.

Change default tracks/cars/graphics/sounds to put community ones and upload it to Steam.

It will be still Turbo Sliders in essence with another name and a more modern UI.

[Tijny]

(Whip is making me post this because apparently he can't find this information)

As far as I can tell it's pretty explicitly disallowed by the license agreement that comes with the game itself:

You may freely distribute the demo version
of the product by any means (internet, ftp-
sites, magazine cover CD’s, etc.) as long
as nothing is charged for the demo and no
alterations are made to the distributable
packet.

There's no separate license for total conversions, the but their documentation goes on to state the following:

The installer should ask where the current Turbo Sliders installation is and then create a new
directory under it.The installer MUST NOT change any original Turbo Sliders
files - it may only add files under the mod directory. There is an included
example NSIS script file named mod.nsi in this directory.

[joevicentini]

Strange. Are you sure this is updated to the latest version? As far as I know, this game don't have a demo anymore, it´s free to play.

I read on the documentation how to mod the game, even how to make total conversios of it. And it was written by the author. It's in the docs folder.

Why would the author document this piece of information is you're disallowed to modify the game?

Remember we don't change source code to mod the game.

Cheers.

[Whiplash]

Strange. Are you sure this is updated to the latest version? As far as I know, this game don't have a demo anymore, it´s free to play.

I read on the documentation how to mod the game, even how to make total conversios of it. And it was written by the author. It's in the docs folder.

Why would the author document this piece of information is you're disallowed to modify the game?

Remember we don't change source code to mod the game.

Cheers.

Of course we are sure the game is updated to the latest version - we worked on the update together with the author. As you can see, modding is pretty free, but it still doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to. And, even if Antti would allow such thing, I'm quite sure it would just produce more damage. The community would be split and it would be much harder to reintegrate it later when the main game is released (if it ever comes). But, in any case, I suggest you to contact Antti by yourself and see if you can push things forward with all of your arguments:
antti.mannisto@iki.fi

[Tijny]

Strange. Are you sure this is updated to the latest version? As far as I know, this game don't have a demo anymore, it´s free to play.

I read on the documentation how to mod the game, even how to make total conversios of it. And it was written by the author. It's in the docs folder.

Why would the author document this piece of information is you're disallowed to modify the game?

Remember we don't change source code to mod the game.

Cheers.

Even though for all intents and purposes the free version is fully featured, strictly speaking it's still a trial that has some very minor restrictions compared to the full version - most notably the demo video on launch and the nag screen on exit.

Now, the problem is not that you can't modify the game. You are completely within your rights to create any total conversion mod you want as long as it's only an extension to the game and doesn't install Turbo Sliders itself with it. I am not a lawyer and maybe I'm misinterpreting things but I believe releasing any project like you're suggesting on Steam directly violates this clause.

[joevicentini]

Of course we are sure the game is updated to the latest version - we worked on the update together with the author. As you can see, modding is pretty free, but it still doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to. And, even if Antti would allow such thing, I'm quite sure it would just produce more damage. The community would be split and it would be much harder to reintegrate it later when the main game is released (if it ever comes). But, in any case, I suggest you to contact Antti by yourself and see if you can push things forward with all of your arguments:
antti.mannisto@iki.fi

I was not talking about the game, I was talking about the license. But I understood what you mean.

Maybe a total conversion that would be the collection of long recognized tracks and cars from the community are going to be recognized as "canon" by the community, but maybe I'm wrong.

[joevicentini]

Even though for all intents and purposes the free version is fully featured, strictly speaking it's still a trial that has some very minor restrictions compared to the full version - most notably the demo video on launch and the nag screen on exit.

Now, the problem is not that you can't modify the game. You are completely within your rights to create any total conversion mod you want as long as it's only an extension to the game and doesn't install Turbo Sliders itself with it. I am not a lawyer and maybe I'm misinterpreting things but I believe releasing any project like you're suggesting on Steam directly violates this clause.

I think you're right. What about uploading just the Mod as a full software to Steam, but not Turbo Sliders itself, and on launch, tell the user that he has to download Turbo Sliders as a dependency for the game to work, and on his agreement, start downloading it and installing it? More or less like how we are faced with the Microsoft Visual C++ installation as a dependency when installing other games?