Hi Truck Lifers,

It’s update time 😀 This week we’re going to look at the Roadmap, The Endless Road, and the future of Super Truck Life! Let’s start here:

You may have a few questions. Like what the hell am I looking at, for example. Before I get to that, it’s important that yall know a few things about the two man army that is us. First, we don’t have a project manager. We have very expensive and equally neglected project management software. We do not have a dev team. It’s just Mike. We do however have a massive design team except no we don’t; it’s just Dan. “The thing about Mike and Dan,” he said casually in the third person, is that they like to make things. Cool things. Fun things. Things that should probably be measured and budgeted and ultimately kept within a reasonable scope. Instead, they like to make a million things and then a million things more and forget that sometimes you have to function as a real company with real goals and real milestones.

Now you have even more questions.

What I’m saying is we’re extremely passionate about our creations, and we put a lot of blood and sweat and (legal) drugs into these things. And most of the time, we get carried away. That’s why we’ve spent the last several days discussing how STL can grow without spinning wildly out of control. Just like our players, we need a destination. We also need an approachable route that makes sense to our production cycle and is conducive to reasonable expectations. That last sentence was so corporate that anyone reading this is probably pregnant with a pair of pleated khakis.

What you’re seeing above is how we’re going to approach production from here on out. First, you’ll notice that we have indeed locked down ascension rewards, but we’re only sharing the first two for now. Regardless, Ascensions will always reward the player with a minimum of:

• A unique paint set only obtainable via ascension
• A handful of crates, increasing with each ascension
• Increased buff timers
• Increased betting limits at the Track (win big, lose big)

We are working on additional rewards for ascensions. These are big, and will likely come every few ascensions. We know exactly what you get at the third ascension, but I’m not going to tell you because it’s a work-in-progress. And while we progress on that, we’re giving players The Endless Road. Here’s a description written by our Marketing Team’s Copywriter (seriously you guys it’s just me, I can’t emphasize this enough):

What is the Endless Road? Simply put:

• Drive forever (while we work on this ascension).
• Earn crates every x amount of miles.
• Discover a new loot tier.
• Unlock other things, coming soon etc

The Endless Road gives you the option to drive through time and space while we keep adding features, content, and polish to the game!

Hopefully that makes sense. This is how we’re going to move forward. There will be several ascensions. There will be multiple ascension rewards that are bigger and better than a handful of crates. These require functionality, testing, and polish. But we want yall to play and have fun. To explore. To socialize and be rewarded. Now you can be, while we inevitably get carried away and add a million more things behind the scenes.

On a sincere note, we really appreciate all of the feedback, love, patience, and support you’ve shown us since we launched the closed beta not long ago. I can honestly say we’ve effectively rebuilt this entire f#&%ing platform since the launch. Layout, functionality, optimization, feature set, systems, social network, gifting, progression, ascensions, etc. I mean, my dudes we’ve built a functional AI-driven race track for the hell of it. We’ve even built an entire premium shop somewhere in the middle of all of this. And as cliche as it is, there’s no way in hell we’d have done all of that without yall. So thanks.

We know you’re probably still wondering when Mega Ultra Patch is shipping. Now that we’ve built a route and destination that makes sense (finally), we’re damn close. As always, we’ll keep you posted with another update next week!

Literally The Entire Company,

Dan/Mike

 

 

 

Hi Truck Lifers,

You know what time it is. This week we’re focusing on gifting; the selfless act of giving a friend a part or paint to show your appreciation for them and give them a hand out there on the open road with absolutely no expectation whatsoever of reciprocation but honestly Mike it’d be nice if you could just maybe send me something. That was an heirloom engine, damnit.

The point is we’ve provided a way for you to hook friends up and be hooked up with minimal effort. It’s this easy:

As you can see in my Notes, nothing new has come in, but I get the feeling that’s about to change:

Suddenly, a wild note appears:

Nice, looks like Mike hooked me up. I wonder what it is. A simple click on the blue link and…

Smooches, Mike. Hit accept and boom, the attachment is added to your in-game inventory. That’s it! Well, not quite. Half the fun is giving, right? Time to send Mike something terrible fun. First, we’ll smash the gift icon near Mike’s name on our friends list:

Once we’ve written an exceptionally important and heartfelt message, we’ll need to choose an attachment:

This might look vaguely familiar — it’s your in-game inventory! Neat!

You’re all set. You can change the message, eject the part, or swap it out with something else. When you’re done, it’s time to send!

That, my friends, is gifting. While we plan on making it a bit more complex at some point, we think this is a great start for you and your friends to share the love. It’s also a great way to help out a friend that’s new to the game. Speaking of gifting, you could always give your friend the Fast Food Paint Pack featured in our premium shop (coming with this mega patch):

 

Just sayin’.

Well, that’s all for this week. Stay safe and stay generous.

Ya Bois,

Mikey & Danny

Hi Truckers,

Update time; let’s go!

First, thanks for your patience. We’ve been updating every week to keep that sweet, sweet transparency going, but we know you want more. Well, here’s more; The Track & Gifting are done. These are two massive items on our roadmap that have already made their way to internal testing. We’re tuning, polishing, and bug-murdering, but I can assure you they’re almost up to our standards. This week, we’re gonna focus on the Track.

The Track is basically a mini-game where 4 AI controlled drivers compete against each other in an action packed drag race. You and the community can bet on your favorite driver and win big (or lose your ass; it’s gambling, you guys).

The Track is basically divided into 3 phases; betting, racing, and results.

In the first phase, drivers will be randomly generated for you to choose from. You’ll drop a minimum of 1,000 scrap (for now) on your driver of choice:

 

I went ahead and bet on Cranstin Borgtles. I feel pretty good about this driver, especially that ridiculous randomly-generated paint set.

Once the timer counts down and you’ve placed your bets, the drivers will meet at the starting line and wait for the green light:

The light turns green and off they go:

Sadly, it doesn’t look like Cranstin is doing too well, but it’s still anyone’s race:

Haha, just kidding. Damnit, Cranstin! Ah well; win some, lose some. As they cross the finish line you’ll return to the results screen to see placement, and collect your winnings (unless you’re me):

As you can see, we did great. Especially if there were several other drivers in this race, which there weren’t.

Anyways, we had a good time and we think you will too. There’s one more thing worth mentioning before we let you get back to Trucking, and we think it’s kind of a big deal. With the new structure and functionality of the rebuilt Play page, you can participate in the Track while never losing progress on the main road. That means while your truck is chugging along on a route, you can visit the track via the interface, bet on a race, win some scrap, and head right back to your truck still burning miles. What this really means is that moving forward, mini-games in general will not impede your progress on the road. Pretty sweet, right?

That’s all for now. Next week, we’ll do a deep dive into Gifting (or maybe more) as we get ever closer to Ultra Super Turbo Mega Patch v1 (name pending).

Peace and Truck Love,

Dan & Mike

Hi Truckies,

Time for another weekly update, and today we’ll be discussing the brand new chat system that comes fully equipped with a way to DM your friends. You know, the friends that you’ll be able to add detailed in our last update.

Chat has undergone a few big boi changes that make it more robust, feature-heavy, and just useful in general. When we started the site we added a very simple, mostly functional chat that Mike hacked together in a day. It was a great temporary solution we knew we’d revisit later. Well, we revisited the absolute shit out of it. Let’s jump in.

We’ll start with the layout (without giving away too much about the overall page layout):

Take a look at the channels menu on the left. Right now, we’re in General chat (highlighted in blue) where Dan & Mike are having an extremely deep and unplanned conversation about the thing I’m literally talking about.

Trade and Track are two additional channels also available and contain their own chats.

Notice the divided section below “Track.” That is where friends are listed. In the extremely rare event that you’re not me (Dan) you’ll have more than one friend (Mike) — let’s check out Mike’s channels:

You’ll notice that Mike has two friends; Dan and Mitchel. One is white, the other grey. Dan is online. Mitchel is not.

Maybe Dan will send a message for the purpose of this screenshot:

Wow what are the odds? You’ll notice a dot appear when there’s a new unread message. It’ll go away when you click on the channel.

Let’s recap:

• Multiple group channels
• New message notifications
• Online/offline color coding
• DM channel for each friend

Yeah, it’s all there. Now you’ll be able to add friends on the fly or with friend codes, which will automatically create DM channels for each of them. It’s almost as if we intentionally built the friends feature and tested the hell out of it because we knew this was coming.

Our goal, as previously stated, is to build a social network with the features you know and love without a bunch of bloated bullshit. We also always spend a lot of time trying to make things simple and approachable. Hopefully we got that right! Now that friends, chat, and DMs are tested and functional, we just need to tackle the last challenge to pull it all together; gifting. Once that’s in, the network is complete (for now) and it’s on to the race track!

Naturally, somewhere in between these updates we got inspired and added more things that I’m not sure we can talk about just yet, but soon.

Truck It Real Good,

Dordles & Mordles

Hi Truckers,

This week, we’re going to focus on two things; first, your routine super exciting update that yes, we are in fact still working on shit and no, we have not abandoned the game. It’s just that, if I haven’t mentioned this yet, the upcoming patch is going to reinvent a lot so we’re super busy.  Specifically, Mike is crushing bugs and building features (gifting, track) while ya boy keeps designing things, and we’re both QAing systems like Notes, Friends, Chat, and DMs. Things are looking good!

Either way we’re still going hard, but why tell you when I can show you? Welcome to this week’s update: Truck Friends. This week we explore how the social network works and how you can make friends, or remove them! Fun!

Keep in mind while some design elements could change, what you’re about to witness is actually fully functional.

Let’s assume you, the player are Dan and you’re trying to become friends with Mike.

Let’s also assume, you (Dan) have no friends. Shouldn’t be hard to imagine 🙁

Let’s make some friends! How about we start with Mike. After all, he’s the only other person available. The first way you can do this is through chat by simply clicking on their name, then clicking on Add Friend:

Once you’ve sent a request, you’ll notice something magical has happened in your friend list:

Mike is currently considering your ridiculous request. Will he accept? Perhaps:

Wow. Thanks Mike! You’re friends. That’s all there is to it except no there isn’t. Let’s say Mike beats you to the punch and sends you a friend request:

You immediately accept because Mike is a pretty cool human that deserves acceptance:

Now, what happens if you immediately regret that decision and decide Mike should be removed because he tells you he doesn’t like pesto as a sauce (it’s true) and now you don’t trust him:

Bye bitch!

Great. Now you have no friends again. This is how it always happens. Or does it? Maybe you already know the person you’re trying to add. Maybe you don’t want to find them in chat. Like what if you use some wildly unpopular rarely used app like Discord or Slack and you just want to be friends easily in STL? What an amazing question you didn’t just ask. That’s why we have friend codes! I added a few subtle indicators because apparently on the internet everyone is a blind grandma:

All you do is provide that code to your friend and skadoosh, they enter it in. Let’s say Mike gives you his, let’s see how that works. First we hit ADD FRIEND:

Enter the code:

And…

Wait for it…

Done and done. And that, my friends, is how our social network works. Once you’ve become friends you can send gifts, DM, and remove each other after you inevitably get tired of each other. Hypothetically!

That’s it for the deep dive into friend things, but next week we’ll provide another update jam packed with another deep dive into something, probably the revamped chat or the new layout or idk something pretty awesome probably.

Truck is Love,

Two Idiots

Hi Truck Kids,

We have another update for y’all as we get closer and closer to the biggest build we’ve pushed since closed beta launch. Allow me to save everyone some time and summarize.

Done:

• Friend codes
• Add friend
• Remove friend
• Online/Offline status
• Notes
• Chat channels
• Ascension wall (see screenshot below)
• Leaderboards
• Play page rework
• DMs

Yeah, that last one is new. While working through the friend system we decided to introduce a direct message system as well. You will be able to add a friend via chat or with a friend code and simply switch to their chat channel to talk about trucks and driving trucks and living in your truck.

In Progress:

• Gifting
• The Track

On Hold:

• Trading

As you can see, we’re knocking things out pretty quickly, but the last two are thicc bois. In addition, we’ve been doing an annoying intense amount of internal testing so the features outshine the potential bugs on launch. We’ve decided that trading is going to require a massive amount of work and we’d like to avoid that being the reason the build gets delayed. We are, however, knocking out gifting, or as I like to call it: Trading On the Honor System.

Also, here’s the ascension screen (the information is a placeholder):

As previously explained, you can scroll through several ascensions to see rewards, unlocks, and surprises. We felt that ascension was an achievement in itself but there wasn’t enough incentive. Fixed; you know how we do.

We’ll keep you updated but we’re getting there!

Truck is Life,

Happy Dan & Tiny Mike

Hi Truck Friends,

It’s that time again for another update. Last week, we gave you a probably-way-too-specific look into what we’re working on. If you already forgot or just want to read it again, go here. Since that post, we’re stoked to announce that the Friends and Notes systems have been designed and built. We’re still testing internally, but the core systems are done. Boom.

On top of that, we’ve completely reworked the play page to feel more like an ecosystem, built with expansion in mind. This means instead of just a game window and a chat box, the new layout accommodates a micro social network, instant viewing for things like leaderboards, ascension reward trees, notes, and gifting. Everything can be done simultaneously and on the fly while your truck powers through in the background for those sweet, sweet crates. This too, has been designed and built.

Once we’ve appropriately bug-tested all of these new systems, it’s on to the Ascension panels. These panels will tell you exactly what you can expect to earn and/or unlock per ascension, all the way up the ladder.

Lastly, it’s on to the Track we also mentioned in the previous post. Pick a racer, place your bets, and maybe don’t yell at us if you lose all of your scrap ok because this was your decision.

As it stands, we’ve still got weeks of work ahead of us, but we’ll keep you posted along the way. All of these systems, including the Play page rework play nicely together and we want to release the whole thing in one beastly patch. The idea is release the whole meal at once, instead of serving a steak with no sides. Have you ever had a filet with a loaded baked potato and asparagus? On the same plate? It’s f*cking delicious. Analogies, yall.

We know some of you are trucking at the bit for a patch, and we Super appreciate your patience.

Truck On,

Morkles & Dornjins

Hi Truck Lifers,

We’ve got a lot to cover today, so get ready for a non-stop action-packed reading adventure. Seriously though you’re about to read a lot of words so if you don’t have time for that shit a TL;DR has been provided below. Note: All screenshots are conceptual and subject to change.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed we haven’t dropped a chunky patch in about two weeks. There’s a reason for that. Technically there are multiple reasons for that, which I’ll get into in a moment. First, we want to tell you exactly why we’ve pivoted away from the weekly sprint.

While beta has been insanely insightful and each patch drastically improved the game, we haven’t made time to focus on bigger, better features. It’s kind of like when you’re starving so you chuck a ham and cheese hot pocket in the microwave and stare at it through the window while it rotates for 2 minutes and you’re so impatient that the second it’s ready you bite into what can only be described as molten f#@&ing lava. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes you need to pull your head out of production, take a breath, and reassess what the hell you’re doing like why are you eating ham and cheese everyone knows the only hot pocket flavor worth ingesting is none of them.

Now, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been absolutely working our balls off for the last two weeks. Specifically, we’ve been focused on a few things:

Social
We’ve watched players interact for a month now. Leaderboards were a big hit, although our focus is not PVP a little friendly competition never hurt anyone. Chat has been relatively active and we’ve had multiple requests for trading in the game. This is, coincidentally, 100% in alignment with our vision and that’s why we’re going to do you one better:

• Friends list
• Gifting
• Trading
• Notifications

The goal is to build an ecosystem within the play page itself that allows players to interact with each other on a more exciting, personal, and helpful level. Pick up an extra legendary rook? Why not make a friend’s day? Need a better engine and know a friend that needs a better nitro tank? Why not swap? Why am I explaining how trading works?

Here’s an idea of what that looks like:

Also, never miss out on what happened while you were gone, or an incoming trade request. We’re adding notifications to provide all the info you need, and actionable requests that require your attention. Or you can ignore them. We’re not your dad.

Lastly, for now, we’re expanding on Leaderboards and making them a long-term thing. The exact specifics aren’t quite there yet, but this should give you some idea:

MiniGames, Activities
In addition to building massive social systems, we know that when you’re out there on the road driving around in your piece of crap, you need more to do. More events are on the way, but we’ve been going hard on some bigger beasts. Like, I don’t know, maybe a race track where you can bet with (or against) your friends on AI drivers and win an absolute shitload of scrap in the process. Just kidding, I was just throwing a random idea out there.

No I wasn’t.

Play Page
You’re also going to notice a few changes to the play page to accommodate all of these super dope features, but we’ll let that be a surprise.

TL;DR
Gifting, Trading, Notifications, Leaderboard Improvements, Race Betting MiniGame.

Timeline
Timelines can be tricky. Something, something scope creep something priorities. Look, we don’t know when this coming, but soon-ish is the best we can do. We’d say “when it’s done” but we don’t have the clout to get away with shit like that. Yet.

We will, of course, always communicate regularly and let you know what to expect while we work as fast as we can.

As always, thanks for everything ya’ll have done for us and STL.

<3,
Mgmt

Hi Truck Kids,

First off, the horseshoes have been fixed. For real. Seriously. Totally fixed for sure.

The short version is ascension reward multipliers were not being taken into account. Now they are. Also, the number on the stats page has been fixed and includes the bonus percentage so no need to math it yourself. Go ahead and refresh for 100% more horseshoe action (build 232c).

Second, no major patch this week; we’re busy working on COVID SIMULATOR 2020 where the player is trapped in their home and the objective is to hide in total darkness while getting progressively fatter.

Ok, so what we’re actually doing is working on some really big features for STL that take more than the usual weekly sprint. Get excited; we’ll keep you posted.

Truck it Good,

Dandelion & Microcosm

Hi Truckles,

Build 232 is good to go, and we invite you to check it out:

FEATURE

• The much-anticipated hide-on-equip feature is in! That means all Paints and Parts currently equipped will no longer appear in the inventory list. Never again will you accidentally scrap an equipped part like that idiot Dan definitely hasn’t done a few times

CONTENT

• New radio station: Sunshine FM. Sip on a Pina Colada and bask in the Sunshine

BALANCE

• Coins/Mile Upgrade is now +10 per pip, instead of +1. Get rich quick, and double down with some dice!
• Lighters are now x2 per rarity in order to compete with Rooks

BUG FIXES

• Horseshoe now works fully as intended
• We crushed some other bugs that we’re not going to tell you about because for you, they never existed

Treat yo self to the good life; the Truck Life.

Much Truck Love,

Dorn & Malk