Hi Truckers,

We’re back again with another big boi update that all of you had no idea you were totally waiting for, hopefully. I think I said that pretty well. We’re wrapping up our second week of Open Beta and things have been smooth as butter. Not like, the spreadable butter but more like the butter your partner/roommate insists doesn’t need to be refrigerated even though it clearly says “refrigerate” on the packaging. So like, mostly smooth butter once you cut through that weird crystallized crust. It’s been pretty smooth, is all I’m saying.

Last week, we dropped a beast of a patch in celebration of the Open Beta launch and to address more pressing optimization/compatibility issues. Then we dropped a whole bunch of other stuff on top because why not. While we didn’t want to necessarily set the standard that we’d be dropping massive patches every week we just did it again because we don’t know how the f#@& to stay in scope.

We’ll start by introducing the brand new Scrapyard! The Scrapyard is the easiest, laziest way to earn Scrap on or offline. That’s right, this not only introduces offline progress but this new layer of idle mechanics has its own upgrade system as well! Just click the new nav item (Scrapyard) to get started:

In addition to this massive feature that basically took like no time at all we’ve also included Player Profiles! You can now click on your friend’s name in the friends list to view their truck, ascension level, and even their parts! Check out your friends parts:

Looking good, Mike. Your engine sucks btw.

But wait, there’s more. We’ve also added 12 more paints. Yes, 12, because we decided that over 250 of them was insufficient. Enjoy this sneak peek:

Ok, just one more thing and I’ll let you read the entirety of the patch notes in boring bullet format. We also decided to add a new Radio Station! Introducing Rad Radio, the raddest 80s themed station you can totally veg out to in a bodacious way. Tubular, etc.

Thanks for your time. Onto the full list:

Optimization

• Wallet/travel caching has been tweaked to reduce slow server responses (thanks Litany Of Fire & STONEEATER for the heads up)!
• Reduced inventory load issues — this includes things like opening a crate or loading inventory while Gifting
• Doubled database horsepower. Response times and sync across the board should improve dramatically
  

Features/Tuning

• The Scrapyard
• Friends: Profiles have been added! Just click on your friend’s name in the list and you can see their truck, parts, and ascension level
• Friends: Pending section has been moved above the friends list to provide better visibility when a request is pending
• 12 new Paints have been added
• New Radio Station: Rad Radio
• Carousel (lower right ad space): No longer has a static text link to the Shop
• Carousel: Now rotates every 30 seconds — up from 15 — in order to be less distracting
• Carousel: Links to Discord and News/Updates have been added to the rotation to minimize ads and provide helpful info

Bug Fixes

• A few minor, annoying bugs (you may not have noticed) were squashed

That’s “all” for now you beautiful bastards. Thanks again for all your feedback, and for playing whatever the hell this thing is. We look forward to adding more content, loot, rewards, features, mini-games, and multiplayer elements in the near future. As always, your patience and support is super appreciated! Also please tell your friends to give us a try, even if they don’t refrigerate butter 😉

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,

D/M

Hi Truckers,

For our first official Open Beta patch (excluding the hot fix we pushed a week ago) we wanted to do something a little… extra. Ya’ll gave us a ton of great feedback, from bug reports to feature requests to quality of life ideas. Thanks for that. In return, we went hard for our first patch and tackled 4 or 5 things. Then another 10 or so. Mike actually might be dead; I haven’t heard from him in a few hours. Check it:

Optimization

• Game client is 15% of its original size
• Play page memory (RAM) usage reduced by 75%
• Play page provides more feedback on loading and loading bar should be a bit smoother
• Improved leaderboard caching to reduce database load

Features/Tuning

• Buffs can now be refreshed; you no longer need to wait for them to expire to repurchase
• Event buffs can also be refreshed
• Track betting payout increased from 3x to 5x.  Betting is still 1,000 scrap but you can win 5,000
• Slowed down collectibles and added an outline to help with accessibility and visibility respectively
• Scrolling speed increased on lists — scrollbars should feel more responsive
• Forums have been replaced with our new Discord (details below)
• Increased the cash reward for Endless Routes by 10x the current amount
• Game now saves every 50 miles to help with desync issues — previously 100 miles

Bug Fixes

• Special thanks to Spooble for being an ethical and helpful hacker — leaderboards have been fixed… for now 😉
• Chat box character limit is now 255 and will restrict you from trying to type more (and losing the message)
• Tweaked probabilities on crate rarity levels; fixed edge cases where some players experienced unintended odds
• Endless Road: fixed bug where after the first route you would get a black screen. Goes on endlessly now
• Endless Road: 45k mile routes are now 50k, as originally intended
• Endless Road: fixed a bug that would drop you in Ice Town after ascending the second time
• Fixed a bug where the Endless Road map would show after your first ascension
• Track winnings now sync properly
• Vending machine button states (up, down) now properly reflect the price and your current scrap
• Fixed environmental sound bug where you still hear the diner or garage after leaving is fixed
• The in-game ready-to-Ascend panel will now show proper rewards per Ascension
• Probably other things we forgot we did because just look at all this shit

While we’re confident the optimization alone should make your Truck Lives™  a lot better, we went ahead and smashed a “few” other things on the list. Let us know what you think!

Forums have been removed. In the shortest terms, we felt they weren’t a good fit for the play page. A little sluggish, unwieldy, and arguably antiquated; the exact opposite of what we want the user experience to be on the play page. That’s why we put together a boosted Discord server instead. You can join by hitting this link.

That’s it for now. Thanks again for all your feedback, support, and patience in the Open Beta.

Truckers for Life,

Mike & Dan

Hi Truckies,

As you know, our Open Beta went off without a hitch and everything worked perfectly and we were totally showered with praise and adoration except not exactly. We had some roadblocks here and there (which I’ll get to) but let’s talk about the good stuff first.

Overall, very positive feedback from our players. Players had fun. Also, players seemed to “get” the game (sans a tutorial), community was active and established faster than we anticipated, and the servers did not explode which is impressive considering the ridiculous influx of new players from a simple reddit and discord announcement. At one point we had over 70 concurrent players submitting feedback, helping each other in chat, reporting bugs, and having a good time. We really couldn’t have asked for a better response there.

The not-so-great discoveries were regarding performance and load times. Chromium (Chrome, Brave) was displaying a broken loading bar in some cases that suggested to the user the game wasn’t loading (it was) and would never finish loading (it would). In other browsers, the game loaded fine, but it took a while due simply to size. These issues caused a prospective player drop-off we weren’t super pumped about. We also confirmed reports that the client was eating way too much RAM and causing some performance hits. Damn.

Why mention all this on the blog? Because priorities, that’s why.  While we did push a patch this weekend to help considerably with chat lag and leaderboard issues, next week’s patch (this coming weekend) will focus on the two discoveries I mentioned above. A lot of the known issues are low hanging fruit and nothing game breaking, but the load and performance need some more urgent love.

We believe that the radio is causing some performance issues, while we know for a fact it is causing a lot of load time issues. After a lot of weekend research we’ve found a way to build out a new audio system and offload all the actual audio files from the game client. This should help the load times considerably, and hopefully make a dent in the performance as well. In addition, we’ve spent some time prioritizing the other known issues and we’ll try to squeeze some of those into the upcoming patch as well.

There was some negative attention towards the MTX (microtransactions) which is to be expected, but that’s partly because a) the carousel was moving too fast and b) the carousel is 66% MTX. We halved the rotation speed so it’s less intense, and we’re working on some additional items like News/Updates and Player Spotlight that will break up the “buy stuff!” messaging. We still have no intention of paywalls, third party ads, energy mechanics, or punishing systems if you don’t spend money as we’ve said before.

As far as content and features we’ll still be sprinkling those in along the way. We received very little “this game sucks” or “I’m bored” as feedback, but plenty of “it’s not loading” so our decision is based on metrics that scream “it’s a fun game, when it works.” It’s that second part we’re after.

As always, big shout out to our incredible beta community and all yall have done to make this game so much better. Please be patient; we’ve definitely got a long list ahead but we’ll get it done.

Onward,

Dan & Mike

Hi Truckers,

As you know, we went live a few days ago and things have been awesome. Awesome to the point that instead of a handful of new players we received approximately 1,000 and things may or may not have exploded in some places. It’s a good problem to have, if you’re going to have problems, but we’ve been listening, prioritizing, and working hard to get a hot fix that will alleviate a few issues.

First off, we know the radio is an issue right now. It is causing some nasty performance spikes and requiring a substantial (initial) download. We have a solution, but it’s going to take more than today to knock out.

However, we’ve noticed the leaderboards have gone way over the anticipated numbers which is constantly updated. This is causing a ton of lag, potential desyncs, and delaying the hell out of chat. This patch will alleviate those issues, but we’ve still got a long road to go, so thanks for all your support and patience! We’ve also built some roles in chat for future mods and tools in case some of yall wanna be bad bois and gurls. Feel free to check the forums to discuss, read known issues, and see where STL is headed!

Lastly, we’re completely floored by the amount of new players and support we’ve received. Yall are amazing.

Back to Work,

Dan/Mike

Hi Truckies,

You read that right. After months of production, discussions, drugs and combing through your amazing feedback we’ve finally hit Open Beta, just in time for Christmas.

For now, if you have an existing account, feel free to get back in the game with the same login info you used in the Closed Beta. If you’re new here, we’ll be accepting new sign ups next week (check the blog for updates). We’re going to use the next few days to make sure that nothing explodes horribly. Which it won’t. Probably.

If you are a returning player, you’ll notice a few new things. Somewhere in our sprint we couldn’t quite lock down an introduction to the new site, but we hope we’ve built it intuitively. If you get a little lost or confused, feel free to use the forums or ask in chat. The forums are now built into the same page, so you don’t have to leave. They’ve also been updated considerably to provide a cleaner, more approachable user experience. The chat is now part of the page as well and will always be visible; we’ve removed the need to switch between tabbed items to see chat.

And that is the longest I’ve gone in a paragraph without making a joke and I didn’t care for it. The point is, there’s a lot of new shit to explore. New features, experiences, content, systems, and an emphasis on making friends or bribing them with gifts or a little friendly competition on the leaderboards. It’s really up to yall, which is kind of the whole point.

Although, this post wouldn’t be complete without that thing we do where things get weird and emotional because we gush over our amazing players/friends/family (you can be more than one thing). Yall have been amazing. This game is not the Dan and Mike show, but an amalgamation of every skill we can put to work and the feedback that molds it into something so much better. I  mean that last part is definitely subjective, so maybe it’s still garbage. But the point is it’s our garbage. What I’m saying is we made garbage together and we’re really proud of you guys.

Seriously though, we love yall and thank you all your support. We hope you love the game you helped us make and we look forward to making it bigger and better in the days ahead. Oh, and Happy Holidays.

Your BFFs,

Dan & Mike

Hi Truck Kids,

Quick update this week, for obvious reasons. If it isn’t obvious, feel free to check out the previous posts, or I’ll just tell you because we’re tight like that: we’ve been busting our asses to hit a pre-Christmas Open Beta release and given the amount of work, lack of resources, and budgetary concerns unfortunately I had you in the first half because we’re totally on point to release on Christmas Eve!

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Also, we’ll be posting on Thursday, December 24th once the Open Beta is officially live, so feel free to check back then for the news. We’re going to be working on QA, patches, and polish until the moment we launch, so I’d better get back to it.

Open Beta Bois (Soon),

Mike/Dan

Hi Truckies,

I don’t have much time, he said dramatically as if a catastrophic event was imminent and he knew he had mere moments to inform his people.

Haha, just kidding. It’s only an open beta for some shitty video game Mike and Dan have been working on for like two years while speaking derogatorily about in the third person to trivialize their own accomplishments because that way if everyone hates it they never said it was actually good except they probably did several times in previous posts. Shit.

Regardless, it’s coming, and it’s coming soon. We said Christmas was our deadline, and we’re still on track, but like I’m super busy right now and we shouldn’t even be having this monologue. That’s why I’m going to cut this short and get back to drawing trucks or mega run-on sentences or whatever weird task I have on my punch list. Also here’s a look inside our studio during the final sprint:

Almost There,

Danny & Mikey

Hi Truckies,

Well, we’re approaching Christmas and we’re totally not panicking in case that’s what you were asking or were going to ask. Really though, we’re not. We’ve hit every milestone we’ve set for ourselves, and then some. I’m sure you’re thinking “ok we get it, yall are handsome and smart and your beard is lusciously out of control but like can you just get to the f$&#ing update already.”

FINE:

That right there is a picture of my truck, cruising down the Endless Road. It’s fully functional! You might notice the event notification on the World Map. Let’s take a look:

Yeah, that works too. We even added a new tier of loot which you’ll have to find on your own, but it’s better than any loot in the game so you might wanna pick some up. Or you could just drive around in your piece of crap.

If you’ve lost track, and I know you have because Mike and I don’t even know who we are any more, that was the last major feature on our list that we posted since the last build push. Here’s a recap for yall (with a few extras):

• Play page overhaul
• Social network
• Notifications
• Gifting
• Chat and chat channels
• Friend DMs
• Leaderboards overhaul
• Ascension/Progress overhaul
• The Track minigame
• Endless Road/Map with new loot tier
• Multiple paints
• Premium Shop
• Quality of life improvements
• Bug fixes
• Idk at this point seriously please help me

We did it. We did all of that shit. Right now, we’re mostly working on copy(writing), last minute fixes, feature updates/improvements, and essentially just a whole lot of testing. Even though we’re going into an Open Beta from a Closed Beta, we felt the step between the two needed to be significant. We’re also building a huge marketing kit which you totally do not care about at all but I’m mentioning it because of that transparency thing I keep droning on about.

Speaking of which, it would be really super rad af if yall would start telling your friends to sign up on the main page. Our marketing efforts should absolutely bring in a healthy number of rookies but see we love yall and we just assume the people you love we’d also love by association. You get it.

Anyways that’s it for this week’s update. We’re definitely staying the course or godspeeding or whatever the hell people say when they’re doing a good job.

We’re So Close (to launch),

Dorbins & Manjels

Hi Truck Turkeys,

Short update today; we just wanted to wish yall a Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone had a good time, stayed safe, and ate way too much food.

We’re still going hard on the mega patch and we’re still on schedule for a Christmas-time release! We’re currently wrapping up a lot of loose ends, building out the final systems like the Endless Road, and doing several polish/testing passes so we don’t, you know, release a bunch of broken shit after all this work and your continued patience.

We also realized this was the first big holiday since STL launched a closed beta, and we’re a little bummed we didn’t get to do our first holiday-themed event and/or a limited edition paint set. I guess we’ll just have to see what we can do for Christmas.

Much Love & Gobbles,

Mgmt

Hi Truck Lifers,

Let’s just dive in today without the usual long-winded introduction or run-on sentence usually ending with some kind of hilarious punchline you totally didn’t see coming right before I finally get to the point and post a pretty picture:

No, today is going to be brief because we have shit to discuss, you and I. We and them. Us and they? I don’t know. The point is you’ve been asking about a release date for Mega Patch and we’ve been Soon™-ing the shit out of it. As you know, there’s a reason for that, but we’ve finally settled on “around Christmas.” Not on Christmas, or after Christmas. Like, right before it. That’s the plan — if anything changes we’ll let you know. We’ll get more specific as we approach the holidays.

We know for a lot of people, 2020 has been a nightmare-fueled thrill ride of suck so we’re going to make it suck less with a totally free video game we made for yall. Speaking of yall, this will patch will be for a lot more of you since this patch will begin the official Open Beta. If you haven’t already told your friends to sign up on the site (www.supertrucklife.com) then please do so we can add them to the Open Beta!

Right, so you’re probably wondering what the hell STL Play means. When we built version 1 (currently live version 232c), the STL Play page was only going to be a single page of a multi-part site. As the Play page evolved we decided that taking you away from game progress or insisting you open another tab to participate in something outside of the Blog was counter productive and kind of annoying.

We also noticed a second issue with the live layout; the chat. The panel on the right is currently being used for chat, feedback, and leaderboards. It’s also very limited in size. Any time you want to check the leaderboards you’re taken out of the chat. That didn’t sit right with us. The whole point of a community is that they’re always visible.

We kept finding problems with the current layout. Chat was dumb and small. The nav didn’t make sense. The wrapper (header/footer) was intrusive. Expansion was a nightmare. I’m too handsome. You get it.

Here’s a wireframe of the current site:

“What even is this shit?” -Dan & Mike, a month after looking at their work. That’s when we sat down and rebuilt this entire thing. Every single area changed. Every element was moved and redesigned and rebuilt. Then we built the social network. Then the Track. Then finalized ascensions and the Endless Road. Speaking of endless roads, this was a ton of work, but we thought you’d like to see what you’re waiting so patiently for. Here’s the wireframe version of the rework:

Nice, right? When I said everything changed, I wasn’t kidding (for once).

While everything has been designed and built, we still have a few features to flesh out, heavy testing to do, and then it’s all yours. So get ready for the Super Truck Life Open Beta! And Christmas, if you’re into that kinda thing.

Seasons Greetings,

Santa’s Little Nerds