Monday, March 18th 2024
Taxi Life Devs Address Performance Issues & React to Player Feedback
Hello Drivers. Here we are. Taxi Life was released about two weeks ago. First of all, we'd like to thank you for all your support and feedback to improve the game. Reading your feedback, your kind messages and your encouragement has given us a lot of fuel for this first week. We are glad to read that many of you are enjoying driving in Barcelona! Now, let's get straight to the point. We are aware that you're interested in what is going on next in Taxi Life. And in this post, we want to share with you how our first week was for the team, and what's coming in the future of Taxi Life.
Driving Wheel
The main feedback we've received is that there aren't enough steering wheels compatible with the game. During the development of Taxi Life we worked with the driving wheels that were available for us. There are a lot of models out there, and it takes a lot of time to make every single driving wheel compatible with the game. It's not an excuse, but this was our situation. We really want to expand this list, and improve some actual driving wheels. We have a step-by-step plan that we are polishing right now and should let you know in more detail soon how it will look. In parallel we need to fix other issues you're already experiencing in-game.
AI issues
Recreating the life of a real city was a challenge for us. We think we've succeeded in modeling a part of the city of Barcelona. But our AI is a complex system and there's a lot of randomization. We tested it as carefully as we could and believed that balance would work. Now we see there's still work to do. At the moment, we're working on improving the behavior of the cars. For example we know some cars can run into the back of your car quite randomly. It can happen to you once every five minutes, but it can also never happen to you. Our second piece of AI work focuses on pedestrians. Especially those who use crosswalks too often and can block the player. More details bellow.
Performance issues & bugs
Performance issues are also a challenge for us. We're getting feedback that on some high-end PCs the game runs very badly, and on others that, and I quote, "are several year old potatoes", the game runs very well. So we're going to work on that. We want to provide a good Taxi Life experience to many players, and we understand that stuttering and frame loss are not fun and can be frustrating.
More content?
To be completely transparent, we've got lots of ideas, and you've shared with us some great ideas for improving the game as well. But for the moment, it's still a bit early to think about what we're going to add to the game. So for now, we encourage the community to keep the ideas and feedback coming and please know that we're always reading everything.
We'd like to add more cars, expand the map, add more features, cities etc... but we need to stay focused on improving what's already there, rather than ignoring the problems and adding content just to hide the dust under the carpet. Rest assured, as soon as we're ready to talk about what's next for Taxi Life, we will communicate it, no doubt. Oh, and we'll add NPC taxis driving around the city in the next patch upon community's request!
Let's stop talking, what's going to happen in the next few weeks?
Our IDEAL plan is to release a patch every one or two weeks or so until Taxi Life reaches a standard that satisfies you, the players. Over the next few days, we will be releasing patches to correct bugs and improve AI. This is our plan for the patches that will be arriving shortly. At the time of writing, a patch is being tested by our quality assurance (QA) team for validation before going live in a few days.
To give you more details, we decreased the number of random collisions between AI vehicles (or with your car). We've also reduced the amount of pedestrians a little bit and some of the crossings shouldn't be problematic anymore. For the past week we've been making lists of the most popular steering wheel models to prioritize which ones we're going to add. We'll try to add a little at a time. Finally, a quick word for our console players; We are still working on the performance issues you have on PlayStation 5. We have a solution that is currently being tested by our QA, it should arrive very soon.
Once again, thank you for your support!
The Simteract Team 🚖
Sources:
Taxi Life Steam Update #1, Taxi Life Steam Update #2
Driving Wheel
The main feedback we've received is that there aren't enough steering wheels compatible with the game. During the development of Taxi Life we worked with the driving wheels that were available for us. There are a lot of models out there, and it takes a lot of time to make every single driving wheel compatible with the game. It's not an excuse, but this was our situation. We really want to expand this list, and improve some actual driving wheels. We have a step-by-step plan that we are polishing right now and should let you know in more detail soon how it will look. In parallel we need to fix other issues you're already experiencing in-game.
Recreating the life of a real city was a challenge for us. We think we've succeeded in modeling a part of the city of Barcelona. But our AI is a complex system and there's a lot of randomization. We tested it as carefully as we could and believed that balance would work. Now we see there's still work to do. At the moment, we're working on improving the behavior of the cars. For example we know some cars can run into the back of your car quite randomly. It can happen to you once every five minutes, but it can also never happen to you. Our second piece of AI work focuses on pedestrians. Especially those who use crosswalks too often and can block the player. More details bellow.
Performance issues & bugs
Performance issues are also a challenge for us. We're getting feedback that on some high-end PCs the game runs very badly, and on others that, and I quote, "are several year old potatoes", the game runs very well. So we're going to work on that. We want to provide a good Taxi Life experience to many players, and we understand that stuttering and frame loss are not fun and can be frustrating.
More content?
To be completely transparent, we've got lots of ideas, and you've shared with us some great ideas for improving the game as well. But for the moment, it's still a bit early to think about what we're going to add to the game. So for now, we encourage the community to keep the ideas and feedback coming and please know that we're always reading everything.
We'd like to add more cars, expand the map, add more features, cities etc... but we need to stay focused on improving what's already there, rather than ignoring the problems and adding content just to hide the dust under the carpet. Rest assured, as soon as we're ready to talk about what's next for Taxi Life, we will communicate it, no doubt. Oh, and we'll add NPC taxis driving around the city in the next patch upon community's request!
Let's stop talking, what's going to happen in the next few weeks?
Our IDEAL plan is to release a patch every one or two weeks or so until Taxi Life reaches a standard that satisfies you, the players. Over the next few days, we will be releasing patches to correct bugs and improve AI. This is our plan for the patches that will be arriving shortly. At the time of writing, a patch is being tested by our quality assurance (QA) team for validation before going live in a few days.
To give you more details, we decreased the number of random collisions between AI vehicles (or with your car). We've also reduced the amount of pedestrians a little bit and some of the crossings shouldn't be problematic anymore. For the past week we've been making lists of the most popular steering wheel models to prioritize which ones we're going to add. We'll try to add a little at a time. Finally, a quick word for our console players; We are still working on the performance issues you have on PlayStation 5. We have a solution that is currently being tested by our QA, it should arrive very soon.
Once again, thank you for your support!
The Simteract Team 🚖
1 Comment on Taxi Life Devs Address Performance Issues & React to Player Feedback
On the keyboard, the steering wheel cannot be changed from A/D to I/O.