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2025 - The Year of TURNT

Happy new year!

It has been a while since we've posted an update (even in Discord) which has any specific details.

Let's get right into the JUICE

TURNT is on Godot 4

elim is typing...

Surprise!

Many months ago I was experimenting with porting TURNT to GD4. The experiment resulted in the conclusion that porting everything across by converting the GD3 project and then iterating on the errors was going to take more time than it was worth.

However, there is no doubt that Godot 4 offered benefits that would drastically improve both developer and players' lives. So, what's in it for everyone?

For the Players

Let's start with the most important people - the players. The players - you - are the reason this game exists in the first place. So what does the transition to Godot 4 mean for you?

Jolt Physics

While the GD3 version of TURNT had a custom solver for delivering some semblence of consistency in physics, it still relied heavily upon Godot Physics' intersection testing. This meant that consistency was a game of trial-and-error. To make matters worse, we couldn't even always reproduce bugs that were sent in via demos. So while we could watch the bug occur, trying to simulate the frame the bug occurred wouldn't always provide the data we needed to actually fix it. Jolt Physics is a library made by the incredibly talented, hard-working and intelligent Jorrit Rouwe. It's a modern, open-source implementation of rigid body physics with commerical-grade performance. It's incredibly stable, runs faster than my solver does and (somehow) consumes less memory. It also integrates very well into Godot 4. Let's list out the benefits this provides to the players:

  • Consistency: The same inputs will (in the context of TURNT) produce the same output. This is huge for keeping the skill ceiling impossibly high by eliminating the luck requirement. It's all on the mappers now!
  • Performance: We still have the goal of having the game playable and competitive on old and cheap systems. TURNT is for the bipedal racers, and bipedal racers just want a game that feels smooth and responsive.
  • Stability: Following on from the "Consistency" point above, having a stable physics engine when bodies are moving at high speeds means that, like in Q3DF, you won't be scared that something random will occur. This is important for all skill levels.

In short, you (the players) get to slide around with less annoying issues to deal with.

Vulkan Graphics

I'll keep this one short. I am comfortable manipulating Vulkan renderers. We're going to have high framerates in this game. For GPUs that support Vulkan 1.0 or higher (that should be most of you!) you're going to have good framerates. I will guarantee it.

For the players who were relying on GLES3 support from GD3, you will still have that. We are committed to ensuring that older machines can still slide around and have fun in TURNT.

Nerd Talk

For those with technical knowledge, you'll have the option of utilising multiple in-frame flights or restricting it to sequential swapchain usage to keep latency low. Do not fear, I know what I'm doing here!

Refreshed Codebase

From the few years of working on TURNT, it became evident that some of the technical decisions I had made in GD3 were hindering the ability to iterate quickly. I have taken the opportunity to rewrite core infrastructure to make developing the game AND the tech substantially easier. What does this mean for you, the players? Well, here's what you'll be enjoying with the first GD4 release:

  • Demo UI: Hitting F6 (by default, can be changed in Options) will bring up a list of demos. Click on one to play it. This will present you with a brand new demo playback UI. You can scrub on the timeline in real-time, pin-point the exact frame you want to create a practice respawn point from and much more. This is literally already done and working.
  • Lobbies: You all know how long this was taking me to build in GD3. Fitting a lobby system into the old architecure was fucking brutal. This is amended. You have lobbies. Now everyone can play whatever map they want and still chat to everybody in the same lobby.
  • Map Importing: GD4 has allowed me the opportunity to create a reasonably good map importer. While checkpoints and surfaces (ie slick) won't work right away, mappers can begin iterating on maps for the game. This feature will be iterated on over time to empower mappers as much as possible.
  • Much more...

For the Developers

In case you're interested in how moving to Godot 4 improves the developer workflow, here's a quick list of things that are simply easier for the TURNT_TEAM

  • Fonts & UI: Fonts are handled much better in Godot 4. We're also hoping some container issues that were broken in Godot 3 are also fixed.
  • Community: Godot 4 releasing seems to have created a bit more buzz in the Godot community, with lots of information sharing and tutorials available.
  • Standard format: Instead of the previous GD3+elimhacks, GD4 with modules like Jolt allows multiple developers to remain in sync with project tools easier
  • Easier upgrades: While the move from GD3.5+elim to GD4.3 is a big chunk of work - any future upgrades should be way faster

Roadmap

Obviously a large engine upgrade has resulted in some loss of feature parity. However we're quickly regaining ground here. The ulterior goals for the year are:

  • Get TURNT onto Steam (Win64, Linux, MacOS x64 + ARM)
  • Have a map submission process in-place for mappers to do their thing
  • Finalise physics so that there will be no need for leaderboard resets

We will be returning to a release schedule of lots of small updates. With the new architecture in-place and being used already, there is no longer a need for us to spend 3 months developing something without an update as it won't require outright breaking the game to introduce new features.

While I'm obviously averse to posting deadlines (given my history), here's a rough idea of how things will track.

Phase 1: Feature parity + getting the game into your hands once more

  • Getting all of TURNT's original mechanics back in and running (right now we're missing CPM, slick, RJ)
  • Multiplayer support (mostly done, however the first release of the game will be isolated to offline in the interest of bug-hunting)
  • New Home Screen
  • Leaderboards
  • Map Importer (for maps to have leaderboards, elim will still need to manually add them. But for mappers, you'll at least be able to iterate on your TrenchBroom/GTKRadiant maps with ACTUAL gameplay!)

Phase 2: Full Speed Ahead

  • New game mechanics fresh to TURNT
  • Iterating heavily on weapons mechanics
  • Models, animations, sounds
  • Automated map submissions
  • Introduction of cosmetics (non-paid, everything will be available while we test and iterate here)
  • All physics modes being finalised: TPM/CPM/VQ3/VNT

Phase 3: TURNT WORLDWIDE

  • Releasing the game on Steam
  • Ingame shop with 100% of earnings going toward TURNT server hosting, and anything remaining will be funneled entirely back into competitions/cups
  • Anything extra in this phase will likely be backend-related. Phase 3 will be all about releasing TURNT properly to the public + polish and less about the addition of new features

Chad Zone

puyo is typing...

New website

Aside from Godot 4, I've moved website content to a setup with material for mkdocs. It's a very nice system, geared towards generating easy to read documentation. At this stage we're hijacking the blog feature until we get some things to document.

  • Updates will still be posted in discord, but this will serve as a better long term reference, and allowing us to post more detail and linked content if desired
  • Easier for elim to blogpost
  • Leaderboards will be on a separate subdomain

TURNT itself

After my significant hibernation, the switch to Godot 4 and some better access to TURNT time in 2025 will allow me to work on a bunch of stuff:

  • Better UI everywhere.
  • Player models and animations.
  • Sounds.
  • Look, feel and juice.

Sign-Off

elim is typing...

Once again, thank you to each and every one of you that has anything to do with this game. Whether you've played it, talked about it, followed it from afar or anything else - all of it gives me motivation to continue spending as much free time on it as possible. We all know that TURNT is not a game marketed for profit or any kind of large playerbase. It's just a bipedal racer game by a bipedal racer player for the bipedal racer players. As such, you all have much more impact than you probably know in steering the direction of where we end up.

Here's to THE YEAR OF TURNT

We'll see you sliding around again very soon. Take care!