MudRunner vs. SpinTires

@unster Not to mention their communication. They are on fire answering on facebook. Lots of promises have been made, like free roam camera etc.

@08_jk_ The AW trucks do have friction values. They're not numerical & specific like mods often are, but they use "default", "offroad" or another preset value.

I'm not sure what you're talking about regarding ST mods & camera. Mods are downloaded and the camera works the same way as in MR. In fact the cam is better now in ST. It has 4 levels of zoom. ST doesn't have the truck-centered cam from MR, but I don't care. I find the original cam more useful.

And yes, don't use STmod or anything like that with the new ST. Features from that are starting to migrate into ST and if you have both you may have conflicts.

Edit: I just found out that mod maps are indeed installed manually. They're not in the workshop for some reason. But the process is simple.

last edited by Unster

If the resurrection of SpinTires pushes Pavel and the team to still work on Mudrunner a bit more I'd say we're good.

I for one still have a couple of major peeves with MudRunner : the fact that for nVidia cards at least texture quality decreases as you play along and that the automatic gearbox always downshifts to first.

Others still have the following gripes: no front driveshaft for the F150, tire tracks aren't saved, logs you carry don't collide with trees, traction is sometimes a bit wonky on various surfaces (tires on fully loaded trucks spin on pavement).

Even if SpinTires won't get that far with new updates, the fact that Mudrunner has bugs SpinTires doesn't, doesn't really bode well.

Please, let's just all let the team know that we're still expecting a bit more from them before we go out and buy Mudrunner 2. And we're not talking extra content like the upcoming DLC (which I'm really looking forward to) but fixing some still big issues that remain in the game.

@xenorad I hear you and I agree. It's actually a real shame that MR even introduced bugs & issues that were not in the original ST. And the devs have been very non-respondent when it comes to bugs reported. It's the opposite with ST now, where Zane is involved in the community and talks to us. Of course he doesn't have time to respond to every single comment and he shouldn't, but he's not absent like the devs on this forum.

I haven't noticed the texture degradation in ST. As far as tire tracks, those don't stay long but the depression in the ground stays in both games and it gets saved from what I've seen, though it's more pronounced in ST. Logs don't collide with trees in either game. But I'm really glad the automatic in ST works correctly, since I'm forced to use it until they add shifter support.

@unster - I read the clarification on the Oovee forums. I don't know what to say, but it's very strange that they waited so long before coming up with this. It almost sounds like made up stuff to try and restart SpinTires and bring MudRunner down a notch, but I just don't know.

Since I don't know the real truth I don't wish to take side and generally I'm on the opinion that too much politics ruins things. Competition on the other hand is good. For instance the new SpinTires beta does some things better than Mudrunner (not limited to bugs only), even without the original devs on board. That is troublesome.

I liked SpinTires a lot and I like Mudrunner even better, but it has been 5 years and that makes me think. For one, this is a very loyal following the game has gathered, regardless of iteration. And for a game which traditionally was plagued by a lack of communication from devs and publishers alike and of not that frequent updates - well that' saying something. That something is potential. Potential is very precious and it's a real pity to waste. People stuck around hoping that that potential would bare proper fruit. But 5 years later it just doesn't add up. And it's a real pity that a game which basically has no equal in its niche can't be all that it can be.

From what I've seen this community doesn't really ask a lot. They just ask for a few much needed improvements and the ability to work on themselves via mod tools to bring extra content.

The general consensus is that the Americal Wilds DLC was extremely welcome and so is this next free one. But - it doesn't supplant the fact that some work is still needed for the game.

How can we all get together and in one voice ask that some things are taken care of before we get to MudRunner 2?

There's a saying which goes that about 20% of your customers produce 80% of your sales. We are the 20%, we're here on this forum. We should be heard should we drive 80% of sales for MudRunner 2.

@xenorad I don't know about that. I don't think we're that important. In the end it's all money, and whether it comes from a hardcore fan or a casual player who stumbled upon the game, it's the same profit for the company. I mean I'd like to think that we're important, but I'm being realistic. In the end it's their game, and they don't have to listen to us, and we don't have to buy their product. Voicing our suggestions and voting with our wallets is all we can do.

As far as Oovee goes, I'm aware there was silence for years and the game seemed abandoned. From what I know it has to do with the licensing agreement between Oovee and Focus/Saber that was in effect for the purpose of making MR, and it appears that agreement is now null and void which is why we're seeing ST resurrected. And it's all good for us customers.

@unster "They don't have to listen to us and we don't have to buy their product."

I like that statement but I don't know whether that puts us on equal footing or implies there's an advantage to one side over the other. Several years from now hindsight will give that answer.

I get it. MudRunner isn't that important. At the end of the day there are multiple things that take precedence.

But we don't lose anything by trying to put a bit of pressure to get our woes heard. It's the least we could do if we're still here.

@deathcoreboy1 said in MudRunner vs. SpinTires:

@unster I bought the game just like you a few days back out of the hype. It was on discount and only paid like 3.45 so I'm gonna keep it anyway to see if it worths the while in the long run. So far just seems like they hired LocalHost and Draconous who have been working in the game all this time and made their mods official. Not my idea of a good product tho.

Where'd you buy it?

@wiatowski I bought it on Steam. It was on sale 25%off, but keep in mind I'm in Argentina and pricing here is different.

@deathcoreboy1 Is that 3.45 US dollars? That's very cheap in Argentina, but I understand each country has its own living costs.

@unster said in MudRunner vs. SpinTires:

@deathcoreboy1 Is that 3.45 US dollars? That's very cheap in Argentina, but I understand each country has its own living costs.

0_1556306154813_Price.JPG
0_1556306164536_Dolar.JPG

I wouldn't be able to purchase it of the price were higher. My monthly salary is around 550USD and my living cost is around 450USD so...
I work as IT support engineer for a multinational enterprise so go figure out how other people live.

last edited by deathcoreboy1

@deathcoreboy1 Got it and thanks for the info. FYI, in the US Spintires is $11.99 on Steam without any discount. And I thought that was already quite cheap. New premium games are $59.99. But yeah, different country.

last edited by Unster

...and just for anyone else who might be curious about steam prices for other countries. HERE is a page a not a lot of people take advantage of.

@8up-local I didn't know in Costa Rica people pay with colons. 😀

There's been a new update for the Spintires beta. Simply put it's now beating MudRunner in several key aspects:

  • The graphics appear sharper in tone and there's little to no annoying level-of-detail switching for environmental objects. You can tell where Spintires starts to draw foliage but then the foliage doesn't swap details as it does with Mudrunner; As a result the visual experience is smoother in Spintires;

  • The sounds of the trucks are more defined and less repetitive in Spintires;

  • Mud doesn't clump together in huge blobs on tires in Spintires;

  • The automatic gearbox just works;

I didn't otherwise spend a lot of time testing for difference but the way this is going in a couple more updates the core of Spintires is going to be better than Mudrunner. Obviously Mudrunner still has more content, has a better UI and some better truck models here and there, but ... also has more bugs, some of which reported a long time ago ...

Come on, Mudrunner team! I know you can release another patch or two until MR2 to fix these remaining issues. I know you can at least try and make Mudrunner the better of the two Spintires games.

Do you really want Spintires: The Original Game to catch up to your product and surpass it? That will be bad marketing by the time MR2 shows up.

last edited by XenoRad

@xenorad LOL, good points though. I imagine Saber & Focus are focused on MR2 and not MR anymore. ST beta surpassed MR weeks ago when it came out and it just keeps getting better. Even the old ST was giving MR a run for its money. Now it's not even a contest. The only thing where MR holds the lead is content (more maps & trucks), but even that will probably change in the near future.

Anyway, I doubt Saber & Focus are interested in competing with ST using MR. They probably hope MR2 will crush it, but I wouldn't be so sure.

@Unster Mudrunner also has better gamepad controls, at least for now. Anyway, I see you're active on Spintires forums so keep at it - if you can at least get that game improved with player feedback it'll still be a win.

But still, I mean, we get a game that is almost a whole niche by itself, has no competition for several years and most of its potential has been squandered away in business politics and easy to notice bugs that remain for months on end.

I think we were all hoping that Mudrunner would break free of whatever toxicity came out of the previous business relationship between development and publishers but it's deja vu already.

Worst (or best) of it all, Oovee, who weren't exactly the champions of communication, are starting to be rather active in forums and use community feedback to improve Spintires. Simultaneously, Pavel's new team at Focus is revving down on the updates and community interaction.

Can't we just get a proper Spintires/Mudrunner game with only minor bugs and annoyances if any? Is that too much to ask after 5 years of development across two games that can only rely on a faithful community to survive?

@xenorad You are correct that MR has slightly better controls. Especially the ability to use 2 controllers at once comes to mind but Oovee is working on that.

I'm not sure what business relationship toxicity you're talking about. Anyway, I certainly like where Oovee is going with ST now. They're trying hard and listening. Something Focus & Sabre could do much better at. Their only excuse really is that they're working on MR2 and some may say that's fair enough. Still, if I were them I wouldn't leave MR1 in the shape it's in now.

Business Toxicity - at several points Spintires encountered some hiccups and accusations started being thrown:

  • that Oovee took Pavel's game and didn't pay him according to their contract;
  • that Pavel snuck in some code to sabotage the game;
  • etc...

Multiple things. Anyway, we're past that now.

Now we all want MR1 to be properly fixed so that we can look towards MR2 with more confidence. Alternatively we won't say no to Spintires rejuvenated with more and better features and content.