We are truly happy to anounce the latest release for Speed Dreams, 2.4.0! 🎉 Released in the context of FOSDEM 2025, this new version is the result of almost one year of hard work, resulting in over 800 commits, 1391 files changed in
speed-dreams-code alone.

Get the latest release from https://forge.a-lec.org/speed-dreams/speed-dreams-code/releases/tag/v2.4.0

This is the first release since the new leadership was announced and it has incurred major changes in our infrastructure and the community as a whole.

From SourceForge+Subversion to Forgejo+Git

One of the bigger changes was migrating from SourceForge and Subversion
to Forgejo and Git. Frustrated with the 14 GiB monorepo on SourceForge, we have decided to split the game into several repositories:

• speed-dreams-code for the engine source code. Around 37 MiB as of the time of this writing.
• speed-dreams-data for the base assets. Around 324 MiB as of the time of this writing.
• Many small repositories in https://forge.a-lec.org/speed-dreams/ for tracks and cars. For example:
  • 36gp-milano-12c36
  • mp1-vicente

This new structure allows developers and our brand new CI/CD
to quickly clone the source code with a much smaller footprint.

The new CI/CD also allows us to automatically build ready-to-use Debian and Ubuntu packages, as well as Windows installers.

In-game download manager and assets migration

These changes, which might seem trivial at a first glance, required deep changes to the engine and its underlying design, which were explained on a previous blog post.

Some assets have been already migrated to the official assets database,
but there are still many tracks and cars pending. Since those can be released independently from the 2.4.0 release, they will be migrated during the following days or weeks, and will be made available from the in-game download manager.

New sounds

We have been working on new, freely-licensed sounds for some of our cars, as shown by this video (YouTube).

Improvements to USR

We have been also working on making USR bots more competitive. While still considered WIP,
some videos were published to show the new behaviour.

Reduced system requirements

Developers are often proud to announce new features, but it is not so common to celebrate reduced system requirements! Because of the changes required by the Git migration, the minimum system requirements for Speed Dreams have been reduced:

• OpenGL 2.1 or higher (had been bumped to 3.3.0 after the 2.3.0 release)
  • GLSL 1.1 or higher (had been bumped to 3.3.0 after the 2.3.0 release)
• Disk space:
  • 252.6 MiB for Windows (plus 118.8 MiB for the installer).
  • 162 MiB for Debian/Ubuntu (plus 104 MiB for the .deb package).
• Default settings have been tweaked so that highest performance is preferred.
• A frame rate limiter was implemented so that CPU cycles are not wasted.
  • Tests during menus showed a CPU usage reduction from 70-80% to 5-10%.
  • Tests during menus showed a CPU usage reduction from 100% to 40-50%.
• The number of shared libraries in lib/drivers has been reduced from 58
  to 7, thus reducing the memory footprint while maximizing flexibility.

More Changes

Of course all the changes described when we released our latest experimental version are also included. A very quick summary of these would be:

• New tyre model, with much more realistic tyre degradation and temperature.
• Possibility to choose tyre compound (1-Soft, 2-Medium, 3-Hard, 4-Wet and 5-Extreme wet).
• Deleted the recorded weather and replaced it with a formula that takes real data, with a choice of season.
• OSG Hud completely renewed, with new widgets and the possibility of customizing it using Ctrl+8.
• Tons of improvements in trackeditor, allowing more control over the placement of objects on track.

Simu v4.1 changes (Added lateral and longitudinal force heat multipliers) have also been introduced and improved in Simu v5 (Added engine temperature, as well as activation and deactivation of certain tyre model features depending on the difficulty level you choose).

Final notes

While this release did not bring many new features, it means an important step in this new project direction. Now that Speed Dreams is relying on Git, we encourage new developers to come in and help us to make Speed Dreams greater than ever.

Happy racing!