Changelog

Daily Dirt Rally is developed in the open by one person. This page is the running record of what shipped and when — including the unglamorous fixes, because those are usually the ones players notice.

September 2026

8 September — Site rebuild around real documentation

• Added this guide library: driving guides covering track limits, nitro timing, cornering, multiplayer, track generation and scoring.
• The contact form now sends a real message to a real inbox instead of pretending to. Previously it cleared the form and displayed an invented confirmation code without transmitting anything, which was indefensible; it is fixed.
• Removed an inaccurate claim from the front page promising on-screen touch controls on mobile. No such controls exist yet, so the page now says so plainly.
• Corrected the description of the surface system. Grip and speed-penalty values exist in the generator but nothing reads them while driving, so the site no longer describes a friction engine the game does not yet have.
• Unknown URLs now return a real 404 page with a 404 status instead of silently serving the home page.
• Every page now has its own title, description and canonical URL, and the content pages are rendered to static HTML at build time so they can be read without JavaScript.
• Added a sitemap, a robots file, and a favicon that is not a missing file.
• Rewrote the privacy policy to describe advertising cookies and third-party vendors.

July 2026

27 July — HTTPS everywhere

• The site is served over HTTPS via nginx with an automatically renewing Let’s Encrypt certificate. HTTP requests redirect to HTTPS, and the multiplayer websocket upgrade is proxied correctly.
• Removed the third-party Social Bar ad script. It was intrusive, and the site is better without it.

23 July — Deployment automation

• Production deploys now run from a GitHub Actions workflow rather than by hand.
• Rotated and untracked a leaked SSH key, and moved secrets out of the repository.

May – June 2026

• Landing page and contact form redesign.
• Repository cleanup: removed tracked virtual environments and stray platform files.

April 2026

Race feel and interface

• Renamed the game to Daily Dirt Rally.
• Repositioned the countdown and race notifications so they no longer sit on top of your truck at the moment you need to see it.
• Rebuilt the minimap with live player tracking, fixed the nitro counter and removed redundant surface labels from the HUD.
• Fixed the leaderboard close button returning you to the lobby correctly.
• Fixed player positions failing to reset when restarting a race from the leaderboard.
• Replaced the wall-collision response with an outward nudge, eliminating the oscillation that could pin a truck against a barrier.
• Corrected multiplayer truck rotation, which differed between AI and human vehicles.
• Added background music for the lobby and for races.
• Major physics rework, plus a batch of leaderboard fixes.

March 2026

• Pixel-accurate collision. Track boundaries moved from rectangles to per-pixel masks generated from the tile artwork, so the visible edge became the real edge. World dimensions were harmonised at the same time.
• Daily leaderboard. Times are filed by track date and reset with the track. Added a profanity filter for names.
• AI opponents. Three difficulty profiles that drive the track with the same physics as human players, and can take over a vehicle if its driver disconnects mid-race.
• Multiplayer. Four-player rooms with invite codes, room management, client socket integration and correct grid spacing.
• Backend physics moved to an arcade driving model, with an AI steering overhaul.
• Blocked joining a lobby whose race is already in progress.
• Restored and expanded the automated test suite across both frontend and backend.

Earlier

The project began as a phased build: procedural track generation, then the truck and its physics, then race timing and checkpoints, then multiplayer, then AI. The phase reports from that period are in the repository rather than here — this page starts where the game became something people other than its author could play.