FUEL: REFUELED mod

6 comments by Vetron on Feb 12th, 2013

The REFUELED mod has been in development for around three years now - the first iteration of the mod was compiled back in '09, but it wasn't until the following year that I actually released the mod publicly. If you want to attribute any one thing to FUEL's revised popularity and the current development state of REFUELED then in my opinion it was the Codemasters racing pack weekend deal on Steam. This deal included a lesser played game which had been badly reviewed and cast aside by many, with popular racing games such as DiRT 2 and GRID. So all of a sudden there was this huge influx of players who simply wanted to try out FUEL bundled with.

 
After talking with members of the TFROC (The FUEL Race Organization Club) Steam Group at weekly events about the mod I was developing, I soon felt it would be received well enough to actually be worth releasing. Eventually as download numbers grew I realized it would be more practical to have the mod hosted here on Mod DB. Now nearly 3 years later, REFUELED has had over 20,000 downloads and through community effort, has been made available to support 6 different languages.

So what's next?

There are two things I am really focusing on right now. Firstly "REFUELED - EXTENDED" (better name pending!), unofficial expansion pack to FUEL - adding 42 single-player and multiplayer races, with notably online dragster and hovercraft races; something the stock game never included.
Secondly is the Career Race editor (and eventual follow up of the Challenge Editor); allowing you to customise the weather and vehicle selection used in races. Want a night time bike career? A Monster Truck game more your style? Or how about throwing every vehicle in at once and having real unrestricted racing - the choice will be yours!

I have plans to release more Vista Point packs like Vista Point Pack #1. You can expect every major REFUELED release to hopefully include one of these. A lot of these Vista Points I included in earlier BETA versions of the mod - as soon as I have them refined and the translations of their names completed, they will be included. If you have any suggestions for suitable Vista Points then by all means let me know and your may find it included in a later REFUELED release!

Other lower priority things I'm working on is bringing back the old REFUELED UI (after finishing it of course), and another idea I'm liking is vehicle tuning; not so much upgrade your engines need for speed style, but more adjust your tires and gears like a typical racing game.
I've been working on various concepts and for this to work would require an external application (like Free Ride Extreme Editor and Vehicle Color Palette Editor), but this is further down the line.

Updates!

Since I released REFUELED 2013.1 [R2] I have applied various hot-fixes to improve the download package; besides bug fixes the most notable improvement is the presence of new PDF documentation files. Included is a copy of the installation tutorial I recently published here, a copy of the change-log posted here, and a screenshot preview of certain optional mods included in the package (particularly Interface and Vehicle Color mods).
So I recommend you re-download REFUELED 2013.1 [R2] here if you downloaded before the 12^th February to get the hot-fixed version.

Feedback Please!

I continue to improve REFUELED based on feedback, but there are still circumstances where people have encountered an issue with the mod (sometimes posting on forums on other websites) then not telling me about it! You can't expect me to fix or improve aspects that I'm unaware need it - if you consider certain parts of the mod could be done better or you've encountered a bug then either let me know in a comment or PM me and I will look at it ASAP.

At the moment as of writing this, 86% of the 65 people who reviewed FUEL REFUELED rate it 9 out of 10 or higher, so at least I must be doing something right...

Download

Links to the download and change-log of the recent REFUELED 2013.1 [R2] release are provided below. If you have any problems with the mod or discover a bug then let me know by either comment or just PM'ing me directly. This is a one-man project, however I'm always happy to help.

Change-log: R2 Change-log

Download: FUEL: REFUELED 2013.1 [R2]