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!
![New Map Interface [V15.2 Rev. 3]](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/17/16150/thumb_300x150/FUEL_2010-12-02_09-34-55-07.png)
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!
![REFUELED 2013.1 [R2] - Documentation](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/17/16150/thumb_300x150/readmedoc.png)
![REFUELED 2013.1 [R2] - Documentation](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/17/16150/thumb_300x150/optionalmodspreviewdoc.png)
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 12th 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]
It seems to be working pretty well to me. Except sometimes (after a update or a reinstall) my game keeps saying that it is corrupted and stuff like that. I can't remember exactly what it says. (I'm not with this problem anymore)
I bought FUEL through that Codemaster's racing pack deal on Steam. I'm waiting for Dirt: Showdown to go on sale, and I'm tracking the development of GRID 2. I can't even look at Need for Speed games any more. I blame EA.
I'd like to note my game almost never crashes during the initial loading screen any more, so that bug seems to be squashed.
New (Singleplayer) Challenge Idea: Hill Climb
-Race against the clock to reach the top of a mountain or cliff
-There's a start and a finish line, it's up to the player to reach the end as fast as possible
-Start and finish lines can be very close or very distant
-Each challenge uses a diffent range of vehicles. Sometimes you'll be able to crawl straight up the mountain. Other times you'll have to stick to roads. High level challenges might even give you a road vehicle when there's only small dirt trails near the start and finish lines
-If possible, have three difficulty tiers like the career races. Higher tiers have shorter time limits and higher fuel rewards
Maybe TexMod (textures) and FXAA Injector (postprocessing) will work with FUEL. If so, you could make graphic improvements to the game.
I bought my copy on release from Steam - but the game had effectively died before that deal came around. I really can't picture REFUELED and the current small community existing without that deal as so many people I know who play joined because of it.
I actually trialed an idea similar to that challenge back with V15.3/V15.4 although it wasn't as refined as you've laid out.
If possible I will add it to the challenge line up when I come to releasing the expansion. If you come across any good race locations for this challenge let me know.
When I finish all the current stuff I'm working on for FUEL then I could look into graphics improvements.
Hi guys.
I have FUEL on steam. I download the mod and extract into the steamapps local files etc. Some features still don't work
~ Debug tools menu (won't show up)
~ Unlock all driver gear
'Disable music/movies' works.
Any suggestions? I would really like to play with the full mods...
I'm having the same problem with you :\ when I want to use 'unlock all driver's gear' mod, it doesn't unlock gears, but instead just 1 jacket labeled 'Road Addict Jacket' and prevents me from unlocking another gears (by game progress)
I'll look into this, thanks for bringing it to my attention both of you. Some things like this occasionally break as I update / fix other things. I will have it fixed though, either with next update or with a hot-fix to the current version.
Anyone aware of any other bugs? :D
What I'm working on right now is getting those updated dev apps finished (e.g. free ride extreme editor) and the two additional vista point packs implemented. Some of it is quite tedious data entry, so why its taking me a while.
I loved all the improvements that you made to the game, one of my favorites is turning off the minimap, feeling compleatly free. I love the new color palette and i hope to see more improvements soon :P
3
Ok I'm trying to download this for Xbox 360. Is there any way I can do that on on my Xbox live because every time I try it a message comes up saying can't download file. Xbox 360 doesn't support downloading files to local storage
Hey great job on this mod. Its really well done. Now I don't know much about coding and game design but I play a lot of games. If this is possible I think that it would be really cool if you could try to improve the sense of speed the game gives off