Developer snapshot 2026-07-25

Preview snapshot for players who want the newest features before the next stable release. Expect rough edges; your save files stay compatible whenever possible, but back them up first.

Changes since the previous snapshot

Added

• Linux players get an AppImage. Alongside the tarball, each release now ships FreightFate-<version>-linux-x86_64.AppImage: one file you mark executable and run, with no extraction step. It carries the libraries the Ubuntu build needs, so it also runs on Fedora, Arch, and openSUSE, and every build boots on Fedora before it ships. Because the AppImage itself is read-only, saves live in ~/.local/share/FreightFate instead of a saves folder beside the game. In-game updates work too: the game downloads the new AppImage, swaps the file in place, and restarts — and if the AppImage sits somewhere your user account cannot write to, the game tells you where the downloaded update was saved instead of failing quietly.
• The R key now tells you how far along you are. The route report leads with your trip progress, like 53 percent there, followed by the miles left. It is the same figure the online drivers board shows for you, and the Tab status menu has a matching Progress line. Deadhead drives count too.

Changed

• Shorter driving readouts that fit a braille display. The clock, route, weather, and fuel reports now put the answer in the first few words, so a one-line braille display shows what matters without panning. The C key leads with the time and whether you are on schedule instead of burying the verdict at the end, and on the terse speech setting it skips the calendar, the appointment restatement, and the stop-planning advice, all of which the Tab status menu still carries.
• Walking away from a parked truck now takes you off the drivers board. If your truck sits stopped with nothing changing for half an hour, you leave the public board just as if you had paused the game, and the board stops calling you a driver who is on duty. The moment anything changes, like rolling again or pulling into a stop, you are back on the board within seconds. Deadhead drives also now say how far along they are, on the board and in Discord, so a long empty run never looks like a parked truck.

Fixed

• Short hauls no longer pay several times more per mile than long ones. A guaranteed minimum meant a fifty mile hop could pay over a thousand dollars, four to five times the per-mile rate of a real cross country run, so short hops were always the best money. Short jobs still pay a premium per mile, the way real freight does, but it now eases down smoothly as the distance grows. Pay for medium and long routes is essentially unchanged.