Developer snapshot 2026-06-21

Automated developer snapshot of the dev branch, 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

• Music remakes. The main menu theme, Open Road, and Night Haul now use new Suno remakes while keeping their familiar Freight Fate music slots.
• Music rotation. All menu and driving music beds now play once and rotate through their active pool instead of looping.
• Quieter music by default. New settings now start background music at half volume so speech and driving cues stay comfortably in front.
• Truck cab sound refresh. Engine start, idle, shutdown, horn, gear shift, parking-brake set and release, and highway road ambience now use the updated in-cab vehicle sound set, with donated truck recordings from Darren Duff. The start cue is trimmed so the idle loop takes over cleanly.
• Night driving ambience. Night drives now play a new recorded in-cab night ambience loop.

Fixed

• Updater works in packaged builds again. Nuitka builds do not set the PyInstaller-era sys.frozen flag, so the game mistook every packaged copy for a source checkout: "Check for updates" reported running from source, the startup update check never ran, and saves/game.log was never written. Packaged builds are now detected correctly, restoring update checks, install, and crash logging.
• Facility approach speed cues. Pickup deadheads now use lower-speed facility access roads, deliveries slow through a final receiver approach, and the last gate prompts are shorter so stopping instructions land faster.
• Facility gate ambience. Pickup and destination facility screens now use a quieter loading-dock ambience that stays away from truck-idle rumble.

Developer snapshot 2026-06-20

Automated developer snapshot of the dev branch, 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

• Expanded music beds. Freight Fate now includes longer menu, facility, daytime driving, and nighttime driving music. Menus and freight facility screens use a career-aware pool, and active drives use stable day/night pools that rotate without reshuffling abruptly while you are on the road.
• Truck cab sound refresh. Engine start, idle, shutdown, horn, and highway road ambience now use the updated in-cab vehicle sound set, with donated truck recordings from Darren Duff. The start cue is trimmed so the idle loop takes over cleanly.
• New achievement system. Careers now track achievements across a range of categories, with a spoken main-menu viewer and a chime when you unlock one. Existing careers carry over. Note: a career saved on a developer snapshot may not load on an older stable release.

Fixed

• Preview sound volume. The refreshed truck, road, weather, route, and facility sounds now play at full source strength before the player's volume settings are applied, so lowering and raising sound effects behaves more predictably.
• Achievement speech routing. Achievement unlocks now speak through the screen reader voice instead of the separate driving-event voice, so players who miss or interrupt an unlock can still review it later from the Achievements menu.
• Facility and settings audio fixes. Terminal and yard screens now use the new facility-gate ambience, delivery completion no longer buries the dock and settlement cues under a generic menu sound, and volume settings persist into the next game session.

Freight Fate v1.6.0

Added

• Contextual route and weather audio. Driving now uses in-cab rain, snow, wind, fog horn, and thunder cues plus short route-event sounds for hazards, construction zones, inspections, tolls, state crossings, rest stops, weigh stations, facility gates, and docking. The road bed is back in the mix so the cab does not feel dry while moving. The experimental vehicle engine sound redesign is still being tuned and is not part of this release.
• Route rest, toll, and settlement realism. Route planning now uses richer truck-stop data, handles shoulder-sleep edge cases more cleanly, and accounts for toll and settlement details more explicitly.
• Air-brake startup and reservoir behavior. Trucks now build air pressure before departure, keep spring brakes engaged until the system is ready, and model service and emergency reservoir pressure while driving so braking feels more like a heavy truck without stranding new careers.
• Driving status menu. Pressing Tab while driving now opens a spoken status menu with load, trip, truck, route, and route-stop details from the road.
• Better route stops. Dispatch-supported freight now relies on curated truck-relevant route stops only: placeholder midpoint POIs no longer count as real route support, long-haul lanes must include explicit fuel-capable stops, and route summaries/GPS stop details now give clearer parking certainty.
• Auto-updater. The packaged game now checks GitHub for new releases when you reach the main menu. When one is found, a fully spoken prompt offers "Download and restart" (downloads the update, swaps it in, and relaunches the game for you), "What's new" (reads the update's changelog line by line), "Remind me later", and "Skip this version". A new Settings entry, "Update channel", picks between stable releases and preview builds, and "Check for updates" checks immediately.
• Real pickup and loading flow. Job offers now name the origin facility as an actual stop on the trip instead of flavor text. After accepting a load, you check in at the listed facility, load only while stopped, then plan the loaded trip to the destination.
• Company terminal dispatch flow. New careers and continued drives now frame the service-area hub as a company terminal or yard instead of a generic city spawn. Dispatches start with a local deadhead move from the terminal to the shipper, and delivery settlement parks the truck at the destination area's terminal or yard for the next assignment.
• Destination facility docking. Deliveries no longer settle just because the truck reached the destination city. The game now warns at speed, keeps you in control until a full stop, opens a facility menu with a dock/yard cue, and requires "Dock and deliver" before payment. "Check paperwork" previews facility, cargo, payout, deadline, and damage details without completing the load.
• Real freight facilities on job boards. Cities now offer freight from classified locations such as terminals, warehouses, ports, intermodal yards, air cargo areas, manufacturing plants, food terminals, industrial parks, retail distribution hubs, and bulk facilities. Cargo is filtered by plausible facility type.
• Highway exits. Rest stops now sit at proper exits. They are announced a few miles out ("Press X to take the exit for it"); X signals for the exit (and X again cancels), you slow to 45 or less for the ramp — any faster and you blow past it — then half a mile of ramp and brake to a stop, and the rest stop menu opens by itself. The ramp is off the highway: hazards and speeding checks pause while you are on it. Pressing T while stopped on the highway at a stop still works.
• Explicit highway stop positions. Route data now stores named highway amenities with explicit mile positions instead of spreading rest stops evenly across a leg. The first curated offline stop set uses sourced rest areas and travel centers, keeping the game playable without live map lookups.
• Reverse gear and missed-stop recovery. Trucks can now back up. Automatic players can hold Down while stopped to reverse slowly, then touch Up to brake and return to forward drive; manual players can press the clutch and Backspace for reverse. If you miss a rest stop, slow down, back up carefully, stop, and press T.
• Cruise control. K sets cruise at your current speed, matching common highway driving expectations, and holds it with a slow throttle governor through grades. K again, any braking, the emergency brake, a stall, or taking an exit cancels it — and a hazard warning hands control straight back to you. Space reports speed.
• Region-flavored road hazards. The hazard pool now mixes nationwide staples with local flavor for the region you are driving through: dust devils and tumbleweeds in the Southwest, deer and farm equipment in the Midwest, rockfall in the Rockies, elk and standing water in the Pacific Northwest, and more.
• Separate voice for driving events. Road events — hazard warnings, collisions, weather changes, rest stop and city announcements, HOS and fatigue warnings, speeding, inspections, speed callouts — now speak through a dedicated Windows SAPI voice, so a screen reader reading menus or echoing keystrokes can no longer cut off a "Brake now!" mid-sentence. A new Settings entry, "Driving event voice" (default: separate SAPI voice), switches events back to the screen reader. When SAPI is unavailable, or is already the main voice, events fall back to the main channel automatically.
• Emergency brake. Hold B while driving for the hardest possible stop: instant full application plus the spring brakes (about 1.6 times the service brakes, still subject to weather grip and brake fade), with a loud air-dump cue. Use it for hazards and for rest stops you would otherwise overshoot. Mentioned in the tutorial, F1 controls, and the manual.
• Roadside mechanic. The pause menu while driving now offers "Call a roadside mechanic" once damage is past 25 percent: a field patch back down to 25 percent damage for a 500-dollar callout plus 110 dollars per percent repaired (a steep premium over the garage). The repair takes 90 in-game minutes against your deadline and duty window, and the bill is due even if it puts you in debt — never a dead end.
• Time and weather in the city. A new city menu entry speaks the clock, the time of day, the day of your career, and current conditions in town (live Open-Meteo data when real weather is enabled).
• Sleep in any city. A new city menu entry, "Sleep 10 hours", gives a full night at your terminal: fresh hours of service, zero fatigue, and the clock advances 10 hours. Previously a spent duty window followed you into the city with no remedy except driving — illegally — to the first rest stop of the next run.

Changed

• How-to-play driving guidance. The main-menu guidance for driving controls is shorter and more direct.
• Early career progression and pay. Low-level jobs now pay enough to make early progress feel worthwhile after operating costs, and higher levels unlock clearer differences in range, cargo, endorsements, and long-haul opportunities.
• Truck acceleration and shifting. Loaded trucks reach safe highway speeds more plausibly, top gear behaves more like mild overdrive, and automatic shift cues are easier to hear without adding air-brake sounds to gear changes.
• Freight market terminology. Player-facing market wording now uses trucking language: tight, loose, and steady, replacing the old generic market labels.
• Real terrain on real highways. A geography audit corrected 20 of the 106 legs. The famous grades are now mountains: Monteagle on I-24 (Nashville-Atlanta), the Cumberland Plateau on I-40 (Knoxville-Nashville), the Pennsylvania Turnpike's Allegheny crossings (Philadelphia-Pittsburgh and Baltimore-Pittsburgh), and US-95's Idaho canyon country (Spokane-Boise). Rolling country stopped pretending to be flat: I-70's Missouri River hills, the Flint Hills and Arbuckles on I-35, Tennessee's Highland Rim on I-40, Wisconsin's driftless coulees on I-94, the Carolinas' piedmont, Connecticut on I-95, and the desert passes on I-10 (San Gorgonio, Texas Canyon) among others. Genuinely flat country — the high plains, the Gulf coast, Florida, and the Illinois prairie — stays flat.
• Realistic deadlines. Dispatch can no longer ask for the impossible. Deadlines are now built from the hours a law-abiding trucker actually needs — driving at an achievable 55 mph average, plus the 30-minute break every 8 driving hours and a 10-hour sleep for every 11-hour shift the distance demands — with 20 to 50 percent shipper slack and a flat hour for fuel on top. San Antonio to Dallas now quotes a workable 7-to-8-hour window instead of a sprint.
• State trooper groundwork. The next law-enforcement milestone is outlined: patrol intensity by corridor, CB chatter warnings, pull-overs, immediate fines, and an enforcement setting.
• Portable saves. Profiles and settings now live in a saves folder inside the game's own directory (next to the executable in release builds) instead of the per-user data directory. Existing saves are migrated over automatically on first launch; the originals are left in place.

Fixed

• Pickup facility sounds. Pickup gates and loading now use the new facility ambience and dock cues instead of the older generic menu notification sounds.
• Preview builds stay in sync with release notes. Preview builds now pick up player-facing changes that have already been prepared for the next stable release, so their "What's new" text no longer falls behind.
• Save resume keeps traffic zones stable. Continuing a saved drive now seeds trip weather from the saved trip seed too, so traffic and construction-zone layouts regenerate consistently across operating systems.
• Updater connections on macOS and Linux. The packaged game's Python runtime looks for certific...

Developer snapshot 2026-06-19

Automated developer snapshot of the dev branch, 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

• Contextual route and weather audio. Driving now uses in-cab rain, snow, wind, fog horn, and thunder cues plus short route-event sounds for hazards, construction zones, inspections, tolls, state crossings, rest stops, weigh stations, facility gates, and docking. The road bed is back in the mix so the cab does not feel dry while moving. The experimental vehicle engine sound redesign is not included yet because playtesting exposed issues that need a separate pass.
• Route rest, toll, and settlement realism. Route planning now uses richer checked-in stop coverage, supports shoulder-sleep edge cases, accounts for toll and settlement details more explicitly, and keeps those systems covered by focused route, hours-of-service, weather, world-data, and settlement tests.
• Air-brake startup and reservoir behavior. Trucks now build air pressure before departure, keep spring brakes engaged until the system is ready, and model service and emergency reservoir pressure while driving so braking feels more like a heavy truck without stranding new careers.
• Driving status menu. Pressing Tab while driving now opens a spoken status menu with load, trip, truck, route, and route-stop details from the road.

Changed

• How-to-play driving guidance. The main-menu guidance for driving controls is shorter and more direct, with the spoken tests updated around the simpler wording.

Fixed

• Pickup facility sounds. Pickup gates and loading now use the new facility ambience and dock cues instead of the older generic menu notification sounds.

Developer snapshot 2026-06-18

Automated developer snapshot of the dev branch, 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

• Curated route-stop coverage contract. Dispatch-supported freight now relies on curated truck-relevant route stops only: placeholder midpoint POIs no longer count as real route support, long-haul lanes must include explicit fuel-capable stop coverage, and route summaries/GPS stop details expose curated parking certainty from the checked-in offline dataset.

Fixed

• Developer snapshots recognize release-ready notes. Scheduled nightly builds now count player-facing entries that have already been curated into the next version block, while still ignoring internal-only changelog buckets unless a commit explicitly asks for a nightly build.
• Save resume keeps traffic zones stable. Continuing a saved drive now seeds trip weather from the saved trip seed too, so traffic and construction-zone layouts regenerate consistently across operating systems.
• Construction-zone warnings are actionable again. Construction zones now give a spoken GPS warning about 2 miles before the slowdown begins, and troopers will not clock construction-zone speeding until you have had about a mile inside the zone to react. Speech-first players can slow down in time again instead of being fined on the same update that first announces the zone.

Developer snapshot 2026-06-17

Automated developer snapshot of the main branch, 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

• feat: manage careers screen: reset or delete a career
• fix(dispatch): keep board offers stable while browsing
• docs(markets): explain freight facility expansion
• feat(markets): add facility taxonomy and role-aware jobs
• feat(tolls): account for toll road expenses
• feat(routes): enrich full freight network metadata
• feat(hos): add ELD duty status and route enforcement
• docs(routes): call out remaining toll corridors
• feat(routes): gate dispatch to metadata-backed corridors
• feat(routes): derive terrain from corridor elevation
• feat(driving): navigate corridor itineraries
• feat(routes): add offline corridor metadata

Developer snapshot 2026-06-16

Automated developer snapshot of the main branch, 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

• fix(updater): prepare 1.6.0 release snapshot
• fix(version): derive spoken version from metadata
• docs: update unreleased gameplay changelog
• feat(routes): use explicit highway stop positions
• fix(driving): add reverse for missed stops
• feat: frame dispatch from company terminals
• feat(jobs): make pickup a drivable leg
• docs: update unreleased gameplay changelog
• feat(jobs): require origin pickup before delivery
• fix(facility): wait for full stop before docking menu
• fix(market): use tight and loose freight terminology
• feat: require facility docking before delivery settlement
• fix(vehicle): tune loaded truck acceleration and shift audio
• fix(routes): announce state-aware trip progress
• fix(routes): filter implausible freight detours
• fix: detect tampered career saves
• fix: rebalance freight progression and delivery logic

Developer snapshot 2026-06-15

Automated developer snapshot of the main branch, 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

• feat(saves): add explicit career chooser
• Fix menu help and weather settings bugs

Developer snapshot 2026-06-13

Automated developer snapshot of the main branch, 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

• Updater: ship certifi for TLS everywhere, speak the real network error
• Hazards: speed-aware reaction windows that physics can actually beat

Developer snapshot 2026-06-12

Automated developer snapshot of the main branch, 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

• README: add uv's official install one-liners
• Updater: copy new root directories, make save preservation explicit
• README: document downloads, source prerequisites, and standalone builds
• Add in-game auto-updater with stable and dev channels
• Add macOS release builds
• Fix Linux-only test failure: frozen game_root test used a Windows path
• Point nightly builds at dev; fix the lint error blocking CI
• Correct leg terrain against real US geography
• Highway exits, cruise control, regional hazards, realistic deadlines
• Bug hunt: stall soft-lock, SAPI event voice, clock fixes, emergency brake
• Make saves portable: store everything in the game directory