VETTE! 2026 0.8.0

The city's buildings in the object editor

The object editor (launch menu > Objects, Enter) now lists the city's ordinary buildings and street objects below the original's models, under City objects. That's 31 of them, from the tall office towers down to the street lamps on the corners. Reshape them like any model: move, add and delete vertices and faces, recolour them, mirror them, and undo every step. Ctrl+R puts one back as the original had it.

The original draws these with program code rather than as models, so the editor turns each one into a model. When a set changes one, the game draws that model in its place everywhere the city has it, in both the original's renderer and the Enhanced view. Left unchanged, they look exactly as the original draws them.

Good to know:

• Collisions follow the map, not the shapes. The car drives through whatever a building gains, and one made smaller still stops you where its walls were.
• A change shows everywhere that object stands. Some appear in hundreds of places (the street lamps in 400).
• Two-player races still use the original's objects.

VETTE! 2026 0.7.0

Traffic on Marina Boulevard

With Freeways: Off, Marina Boulevard now has traffic. The Bay Bridge's cars drive along it in the boulevard's own lanes: eastbound, as on the bridge, and westbound on course 3. You can bump into them, the computer opponent steers round them, and both the original's renderer and the Enhanced view draw them.

The city's own cars couldn't be used there. The game's traffic rules hide a city car and stop it where a street allows only east-west driving, so on the boulevard they'd have appeared for a moment and then frozen. The Bay Bridge's cars drive straight on and ignore those rules.

Nothing else changes: the dashboard's road signs in the Marina are the original's, the police behave as they did there, and the computer opponent finishes every course in the same time as before.

VETTE! 2026 0.6.1

Name tags and an arrow in two-player races

• Name tags. Each player's name floats in a small tag over their car on the other's screen.
• An arrow to your friend. From the driver's seat, a small arrow at the top of the view points the way to steer. It points straight up when your friend is ahead, and slides to the left or right edge (pointing that way) when they're to that side or behind you. In the helicopter view (F4) it lies on the ground and circles your car.
• Tab shows or hides the tag and the arrow during the race. The original game doesn't use Tab in races.
• Pixel style in Classic. In Classic (and in the Enhanced view at the original resolution), both are drawn in the game's own 320x200 pixels and colours, with the tag in a small pixel font.

Names and maps in online races

• The online screen has new Your name and Tag and arrow rows. A LAN race is listed under its host's name, and the window title shows who you're racing.
• An online race is now played in the host's map: if the host plays a map made in the map editor, it's sent to the friend's game as the race begins. Both players still need the same version of VETTE! 2026.

Fixes

• Launch menu clicks. Clicking a row in the launch menu while the window wasn't the active one did nothing (Windows used the click only to bring the window to the front). It now counts.
• Online screen. It now works with the mouse, and Enter on Back goes back.

VETTE! 2026 0.5.0

The object editor

The launch menu has a new Objects row. Press Enter on it to open the object editor. The game's 3D models (the traffic and the opponents' cars, the police car, your Corvette, the pedestrians and the landmarks from Coit Tower to the Ferry Building) are shown one at a time in a 3D view you can turn round and zoom.

• Pick vertices or faces with the mouse. Tab switches between them, and Shift adds to the selection.
• Move what's picked by dragging it, or nudge it with the arrow keys and Page Up/Down. X, Y or Z keeps a move to one axis, and Enter lets you type a vertex's exact position.
• Build: A adds a vertex, F makes a face through the picked vertices in order (two make a line), M mirrors what's picked across the middle, and Delete removes it.
• Colour faces from the original's 16-colour palette: click a colour, press 0-9 (Shift+0-5 for colours 10-15), or press C for the next colour. R turns a face round.
• Undo and redo everything with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y. Ctrl+S saves your set, and F1 lists every key.

Choose your set in the Objects row to play with it. Both the original's renderer and the Enhanced view draw your objects, so they appear in races and on the opponent screen. The game's own files are never changed. Two-player races use the original's objects.

The editor covers the game's data-driven models. The ordinary city blocks are drawn by program code and aren't in it yet.

The opponent screen at full resolution

With the Enhanced view (Extended or Maximum draw distance), the turning car on the opponent screen is now drawn at your display's resolution. With the Smooth frame rate it also turns smoothly rather than in the game's own steps.

VETTE! 2026 0.4.0

Traffic and pedestrians on the new roads (Freeways: Off)

The roads that join the city with the freeways off now have traffic that belongs there:

• The coast road is busy both ways. The Golden Gate's own cars carry on past the bridge's approach: over the causeway, through the Marina and down the Great Highway to the Zoo, in their own lanes. They come and go along the whole road instead of appearing out of nowhere.
• No more cars on the water or the grass.
  • The causeway and the Marina crossing are a real road now, with lane markings. Before, they showed the bay underneath.
  • The Marina's street is a proper boulevard, carried on through the park into the city.
  • Cars stay off the Marina Green.
  • The water beside the causeway is open bay again, as along the Great Highway.
• The city's own cars turn back where the coast road begins, as they do at any dead end. They no longer vanish onto the causeway.
• The new diagonal street before the Bay Bridge has traffic like the old diagonal next to it.
• Pedestrians walk the Marina, which had none before, and keep off the water and the coast road.
• The computer opponent still finishes every course at every difficulty, with the same times as 0.3.0.

Your settings are kept

Whatever you choose in the launch menu is saved for next time, even if you quit from the menu without playing. Full screen or window is remembered too, including when you switch with Alt+Enter in the game. Command-line options still apply to a single run only.

VETTE! 2026 0.3.0

Freeways: Off — one connected city

In the original VETTE!, the city is really several separate pieces joined only by freeways. Every course needs at least one: Zoo → Presidio freeway → Golden Gate; Golden Gate → Doyle Drive → city → 480 → Bay Bridge; Bay Bridge → 280 → Zoo.

The launch menu's new Freeways row can switch them off. With Off:

• New roads, built from the game's own pieces, join the city into one:
  • a causeway runs up the coast from the Great Highway to the Golden Gate;
  • the Golden Gate's road deck continues down to the Marina;
  • Golden Gate Park and the Marina open into the central city;
  • the barrier in front of the Bay Bridge becomes a street.
• The on-ramps lead nowhere. Driving over one does nothing.
• The computer opponent drives city streets wherever it used to take a freeway. It finishes every course at every difficulty level, and it gets there sooner than it does with the freeways (course 1: 3½ minutes instead of nearly 5), so it's harder to beat.
• Online races use the host's setting.

The default is On, the original game, and the Classic preset keeps them on. To switch them off for a single run, use --freeways off.

Also

• When the window is short of room, the launch menu now lists the versions found (DOS, PC-98, Macintosh) on one line, so everything fits.
• For developers:
  • vette_world --drivable [--no-freeways] draws which parts of the city connect.
  • vette_run --freeways off --opponent-log follows the computer opponent around a course.

VETTE! 2026 0.2.0

Map editor

You can now edit the city and race in your own version of it.

The launch menu has a new Map row that picks the city you race in: the original, or a map you've made. Press Enter on the row to open the map editor. It shows the whole city from above, north up, and you edit it cell by cell using the original game's own 161 cell types: streets, city blocks, parks, water and bridge pieces.

• Left-click paints with the brush. Drag to paint a line.
• Right-click picks the cell under the pointer as the brush. Right-drag moves the view, and the wheel zooms.
• 0-3 set the brush's height.
• [ and ] change which design a big tile uses. W switches a big tile between water and land.
• Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo, and Ctrl+S saves. F1 lists every key.

The city is 5 x 5 big tiles of 16 x 16 cells. Some big tiles share one design, such as the water around the city, and these change together. The editor outlines them when you point at one.

Your maps are saved in VETTE! 2026's own maps folder, next to save. The game's original files are never changed. To play a map for a single run, use --map NAME.

Not yet

These are next on the list:

• The original's traffic, pedestrians and computer opponent still follow their fixed routes, which can run through what you change.
• Street names and dashboard signs are still the original's.
• Online races always use the original map.
• An option to remove the freeways, with roads that connect the whole city.
• An object editor.

VETTE! 2026 0.1.9

Smooth freeway traffic

Freeway cars no longer appear out of nowhere in front of you or vanish up the road.

The original game puts each new freeway car on the road a few hundred yards ahead of you. It removes cars once they get too far ahead. In its own small 320x200 view you barely notice this. With the long draw distance, it looks like cars popping in and out.

The new Freeway traffic option in the launch menu is set to Smooth (no pop-in) by default:

• New cars come onto the road at the far end of what the original shows.
• With Extended or Maximum draw distance, cars fade in as they arrive. A car the original removes keeps driving along the road while it fades out.
• Everything else about the traffic is still the original's: speeds, lanes, how often cars come, and collisions.

Choose Original in the launch menu, or the Classic preset, to get the 1989 behaviour back. For a single run, use --freeway-traffic original.

VETTE! 2026 0.1.8

LAN races

Race someone on the same network (the same Wi-Fi or router) with no code to send and nothing to set up on the router.

• One player chooses Online race > Host a LAN race.
• The other chooses Online race > Join a LAN race: the races on the network are listed with the host's computer name, course and driving setting. Pick one and press Enter.
• Races started with Host a race show up in the list too.

The games find each other with a broadcast on UDP port 26990, which never leaves your local network.

The keys, in the game: Ctrl+H

Press Ctrl+H during the game for a sheet of every key: driving, gears, views, map, the original's toggles, and this program's own keys.

• The game pauses while the sheet is open, except in an online race, where the other player's game keeps going.
• Esc, Enter or Ctrl+H closes it. On a gamepad, Start or Back closes it.

Alt+Q quits

Alt+Q quits to the desktop from any screen: the launch menu, the online screens or the race.

The original game already uses Ctrl+Q to leave a race, so that still works as it did.

Also

• On the online screen, the "Internet address" setting no longer runs into its value.
• For testing: --press T:KEYS presses a key through the window, and --online-lan-host / --online-join lan start LAN races from the command line.

VETTE! 2026 0.1.7

Online races, no servers

Race a friend over the internet with Online race in the launch menu. The two games connect straight to each other: there is no server in between, and nothing to set up beyond your router.

• Host a race: a code like 7K3M-QX9P-2HDA goes onto your clipboard. Paste it to your friend in any chat.
• Join a race: the code is picked up from your clipboard. Press Enter and both games go straight into the race.
• The race uses the host's course and Driving setting, so jumps work in online races too. Lane centering stays each player's own.
• Both players need VETTE! 2026 0.1.7 and their own copy of DOS VETTE! 1.1.

If the host's router won't open the port

Most routers open the game's port themselves (UPnP, NAT-PMP or PCP). If yours doesn't, the game says so and you have three choices:

• Let your friend host.
• Forward TCP port 26989 to your computer in your router's settings. Then set Router to Port forwarded by hand and enter your Internet address; your router's status page shows it.
• If your friend is on your own network, give them the same-network code the game shows.

The first time you host, Windows asks whether to let the game through its firewall: allow it. Some mobile networks and internet providers can't be reached at all; then the other player hosts.

Also in this version

• An invite link (vette2026://direct/CODE) opened while the game is running now goes to that game, instead of starting a second copy.
• The two-player setup screen now opens on Direct, COM1, 57.6k, so an online race starts without changing any settings on screen.
• The launch menu's selection bar lines up with its row again.