Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers Version 2.4 Release Candidate 3

Kart Krew Dev — Thu 18 September 2025

Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers version 2.4 is just on the horizon!

This is a Release Candidate version; the design and features are mostly final, but since there are a lot of changes in this release, we’re making it available in a pending state to check for technical issues and critical bugs.

If you’d like to try out the newest features and fixes, and don’t mind running into potential bugs, please give this version a try; let us know if you run into trouble via GitLab or on Discord.

If you’re just arriving, please read the previous release candidate notes first! This page won’t list any changes made in prior RC versions.

• RC1 patch notes
• RC2 patch notes

Download links

WARNING!

This is a Release Candidate build. You may encounter bugs, lose progress, or otherwise have weird stuff happen to you.

We recommend installing to a new location and backing up your save files (ringdata.dat, ringprofiles.prf, ringconfig.cfg). Installations upgraded to 2.4 cannot be reverted to 2.3; you MUST back up your data to do this.

BACK UP YOUR EXISTING INSTALLATION, OR YOU COULD IRREVERSIBLY LOSE EVERYTHING!

• Windows
• macOS
• GitHub Release Page
• The Flatpak release won’t be updated for prerelease versions. Technical Linux/Deck users can compile from source: check out tag v2.4-rc3 and use the assets linked in the GitHub release.

NOTE: There are still more fixes coming! However, we’ve already made enough changes that we’d like to battle-test the latest stuff while we work.

Core Gameplay

• Fixed a series of bugs that could cause your Ring count to desynchronize or function strangely when using Ring Bail, including preventing Ring pickup or Ring Bailing for unusual values.
  • Among other things, this caused rapid repeated Bails to boost you much faster than intended.
• You can no longer Bail while respawning, or while below 0 total rings with no item.
  • The above bugfix makes this generally a bad idea anyway.
• Holding Ring Bail in situations where you can’t Bail no longer prevents all Ring attraction.
• Players using Ring Bail now intermittently flash dark, indicating that they’re vulnerable.
• Increased Insta-Whip’s recovery, and further increased it when missing.
• Using Ring Bail now places Insta-Whip on a brief recovery.
• You now receive amps for Ring Stinging a player charging Insta-Whip, or in Insta-Whip recovery.
  • These changes should make it easier to react to fast slingshot-pass Insta-Whips, and make it easier and more rewarding to exploit careless attacks. Insta-Whip was already strong in 2.3, and Ring Bail allows you to access it much quicker, with instant speed. It’s highly competitive with regular driving even at close ranges, where the defender doesn’t get their usual chance to preempt or avoid approaches. We’re keeping an eye on this (and trying to play plenty of games!), but races seem healthier when Ring Bail is used for situational speed, not all-purpose overtake power.
• Starting Ring count in Race gametypes 20 → 10 (matching RC1, 2.3).
  • Most POSITION areas have enough Rings to stock up some extra safety; this change was a bit too cautious, and reduced the incentive for players to use POSITION at all.
• First Blood grants slightly fewer Amps.
  • Frontrunners are meant to have a cushion of safety, but the position is overall slightly too safe, and can leave a strong frontrunner multiple turns ahead even against equally strong competition.
• You now need to fall slightly further behind to receive Grow in the Item Roulette.
  • Grow appeared significantly earlier than other power items, and is better than ever with more sources of multiplicative speed.
• Slightly increased item distances per player in the race.
  • This has been a mechanic since 2.0, and has existed in its current form since RC1, but needed a heavier touch now that other compensation systems are working correctly.
• Increased the range that the Item Roulette considers you “close to” other players, and slightly decreased the compensation when considered “far away”.
  • This should increase how often players under attack receive usable defensive/counterattack items. (This system is independent of leader distance, and can take effect anywhere from 2nd to 16th.)

This is a lot of changes for a single day’s worth of play—that’s what happens when large portions of the existing balance are based on bugs! We’ll be tuning closer to the ideal over time, but RC2’s balance was a significant overcorrection and led to tight, chaotic midpack scenarios with very low position stability. If “zero-ring berserking” is ever too strong, it can force nearby players into narrow play patterns and turn the game into rocket jousting; we’ll be keeping an eye on this as we enter our final tuning passes (and hopefully the last of major gameplay bugs!)

Misc Fixes

• Fixed the Overdrive shield not protecting from certain “downgraded” sources of damage.
  • The damage system is full of tricky one-off rules and special exceptions. Please continue to report strange events on the GitLab!
• Fixed Acid Drop VFX flying away from the player.
• Fixed a memory bug introduced by a change in the netgame connection flow which would reliably crash on some Linux and macOS systems. - !20
• Fixed a crash starting dedicated servers also introduced by connection flow changes. - !22
• Some debugging commands for staff ghosts have slightly improved log messages. - !17
• Raised the voice bitrate significantly, from 10kbps to 28kbps. Oops. I definitely made that way lower than I thought.
• Speaking indicators are no longer displayed in several situations where you aren’t actually able to speak.

Course Changes

Northern District - Adjusted elements to prevent players from taking the last shortcut on the final lap, after the crane has been raised.

Sunset Hill - Removed the lower section after the mandatory trick panel.

Hot Crater - Removed the first shortcut.

Development

• Added initial support for building with clang-cl.exe with the Windows SDK.
  • We’ll probably be moving to Windows Clang x64 builds in 2.5, but Eidolon wanted to get this into the tree so contributors can start messing with it.

Modding

• V_SPLITSCREEN now draws HUD elements in the proper viewport in splitscreen. - !18

Additional Contributors

These community contributors helped with this release. Thank you!

• frostu8
• hayaunderscore
• rypofalem