As many of you will already know, today marks the 10th anniversary of the release of GeneRally v1.0. A lot has changed about GR in the intervening 10 years, but at its core, GeneRally is still the same, quirky, awesome little game that first graced the world back in 2002.

After releasing GeneRally v1.10 over a year ago, which was mostly aimed at bringing GR into a good working state on modern operating systems, Markku and I wanted to try and make the next major update something significant. When we realised that this milestone in GR's history was approaching, we thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to release a new, improved version.

So, with that in mind, we're very pleased to be releasing GeneRally v1.2 today. This version is packed with bug-fixes and new features and we think that it's the most complete, most satisfying version of GeneRally to date. We've added some features we're really proud of, like an in-game palette-changer; timed races; and speed limiters, to name just a few - and we're certain you'll enjoy it, too.

However, today isn't only about the release of GeneRally v1.2 - we have another, significant announcement to make.

For the past year, Markku and I have been working on a sequel to GeneRally alongside the development of v1.2. When we took over the development of GR, it quickly became clear that there was a lot of stuff we wanted to do that we simply couldn't do without rewriting the game from the ground up. So, with Hannu & Jukka's blessing, we began developing in earnest, eager to improve our beloved game.

The sequel (which hasn't yet been named) is in the early stages of development, but is already promising much. Our hope is to allow GeneRally to appeal to a wider audience by making it more compatible with modern operating systems; improving the graphics; updating the sounds; and making track and car editing easier and more powerful than ever. Of course, we don't want to lose the spirit of the game, so we'll be keeping many of the features and constraints that have defined GeneRally. We're obviously not able to go into much more detail at the moment, as many features and ideas are still in the very early stages of design.

Unfortunately, there is a side-effect to the development of this sequel: version 1.2 will be the last major version of GeneRally for the foreseeable future. Of course, if any major issues arise, we will attempt to patch them promptly (as we did with v1.10b and v1.10c) but, otherwise, the majority of our development time will be on the sequel. Whilst we wish we could keep both projects going, we believe that doing so would be detrimental to both games.

In the coming months, we'll start discussing new features and concepts in a developer blog, which we hope will be able to satisfy the community's desire for information, and also provoke interest from the gaming community in general.

Markku and I have already started upping our time commitment to this project and, with your help, we'd like to increase this further - so, within the month or so, we'll be opening up the project to donations. We will be maintaining a 'wall of donators' on the website to give credit to those donating and we hope that as development progresses, we will be able to provide donators with some exclusive perks and access. Each and every donation, no matter how small, will directly contribute to the project, allowing us access to better tools, and enabling us to take more time from our day-to-day jobs to work on the project (which is currently constrained to our spare time).

Of course, this post wouldn't be complete without saying "thank you" to a few key members of the GR community who have made all of this possible (in various different ways): Rich Nagel, TuomoH, Ivo, Crono and Egamad. Without the help of these guys, GR v1.2 wouldn't exist!

We hope that, after a year of mostly silence, the information we've given you above is enough to get you excited about the future of GeneRally!

James & Markku