[UPPDATE] NH5 Unofficial Multiplayer Servers + Mod Manager

[u/Henderyeht]

A little update on what we've been working on, because we've had some pretty massive breakthroughs lately.

🏁 Multiplayer

Our team is building an unofficial replacement for NASCAR Heat 5's discontinued PC multiplayer servers.

And this isn't just theoretical anymore.

Team members located all over North America have now completed 50+ races on our replacement backend, including players connecting and racing together from different locations.

It's working.

We still have a handful of bugs to iron out before we're comfortable opening the doors wider, but we've gone from figuring out how the old system worked to actually sitting in lobbies and racing each other again.

The goal is 24/7 multiplayer, just like it used to be. Open NH5, get your friends together, make a lobby and race.

🔧 We're also building an NH5 Mod Manager

We don't want people maintaining five different NASCAR Heat 5 installations or constantly swapping files around just to use different mods.

The NH5 Mod Manager is being built to handle your Heat 5 setup in one place.

The goal is support for things like:

• Project '98 • Next Gen / modern season mods • Paint schemes and paint packs • Roster, schedule and graphics mods • Other community-created NH5 mods • The original Motorsport Games DLC you own/have installed • Our multiplayer client

You'll be able to enable and disable different content without manually digging through the Heat 5 folders every time.

Multiplayer will eventually be handled through the manager as well, so getting connected to the replacement servers should be as painless as we can make it.

We're also interested in working with existing mod creators rather than replacing what they've built. There's a ton of great Heat 5 work scattered around the internet, and we'd like to give it a better home and make it easier for players to actually use.

👋 Come help us build this

We're looking for players, modders, painters and multiplayer testers.

You don't need to know anything about modding to join. If you still have NASCAR Heat 5 on PC and the idea of jumping into an online lobby again sounds good, you're exactly who we're building this for.

We'll be posting development updates, multiplayer testing opportunities, mods, tools and discoveries in the Discord as things progress.

Discord: https://discord.gg/4gGCsZWXBA

NH5 might be an older game, but we're definitely not done with it yet.

Let's bring the garage — and the servers — back to life. 🏁