BEWARE - Demo Released!

[Soul Challenger]

I've just posted the first trailer of my upcoming driving game and would be happy to hear any kind of feedback from the TDU community. It can be viewed on my website Ondřej Švadlena , in the "Films" section (sorry for the quirky navigation).

 

As to why I'm posting on this forum... Been playing TDU1 for about four years and had high expectations for the sequel - which, for me, was a major let-down, mostly due to the dreadful driving physics model. In fact, I was so disappointed that I began working on my own driving game.

 

Thanks for watching,

 

Soul

 

Mod Edit: Download here: BEWARE demo file

[CLR-GTR]

Well well, seems TDU2 inspired more people to start their own driving/racing games....

 

Trailer looks good, is there going to be some sort of storyline in it (since it's called a Driving Adventure game)?

[The Compensator]

Hey, another Czech dude! :duck:

Post more informations about it. It seems to be an interesting project.

[Ryzza5]

Definitely something to keep an eye one - thanks for posting. The physics looked interesting (however choice of car might've been the reason why) but I'm sure you're still working on it.

[Paladin Skylark]

Definitely something to keep an eye one - thanks for posting. The physics looked interesting (however choice of car might've been the reason why) but I'm sure you're still working on it.

 

I second this. Thank you for posting it! I'll be watching as well.

[Eudemon]

That was very enjoyable to watch, you're definitely onto a good thing with this and as others have said the movement and the visuals looked really good. Thanks for sharing this and please do keep us informed on it's progress.

 

You certainly have talent. :D

[ScoobSTi]

Looks great! As Diaboob said, keep us notified! :D

[The Compensator]

Diaboob

 

:toof:

[Soul Challenger]

Thank you all for your feedback. I'm actually quite surprised that crappy cars driving on crappy roads could captivate your attention :D

 

The basic technological concept is to have an open-world game setting with driving physics similar to those of Richard Burns Rally (or any other good sim). Right now the driving physics are ok visually but I'm thinking of maybe using CarX 2.0 middleware, which looks quite impressive (programming the physics from scratch would be a real pain and would probably swallow most of the budget).

 

For the storyline part, yes there will be one but it shouldn't be too invasive, leaving you the freedom to explore the game world at your own pace. Our emphasis is to avoid repetitive scripted linearity - we'll see how far we can push procedural programming and the A.I. to reach that goal.

 

For the driving part, there will be two possible approaches: either you decide to be more stealthy, avoiding confrontations, trying to find alternative routes or you decide to interact with the different character types leading to you being chased, or chasing or racing.

 

I can't reveal much more about the game concept but I do want to make fun out of something a big-shot from id soft said about the game Rage: "Everytime, during development, we had to decide between fun and simulation, we went for fun".

I say, knowing that "fun" is not an unchanging universal concept, we'll be choosing simulation most of the time.

 

By the way, the main car in the trailer is a 1980 Skoda 120 s (rear engine, RWD, cca 50HP)... I used to own that car and must say it was really fun to drive (at speeds below 120 kmh ;-) ) - on the other hand, would it be a reason for you not to play the game?

I know rewards are popular in games so here's my question for all of you: do you feel that driving the same car during the whole game would be a bad idea?

 

Soul

[Ryzza5]

If it was a 1980 Skoda 120 s, then yeah, it would probably be a bad idea :lol:

 

 

You could make it so that the player doesn't have to change cars in a while (i.e. random generated challenges/races keep appearing if you prefer the slower cars, or a system where you can continuously create more challenges that are automatically downloaded by the game).

[superhyper]

Impressive, sir :) Can't wait to see more!

[Eudemon]

Being stuck in a single car and a Skoda at that, the fun factor would eventually wear off so I would definitely recommend some extra cars even fictional ones created by yourself or your team if you have one. Maybe you could even run a contest to have people get their design into the game, think creatively and spontaneously, linear can be quite boring and feel like you're merely following a path and moving left or right at times. Freedom of choice in games is something many people enjoy, providing there is also a means for those who get lost to get back on the right path.

 

You're definitely on a good start from the video alone though.

[Leadfoot[YT]]

Cool! :cool: Driving dynamics like suspension travel and the road textures/lighting look amazing. :thumbsup:

 

-Leadfoot

[Soul Challenger]

;451435']Cool! :cool: Driving dynamics like suspension travel and the road textures/lighting look amazing. :thumbsup:

 

-Leadfoot

THX, there's a teaser for my upcoming short film called Time Rodent on my site - I'd like the game graphics to be as close as possible to that look...

 

For the single car throughout the whole game, yeah, probably a bad idea. We'll put some more cars so the player can choose his favorite ride towards the beginning of the game. Initially, all configurations (Front engine FWD/RWD, Rear engine RWD, and possibly AWD) will be there to choose from, and since there are Sci-Fi elements in the story, fictitious cars from the future could appear later on in the game.

 

Been doing some research about licensing real car brands in the past days. Doesn't really seem to be worth it, especially since the cars will get damaged after collisions. So, real cars (with real specs) with fake names should do the job :twisted:

 

Soul

[Ryzza5]

Sounds good to me

[Soul Challenger]

So, 2.7 billion years later...

 

Here are some recent vids of real-time terrain deformation tests:

 

[EDIT] ok, seems like I can't post links

 

 

 

Still not sure if this feature will make it into final release, as it's quite performance-hungry. Not many games have deformable soil/mud - Sega Rally Revo, MX vs ATX and Spintires do, and I think that's it...

What do you guys think?

 

Other news is that I acquired CarX Middleware which takes care of everything vehicle physics related. One of the best car physics out there, in my opinion. You can check out a demo of the system here: CarX Tech | WebPlayer (you'll need the Unity3D web plugin).

 

I'll be posting more videos "soon"

 

Soul

[CLR-GTR]

CarX was very good. For us unfortunately too expensive but it's one of the best out there with much freedom in configurations.

 

The deformable terrain looks fun as a feature, but if you observed it already is so performance hungry in that relatively empty test terrain, imagine what it could do to a fuller modelled terrain with more vehicles. Definitely needs more testing to find that out.

[Soul Challenger]

CarX was very good. For us unfortunately too expensive but it's one of the best out there with much freedom in configurations.

I got the LITE version for 550euros in 2012, which is sufficient, at least for now. It doesn't have all the fancy features the Standart and Pro versions (which cost 10-20K(!)) have - like physical and visual tire deformation, advanced suspension types and settings but it's still a solid package.

 

The deformable terrain looks fun as a feature, but if you observed it already is so performance hungry in that relatively empty test terrain, imagine what it could do to a fuller modelled terrain with more vehicles. Definitely needs more testing to find that out.

Overall, I get 60+FPS without terrain deformation. Enabled, it drags down the FPS to 40-50. The amount of vehicles make no difference because I've created a system that monitors and applies everything happening on the deforming terrain tile. But the tiles are small for performance's sake, 100x100m.

 

Hopefully, I'll be able to find a talented programmer to optimise this feature. Once you get used to the soil deforming under the wheels, it just feels plain wrong to disable that. At least that's the way I feel - stubborn me ;)

[CLR-GTR]

Well then the impact sounds rather subtle... depends on how bad you want 60+FPS, or if you also find 40-50 good enough.

 

Concerning suspension setups, I suppose you haven't actually got modelled suspension working properly, have you? Think of double wishbone setups etc. I've tried to look it up, but I have no experience with Unity and its constraints and other systems, and there doesn't seem to be anything well documented on it. Too bad :(

[JulioRey]

Very nice! Well done man, it's looking very good, congrats

(The little skoda remind dayz, I wish Standalone became to have a similar system about car physics and terrain interaction, but never gonna happen I guess)

[Soul Challenger]

Here's a little AI test - it's mostly about the driving style of the chasing car in the rear view mirror. Would love to get some feedback on how it feels for you :)

 

 

 

Concerning suspension setups, I suppose you haven't actually got modelled suspension working properly, have you?

Not yet - and I'm also not quite sure how I'll do it in Unity. Maybe a hinge joint or "LookAt" through code.

[CLR-GTR]

Like in the movies lol, ye imo it looks good. Guy really trying to almost bash you off the road, then he realizes his car is not made for sporty driving and he has to do whatever he can to get through the turn.

 

 

 

Ye we also tried looking into hingejoints and lookat codes but we can't really find any useful helptopic or anything. Some people did manage to get it right but they either are unreachable, or they have lost like half of all the needed coding/files. :(

[Milli]

Wow... this is quite impressive. Looks like a scary car game! I like it. :D

[hassan1995]

Very nice got me interested ...is that a teddy bear driving :lol:

[Ryzza5]

Seems a tiny bit odd but that also seems to suit the in game environment quite well.

 

Do you plan to make the headlights light up more of the road? The camera position isn't working for me either, can't see anything when the AI is close.

You might also attract a lot more layers if you can implement a cockpit view and Oculus Rift support.

 

Cheers for the update