D.R.I.V.E. has been Kickstarted! And we need you!

[CLR-GTR]

Yes, a new racing game needs some Kickstarting. It's called D.R.I.V.E., and I'm in the development team.

 

A bit of history: our group was formed by a handful of people (including me) who were part of the TDU2 community. Each of us participated in the beta, each of us gave a lot of feedback, and each of us was disappointed with how little made it to the final game. So disappointed, that we decided to take on the challenge of making a racing game ourselves. And that's how we formed Input Games. Input, because the community will be very important in deciding what will be our next move with the game and its content.

 

So what exactly is this game about? Well, you get to drive! In a lot of ways. Racing, delivery missions, pursuit missions, silly missions, alone, together with friends... it's very diverse. So is the list of available vehicles, from a 1.4 straight-4 hatchback to purpose-built race cars to classic icons, from trucks to convertible cruisers and from city buses to off-roaders. Order vehicles the way you want them to be: from yellow or black to radio or satnav, from 15-inch steels and plastic all over to 20-inch forged alloys and carbon fiber details. When you're done and the car is ready for delivery you can park it on, inside or under your property and admire it from there, or you can immediately head to the proving grounds facility and push it to its limits, or take nice pictures along the coast. Just keep it in one piece...

 

The game will be set on a European island that might not always work with you in getting from A to B. Be sure to check if your route isn't flooded or blocked by a traffic accident, and be careful with routes taking you through tight residential neighbourhoods or cross-country. There will be all sorts of roads from highways to dirt trails, and not all of them are as smooth or well maintained as the others are. And expect the same diversity in the landscapes with dense forests, a snowy summit, farm lands and beaches.

 

D.R.I.V.E. is a multiplayer game, but it won't force you to be with people you don't like. If you are trying to join the session a friend is in, you get priority over the other people instead of being thrown into random sessions. Organize road trips and car gatherings where you decide which brands and cars can participate. Complete challenges, with eachother or against eachother.

 

So, why are we reaching out through Kickstarter? A few things:

- People. We need them. We are a small team and at the current rate, we will not be able to get this game done before Diablo decides to no longer censor this four letter word which F1 is currently looking at. We need more modelers and coders to get the rest of our game to take shape. We've tried a lot in the past few years but without success. Going on Kickstarter shows we're serious about this and reaches an even larger audience.

- Money. Ofcourse it's about money. Development resources both physical as digital cost money which we can't pay by ourselves. The engine, the equipment... it's not free unfortunately.

- Exposure. Actually something that hopefully takes care of the two points above. We're on Kickstarter because we're serious about making this game and listen to the input from our future players.

 

Are there rewards? Ofcourse there are! You can pledge from $5 onwards, with more rewards for higher donations. These include having your own designed vehicles, brands or buildings put into D.R.I.V.E., or even a trip to the Nurburgring together with us!

 

Backing can be done through Kickstarter here: D.R.I.V.E. on Kickstarter

You can view our homepage here: Input Games

If you want to get in touch with us you can contact us through Kickstarter, Facebook or ofcourse by contacting me here.

[Ryzza5]

Wait, so you formed back in TDU2 days and didn't tell any of us? :eek: :)

 

Good on you guys for having a serious go at this. I'll peruse over the details after work. The only thing I'm worried about is the possibility of many great ideas causing scope creep (slows down progress), or even worse, causes divisions which in the past have led to some other KS devs taking all the $ and running, killing the project.

 

If project completion is estimated for Dec 2017 (keep in mind you may be up against a new NFS game then), do you know when early access is planned?

If you need other forms of IT support let me know.

[Djey]

Interested as well. Might provide some kind of support. Good luck with KS!

[hassan1995]

I could design the cars :mhmm: but I also don't have 1k to spare to design the cars :cheeky:

[Ryzza5]

Can we request a more plain jane gameplay video to accompany the intro/trailer?

[CLR-GTR]

@Ryzza: Yes, we formed a few months after its release already. Reasons on why we did not make a step like Kickstarter are for example a lot of issues we had in the first 2-3 years. Think of game engines which proved to be too limited in functionality, this slowed stuff down so much that some people had no work. That eventually leads to loss of focus on the project and they leave without notice. Also, we had our stuff in real life to finish which needed time. Now however, we are fully focussing on the game, we have our engine, we're getting assets done, we're getting some game mechanics into working states, and we all feel this is the right moment to this.

 

We don't have division forming and we know we have a group we can trust. The core of the team has been the same since the start and we all watch over eachother's progress. We have meetings on skype where we show what we've been doing, where we are at and ofcourse talk about goals and milestones. What has priority and what hasn't, do we have issues, who needs what to continue work.

 

The project is indeed ambitious with a lot of things planned, but we set milestones and do it in steps.The first batch of cars will just be a small portion of what the entire list looks like. Further cars get released with updates. Same goes for the location; we're dividing the world into areas and work on one area at a time. Players will be kept within the area that has been finished already, basically as is the case with Euro/American Truck Simulator. Roadworks, construction sites and other types of physical and non-physical borders will keep the players within the area we've released so far.

 

We are working out a more detailed timeline including early access and ofcourse release of the first version. A simple gameplay demonstration video will be added as an update to the kickstarter page, and ofcourse I will also post it here.

 

As for IT support, I'll have to discuss with the rest on what we need and when we would need it, but especially later on when things get big we'll need people to manage servers. When we reach that point, I can let you know and we can see what we can do together.

 

 

@Djey: thanks! If you like to support but you're unsure if we need it or not, you can always ask and we'll see what we can do for eachother. :)

 

 

@hassan: if you could 3D-model the cars that would be great, we can always use more people to make 3D models both for vehicles as for more environmental stuff :D. As for drawing the initial designs of cars, we already have over half the vehicle list covered, so at the moment that is a low priority for us and the kickstarter thing plus making game builds is more important.

[Ryzza5]

I don't think I'm skilled enough to make enough of anything at decent quality but I do work as an IT Business Analyst/software designer so can offer to help in that regard, perhaps even menu interfaces if required.

[Eudemon]

This is awesome! I remember seeing you mention ages ago about yourself and some others were looking to create something like TDU and thought the whole thing had went quiet and was no longer a thing but it's obvious you guys have just been working away very hard and haven't been wanting to show anything until it was worth doing so.

 

Best of luck with this and to everyone at Input Games.

[CLR-GTR]

@Ryzza: at the moment we're not that busy with the interfaces yet but we'll have an awful amount to do eventually. I'm putting you on the list though, I'll inform you when we could use your support.

 

Thanks Diablo :D Ye it would have had little use to show anything previously, we did get some things done, also in the other engines, but for quite some reasons we eventually had to abandon them and look for something that would give us the flexibility we need.

[TIMELESS]

What sort of a map size are you guys aiming for?

[CLR-GTR]

Roughly 20 km north to south and 40 km west to east. The island will be developed in lots of smaller areas, the first area being a small race-track island in the south-west of the eventual game world. We block off roads with roadworks or other obstructions, and we'll make an auto-reset feature similar as seen in Fuel and Colin McRae. That means that if a player will venture a certain distance into unreleased areas, the auto-reset works as an invisible border/wall and will bring players back to within the intended area, without physically wall-blocking the player. Gradually we move these reset-borders and we move/remove road obstructions as we add new areas.

[TIMELESS]

Very clever, I hate invisible walls in games. I know they serve a purpose but slamming into nothingness really bugs me. Any idea (guestimate) on the length of drive-able roads yet?

[CLR-GTR]

That might be the advantage of us being gamers as well as developers now, we sort of know what's annoying us and have a chance to make something less silly. :p

 

No idea, unfortunately I can't give a guestimate either unless you don't mind me being off by a million miles :(. I only know so far the majority will be asphalt roads, currently ratio 90% asphalt and 10% off-road/dirt though this can still change as the road network plan isn't finished yet. I expect going more towards 80-20 eventually.

[TIMELESS]

Sounds good! I'm excited to see this :cheeese:

[Hypercycle]

I remember that I seen this logo some months ago... Hope you will release that game :)

[The Compensator]

Yo, that's dope. Good luck!

[The Compensator]

Open world racer D.R.I.V.E... :: Team VVV

 

:btup

[Ryzza5]

About darn time. Was starting to think that everyone I contacted didn't care the slightest. Well at least that proves that writing articles does in fact take a lot of time. :)

 

The good news is that once one picks up the story, you can expect other sites to follow suit.

 

Thanks Martin if you're reading this.

[TIMELESS]

Good to see it's getting some exposure (nice one Ry) :) I'm calling dibs on the first interview though :cheeky:

[CarMadMike]

Yeah it's exciting to see you get interest from other places, good first step! :)

[CLR-GTR]

Amazing! Thanks Ryan, this is the push we needed. We've also been contacting a lot of such prominent online people/groups/websites, ofcourse it helps when other people not part of the team also start talking about it. Which ofcourse now has been illustrated very clearly. Again, thanks a lot :D

 

And also a first achievement: I saw we broke through the 1.000 pounds barrier today ^^.

 

@Scott: I have a feeling I know which bit, but what 'caught your attention'? :p

[hassan1995]

YouTubers like blackpanthaa, ar12, and fail race would be a good idea to get the name spreading and gaining more publicity.

[TIMELESS]

I'd also add Squirrel, I think he'd like this.

[CLR-GTR]

Squirrel, BlackPanthaa, AR12 and Fail Race were on the list too but have not replied since we contacted them a week ago. We also have contacted some youtubers who are more into gaming in general, such as Nerd³, RadBrad and Draegast, but so far also nothing :( The only results we have so far are Team VVV, TheSlapTrain and ofcourse that forum with a turbocharged duck :nods:

 

But we'll keep going. :)

[The Compensator]

Try MotoGames. I think the guy used to be on here.