various Community development: Project DRIVE (working title)

[TDUZoqqer]

I wanted to start the customization level, but I have no clue how to do that in the practical aspect (I know how it works in theory), and I barely have time to work on the game right now, and to be honest I'm a bit done with it for the moment :) I'm gonna get back to it as soon as I have more time for it. Unfortunately I have to work alone at it, so it might take a bit from now till new updates come around :)

[TDUZoqqer]

 

Sooo I kind of started the customization menue. It are the very very basics yet, but I don't have much time to work on the project for very long right now :)

 

To answer your questions right away:

No, it's not the final environment nor lighting right now. It will be really pretty at the end.

Yes, it's inspired by Forza

Yes, the UI icons suck hard at the moment. I was focused on the technical aspect for first

Yes, you see tail light tinting in the video. Yes, it will be available for front and back seperately.

Yes, it will be controlled by input (buttons/controller) later and not by mouse (not only)

No, you will have way more to customize than exhaust tips

No, I don't have a life :)

 

More updates to come when there are some. Critics and suggestions welcome!

[TDUZoqqer]

 

Update, burr burr. Just in case someone is still watching the thread :) Customization menue progressed a lot. Still some things buggy here and there, but all in all it works. Adjusting those cameras was hell. Now I either am going to make a paint shop, or I'm gonna find out how to cast the new purchased parts to the next level (the driving level).

 

One or the other, progress is kewl. :)

 

STILL NEED COOL UI, btw :(

 

Crits and suggestions welcome :)

[Djey]

Brilliant, looks like tons of work has already been done !

Btw I love this purified background, it kinda makes the car prettier than ever :eek:

[Eudemon]

That is looking really good! :cool: It's always fun to watch these projects progress as always.

[TDUZoqqer]

Henlo. I'm still working :) A Little update in text-form:

I managed to get the "plate configurator" to work. As I already mentioned in the first post, I will be working with german plate formats for now. For those who don't know the german license plate Format: it's split up in 3 Groups. The first Group is a set of 1 to 3 letters showing which Region the vehicle is registred in. As Germany has like 170 counties, I decied to stick with the Berlin County for now. This can't get changed yet. Second Group is a set of 1 to 2 letters. You can configure them as you want them to have. The third Group is the set of 1-4 numbers, which also can be customized. It makes up 8 formats of license plate layouts you can choose in between, aswell as the actual vanity of the letters and numbers. This all works as an extra menu - which will be the Registration area ingame later. The vanity plate will be saved to your current car (or you can choose one from your list later, I don't know yet), but each plate can be given only to one Slot (unlike forza for example). Makes it a lot more realistic imo. The letters and numbers will be set randomly when you Register the car. You either can Keep it, or personalize it in Terms of vanity, which will be extra 15$ along the 100$ Registration fees then.

 

But - The part I am most happy about - when you freshly buy a car from a dealer you won't get a regular license plate, but a temporary 5-day Registration. This happens in real life too, most of the time.

 

The german temporary plates are White with a yellow bar on the right side which Displays the expiring date. This date will be generated by reading the current date and adding 5 to it. The first The first letter (or letters) is the County once again. As mentioned, this is not changeable at the Moment, and I doubt it will be necessary, as I only will have one City ingame - which will be a rough copy of Berlin. So the County letter will always be "B". The blue dot is just the coat of arm of the County. Nothing spectacular.Now it's getting interesting: the temporary plate have 6 numbers (in General). the first two (04) make sure the plate is actually a temporary plate. This won't be changeable. The next 4 numbers will be generated randomly.They are not customizable. This is like in real life aswell.

 

Now, the number plate and the date will be saved in the savegame. You have 5 days to drive the car around as Long you Register it within the expiring date. When you don't - you won't be able to drive the car and you have to take another to Register it. I don't know what to do when you have only once car, but I'll figure it out :cheeky:

 

As mentioned, both plate variations will be saved into the savegame. The temporary layout will reset when you Register the car. When you unregister it, you will get another temporary with a new randomly generated plate.

 

#DETAAAAAAILS

 

ALSO: Customizing and paint shop save values now. You can respray and tune your car and cast it to the open world driving Level (and all the others obviously).

 

And some random small fixes. Better light controls, lights enable by night, disable by day, and so on.

 

EDIT: Forgot to tell I started to build a database with all the small poops i might Need in the game again. Like paint Colors, names (which are already programmed) and other stuff you might remember from TDU - Car names, other car stats, Environment stuff etc.

 

I'm gonna post a Video of the plate Generation soon as I really like the Feature :)

 

PS: When someone wants to help me out in Terms of Environment design or graphics design (or Audio), I still appreciate the help :)

 

Greetings

[Eudemon]

It's all in the details as they say and it sounds like you are sticking to this. You sound quite chuffed with how the plate thing is going and the other customisation options you got working now is great to hear. Good work all round! :)

[TDUZoqqer]

I got quite lost in details actually, I just wanted to get a basic idea of how everything works, but I somehow can't leave things unfinished before taking on whole new things :cheeky: The plate stuff will be totally unrelevant to most of the people playing the game, but yeah, I'm a one man army programming a game so I do stuff I have fun with first :D Don't worry, important things gonna be taken on very soon

[Eudemon]

@TDUZoqqer you can now edit your first post (but not the title atm) for the next 10 years as I have applied an increased 'edit limit' on that post for you. :) If you want the title edited please report it with the new title and we'll do it for you. (for now) [I]Sorry it took so long to get this for you mate. :([/I]

[TDUZoqqer]

[quote name='Diablo']@TDUZoqqer you can now edit your first post (but not the title atm) for the next 10 years[I] [/I][/QUOTE] Oh wow, thank you! <3 But 10 years? Not sure if I will manage to finish the game so quick o_O Just joking! Thank you! :)

[TIMELESS]

Oh wow, thank you! <3 But 10 years? Not sure if I will manage to finish the game so quick o_O

 

Just joking! Thank you! :)

 

So you're Atari inspiried then?

 

Coming soon...

[TDUZoqqer]

So you're Atari inspiried then?

 

Coming soon...

 

Yeah pretty much, I am just less.. French.

 

 

By the way, a long time passed since I updated the thread, so I wanted to post a WIP video of the current state today or tomorrow. Please get ready your "why didn't you make this / why does it look so weird / why doesnt it work like Forza" text file for quick copy paste here. :D

[Eudemon]

so I wanted to post a WIP video of the current state today or tomorrow

Just be sure to show indicators/turn signals and all will be forgiven. :p

[TDUZoqqer]

Uhm okay, so I wanted to record my screen with OBS right now and realized I have 15fps. As my physics is (yet) frame dependent, I can't show you the physics recorded just yet. I will cheat and record my screen with a phone tonight in the dark or something. :D Yeah, my PC is not the best, so apoligies for that.

 

Also thinking of how much sense it does make to actually continue it, as Speeder is quite a bit more skilled than me and there is really nothing to compete for me as we make basically the same games :D

[Milli]

Also thinking of how much sense it does make to actually continue it, as Speeder is quite a bit more skilled than me and there is really nothing to compete for me as we make basically the same games :D

 

I believe the point of continue the project is the learning proccess of doing it so and the experience it will give you. No?

[TDUZoqqer]

I believe the point of continue the project is the learning proccess of doing it so and the experience it will give you. No?

 

Actually no, as this kind knowledge (visual scripting) won't help me in the future whatsoever. I do it in the first place to replace TDU for the community (and hoped to get involved with some people at developing the game and bring in ideas), as there is wage interest in doing so (don't blame you) I do it mostly for fun. Although I might just spend not my whole free time with it, but only partly, when I feel the need to :) I belive a lot in Speeder's project, and I don't want the forum to have two people doing the same thing independently.

 

Still, I'm gonna show a WIP video later :D

[Eudemon]

Do what you feel is best for you mate. Have you and @Speeder talked about collaborating on the one project in some way?

[Speeder]

I fail to see how both project are incompatible.

Plus your work on UI looks pretty great, it would be a waste to throw that away don't you think? :)

[TDUZoqqer]

I fail to see how both project are incompatible.

Plus your work on UI looks pretty great, it would be a waste to throw that away don't you think? :)

 

Never said it isn't, I personally just see more potential in your project when I overflew your Trello and realized eventhough we are both in the same boat, I didn't even have had half of it on my list (about all the rendering tech) :D And like said, C++ is the way to go for games, and I don't even have a basic idea how code I doubt I'd be very much of a help. Nontheless, I never said I'm abandoning it my project (I spent way too much time on it to throw it away), I just don't quite see the point of me standing in your way on the path to a TDU successor, I'm there to help if you need anything! I guess I just became a bit tired of my game for now :D You have to know I am almost nonstop coding (well, node baded, but still) since the beginning of the year.

 

BTW the UI of the videos is very outdated, I got a sleek new design in a different side project I created, more on that later

 

I'm off to recording now by the way!

 

PS: We need proper car sounds! That's actually the main reason I am a bit ashamed of showing you the progress :D :D I have various dyno videos downloaded, but I always sucked at sound modding.

[TDUZoqqer]

Here's the video! As it was a ton to write, please take a moment to read it. I tried to keep it short, but didn't really succeed, I have to admit.

 

 

Alllright, so what kind of progress can you see here:

 

First of all - all-new physics.

 

Raycast model, based on suspension points instead of wheel center points.

The physics model might be familiar to some - it's basically the same TDU used. Well, just more fresh, obviously. I mean, there are 12 years of a difference in the engine.

 

As you can see, the suspension works, same as turning, handbrake, brakes in general, torque application and slip/grip on the wheels/tires.

 

Gearbox works just fine. It is totally adjustable with an infinite (I think 64 is the maximum) amount of total gears with real gear ratios. You can have 15 reverse gears if you desire, just as an example.

 

Amount of wheels is not hardcoded, although with the current setup it only takes up up to 6 individual wheels. Adding wheels is a one-time matter of two minutes and will be saved for the whole game.

 

Also, as we all know from TDU, my project is also mostly Database- and reference-based. You can add a new car within two minutes.

 

Force application works through a torque curve. I like to work with 250 rpm steps, but a real torque curve will give you realistic results. That's what I aimed for mostly.

As you can see, with a real torque curve, and all the other data - my M3 goes the realistic top speed of 275-280.

 

Wheels are also placed in a database. Add new wheels, with a new model and the tire grip. Switch out the wheels within seconds. This was really useful for me, as I am planing on make a customization level into the project later. More on that later.

 

Brakes are also seperate. Brake discs and calipers are all completely interchangeable. When you want to put in red Brembos on the stock CSL wheel - go for it! Braking values will be in the same entry.

 

RPM needs some tweaks. Still haven't figured out how to make the revs jump at the limiter, but I'll figure it out soon I hope.

 

Also, donuts are hard to make, maybe because of the low torque of the M3 example, maybe I just can't see it because of the plain world without tire skids, but I think it's not really working. Need to see if I can do anything about it.

 

 

 

Functionality:

 

 

Sticking on the database - colors, interior colors and caliper colors are all in a database file. My paint material is a clear coat metallic, with a fresnel color change. For the non technicians of you - it means, you can make metallic and flip flop colors easy as cake with just two different colors in the database.

Also in the database - coat roughness. Make the color shiny or matte (or anything in between) with one different number.

 

Back to the functionality - Lighting system works completely. Headlights - parking markers, lowbeam, highbeam, highbeam flash (ohh TDU nostalgia) and fog lights - everything works. And of course, the turning signals. Left, right and hazard, all is working (on keyboard).

 

Outside on the level you can see the "lookaround-area". This is pretty much Forza's Autovista, where it loads up a high LOD of the model (which obviously is not displayed when you actually drive the car) and lets you see the car from outside. I most likely won't make trunk and bonnet work, though.

You can open doors, turn your wheels, enable all lights and indicators etc. I think it's pretty cool.

 

Also, window switches will be put in soon, so you can lower and rise your windows while driving.

 

You probably already read about my license plates idea. If not, it's some posts ago. Where I explain about vanities and temporary plates.

 

The sound is temporary and was taken from the Wiesmann MF3 from TDU. I create the sound ques with FMOD Studio.

 

Headlight will toggle with daytime automatically when it gets darker, you can disable the light anyway though, if you want to drive stealth, or with headlight at daytime like a douche (just joking).

 

Mileage and fuel consumption will be generated and saved into the savegame. Don't you dare to put your car in the garage with an empty fuel tank, it will take revenge on you the next time you will play.

 

 

 

Concepts/WIP:

 

I will put in a paint booth (most likely a wrap-booth, we have 2018, nobody repaints their ferraris anymore) in later. I had one in the early concept in october last year, but those were all concepts.

Also in the paint booth - caliper and leather color changes. Let me know if you want a special shop for it, for more realism. You can either repaint in OEM colors, or put on custom color wraps. Who didn't ever want a chrome pink Huracan? (well, I didn't, but thats another story).

 

Speaking of shops - customization shop and car dealer are planed. The tuner was in the concept, and will be worked on a bit later. As for the car shop, I want to add some more cars to test it.

The customization shop will make you change based on real life parts (if available on the slot):

-Bumpers

-skirts

-bonnets

-trunks

-fenders

-spoilers

-exhausts

-headlights

-taillights

-bodykits

-window tint

-wheels

-details I have not thought out completely yet

 

Performance tuning is totally possible, although this will come into development at a later date.

 

As for the car dealer, I have a special idea. The car dealer will obviously be a place for you to buy (and testdrive) cars you want.

THE FOLLOWING IS JUST A CONCEPT:

To solve the problem which occurs right now with the car packs for TDU: the dealers will only have a reasonable car selection available in the shop. The so called "presentation examples". When you testdrive the examples, they will have a dealer plate. That's the only time you will see those in the game.

Those will spawn (depending on brand) in random configurations in the shop. If you desire to buy this model with a different spec, or you want to go for a different model which is not displayed in the shop - you can use the configurator in the shop.

It's basically an extra "game in a game" where you can load up the car model you want to have and spec it with real configuration options the real brand offers.

Note, that this will be only a thing with cars which are available on the market at the moment. You won't be able to configure this CSL, for instance. You will need to go to the "online-used cars" (which will be generated randomly) and hope that your car will be available there to buy.

If it isn't - you can drop a search request at your dealer - which will charge you extra fee, but you will get a car in a short amount of time.

 

 

You will be able to store your cars in a garage. For now, I created a debug underground parking garage, and (not programmed yet) you can park your cars in specific areas there, and see them all altogether, as long they fit inside. That's pretty much the same as in TDU, although my plan is, that you can get in the car and drive out if your garage fluently, without "applying car" and spawn outside the garage all of the sudden. You will be able to walk around as a human in a garage, aswell.

 

I am planing on adding a photomode to the game, although I don't really know how yet, as I never actually coded anything in this direction yet.

 

Working aero parts on cars. In realistic scenarios. You can switch to manual toggles for the "main" parts (eg when cars have multiple moving parts you will be able to control the important ones. I am looking forward for the Huayra flaps, they are going to be fun.

 

I still have to think about how to put in money value to the game. I thought about earning 100k each hour playing. Maybe more, I don't know, I'm open for suggestions. I will most likely not put in races to the game. Not yet.

 

 

Multiplayer:

 

 

yes.

I don't know how yet.

Next question please

 

 

 

Level:

 

 

I don't have a model of the environment yet. I want to make the city to drive in a scale version of my city - Berlin. It would be open world. I think it offers many different, interesting environments. Also the Autobahn. What would germany be without it.

 

I have three basic AI traffic cars in the game yet. Two of them 100% scratch made. I am planing on bringing in 15-20 traffic cars - most of it civilian, the other parts utility and commercial. They are controlled with a special AI controller making the cars follow invisible splines on the road. It's quite an oldschool, trashy and barely working solution, but I didn't spent too much time on AI yet.

The police car will act as a police car and chase you when you're over the speed limit, or do random vehicle controls in free roam. Still a concept, but all the sirens and lights on it work as in real life already.

 

Rain and fog will be a thing. Wipers will toggle automatically.

 

Also, dirt will get on your car. Car wash areas will be in, aswell.

 

 

 

So, yeah, that's pretty much all I could get up with about telling you about the current state and the concept at the moment. If you got any questions, let me know! I definitly forgot some points, I apologize for that, but the sheer amount of ideas I have drives me crazy. If you cheeky programmers have an idea for more features, or can help me with the existing ones, please do so. One-man-armying isn't fun in the long run.

[Ryzza5]

Just watching the video and it looks alright, just slap in some netcode (borrow from TDU Project Paradise community server???) and a tropical island and it's ready to ship, haha.

 

 

Germany would be an interesting area, especially if you were able to include something inspired of the Black Forest mountain roads in addition to Berlin. I've played some of the Cobra 11 'Crash Time' car games on Steam and enjoyed those.

[Djey]

That's quite a great return of experience for upcoming projects. Thanks.

 

Personally I'd like to get free time to help on these. I've got my own MMOR project as well, it's nothing but some scratch notes somewhere...

[Eudemon]

@TDUZoqqer I am impressed with what I already see in the video. You clearly are making sure to pay attention to the details and the video shows this with the whole lighting options and the ability to take a look into the car. I also liked the little nod to TDU with the use of a certain vehicle. Was cool to see that brought up to date so to speak. As for everything you have listed and spoke about above, it all sounds just like what people would love to see from a game like this and your forward thinking in regards to customisation and a modern-day wrap shop is on the money too. The home ideas all sound good too and it's these sort of optional min-details that set titles apart from one another and so if you get it to work like you want, it would be great. It's going to be quite something watching how this project progresses. @Djey Haha another one?! Damn, you guys are like buses.

[TDUZoqqer]

Just watching the video and it looks alright, just slap in some netcode (borrow from TDU Project Paradise community server???) and a tropical island and it's ready to ship, haha.

 

Oh I wish :D But honestly, the game is already at a state I have not expected to achive (so quick). Not saying it's insanely good for the amount of time - real Unreal devs will laugh at me really hard - but as I started in like, september or so, with absolutely 0 knowledge except how do I put in a cube into the scene, I think it's quite something.

 

Germany would be an interesting area, especially if you were able to include something inspired of the Black Forest mountain roads in addition to Berlin. I've played some of the Cobra 11 'Crash Time' car games on Steam and enjoyed those.

 

Good point! Haven't actually thought about that. I just know that here in Berlin and in the county Brandenburg which is around the town, the elevation is almost flat. Half of germany, mostly the nothern part is flat as paper, so I haven't thought about mountains. But as it's a game, at the end of the day, who will stop me from putting in a piece of land which is geographicaly totally wrong :D

 

 

That's quite a great return of experience for upcoming projects. Thanks.

 

Personally I'd like to get free time to help on these. I've got my own MMOR project as well, it's nothing but some scratch notes somewhere...

 

No problem, I might hit you and Speeder up in future when I decide to start actual coding. Sooner or later the day will come where I will need that, and I am scared of that day to be honest. I tried some thing in JS, back when I looked around in Unity, (a year ago? two?), but after two weeks I still couldn't code a single line. Oh well. :D Tell me the secret of learning code

 

 

 

am impressed with what I already see in the video. You clearly are making sure to pay attention to the details and the video shows this with the whole lighting options and the ability to take a look into the car. I also liked the little nod to TDU with the use of a certain vehicle. Was cool to see that brought up to date so to speak. As for everything you have listed and spoke about above, it all sounds just like what people would love to see from a game like this and your forward thinking in regards to customisation and a modern-day wrap shop is on the money too.

 

Thanks! Yeah I (unfortunately) care a lot about correct details, memories about my modding schedule for TDU, huh? :D

Jokes aside, I think a game with bad details is a bad game. You can only imagine how much time I spent on this M3 alone. The fact, that I've made the bulbs in the indicators glow in 3DS Max and the reflector beneath it in chrome, just to render it out and use it as a mask for correct light distribution in the reflector is just one example of how crazy I am about such little details. Also a good friend of mine has an E46 M3, and oh boy, I should have not shown him the model. :D He pointed out a dozen of wrong details just by looking at three screenshots. Have you realized the rims are wrong? That those are the 1M / M3 E92 GTS wheels, and not the ones from the M3 E46 CSL? No? Well, I didn't know the difference either, but there is. Still need to fix it.

 

The TDU dummy car seemed to be the perfect.. well.. Dummy car for me to test things. I mean, not that I can hide my roots anyway. I just thought a "refresh" of the model, with all the features working the actual TDU have missed, that would be perfect.

 

I researched a week before I started developing what cool features my dream game should have. Turns out those are the exact features some friends of mine, which never played TDU, also wanted in a car game. I've added even more, actually. And it's still counting. I will give my best not to loose track of it.

 

About the wrap thing, yeah, I mean, it's basically nothing different than a paint shop. I still need to figure out how (and most importantly IF!) I will make a sticker shop into the game. Like TDU2 had, eventhough I don't know if it wouldn't be overkill. I think custom vinyls aren't really a thing in the modern car world anymore. But as it's still a room for creativity, I need to make my mind about that in the future.

 

The home ideas all sound good too and it's these sort of optional min-details that set titles apart from one another and so if you get it to work like you want, it would be great.

 

It's going to be quite something watching how this project progresses.

 

Still need to figure out how exactly I will make it work. But I will make sure that it will work, hopefully exactly like I described.

 

Thanks :) I'm gonna keep you updated as soon as I have something.

 

PS: Nothing really exciting happened today. Just added an RPM limiter and fixed the 3D model. Still need to make wipers and dirt work on the car. Ugh.

 

EDIT: Oh, and I now imported a LOD mesh to the M3. It's a new task in the pipeline. That means, LOD3 for all the Forza models out there. I will make cars below 50k polys not get any LOD meshes, to save me some time, and for all the Forza models there are LODs anyway. Custom made bodykits won't be scaled either. Hope this won't cause too many issues and framedrops later on.

The only thing which makes me worry about is the dirt map for ever car.. AND for their LODs. Fml.

[JPTH]

It will take a very long time to this game be finished, but im sure if is finished will be much better than TDU, gran Turismo and Forza... Good luck and have fun!