simulator A community project: "Around The Ground" [Official Modders Thread]

[DΛN]

Hello, duckies! I find reading threads about video game updates entertaining, thus I made this for you . This project needs your thoughts, support and well, your help! so boost up your turbos and enjoy reading this thread!! Regards.

Spoiler

 

 

 

UPDATE: Download a demo of its brand new, AAA and Industry-standard physics engine here.

Edited April 25, 2020 by DΛN
Added a download link for its Physics Engine demo.

[DΛN]

//Around The Ground: Kish

-= Driving &  Lifestyle Simulator =-

_About

What is it?

"Around The Ground: Kish" is an indie driving simulator video-game, and is inspired by the original "Test Drive Unlimited 2006" video game. Which means driving dream cars, buying luxury houses and condos, chillaxing and living in a summery island are the key concepts of the project. There is more to that, lots of cool ideas may be added to the project.

 

The island is Kish, a luxurious island of the Persian territory which has never been ever simulated/used in a video-game before.

 

When will it be ready?

I have no plans to finish the project at all! It is just a passion project.
While its structure is almost ready but its island 3D model needs a team to be finished. The island is approximately two times bigger than GTA V's whole map. And it uses 100% GIS real data provided by Nokia, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google.
 

 

 

There are no story modes, no ragdoll animations and no multiplayer, yet. As I said, this is just a passion project.

 

Where will it be released?

Steam. It is primarily for PC with some plans for adding an additional Android app (something like iFruit for GTA V)

 

How much does it cost?

Although I paid for premium plugins and the web-hosting bills. And I can't pay for them anymore, I decided to make it free to play.

 

Who can enjoy playing it?

I think younger people are not the target audience because I planned to design it to have the TDU gameplay with NFS customization feature and GranTurismo physics. "ATG: Kish" is a simulator, therefore neither its game-play is not similar to "Burnout" nor has it the racing atmosphere of "Project CARS".

 

Why this project is made?

I was a computer software engineer student at the time of devising the project, designing the game was my hobby and still is. For more info about why I made it, please visit this link.

 

Which innovative features are in this project?

I have planned lots of innovative features for this project, from online marketplaces to XR and so much more which I will publicly share them on its website and also here, when possible.

 

How come the logo looks like that?

 

 

Is this a final version project?

No, Everything is either alpha or beta. As I said, this is a passion project and passion projects take too much effort to do. They take too much energy and time, This project needs people's support if it ever wants to get finished.

 

Is this a sponsored project?

No, it is a "passion project". I emptied my bank account for this project However, I would love to find a successful publisher or sponsor with a professional team to back this project up!

_Updates

Check the official Blog of this project and/or follow this project here for more info about the updates and news of this indie video game project.

 

 

_Showcase

Here you may watch the contents of the project based on its version number.

• Version 0.01 Pre-Alpha
  More images of this version of the game to be uploaded in its website.
   
• Version 0.01b Pre-Alpha
  
   
• Version 0.02 Pre-Alpha
  
   
• Version 0.02 Pre-Alpha within the island scene
  
  
• version 0.1 Beta
  
  
  
  
  The above image is the Nürburgring scene for prototyping and stuff like that, that scene will not be a part of the final version.
• 
  
  

 

_Links

• The official website
• The official unity forum
• The official modders community forum (TurboDuck)
• The official PolyCount forum
• The official twitter

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by DΛN

[Djey]

Good luck!

[Eudemon]

good luck, send me PM if you need anything like file hosting, gallery display etc

[TDUZoqqer]

Looks good! I like the fact turboduck is evolving into an indie game dev forum :lol:

 

BTW just as a tip for the dev progress: don't add more than 1-2 cars untill the physics and all the car function scripts are working. This will just make a mess. I speak from experience lmao.

[DΛN]

Djey said:

Good luck!

Hey Djey! Thank you for your support.

Diablo said:

good luck, send me PM if you need anything like file hosting, gallery display etc

Thanks new Diablo I appreciate that.

TDUZoqqer said:

[...] just as a tip for the dev progress: don't add more than 1-2 cars untill the physics and all the car function scripts are working. This will just make a mess. I speak from experience lmao.

Spoiler

Shhhhh...There are no souls (or physics system) in most of the cars there just because of that!

Actually, three cars have physics system set up. There is going to be a video on Wednesday which I can't wait to show you guys! There you can see the cars in action .

Edited February 10, 2019 by DΛN

[TDUZoqqer]

Are you using scratch made physics? Or whose Setup do you use? I wanted to get Edy's physics back in the days i was working with unity. Now we bought this super fancy raytraced physics Setup for 250$ idk how it's called but its insane.

[DΛN]

Are you using scratch made physics? Or whose Setup do you use? I wanted to get Edy's physics back in the days i was working with unity. Now we bought this super fancy raytraced physics Setup for 250$ idk how it's called but its insane.

That is a heavily customized prebuilt physics system. My plan is to make it as realistic as possible. After some examination, I concluded that the wheel-collider function of PhysX3 (and soon, PhysX4) is much better than a custom raycasting method for a true car behavior simulation, therefore it uses Wheel-Collider functions.

 

A tech-demo video of the car physics system (and more!) to come this Wednesday, stay tuned!!

[TDUZoqqer]

UGHHH COLLIDERS. I hate them. Nontheless curious about the Demo :)

[DΛN]

Until Wednesday. have a look at these images. This is a series of images showing how I modeled a car in 3DS Max. I used to have and drive the car in real life and it also was the test car for the ATG: Kish project.

_______________________________________________

TDUZoqqer said:

UGHHH COLLIDERS. I hate them. Nontheless curious about the Demo

Yes! those are sometimes tricky to use The video will come in 2 days from now.

Edited February 10, 2019 by DΛN

[TDUZoqqer]

Damn, didn't know you model it yourself. I see a lot of things to improve in the 3D model in terms of real time optimization, but when it works good in the game, I can not complain :)

 

BTW I realized some days ago that it was you who I looked the polycount thread of with the topic of rain shaders. At the end I will just try to reproduce the way rFactor did it. I belive the solution with the blob meshes isn't the most efficient one.

[DΛN]

TDUZoqqer said:

Damn, didn't know you model it yourself. I see a lot of things to improve in the 3D model in terms of real time optimization, but when it works good in the game, I can not complain

 

BTW I realized some days ago that it was you who I looked the polycount thread of with the topic of rain shaders. At the end I will just try to reproduce the way rFactor did it. I belive the solution with the blob meshes isn't the most efficient one.

The model is kinda messy but it is not very terrible,tho.

About the rain shader: Yes that's me there. The rain shader is going to be shared for free after finishing this project as it is not very stable and optimized.

The realtime rain effect is actually not that expensive, Here is a demo of it with ~2000 water particles in an older version of the project. Also I was playing with keyboard in the video.

I'm going to work on its shader and the way the water drops behave, when possible.

 

Nearly everything is either in pre-alpha or alpha and some in beta versions.

Edited February 10, 2019 by DΛN

[DΛN]

• Tomorrow, I am going to share the Tech-demo video which covers some of the technical and conceptual aspects of the project. The video is not done, yet.
• Friday I will share another video which is me driving in a scene - Nurburgring, to be exact - with some cars to show how the physics and the sound simulation work.

Edited February 10, 2019 by DΛN

[DΛN]

Are you ready? The very first official "Around The Ground: Kish" video-clip [part 1 of 2]

It took ~3 hours for each minute of this video and a week for all the works. Kindly, I would be glad if you like and share it if it is possible.

 

 

In this video, I tried to show the concept, the island, some visual and gameplay aspects of the project.

• Everything except the real scenes is in-game.
  
• The pieces of music are by me (the last one, yes I do 3D modeling, programming, And music composing which I'm really not good at it) and KV.
  

[TDUZoqqer]

Okay its really promising so far :) just please do me a favor: please please pretty please take your time and work on the individual car Details. Like individual tire and wheels sizes, body height, and especially materials. I like how it looks like so far and I know that it takes some time to take on those Details, but many people I know, me included wont be Entertained by a car game if the looks are amazing and physics is bad, or vice versa. The details are key. Also point 2 is, please get rid of the default User Interface you have at the Moment and take your day or two to design a good looking, coorparate designed one. It adds so much to the game!

 

Ps: in my opinion all this tuning goes really far, with optical tuning Channing behaviour and stuff, So far that I dont belive i will use so much in the actual game.

 

 

... Okay, that being said by someone who Programmed license plates for a month straight :hmm: nevermind :lol:

[DΛN]

Okay its really promising so far

1. [...] take your time and work on the individual car Details. Like individual tire and wheels sizes, body height, and especially materials.
   
2. [...] many people [...] wont be Entertained by a car game if the looks are amazing and physics is bad, or vice versa.
   
3. [...] get rid of the default User Interface you have at the Moment and take your day or two to design a good looking, coorparate designed one.
    
   
4. [...] this tuning goes really far, with optical tuning Channing behaviour and stuff, So far that I dont belive i will use so much in the actual game.
   

Thanks for your reply, I will reply you line by line. I expected more engagement from people, though :unsure: . Where are the others?!

1. There will be no real cars in the game due to the expensive car licensing laws :eek:, those in the video were just for the show :geek:. People have to add their cars to the game and I designed it to be an easy process. Remember, the game is free :).
   This is a community project, modders can help to finish this project.
    
    
   
2. I am trying hard to make the physics as realistic as possible, it is up to the modder of cars if the car behavior would be realistic or not.
    
    
   
3. Of course, this was just a prototype. I think you are aware that when developing a project, you don't start with the details. :)
    
    
   
4. Would you explain more? :mhmm: I'm afraid I did not exactly understand that.
   

_____________________________________

Its car physic behavior test will be shared tomorrow, :duck: .

[TDUZoqqer]

point 0: the forum is not the most alive ever. My thread also just gets replied by 2-3 people. You're 4 years too late for insane engagement :lol:

1: ok didn't know there won't be real cars, sorry. Just seen the SV Lambo and as I have a good comparisment in real life, also with my TDU mods, I could see some things off. Nevermind then when it won't be in the future versions.

2: okay got you. Similar to what I'm doing :)

3: sure thing. I just try to make everything really pretty for a demo. That's why mine is delayed for two months now :D especially for a video the esthetics count more than physics, as you can cheat on physics in a video a bit, not on the UI tho.

4: well I just pointed out how we tend to stick to perfectionizing the things we personally like, eventho surely nobody will take care of in the final release if they didn't know about it. Eg my ultra configurateable and real life accurate license plates.

[DJayAftermath]

Can you still get in trouble for using real cars though since you did not make any profit on this project?

[TDUZoqqer]

Can you still get in trouble for using real cars though since you did not make any profit on this project?

 

not when you don't share it commercially. eg. when you don't monetize your game whatsoever. Which would mean you would have to upload it to a hoster which don't have any advertisements. (Google Drive, Dropbox). On the other hand people might fine you for using their 3D models when you didn't do them yourself but rather have them from a game (forza, need for speed etc).

[DJayAftermath]

not when you don't share it commercially. eg. when you don't monetize your game whatsoever. Which would mean you would have to upload it to a hoster which don't have any advertisements. (Google Drive, Dropbox). On the other hand people might fine you for using their 3D models when you didn't do them yourself but rather have them from a game (forza, need for speed etc).

 

Ahh that makes sense..

[DΛN]

Sunday night is the time I show you guys the car physics simulation test. Don't miss it. I have spent my last dollars of my bank account buying brand-new shoes just to make the video look better, you better watch it. :D

 

__________________________

 

point 0: the forum is not the most alive ever. My thread also just gets replied by 2-3 people. You're 4 years too late for insane engagement :lol:

1: ok didn't know there won't be real cars, sorry. Just seen the SV Lambo and as I have a good comparisment in real life, also with my TDU mods, I could see some things off. Nevermind then when it won't be in the future versions.

2: okay got you. Similar to what I'm doing :)

3: sure thing. I just try to make everything really pretty for a demo. That's why mine is delayed for two months now :D especially for a video the esthetics count more than physics, as you can cheat on physics in a video a bit, not on the UI tho.

4: well I just pointed out how we tend to stick to perfectionizing the things we personally like, eventho surely nobody will take care of in the final release if they didn't know about it. Eg my ultra configurateable and real-life accurate license plates.

0. That is sad, Hope more people (especially, modders) see this and support me as this is a community project.

1. There could be real cars in the game but their names and models should not represent their real-life counterparts and ultimately, the 3D models ought to either designed by me or they should be commercially legal to be used in the video game. This is the legal way and so I have to do it this way if I ever want to add a car to the game.

2.Cool.

3. I don't have time for that, doing all the "actual" work take a lot... and I mean a lot!... of time, as I do the whole process of the project alone. But good for you, though. I check out your project, too!! Good job :)

4.Hah! In that case, we are on the same page then! This is my passion project, which means it is what it is :) Oh I also made a realistic license plate manager which defines the car ID, In other words, the license plate registration policy of an in-game car is actually the same as in real life, That also is the car's ID.

[Ryzza5]

Nice work so far.

 

I like the detailed city streets, and the wind effect on the trees.

My main concern is that the island seems more desert-y, and particularly seems to lack any mountainous areas of elevation of any kind, which makes driving more fun imo.

[DΛN]

ATG: Kish Physics Test

In these videos, you'll see its physics system, Remember everything is in beta.

• 1st iteration test:
  • Watch it here:
     
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHqS7eTc7Ik

  [*]2nd iteration test:

  • Improved physics for tires
  • water physics for windshield added ( Inspired by DriveClub's rain FX)
  • Improved sound system
    • Watch it here:

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Ryzza5 said:

Nice work so far.

 

I like the detailed city streets, and the wind effect on the trees.

My main concern is that the island seems more desert-y, and particularly seems to lack any mountainous areas of elevation of any kind, which makes driving more fun imo.

 

Thanks for your feedback. That is one of the Speedtree tree models that I have spent quite of resources for them, I manually optimized all of them!! They better look good There are GBs of trees for the project, all the trees are on the real island. However, I have to do a research for their Palm, Coconut and Date trees more. Not sure if they have Chinese variants there or not.

And About the topology of the island: While I know canyons races and mountain roads are exciting for us car lovers, "drifters", and car gamers, I believe that is a nightmare for level designers as height map data is really a huge problem in both pre and post game level designing phases. Kish is a great place for the project, it is surrounded by water, nobody ever simulated that before which makes it unique. And although it is about two times bigger than GTA V's map, it is almost a desert - just like Dubai - and it is almost flat which makes me able to design the project. Back in the day when I was starting to "simulate" the island, I wanted to test and simulate another place where there are mountains and it is much more beautiful than Kish IMO -also it is in Iran. and when I opened its GIS data, my whole laptop was about to explode - I use one mid-level laptop with 8GB of RAM to design the game. And at that time there was not a plugin or a good "GIS data to mesh" converter or anything like that, I made the whole island by myself manually in 3DS Max and with custom scripts for Unity, which took around a year or so.

So not only technical limitation but also time limitation is one of the reasons I chose the small, flat and cozy Kish island. More about these things to come to its official website.

But don't worry, I already have thought about that. The project's name is "Around The Ground" for a reason, there is a possibility that I add another place to it when possible.

Edited November 3, 2019 by DΛN

[TDU Iceman]

Looks promising, nice work.

 

Btw I agree with starting off simple, and the island you picked looks like a good way to go about it. It may not have elevation, but the layout is interesting, with its inner highway loop and coastal road loop. So at least it flows nice.

 

Also, for a long time I've been thinking that all that's really needed is a solid platform for open world driving with realistic physics. By that I mean, if a project like yours is being worked on by a single person or a small team, there should be some basic content like a few cars and an environment, but for the most part the underlying game and ease of modding is all thats needed, imo.

 

For example, Euro Truck Simulator has insane amounts of open world map content created by modders, but the underlying physics are pure crap for anything thats not a commercial truck. And games like Assetto Corsa have the same problem but backwards.. the physics are fine but the game can't handle open world maps well, so modders just make circuits and small point-to-point roads.

 

But if someone finally makes something that can load a TDU or Horizon sized map, have multiplayer, along with car mods that have good physics, and make it not a nightmare for modders to add content, then to me that's pretty much a guaranteed success in the making.. even if its a small indie project.

[TDUZoqqer]

Looks promising so far. I only gonna judge the physics model as it was your main target.

 

First of all, I got the feel the suspension is too soft. According to what is visible from the outside view and bonnet view. Feels a bit too GTA4ish to me personally. I'm pretty sure the suspension of a 4 series is way firmer than the one on a Corvette C3 :)

 

Second, which is bothering me even more, for some reason the whole driving feels really slow. Looking at the speedo you going 130 at 6k rpm feels like you are in first gear driving 30. Had the same feel with TDU. I don't know why.

 

There are some graphics aspecs I would concider fixing, but it's not the time to point that out as it's an Alpha :)

 

E: 250 km/h in this Peugeot? :D This must have been a twin turbo mega sleeper