Soul Challenger

SNES - Dirt Racer - https://www.loveroms.com/play-online/super-nintendo/dirt-racer-e/104361 N64 - Top Gear Rally - Mac - Driver1 PS2 - RBR (+TDU) PC - TDU Spent most time playing Driver (1999-2003) and TDU (2006-2011). RBR tought me to enjoy sim driving :)

@Diablo & @DJSalajutsu Thank you! It's really great help to get this kind of feedback. Also, I'm probably too deeply invested in this and lack distance so your opinion is very important. I'm a bit sad that not more people wanted to participate in the previous guessing game - but, maybe it's a good sign :D Well, time for some news! I've further perfected the AI driving, and because I'm finally quite happy with it, I started working on stopping maneuvers during the past months. Most games will just spawn many cars coming from all directions, mindlessly ramming the player. I wanted to do something slightly more advanced and try a quality over quantity approach. OK, so how do you stop a car with a single vehicle? After extensive testing, it appears that the most effective way, is to perform a PIT maneuver. But then what? I need the player car to be immobilized, at least for some time, so the mean blokes can exit their car(s) and finish the job. Ideally the player car would get pushed into slippery terrain where it will take time to recover - or get pushed into a tree/building/streetlamp dealing significant damage to the car. So I came up with this enhancement where the player car will be pushed right after the PIT is performed. It's called Pit n' Push : Side-ramming is quite fine too, but there have to be road-side objects present for it to work: Blocking doesn't really work with a single enemy car (+ it's somewhat annoying). With a heavier car it's better and I'll keep it, for once I start implementing multiple enemy car behaviours. For example: one car would block in front and another car at the back would perform a PIT.

:) Thank you! Unity does have a bad reputation but it's possible to squeeze some nice results out of it. So-far, I'm quite happy with it. Thanks a lot for your feedback and offered modeling help. Much appreciated :) --- Post Updated --- Made a video of me racing against an AI-controlled car: [media=vimeo]155246283[/media] Which car is player-controlled? Yellow or blue? :cool:

Thanks. That's music to my ears :) Yeah, I've been doing some sniffing around and this may sound pretentious and cheeky: it seems like I've got the most believable and fair (no cheats at all so-far) driving AI known to man :D Concerning the pursuers, they're kind of grotesque for now - but IMO better than an empty car. They're basically just ragdolls with their limbs constrained to the car and an extra bone to make the jaws jiggle when the car is bouncing around. Sometimes it looks as if they were drunk and singing :) I'm always happy to post here :) Great site and community.

Aaaand happy 2016 :D Here's a brand new gameplay trailer showcasing the car-chase part of the game: [media=vimeo]151343852[/media] Had a tough time recording this because the NPC's are starting to drive better than me :eek: while maintaining a drunk-aggressive and risky driving style. Hooray! (I'm really motivated on getting this right because personally, I find it disappointing, how easy it is to escape NPC's (cops, villains) in most open-world "driving games" (GTA, Mafia, TDU..). Although those games do compensate with quantity over quality, and cheating on the physics, the car chases don't feel genuine at all). Compared to the versions from last year, the physics are now back to simulation mode (tire friction was at 1.2, now it's back on 1.0). Rewrote completely the steering and braking behaviour and did some minor work on the graphics.

Making it optional is not a problem. For now it's a dynamic rig that imitates body and head movement and also adjusts the view direction when the car is sliding. I also though of bundling a with the game :D Hopefully it will behave better when an actual programmer starts working on this project. Until now it's been a one-man-show (and I've never programmed in my life before working on this). Kind of a miracle I managed to get this far alone :) Well it's certainly a huge motivation to get that positive feedback :) It makes me feel it's worth it to keep going with this project - thank you for that! And thanks to all for their valuable feedback! All the very best for 2015 :) [ATTACH]22242[/ATTACH]

Here's an early attempt in-car view (for the 5% of you who prefer cockpit view :twisted:): ...and a ramming compilation:

Yep - I'm trying to achieve some of that 70's movies feeling :). For this test, it was mostly the sliding and counter-steering I was trying to implement. Never really seen this in other games, where the AI cars are always well glued to the tarmac. Ok. I'll share my solution if I manage to get it right - might take a while though, since I'm very busy with another project at the moment. Thank you! Nice to hear that some scariness does come across. :) The driver is called Time Rodent - a time-traveler from the far future :cool: [ATTACH]21558[/ATTACH] Maybe the steering is a bit cartoony? Yes, better headlights and camera are planned (among lots of other yet-to-be-implemented features). There's also a cockpit view but I'm not so fond of the way it behaves right now. Occulus could be very interesting to boost the immersion. Thanks for all the comments. Very much appreciated!

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

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. 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 ;)

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

Yep, Atari kept it all quiet - I guess it's part of their style. Too bad they're not the ones in the coffin - would be about freakin' time. For those interested: a good friend of mine works together with an ex-Eden programmer. He said most of the talented/better programmers left Eden during or just after TDU1 development. That explains pretty well the tragedy that followed ;)

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

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

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

They tested a Mercedes SUV offroad - it got gradually covered in dust that was washed away by rain later... For now, Fabien from tdu2.fr can't confirm or talk about any new cars since Eden/Atari are still negotiating with the car manufacturers.

Happy TDU2 day! Fabien, from the french TDU2 forum, was able to attend a demo at Eden games in Lyon mid April. Here's the full article: http://tdu2.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24:reportage-tdu2fr-chez-eden-games&catid=8:test-drive-unlimited-2&Itemid=6 Here's a brief selection of new info: The roads are now level with the ground (and not 10cm above like in TDU1) TDU2 has a brand new physics engine (not using the VRally engine like TDU1) Dynamic traffic density - the traffic density changes in relation to the time of day/night Manual :) control of roof on convertibles - via a mini menu Cosmetic damage confirmed - with extensive damage the side doors will swing open The cars will now not be reluctant to do some barrel rolls - and will not reset after flipping over like in TDU1 :thumbsup:

Finally a decent article. The city on the Viper picture looks great. Thanks for the translation! :thumbsup:

I thought in-game Oahu might be smaller than the real one so I did some tests and measurements today. Superimposed max zoom parts of the TDU map over satellite photos... and oddly enough it seems to be 1:1 scale. Or almost. The trees are a bit bigger and the roads are broader but the game cars were the same size as the ones on the sat photos. So either they pumped up Ibiza to be bigger than Oahu or they just mean 2.5x more roads. If they count the offroad dirt tracks that wouldn't be very surprising. :confused:

Nice research work Diablo! Sounds great. I'm just a bit worried about the "Holy Grail between playability and realism" part. Hope there will be the choice between "Full Holy Grail", "Sports Holy Grail" and "Holy Grail Off" just like in TDU1 :twisted: