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 :)

Always like seeing the updates you post in this thread. Can't believe that you've made something that looks so good and fun in Unity! Looks like really good fun bouncing around in that car. :nods:

:) 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.

This looks amazing! If you need any help in matters 3D Models hit me up! :)

Thanks a lot for your feedback and offered modeling help. Much appreciated :)

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Made a video of me racing against an AI-controlled car:

[media=vimeo]155246283[/media]

Which car is player-controlled? Yellow or blue? :cool:

I like it. Perhaps eventually add a setting to enable or disable head movement. I liked it but maybe others might find it dizzymaking, although I do find it quite realistic, also in the sliding moves.

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

Nice work on making the enemies trying to perform a PIT maneuver on you. They are a bit clumsy sometimes though lol.

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 :)

It is so good watching this project evolve and the latest videos are fun to watch because it's something different to the norm which is refreshing. Watching them I got an eerie sense of some kind of driving Silent Hill type game and then the ramming test reminded me so much of Ronin. Good work yet again, every update is always something better to see.

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 :)

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

...and a ramming compilation:

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.

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.

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. :(

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.

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

Thank you! Nice to hear that some scariness does come across. :)

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

The driver is called Time Rodent - a time-traveler from the far future :cool:

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

Maybe the steering is a bit cartoony?

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

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 :)

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.

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 ;)

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

[threads merged]

 

Took them long enough to notice, I thought I was late considering they posted they were shut as of the start of March.

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 ;)

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

 

-Leadfoot

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

Does that confirm a Merc SUV, or are they using it to describe the SUV they buy is very expensive?...

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: