Can i build a cityscape driving simulator?

[police state]

I am interested in building a small cityscape 'driving' simulator. The purpose of it will be to simply drive around the roads of the city, no competition driving, just one vehicle. no action/special effects/sequences. If you can imagine doom/quake without the guts n gore. Has anyone any experience of 'gaming engines' that could point me in the right direction.

[timbob]

I think there's been plenty done with the good old Quake 2 engine... I'd have a look there - it's been around long enough for there to be plenty of expertise on it.

[police state]

timbob said:

I think there's been plenty done with the good old Quake 2 engine... I'd have a look there - it's been around long enough for there to be plenty of expertise on it.

Thanks for that TimBob, i was thinking of looking at the quake engine, but wasn't sure whether to go down the 'bitmap' route or some other kind of rendering engine for 'cleaner' look.

[MTv Dave]

This is a pretty big undertaking: There's a lot of work that goes into building any level / 3D environment, and to use it means you'll be tweaking it from here to the end of time (though I think that's the fun of them).
Good luck, but you may want to start small (make a "village" before going for a full blown city

[FourWheelDrift]

As a bit of encouragement have a look here, someone has modelled the town centre of Hitchin for a number of different PC driving games (all of which you can drive round on your own if you want to).

www.hitchin-circuit.co.uk/ & www.hitchin-circuit.co.uk/viewimages.html

[MTv Dave]

FourWheelDrift said:

As a bit of encouragement have a look here, someone has modelled the town centre of Hitchin for a number of different PC driving games (all of which you can drive round on your own if you want to).

www.hitchin-circuit.co.uk/ & www.hitchin-circuit.co.uk/viewimages.html

What an odd idea. Why Hitchin, do you think? Of all the places with roads ON EARTH they chose Hitchin! I have nothing against the place, my train stops there twice a day when I'm on it (I assume it also stops when I'm not though ) but I can't really understand why...

[FourWheelDrift]

Probably the chap who did it lives there. Still good though, taking photo's all around and using them as the textures.

[pentoman]

I am waiting for a great real-life driving simulation... i.e. a game the really feels like driving around in a real country, with real other cars, real narrow or variable roads, real traffic, real crashes (i.e. pile-ups, like you used to get in the Nascar games). I just like the idea of cutting everyone up, drifting off a motorway roundabout, flooring it down the slip road and trying to do 200mph down the hard shoulder in rush hour, then pulling off onto a bumpy B-road through villages, narrow single track lanes, overtaking tractors and sheep, going over hump-back bridges, making questionable overtaking calls etc. Ideally all this done with realistic police, rather than the crap police most games have, most of which must have only 2 lines of artificial intelligence code.

They're getting there, but still most games feel like a boring 3d world with 4 different types of objects: grippy tarmac (lots of - most roads feel 5 lines wide), slippery grass, stationary objects you collide with, and "invisible wall" areas you aren't allowed to go. Always with an unrealistically consistent smattering of unrealistically driven AI cars around the place.

GTA is pretty damn good but is not really geared around driving and lacks... something.
Test drive is ok but just feels like a big race track with a smattering of AI cars.
Rally games are actually better at giving a feeling of changing scenery and roads
Interstate '76 was quite good?
And I played this truck driving game once that was quite amusing

Does anyone else agree that this would be fun?

[xiphias]

pentoman said:

I am waiting for a great real-life driving simulation... i.e. a game the really feels like driving around in a real country, with real other cars, real narrow or variable roads, real traffic, real crashes (i.e. pile-ups, like you used to get in the Nascar games). I just like the idea of cutting everyone up, drifting off a motorway roundabout, flooring it down the slip road and trying to do 200mph down the hard shoulder in rush hour, then pulling off onto a bumpy B-road through villages, narrow single track lanes, overtaking tractors and sheep, going over hump-back bridges, making questionable overtaking calls etc. Ideally all this done with realistic police, rather than the crap police most games have, most of which must have only 2 lines of artificial intelligence code.

I've always thought they should do that, then combine it into a massive online thing combined with flight sim

[big_treacle]

xiphias said:

pentoman said:

I am waiting for a great real-life driving simulation... i.e. a game the really feels like driving around in a real country, with real other cars, real narrow or variable roads, real traffic, real crashes (i.e. pile-ups, like you used to get in the Nascar games). I just like the idea of cutting everyone up, drifting off a motorway roundabout, flooring it down the slip road and trying to do 200mph down the hard shoulder in rush hour, then pulling off onto a bumpy B-road through villages, narrow single track lanes, overtaking tractors and sheep, going over hump-back bridges, making questionable overtaking calls etc. Ideally all this done with realistic police, rather than the crap police most games have, most of which must have only 2 lines of artificial intelligence code.

I've always thought they should do that, then combine it into a massive online thing combined with flight sim

Combined with battlefield 4

[ThePassenger]

big_treacle said:

Combined with battlefield 4

Funny you should mention that. Back in the days of Spectrum Holobyte and Falcon 3.0 they came up with this brilliant idea: Electronic Battle Simulation.

Basically, Falcon, A-10 Tank Killer, a (I belive) unreleased M1 Tank sim and several others where all going to speak the same language and thus when on-line you could be providing air superiority to the A-10's, the A-10's would be giving close air support to the people roaring around in tanks.

Each game was going to be in the same vein as Falcon so pretty bloody close to how the actual thing would handle (given technological limitations at the time) and of course all the different formats released would again talk to each other via the EBS server.

Unfortunatley this was pre-internet days so the idea of connecting for hours on end over the phone line didn't really appeal to people, especially as again this was during the days of BT bending you over and abusing you for phone calls.

Whilst I know Battlefield and most modern FPS games include player controlled craft they aren't really simulations; but I am surprised that nobody has done the EBS idea with releases on major consoles and PC.

[pentoman]

ThePassenger said:

big_treacle said:

Combined with battlefield 4

Funny you should mention that. Back in the days of Spectrum Holobyte and Falcon 3.0 they came up with this brilliant idea: Electronic Battle Simulation.

Basically, Falcon, A-10 Tank Killer, a (I belive) unreleased M1 Tank sim and several others where all going to speak the same language and thus when on-line you could be providing air superiority to the A-10's, the A-10's would be giving close air support to the people roaring around in tanks.

Each game was going to be in the same vein as Falcon so pretty bloody close to how the actual thing would handle (given technological limitations at the time) and of course all the different formats released would again talk to each other via the EBS server.

Unfortunatley this was pre-internet days so the idea of connecting for hours on end over the phone line didn't really appeal to people, especially as again this was during the days of BT bending you over and abusing you for phone calls.

Whilst I know Battlefield and most modern FPS games include player controlled craft they aren't really simulations; but I am surprised that nobody has done the EBS idea with releases on major consoles and PC.

Sounds very ahead of its time that idea!

[MTv Dave]

Unless they were all made by the same development house and publisher combo - I can't see it happening these day - cooperation in the industry is a myth. The only other way is an open-source project - so a mod'ed PS2, old PSP firmware versions, a PC or the next M$ console (if the bumph on the net comes to anything) may be able to play it. I've heard many different stories about the PS3 having some developer tools and APIs being made available, but knowing Sony's stance on this I seriously doubt it

I'm a bit suprised nobody has taken the HL2 engine and stuck a flight sim mode on it - I know the vehicles in there aren't the most realistic, but with a bit of work they would be better. I know that would limit the market to PCs, but they are genereally the platform for things like this to kick off, gain popularity and then be migrated to other platforms later.

[ThePassenger]

It was indeed an idea very much ahead of it's time.

MTv Dave said:

Unless they were all made by the same development house and publisher combo - I can't see it happening these day - cooperation in the industry is a myth. The only other way is an open-source project - so a mod'ed PS2, old PSP firmware versions, a PC or the next M$ console (if the bumph on the net comes to anything) may be able to play it. I've heard many different stories about the PS3 having some developer tools and APIs being made available, but knowing Sony's stance on this I seriously doubt it

I can't see it either, which is a shame because I think, if you threw an FPS in the EBS idea it would be completely brilliant, then you even have ground troops yelling for support from mechanised forces.
Open Source could pull it off but look at Vega Strike (and the spin off's using its engine) very few people have heard about them as they don't have the massive marketing machine to push the title out.

[AJLintern]

pentoman said:

GTA is pretty damn good but is not really geared around driving and lacks... something.
Test drive is ok but just feels like a big race track with a smattering of AI cars.
Rally games are actually better at giving a feeling of changing scenery and roads
Interstate '76 was quite good?
And I played this truck driving game once that was quite amusing

Does anyone else agree that this would be fun?

Did you ever try Midtown Madness? That was good fun! The pedestrians would leap out of your way and shout abuse at you
Carmageddon was one of the first games of this type I think, except the pedestrians weren't quick enough!

[pentoman]

AJLintern said:

pentoman said:

GTA is pretty damn good but is not really geared around driving and lacks... something.
Test drive is ok but just feels like a big race track with a smattering of AI cars.
Rally games are actually better at giving a feeling of changing scenery and roads
Interstate '76 was quite good?
And I played this truck driving game once that was quite amusing

Does anyone else agree that this would be fun?

Did you ever try Midtown Madness? That was good fun! The pedestrians would leap out of your way and shout abuse at you
Carmageddon was one of the first games of this type I think, except the pedestrians weren't quick enough!

Yep, played midtown loads! was good multiplayer.
all the carmageddon games have been brilliant too.