Live data from Hacker News

A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

slowroads.io

21–30 of 202 posts

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually does generate bridges over bodies of water. If the road goes over a lake/river, it creates a simple bridge over it. I'm not sure if there are other bridge types I'm not sure I want cities but I agree with adding a few villages and landmarks

If we're putting in requests, my two would be a forest setting (would allow the Autumn option to be more colorful - particularly with some Aspen) and a Mountain/steep valley option. And yes, please advise when it's available for sale :-)

The next location I add may well be a denser forest in the mountains - I'm picturing tunnels, fog, and snow at higher elevations.

I don't plan to sell it, but you can follow my twitter for updates. I'd like to keep it freely available if I can :)

https://twitter.com/anslogen

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#22

Love it! If feel like you should lean into the landscapes, which are the biggest draw, by not penalizing driving off the road as much. Maybe dirt roads with some more floaty handling but not the speed penalty? Great work!

It isn't intentional, that's just the physics of low friction on steep slopes. But you're right, nearly everyone starts by immediately seeing how far off-road they can drive, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to better support that :)

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#24

Adding a distance-dependent blue tint would increase realism a lot.

There is a nice way to set fog to be two-tone - I'll play with that and see what I get. The default Summer mode has quite a distant fog, but the morning/evening weathers are a little mistier.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#25

Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish. Also it might be nice to have a first-person vew, maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. I love the procedurally-generated landscapes. It really captures the feeling of driving on unfamiliar roads. I'm curious how the physics works. Is this using raycast wheels? A couple of years ago I made a racing game for Oculus Quest using G…

The author did a little write up here: https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40

By the sounds of it they’re doing a very simple sim with raycast wheels and not using a rigidbody physics engine.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#26
post #16

Great idea, but landscape is not very realistic, I'm driving next to sea or huge lake going uphill, then driving further away from sea, all the time going uphill and after some time I'm back at coast at same elevation where I started while going all the time uphill and NEVER going downhill. Also why is autodrive driving in the middle of the road and not in the correct lane?

That's interesting - the sea plane is set at a y position of 0 so I can't imagine how that could happen... You can press F3 to get a debug overlay showing your position, maybe you could verify that the Y value looks correct?

Autodrive is in the middle of the road because it was much easier to implement. I'll see if I can get around to letting you choose a more legal lane-follow option.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#28
post #20
post #10

This would be great for Rally racing games, since it's all about reacting to unknown terrain. Also, it would be better if mouse steering is damping impulse based, i.e. every frame the steering position exponentially decays, mouse position resets to center and the change is added as impulse on the steering position. sensitivity = max_ang / ( screenwidth/2 ) decay_rate = 6.0 frame(dt){ dx = mouse.x - center_pos mouse.r…

Thanks! I'll give that a go and at least add it as an optional alternative, if not the default :)

Oh, and I noticed that the tyres don't seem to respond to the steerangle changes immediately, instead it seems to slowly interpolate towards it. Not sure if it's cosmetic and does not represent the logical wheel state, but if it does then you might want to change it so that the steer-bar position directly sets the wheel angle, otherwise they'll end up being derivatives of derivatives making it extra sluggish.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#29

Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish. Also it might be nice to have a first-person vew, maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. I love the procedurally-generated landscapes. It really captures the feeling of driving on unfamiliar roads. I'm curious how the physics works. Is this using raycast wheels? A couple of years ago I made a racing game for Oculus Quest using G…

Physics are always a major headache - mine are pretty hacky and cut a lot of corners, such as ignoring trees or preventing the car from flipping. I only height-test the wheels, progress them independently, and then resolve the chassis position from that. It's not terribly physically accurate but it gets the job done, and is pretty cheap!

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#30
i loved the drive but the speed is offputting.... i mean it only seems to work when i am like 100km, something that autodrive does while i can expect a mountain winding road to be comfortable at 20-50 because of twists and turns?

like there is

1. incline effect on the speed (up turns down speed and going down increases) 2. snow effect on wheels 3. traffic mode 4. like above, speed responsiveness at slower speeds 5. gear shifting

thank you for building a great product

Post reply on HN