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A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

slowroads.io

121–130 of 202 posts

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#121
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…

> This would be great for Rally racing games I'm pretty sure the tracks in Dirt 4 were procedurally generated. This made them feel extremely generic and bland compared to the hand modelled tracks in the sibling-series Dirt Rally.

That is also why Bethesda switched from procedural generation for Daggerfall to hand built for Morrowind. I have to wonder if we could train a model now to do this stuff? For terrain it is mostly mappable to an image anyway. Could fix undercut cliffs in a post processing step using voxel models instead. Probably not a very good database to pull from for underground stuff though if you want to generate dungeons.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#122

A small note: 80 miles an hour on windy roads, driving in the middle of the road, is not slow and chill. That's "I want to die" fast and reckless... maybe have two autodrive settings. "slow and chill" going appropriate speeds and driving correctly (left/right toggle?) and "landscape zoomies" or something for what it currently does. Right now auto pilot is literally stress inducing =D

For real slow and chill, I propose a third setting - "Medieval handcart" https://youtu.be/RlcuPPPXY3w

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#123

This is really cool! Thank you for making/posting this. I played around with it for about half an hour to 45 minutes or so. I did manage to break it two or three times but I can't reproduce it reliably yet. I'll provide a proper bug report if I can figure out the exact conditions, but mostly if you go off road and get to the top of a big enough hill and then accelerate down the hill as quickly as you can and crash in…

Thanks for the kind words! That screenshot looks like the tail-end of the road - the world despawns behind you as you drive, leaving behind this weird-looking trench. That isn't a bug, but it definitely looks like one - the plan is to add a little achievement for driving back that far, so that people will know it's expected behaviour. Don't worry about replicating bugs, or finding exact coordinates; I've been seeing them all stream in on my analytics backend, and they come with all the metadata I need :)

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#125
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cruise control option to the lower right. You can choose a slower speed

Sure, but if the title of the site is "slow roads" and it's billed as "slow and chill", then careening down a road with half your car in the oncoming traffic lane at 80 miles an hour by default is not a good default. It's a bit like a "ambient study music" site that plays darkstep with flashing lights when you press "just play me something to study to" =)

Ha, true. I'll see to making it a little less reckless, and probably give a setting to have it follow a lane, if it isn't too difficult. The idea of a "slow road" is more about taking the scenic route - back roads like these tend to have some of the highest speed limits, at least in the UK.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#126
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…

> This would be great for Rally racing games I'm pretty sure the tracks in Dirt 4 were procedurally generated. This made them feel extremely generic and bland compared to the hand modelled tracks in the sibling-series Dirt Rally.

You're right - I spent a while looking for existing procedural driving games before I started, and seeing how disappointing the Dirt 4 implementation was was all the motive I needed. Thanks for the kind words.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#127
post #123

This is really cool! Thank you for making/posting this. I played around with it for about half an hour to 45 minutes or so. I did manage to break it two or three times but I can't reproduce it reliably yet. I'll provide a proper bug report if I can figure out the exact conditions, but mostly if you go off road and get to the top of a big enough hill and then accelerate down the hill as quickly as you can and crash in…

Thanks for the kind words! That screenshot looks like the tail-end of the road - the world despawns behind you as you drive, leaving behind this weird-looking trench. That isn't a bug, but it definitely looks like one - the plan is to add a little achievement for driving back that far, so that people will know it's expected behaviour. Don't worry about replicating bugs, or finding exact coordinates; I've been seeing…

Oh, nice re: the analytics backend. Good thinking! This project has prompted me to dust off some code I was working on a couple years ago, I'm excited to play around with it.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#128
post #103

This is a really minor detail, but — how long are the lane dashes? It looks like they're 50% white, 50% space, but in real life they are actually a lot longer and spaced a lot farther apart than most people think. A tiny detail to consider if you're going for realism. Examples: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9700533,-121.9225333,59a,35y... https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9700286,-121.9224894,3a,60y,...

A typical single lane road in the UK under national speed limits (60mph) have dashes that look like these - if not opposite (longer lines with shorter gaps) Based on some other road details, like the barriers, bollards and road signs, I'd say it was modelled fairly realistically on UK roads. https://maps.app.goo.gl/r2ZfKdv9eVUPm4H89

Bingo - the dash spacing is still wrong, but it's based on the roads you might find around the Peak District (Cat and Fiddle, Snake Pass, etc.). I didn't reckon many people would mind the line spacing, but it'd be an easy fix

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#129
this is awesome! i love having a web-based chill car game like this to play to calm down, let my brain chill, and play it when im in bed or the middle of thinking or in between meetings.

for the last 5 years or so, its been this game for me: http://uploads.ungrounded.net/alternate/1099000/1099839_alte...

you can see its very similar vibe to yours.

in case you shut down the site, is there a way i can download this for personal use so i can host it on my own servers (in the event you take it down)? thanks for making and sharing!

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#130
post #45
post #43

Nice, looking great. Roadster feels like a super heavy electric car though :D Controller support would be great. Or I wonder if there is already some way to map the controller inputs? Browser extension maybe

I've heard it's mappable on a steam deck, but I don't know about others. Controller support is one of the most-requested features, so I'll be trying to work on it this coming week. Thanks!

Excellent! Yes, it would be much more chill if I didn't have to use keyboard steering :)
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