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A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

slowroads.io

151–160 of 202 posts

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#152
post #76

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…

> maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. Can confirm. I was physics lead on a console driving game, and we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics, and that it’s quite difficult to get the camera right. The camera can make real physics feel sluggish, cartoony, or just wrong, and a great camera can make fake physics feel…

> we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics

This was my experience when I made Speed Haste, a 3D racing game back in 95. I spent a few nights banging my head against my car physics code, and being frustrated and tired, I switched to tuning camera code to clear my head. Voila! Car physics and handling felt completely different. As you say, audio was huge too, even back in these primitive and (by today's standards) cartoony times.

I've used this anecdote when teaching gamedev students, to hammer in their heads that games are complex because they're the sum of their parts + the sum of all the interactions between all the parts.

(for the historically inclined, code for the game is available at https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc)

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#153

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,...

i seem to remember that i have seen them vary in length, and i have the distinct impression that the length variation is dependent on the suggested speed. that is, shorter dashes if you should go slower, longer dashes if you can go faster. the specific details probably vary from country to country.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#155
I love the cruise control and auto drive options. I don't find the default cruise speed very relaxing and appriciate being able to bump it down.

A feature request that, if I were you, I would probably say no to:

It would be cool to have URL flags to load with auto-drive on and cruise control at a certain level.

I think it would be fun to easily share what I find relaxing about this. Also it would be a kinda cool default new page.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#156
I got really weird results when I set the seed to 0099FF - not the decimal value of 0x99FF, I mean the literal string "0099FF". I got all kinds of terrain generation glitches including one where the surface on which my wheels rested was a good 50 feet above what the texture was applied to.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#157
post #136
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i found the bus averaging 80km/h pretty realistic. what felt wrong was the acceleration. it would go to max speed on a straight road even if there was a curve just a few hundred meters ahead. perhaps reducing the acceleration when autodrive is on will help. maybe you can add a self learning component. every time the vehicle bumps the barrier, it was going/accelerating to fast.

> maybe you can add a self learning component

Basic physics is also pretty applicable here. ;)

acceleration = velocity^2 /radius

with a simplified

max friction force = coefficient of friction * car weight

And to tie them together

force = mass * acceleration

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#158
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…

I have a keyboard steering related question. I like key control, but I do find the on/off nature of keyboard turning to be lacking. First let's move WASD over to the right by one key, so ESDF. S and F would now turn slightly. Now let's add A and G and assign those to more extreme turning. Is there any driving game which has done this, or at least has some sort of configurable system where it could be tried? I assume…

> but I do find the on/off nature of keyboard turning to be lacking.

This may interest you: https://aimpad.com/

> Aimpad® patented technology adds full analog movement control to the traditional WASD keyboard layout

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#159

I love the cruise control and auto drive options. I don't find the default cruise speed very relaxing and appriciate being able to bump it down. A feature request that, if I were you, I would probably say no to: It would be cool to have URL flags to load with auto-drive on and cruise control at a certain level. I think it would be fun to easily share what I find relaxing about this. Also it would be a kinda cool defa…

Additionally, if you add the seed to the URL GET parameters, I can share this with my colleagues to compete who clocks more kms during a morning stand up.

Re: A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes

#160

I think this would be way better if it could work with only the mouse. LMB/RMB for brake/accelerator and moving mouse left/right for proportional steering with steering position visual feedback. I've always also preferred the more immersive inside-out view where the view rotates directly with direction of motion rather than the overhead/behind view.

Conversely, it would be nice to be able to use the mouse to look around in keyboard mode.
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