You can build you levels in Illustrator / AffinityDesigner and export an SVG to Blender and make meshes out of your curves, done this a couple of times and saves a lot of time.
Man fhe fact youre doing all this alone deserves the utmost praise. Keep going and you'll definitely complete the project and the feeling will be worth it.
Would recommend treating your course/level a bit like a set of interlocking modules. It'll make the level-design and building easier, since you can take whole blocks out or redesign them, and have them reconnect without needing a full level redo. But also it'll make your skill-progression and PvP/PvE difficulty curves a lot easier to design & implement, since you can assess the impact of each sub-track configuration separately and in various configurations. GMTK's puzzle-game devlog and Firaxis' GDC talk on their adventures in modular procgen with XCom 2/WotC are definitely ones to check out - good luck! ("Plot and Parcel: Procedural Level Design in XCOM 2" and "How I make puzzles for my indie magnet game (Developing 9)")
Looking like a very interesting project! My son loved Crazy Taxi and would surely love this too. But about gray boxing, don’t you just need gray boxes for the houses instead of procedural buildings? :) keep us updated and good luck!!
Yeah that's the first step, but eventually they'll need to be converted to real buildings for the vertical slice. So, I'm hoping to lean into my procedural tools for that
Hate to be 'that guy' (& I could be wrong) buuut ... You may want to look into Sega's crazy taxi and their patents. If remembering right, I saw a video some time ago that stated sega patented the arrow "system" and some other parts of their game which, looking at your progress, could result in some legal letters being sent to you. This is clearly a very similar concept to their game and these companies don't play nice! I'm not saying I agree with them in any way, just a heads up in case you haven't looked into it already.
Nvm it expired in 2019 so shouldn't be an issue any more. Apparently another one was when NPC's dodge the car! Crazy that this was allowed in the first place.
I think the problem with the character designs you might be having is they are all completely rounded like bowling pins. You probably smooth subdivided them in Blender, but you'll need to leave some edges on there for shirt sleeves and elbows and stuff to give visual interest.
Hi. With your time in Unreal Engine, what did you use for vehicle physics? I'm currently using Chaos Vehicles in UE5. Although initially easy to set up, getting simcade control out of it is a bit more difficult (especially since I don't have any game-development experience). I've gotten my vehicle to a point it controls well, but have a hard time getting controlled drifting in there. Which is a necessity, since I'm making a spiritual successor to Split Second, so drifting is a key-component. Your day to day job is in game-development aswell? Any pointers on how to approach solo-development of a game? I'm from a country where game-development is just starting to build, and I'm already at an age where I'm considered "too old" for it.
Yeah, I didn't get on with the vehicle physics at all. So, I ended up just using my own solution that I had in Unity, and ported it. I'll likely make a tutorial on how I handled it in Unity some time in the future.
The game is looking really cool, and I love the approach your taking to the development. Generating stuff procedurally like that for testing and refining is such a smart approach :)
It would be interesting to see a video talking about how you got the pathfinding working for the cars! I've got a few projects that involve car AI, and working out how to get them sticking to one specific side of the road has been wrecking my brain, and the idea of getting them to go into the other lane for passing when necessary instead of freezing up seems impossible. ^^;
So, It's literally just splines. Each lane is a spline, and the vehicles move along points on the Splines via physics. I don't really need them to do anything more complicated than that, they don't really need to overtake or anything more complex for this game. I did a write up post explaining how I handled the traffic lights over on patreon. But essentially to get vehicles to avoid each other at intersections they basically just wait and I move around the intersection taking it in turns allowing the vehicles to move.
@@henrikgab2876 Unfortunately, the project I was needing this for was put on hiatus, so not really. If it helps any, my plan for it was mostly to just exploit my own game's conditions. Ie, it was a turn based, grid based system, so I knew the roads could only have turns and straight lines, and would move at fixed distances. My idea (not sure if this would've worked out, haven't gotten around to doing it in practice) was to have the cars move forward on straight roads, until they encountered a turn or crossroads, then use pathfinding to determine which turn will bring them closer and handle the turn programmatically while keeping them in the correct lane (since overtaking and turns were the only places I could see where pathfinding might push the car into oncoming traffic) It wouldn't have the ability for cars to overtake stopped cars, and I wasn't sure how to handle what happens when they reach their destination, (perhaps a distance check while driving?) as well as a lot of other stuff that'd need extra problem solving like "what if their destination isn't reachable from the road," but, yeah, that's all I had. I wish you luck on this, it seems to be a surprisingly difficult topic!
Building the game in a modular way sounds like a great way to combine game dev and a full time job, nice!
Such an awesome idea. Crazy Taxi as a competitive multiplayer game is just genius.
Aha thanks! The multiplayer part is inspired by Simpsons Road Rage (which had a really awesome split screen battle mode)
You can build you levels in Illustrator / AffinityDesigner and export an SVG to Blender and make meshes out of your curves, done this a couple of times and saves a lot of time.
Man fhe fact youre doing all this alone deserves the utmost praise. Keep going and you'll definitely complete the project and the feeling will be worth it.
Would recommend treating your course/level a bit like a set of interlocking modules. It'll make the level-design and building easier, since you can take whole blocks out or redesign them, and have them reconnect without needing a full level redo. But also it'll make your skill-progression and PvP/PvE difficulty curves a lot easier to design & implement, since you can assess the impact of each sub-track configuration separately and in various configurations. GMTK's puzzle-game devlog and Firaxis' GDC talk on their adventures in modular procgen with XCom 2/WotC are definitely ones to check out - good luck!
("Plot and Parcel: Procedural Level Design in XCOM 2" and "How I make puzzles for my indie magnet game (Developing 9)")
Yeah I'm definitely going to be approaching this in a modular way. I think it'd be impossible otherwise. Thanks for the recommendations!
Looking like a very interesting project! My son loved Crazy Taxi and would surely love this too. But about gray boxing, don’t you just need gray boxes for the houses instead of procedural buildings? :) keep us updated and good luck!!
Yeah that's the first step, but eventually they'll need to be converted to real buildings for the vertical slice. So, I'm hoping to lean into my procedural tools for that
Hate to be 'that guy' (& I could be wrong) buuut ... You may want to look into Sega's crazy taxi and their patents. If remembering right, I saw a video some time ago that stated sega patented the arrow "system" and some other parts of their game which, looking at your progress, could result in some legal letters being sent to you.
This is clearly a very similar concept to their game and these companies don't play nice!
I'm not saying I agree with them in any way, just a heads up in case you haven't looked into it already.
Nvm it expired in 2019 so shouldn't be an issue any more. Apparently another one was when NPC's dodge the car! Crazy that this was allowed in the first place.
I think the problem with the character designs you might be having is they are all completely rounded like bowling pins. You probably smooth subdivided them in Blender, but you'll need to leave some edges on there for shirt sleeves and elbows and stuff to give visual interest.
I've been trying to join your discord but it says the link is invalid, do you know why that would be? Great video though!
Hi. With your time in Unreal Engine, what did you use for vehicle physics?
I'm currently using Chaos Vehicles in UE5. Although initially easy to set up, getting simcade control out of it is a bit more difficult (especially since I don't have any game-development experience). I've gotten my vehicle to a point it controls well, but have a hard time getting controlled drifting in there. Which is a necessity, since I'm making a spiritual successor to Split Second, so drifting is a key-component.
Your day to day job is in game-development aswell? Any pointers on how to approach solo-development of a game? I'm from a country where game-development is just starting to build, and I'm already at an age where I'm considered "too old" for it.
Yeah, I didn't get on with the vehicle physics at all. So, I ended up just using my own solution that I had in Unity, and ported it. I'll likely make a tutorial on how I handled it in Unity some time in the future.
Looks amazing sir! Does this mean we’ll get a tutorial on handling user authentication in a game? :)
Glad you're still uploading
Good job btw
That's a cool game
Hey Matt, I think Chaotic Cabs might be a better name for the game.
The game is looking really cool, and I love the approach your taking to the development. Generating stuff procedurally like that for testing and refining is such a smart approach :)
Is gameplay like a sorta a combination of Crazy Taxi and Carmagedon?
Looks like multiplayer Crazy Taxi so far 🤔
Hey, I would really like to know how do you handle rigidbodies for multiplayer, like how do reconcile the state between multiple players?
but why visual studio though?
pvp crazy taxi? ^^ love it
It would be interesting to see a video talking about how you got the pathfinding working for the cars!
I've got a few projects that involve car AI, and working out how to get them sticking to one specific side of the road has been wrecking my brain, and the idea of getting them to go into the other lane for passing when necessary instead of freezing up seems impossible. ^^;
So, It's literally just splines. Each lane is a spline, and the vehicles move along points on the Splines via physics. I don't really need them to do anything more complicated than that, they don't really need to overtake or anything more complex for this game.
I did a write up post explaining how I handled the traffic lights over on patreon. But essentially to get vehicles to avoid each other at intersections they basically just wait and I move around the intersection taking it in turns allowing the vehicles to move.
@SheepUndefined Did you ever find any good videos/articles on this? I'm trying to understand the same thing at the moment.
@@henrikgab2876 Unfortunately, the project I was needing this for was put on hiatus, so not really.
If it helps any, my plan for it was mostly to just exploit my own game's conditions.
Ie, it was a turn based, grid based system, so I knew the roads could only have turns and straight lines, and would move at fixed distances.
My idea (not sure if this would've worked out, haven't gotten around to doing it in practice) was to have the cars move forward on straight roads, until they encountered a turn or crossroads, then use pathfinding to determine which turn will bring them closer and handle the turn programmatically while keeping them in the correct lane (since overtaking and turns were the only places I could see where pathfinding might push the car into oncoming traffic)
It wouldn't have the ability for cars to overtake stopped cars, and I wasn't sure how to handle what happens when they reach their destination, (perhaps a distance check while driving?) as well as a lot of other stuff that'd need extra problem solving like "what if their destination isn't reachable from the road," but, yeah, that's all I had.
I wish you luck on this, it seems to be a surprisingly difficult topic!
same exact thing happen to me... soooo back to unity....QAQ
Great concept, excited to follow the game's journey! Good luck!!