[HN Gopher] A chill driving game with procedurally generate scen...
___________________________________________________________________
A chill driving game with procedurally generate scenic landscapes
Author : itsuka
Score : 526 points
Date : 2022-10-23 07:24 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slowroads.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (slowroads.io)
| aniforprez wrote:
| I wish the autodrive had a defensive driving option. As it is, it
| goes at 120 kmph on these windy roads and takes over the entire
| available space including the opposing lane. Wish you could limit
| the speed for a more relaxed cruise
|
| This is very lovely and really relaxing (aside from the crazy
| speeds the autodrive goes at haha). Kudos to the creator! Btw if
| you haven't tried the numerous options to change weather, time of
| day, vehicle and even planet, go for it! There's a surprising
| amount of options
|
| OH! I'm just finding out that there's a lock that's next to the
| speedometer that limits how fast the car goes! Damn this is so
| neat!
| tech-historian wrote:
| I really enjoyed these settings:
|
| - Autopilot on
|
| - Using the motor bike
|
| - Setting roads to "casual"
|
| - Season to summer
|
| - Cycle timer of 3 minutes
|
| - Setting cruise control to max 120
|
| - Hitting "c" until you get complete first person view
|
| - View distance: Ultra
|
| - Detail: Ultra
|
| Very cool experience, sort of put me in a trance a bit.. and I
| can't quite put my finger on why!
| crazygringo wrote:
| When I set it to 15 mph it feels like a really nice
| screensaver.
|
| Which, really -- turning this into a screensaver for mac/pc
| that skipped the sound and slowly/gently cycled through days
| and seasons would actually be really nice! At least on my M1
| MacBook Air it seems to be pretty low CPU usage.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| I did the same type of thing with the moon but I had to cycle
| the camera views a bit until I was comfortable.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| Requesting a max air-time feature!
| hanklazard wrote:
| Lots of fun! My favorite part was taking the motorcycle off-road
| and doing wheelies :)
| saint-loup wrote:
| Me: nice, a chill, contemplative game, just what I need.
|
| Also me: try to counter-steer at 100 mph.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Adding a distance-dependent blue tint would increase realism a
| lot.
| anslo wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| cousin_it wrote:
| I don't mean fog, I mean just the fact that air is blue, so
| things get smoothly bluer with distance (or rather, more sky-
| colored). Check out any mountain landscape, nearby trees are
| green and distant ones are blue: https://live.staticflickr.co
| m/1009/531101849_a7d297e0cc_b.jp...
| anslo wrote:
| True, though in practice that's the way fog is applied in
| the shader. With the two-tone setup I can have a blue hue
| in the foreground transitioning into the hard white at the
| edge of the view dist.
| PedroCandeias wrote:
| This drives really nicely. Reminds me of some good driving games
| from the 90s when a keyboard was enough. It's so well done,
| thanks for sharing!
| purplecats wrote:
| 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!
| drewtato wrote:
| If anyone is looking for this but as a more complete game, check
| out art of rally: https://artofrally.com/
| marssaxman wrote:
| This is really soothing and nice!
|
| The endless explorable landscape is what I wished games could be
| like when I was a kid.
|
| Any way you could offer an alternative to WASD controls for those
| of us who aren't using standard keyboards?
| tech-historian wrote:
| Looks like you can use the arrow keys too.
| siva7 wrote:
| this is fun on lsd
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Nice. Do you have a V8 mode?
| krylon wrote:
| This is really cool! It's a bit much for my puny laptop, but it's
| fun!
| tagami wrote:
| For fun, I went off-road immediately and ended up floating over
| the ocean after a few minutes
| zestyping wrote:
| 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,...
| bbrks wrote:
| 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
| anslo wrote:
| 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
| zestyping wrote:
| Wow, I was so wrong! TIL, and sorry I imposed an incorrect
| assumption.
| em-bee wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| xeonmc wrote:
| 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.reset() steer_ang += dx*sensitivity
| steer_ang.clamp(-max_ang,max_ang) steer_ang *=
| exp(-decay_rate * dt) }
| anslo wrote:
| Thanks! I'll give that a go and at least add it as an optional
| alternative, if not the default :)
| xeonmc wrote:
| 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.
| aliqot wrote:
| bike doesnt lean
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Any chance for joystick controls?
| consumer451 wrote:
| 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 it has to exist somewhere if it is at all usable.
| anslo wrote:
| Interesting idea - I could try implementing this
| experimentally
| xeonmc wrote:
| Or alternatively, have ijkl serve 75% weight and esdf serve
| 25% weight. Then you can achieve 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25%
| combinations using both hands. Left |
| Right | Total ------|-------|------ +0.25 |
| +0.75 | +1.00 0.00 | +0.75 | +0.75 -0.25 |
| +0.75 | +0.50 +0.25 | 0.00 | +0.25 0.00 |
| 0.00 | 0.00 -0.25 | 0.00 | -0.25 +0.25 |
| -0.75 | -0.50 0.00 | -0.75 | -0.75 -0.25 |
| -0.75 | -1.00
|
| (two ternary digits -> 3^2 = 9 combinations)
| nomel wrote:
| > but I do find the on/off nature of keyboard turning to be
| lacking.
|
| This may interest you: https://aimpad.com/
|
| > Aimpad(r) patented technology adds full analog movement
| control to the traditional WASD keyboard layout
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Your description is that steering decays then has mouse impulse
| added, which makes sense to me. But the code decays the
| steering after adding the delta-X. Is there a reason for that?
| xeonmc wrote:
| As the discrete impulse is meant to approximate average
| derivative, applying decay after the impulse ensures that the
| value is always attenuated by decay (low frame rate
| underestimate the ground truth impulse, whereas the converse
| overestimates at low framerate).
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > 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.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| 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.
| anslo wrote:
| 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.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| > This would be great for Rally racing games, since it's all
| about reacting to unknown terrain.
|
| Indeed, eventually you know the tracks by heart, so much so
| that you don't need the pacing notes anymore. I'm surprised
| nobody thought of using procedural generation here.
|
| It's not exactly true that you react to unknown terrain,
| though, because IRL there's reckons in order to make pace
| notes, and I suspect that rally races tend to happen more-or-
| less on the same roads.
|
| PS: actually someone did think about using procgen for rally
| games: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/procedurally-
| genera...
| pmontra wrote:
| If you're on mobile enable autodrive (the wheel icon at the
| bottom) and enjoy being a passenger.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Looked for this but it doesn't appear on iPad
| Ciantic wrote:
| Auto-drive could go slower and stay on it's lane for extra
| relaxation.
|
| Currently I just kept wondering, that driving on a middle of a
| road with such a tight corners seemed like dangerous.
| comprev wrote:
| Kudos to the developer! I'm a huge fan of open world driving sims
| (Forza Horizon series) and find the endless roads (and the long
| races) a great way to unwind. Knowing the roads is one thing, but
| add in changing weather conditions and general road traffic, each
| corner can be different each time you go round. Certainly keeps
| me on my toes!
| coldcode wrote:
| Driving off road works too! One thing I wish it had was a look
| around function so you could admire the scenery when not
| driving.
| xtirpation wrote:
| I don't know if there are other achievements but the one with the
| "What did you expect" text popping up really made me laugh. Good
| foresight anticipating players like me.
| smusamashah wrote:
| I have RTX 3080 but fps is low.
|
| - Distance: Ultra - Render scale: 0.75 - Detail: Low
|
| Even if view distance is low, setting detail to med lowers the
| FPS.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You might have GPU acceleration turned off in your browser
| settings.
| anslo wrote:
| This has been an issue for a couple of people, yeah - I
| mention it in the FAQ but I'll probably make a more obvious
| warning when I detect a low FPS
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| I would like an engine noise that's more of a deep rumble and
| less of a high-pitched whine. But this is nice.
| error_salad wrote:
| Neat! Will you release the source code?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| There is something fun about a flat earth with cartoon physics.
| mlok wrote:
| Very nice creation ! But sad that AZERTY keyboards are often
| forgotten in mini games. The game is not really playable outside
| QWERTY keyboards. (Arrow keys would be a good alternative too)
| marssaxman wrote:
| I had the same concern, but it turns out the arrow keys already
| work! They're just not mentioned.
| anslo wrote:
| Rookie error on my part, apologies - I was needlessly agonising
| over having to make string comparisons in my input controller.
| This week I'll be refactoring it to use a map, and be adding
| some UI for remapping.
| mtoddsmith wrote:
| How about some relaxing driving music?
| xeonmc wrote:
| Maybe some Eurobeat
| horsellama wrote:
| wow, now I can drive on the snake pass from my browser :) kudos!
| greggh wrote:
| The only correct play is to drive forward a few hundred yards, do
| a u-turn and drive back past where you started. Very
| entertaining. Especially when you fall off into the ocean and
| earn an achievement.
| pmontra wrote:
| I turned right, drove up the hill in the woods, down to a lake,
| kept going on the bottom of the lake and arrived to The Edge.
| Nices views from the top of the hills.
| hinkley wrote:
| One of the vehicle options needs to be a Lotus, and it should
| convert into a submarine when you hit the water.
| wishfish wrote:
| That's very well done. I was pretty happy about turning my Camaro
| into a Jeep and being able to go off-road for miles before
| finally running out of map.
|
| The fall and winter modes are especially evocative. Winter with
| fog or winter with night reminded me so much of driving in Utah.
| otikik wrote:
| It's chill when you drive into the water, I wish they added some
| bubble sounds to complete the effect.
| jstanley wrote:
| 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
| Godot[0], based on Godot's "VehicleBody", and getting the physics
| to work satisfactorily was a major headache. But a procedural
| world would have made it _so_ much cooler.
|
| [0] https://sidequestvr.com/app/1403/ghost-racing-vr-wip
| meheleventyone wrote:
| 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.
| kqr wrote:
| Interesting that they generated terrain first and then tried
| to fit the road onto it (with the headaches involved, like
| getting stuck on peninsulas) and not generated road first and
| then surrounded it by terrain!
| anslo wrote:
| I figured that was the best way to get organic-feeling
| roads stitched seamlessly into a far-spanning environment.
| I also didn't recognise at the time just how hard it would
| be, but I still think it was the right choice.
| kqr wrote:
| You are probably right! The results are stunning.
| Aperocky wrote:
| I think it's because there are only full left and right and no
| slight turn of wheel like we do 99.9% of time in real driving.
| anslo wrote:
| 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!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Yeah these simple approaches are great and a bit of a lost
| art. Physics engines give a lot of flexibility and emergent
| behaviour but add a lot of complication when you want to
| constrain the madness. I wrote my own simple vehicle for our
| platform the other day which was a lot of fun:
|
| https://dotbigbang.com/game/b0e8bf8b309b44a3b0abed8f9525e335.
| ..
| xeonmc wrote:
| press c
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB6rP3KHcc
| jstanley wrote:
| Nice, thanks.
| dahart wrote:
| > 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 real. We
| humans are pretty sensitive to subtle motions.
|
| Making physics feel right is also about lots of other cues too
| though (cues which aren't here in this game). Sound and effects
| and even sometimes tactile feedback are also needed to complete
| the illusion. Sometimes real physics is surprisingly sluggish,
| and we don't notice how slowly momentum changes until we take
| away the sounds and bumps and dust and skid marks.
| Jare wrote:
| > 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)
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| The first bit I landed on looked exactly like the roads around
| where I grew up...
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very
| sluggish"
|
| I tried it on PC, laptop (both are Windows) and on Google Pixel
| 6 Pro. All are very fluid. But reaction on keypress I think has
| slight constant delay. Not sure what's the reason. Anyways I
| used it on auto drive and just stared for a while.
| jstanley wrote:
| I'm not saying it's not _fluid_. If anything it 's too fluid!
| It's difficult to drive fast because the car takes so long to
| react to your inputs.
| behnamoh wrote:
| the Mars terrain is interesting. Also, I found out that the car
| can go just as fast in reverse gear!
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| 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
| bhelkey wrote:
| 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.
| porkbrain wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| rsync wrote:
| Oh, I thought this was "Desert Bus"[1] ...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_...
| frogulis wrote:
| "What did you expect" - ha! Nice. The keyboard controls could
| definitely feel snappier, but once I got a feel for the mouse
| controls I settled right in. And taking the coach offroad is
| super fun!
| chrisdalke wrote:
| Nice! Loved driving around and trying to break the physics.
|
| At first I was disappointed you couldn't leave the road until I
| found you just needed to use more speed + boost. After that I
| spent all the time driving off-road.
|
| I drove backwards at the start and clipped into some geometry,
| causing the car to gain a ton of vertical velocity and fly high
| into the air up to the clouds! When it dropped back down it
| bounced around a lot. Found you could reproduce this by finding
| where the road surface was clipped and gain some speed before
| entering it.
|
| This made me think: You should add some planes!
|
| Had a great time exploring.
| thrill wrote:
| Nice ... needs the occasional pair of superbikes blowing by for
| realism. :)
| ibdf wrote:
| Thank you for acknowledging that I made it to the edge :)
| mysterydip wrote:
| It would be nice if autodrive was on to start so that those on
| mobile could see it in action, even if control is currently not
| possible.
| Markoff wrote:
| you can tap even on mobile on autodrive button and it will work
| fine
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| 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
| antiterra wrote:
| Just assume the roads are closed to everyone else but you, the
| VIP.
|
| As for the speed, it's nowhere near 'i want to die' reckless
| for those long sweepers and a lot of people do find the rhythm
| of that sort of driving to be relaxing. The other component is
| simply that the sensation of speed is always much lower than it
| would be in real life in these kind of things.
| drittich wrote:
| If you read "slow and chill" as an imperative, not adjectives,
| then it works just fine.
| Keyframe wrote:
| even autodrive managed to crash into hill on the side of the
| road on me, hah.
| comfypotato wrote:
| You may prefer the other terrain. At the bottom left of the
| screen you can switch away from the hills. The other road makes
| more sense to be flying down the middle.
| taberiand wrote:
| For real slow and chill, I propose a third setting - "Medieval
| handcart" https://youtu.be/RlcuPPPXY3w
| picture wrote:
| There is a cruise control option to the lower right. You can
| choose a slower speed
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| 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" =)
| [deleted]
| anslo wrote:
| 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.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Here in Canada 80kph is the maximum for back roads, but
| when it's twisty by nature, or it's straight with a few
| turns but has a cliff to one side, that road is a 60kph
| road. Add most of the time anything S-bend or hard turns
| will be on a 40kph advisory.
|
| No going 115+ in a blind corner over a road that will
| launch you off the side of a mountain if you steer poorly
| =D
| em-bee wrote:
| 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.
| nomel wrote:
| > 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
| userbinator wrote:
| That's ~130km/h for those on the other side of the world...
| which is a normal average speed on the Autobahn.
| [deleted]
| tantalor wrote:
| Is the Autobahn windy?
| high_pathetic wrote:
| It is, if you stick your head out...
| robflynn wrote:
| 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 into a barrier you can sometimes
| flip yourself over it. When you do, you are no longer tethered to
| the ground and, instead, kind of hover above it and the road.
| Sometimes you can slip through the ground and the water, and all
| other barriers become passable.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/YDyJa5g.png
|
| (edit: It might be related to hitting slightly awkward terrain?)
|
| (edit 2: Got it on video, though my commentary didn't get
| recorded for some reason)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7U-qS7P2tI
| anslo wrote:
| 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 :)
| robflynn wrote:
| 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.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Very neat, but also made me very glad we don't actually have to
| steer real cars using a keyboard!
| atentaten wrote:
| Great job. Reminds me of an old pc game called Vette! I played as
| a kid.
| fho wrote:
| Some time ago I added ABS, traction control and some torque
| vectoring to the Unity CarDemo ... that made the supercar
| surprisingly handable (is that a word?) even with acceleration
| levels increased to insane values. Especially with keyboard
| control (ie full tilt left or right) the car would not spin out
| in curves. Maybe you get a kick out of implementing some
| "electronic assists" for your car?
| fho wrote:
| s/handable/handleable/ ... note to self: write out the words in
| your head correctly :-/
| ch33zer wrote:
| 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!
| anslo wrote:
| 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 :)
| muznar wrote:
| Got me surprised when I realized it is a browser game.
| Driving off-road in Hills gives Just Cause 3 wingsuit over
| fields vibes.
|
| Feedback, Off-World was incredibly laggy.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Some underwater features would be nice for people that likes
| to try silly things.
|
| [Note: It was difficult to reach the water. Most of the time
| it has some protection, that makes it more realistic. But I
| finally found a part without protection :) . )
| anon25783 wrote:
| 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.
| bramgn wrote:
| The mouse wheel controls your speed. I wasn't aware of this at
| first.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I appreciate the player is rewarded for going offroad. That was
| fun. :)
|
| I noticed as I approached the edge that large square tiles
| started to show up (the terrain was still contiguous until I go
| all the way to the edge, but it divided into uniform-sized
| squares by increasingly-high dirt walls with no collision
| detection). I wonder what caused that?
| Animats wrote:
| Reaching the edge of the world produced varying results:
|
| - "The edge. What did you expect?"
|
| - Going off the edge and seeing the terrain from off the edge.
|
| - A crash.
| fit2rule wrote:
| karmakaze wrote:
| 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.
| int_19h wrote:
| Conversely, it would be nice to be able to use the mouse to
| look around in keyboard mode.
| Moru wrote:
| Press C for inside out view. Bottom right has some settings for
| mouse steering.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Nice.
| Markoff wrote:
| 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?
| anslo wrote:
| 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.
| _nalply wrote:
| I think what happened is that some people perceive they go
| upwards even when going flat. I discovered that after I once
| tried to stop at the top of a hill but already was beyond the
| top because the car started to roll down by itself. Perhaps
| you could adjust some angles of view?
| Markoff wrote:
| that's what I tried, it always rolls back and I went
| clearly long time uphill and at best only flat, but clearly
| never went downhill to make up for same elevation as I
| gained to be back at same level with sea where I end up no
| matter how long I go uphill
| anslo wrote:
| I think you're probably right. The camera's pitch exactly
| matches the car's pitch, so I'll fiddle with having it
| maybe only take 50% from it.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| When driving down country roads in the UK, it's normal to drive
| in the middle of the road - or entirely on the other side of
| the road, briefly, if: * You have a clear view
| of the road ahead * You're wanting to drive fairly
| quickly, which is when this road positioning can help
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Fun!
|
| Nothing in the lakes; nothing under the sea. Just boring half-
| light and featureless bottom. Would be nice to see it populated
|
| And you can't hit anything! Can drive right through forests,
| ghost trees.
| thom wrote:
| This isn't chill. Surely you have to assume people are going to
| hold down W but not necessarily want to go at uncontrollable
| speeds?
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Rats! No underwater texture!
| MaxBorsch228 wrote:
| Procedural landscapes are such a fun thing.
|
| When I was in high school I read about perlin noise landscape
| generation technique in a random blog post. I shared the
| technique with a friend and he was very excited. A week later he
| presented a program which rendered Minecraft-style landscapes in
| ortho projection. A few more weeks passed and he added 3D
| perspective (using alien tech called "projection matrices"),
| water reflections, grass and day-night cycle animation with
| shadows from Sun and stars. All this using Pascal and some
| primitive bundled-in 2D graphics lib.
|
| Another related high school memory is Audiosurf game, where the
| road and environment are generated using an algorithm based on
| music tempo. What if we replace this algo with a modern
| generative model? Probably literally a bad trip.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Man, I wanted something like this when I was a kid. (I liked it
| as an adult too, but I immediately drove off the road
| deliberately... just like I would have when I was 12)
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Around 2000 when I was 11, there was a language called
| Darkbasic that had a 3d cave runner demo with a procedurally
| generated track. I made it faster and played it.
|
| http://vplanet.petesqbsite.com/arch128.shtml
| keyle wrote:
| "The edge" is a pretty amazing place at sunset. Well done.
| bohadi wrote:
| This is really cool. I was reminded of the following thread on
| elaborating the illusion of engine sound
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32367979
| M4v3R wrote:
| Wow, I didn't expect I will like this as much as I did. This is a
| really neat idea and could probably be turned into an actual
| product. If the author added some more content (like some
| landmarks sprinkled on the landscape every now and then, possibly
| some varied terrain eg. bridges over rivers, cities/villages,
| windmills, dams, maybe some simple wildlife, etc.) and released
| it on PS4/PS5 for few bucks I can imagine it could sell pretty
| well.
|
| Edit: Seems there's actually a way to support the developer on
| Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/slowroads
|
| Edit 2: Also props for good optimisation, it runs flawlessly on
| my M1 Macbook even on the highest setting.
| aniforprez wrote:
| 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
| M4v3R wrote:
| Yeah cities might be overkill, but small villages you can
| just pass through would add in to the chill atmosphere of
| driving the countryside.
| EwanG wrote:
| 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 :-)
| anslo wrote:
| 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
| EwanG wrote:
| Made a KoFi contribution. Perhaps one of your "goals" can
| be to hit a level where you can keep it freely available?
| anslo wrote:
| Much appreciated! There isn't any reason it can't be
| freely available; it costs almost nothing to host.
| Development time is the true cost, so it's more a
| question of how much I'm able to add.
| khold_stare wrote:
| Why not both? Have a free version and a paid version with
| more features/terrains/cars etc.
| Kukumber wrote:
| The beauty of that project is not because it is a product
|
| It is the fact that it is freely available for everyone to
| experience it thought your browser
|
| Racing games? there are a shit ton on
| steam/ps/xbox/switch/mobile
|
| Money people are very annoying
| remram wrote:
| For anybody else on mobile, I found this video of it:
| https://youtu.be/mEDywA7aVLo
| anslo wrote:
| And here's the trailer:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8zH1CzKSM
| kqr wrote:
| I was really glad for the "I'm not on mobile" button - I am on
| mobile, but I do have a keyboard on it!
| bitwize wrote:
| It popped up a message saying "Hold shift to increase
| acceleration". But I got the feeling that I was playing it wrong
| if I went far above 40 mph, so the shift key seems perfectly
| useless.
|
| Lovely countryside -- very evocative of winding country roads in
| the southern or midwestern USA -- but I get stressed out when
| driving even in a simulation; real world driving is worse, so I'm
| not feeling the "zen".
| anslo wrote:
| Neat, this is my project - thanks for sharing! For anyone
| interested, I have a brief overview post up on Medium while I
| work on a deeper technical write-up:
|
| https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40
| Kkoala wrote:
| 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
| anslo wrote:
| 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!
| quasarj wrote:
| Excellent! Yes, it would be much more chill if I didn't have
| to use keyboard steering :)
| MrFoof wrote:
| Well, the roadster is also a 2+2 coupe reminiscent of a 5th
| generation Chevrolet Camaro, which is ~3860lbs (1750kg) for a
| V8.
|
| A roadster would be a 2-seat convertible (no C-pillar), like a
| Mazda MX-5 (Miata) or a Porsche Boxster.
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