Hi all. There has been no news from me for a long time, but this is not because I forgot about you. I planned to do a global update at the end of spring of this year, but it so happened that I found myself at the construction site of a house for the whole summer, where there was not even the Internet. When I returned, I suddenly discovered that the announced almost finished location had disappeared somewhere. However, over the past year, I have done a lot. The third iteration of the game is currently underway. The problem I encountered was in the organization of the project. Each time, as soon as the number of lines of code reached more than 10,000, I realized that I myself had a poor understanding of how it all worked and I spent half the time trying to figure out what I was doing myself. And I think in most cases when you see rare and minor updates to some other project, the developers face the same problem. However, I found an approach that would help me overcome this milestone, and I was so glad that Unity allows me to implement it. In addition to rewriting the code, I was also involved in development. I completed my car repair system and I also understood why this is not in other games. This is a very complex system that includes multi-level intersecting loop logic. In reality, turning the nuts is somehow easier. Also, I kept looking for the meaning of the game, for what to travel and carry cargo. It was possible to create a system where the player is simply given a load, told where to bring it and rewarded upon completion. This is a primitive system that is developed in less than a month, but I can’t do that. I need a reason for existence and I also found it - the development of the region. Yes, now cities develop with the direct participation of the player. Roads are built from dirt to asphalt and then turn into a highway. Supplying a populated area, supplying manufacturing factories, transporting workers to their place of work, in general, a living economy in which each game object takes part. Now for the location. Since I somehow safely got rid of the finished training location, I had to make another one. Since the economic model already includes several dozen goods and about 20 factories, plus it is necessary to locate several cities with development prospects, I decided to aim for a square of 30x30 kilometers... And I succeeded. 900 square kilometers is already a lot, but this is not the limit. I've already written about the concern that I don't think players will be interested in traveling for several days, but I decided that I'll let the players decide for themselves whether they're interested or not. In general, the diagonal of the map is 42 kilometers, which is 30 minutes of continuous movement at an average speed of 60 km/h. For starters, it sounds good. In general, I polish the project, place objects in the new location, make traffic flow, lay roads and download the update. Global events are planned on our planet in the fall, and if this does not affect me, I hope to cope in a couple of months. Bye everyone.
Continued development
Hi all. So a year has passed since the announcement of the big update. To be honest, I didn't think it would be, uh, so eventful. In addition to global changes in the world, a lot of things have also happened in my life. So sometimes I didn't develop a game for a couple of months in a row. But even this gave its positive results. At some point, when I did not work on the project for a long time and returned to its development, I realized that I simply did not understand how it works. During the development, several generations of systems have changed, my developer level has also grown significantly and the old code turned out to be like pasta. It was a difficult decision, as I would like to roll out the first announced update that really changed the game, but I still decided to rebuild the project before that. We must remain honest with ourselves and the people who follow the project - I could not ensure stable operation of all gaming systems, for the reasons described above, and it is better not to release anything than to issue a crookedly working game that cannot be played. What am I doing now: 1) I broke the project into separate systems, in particular, it is a repair system, an economy system, a physical model of a car, a character's life support system. 2) Rebuilt the car repair system so that it is now based on nodes rather than individual parts. This means that now you can separately assemble the entire rear axle of the truck, the front axle and install it on the frame. The nodal system required a fastening system, so now in order to remove a separate spare part or a whole assembly of parts, you must first unscrew it. 3) Next, I began to put the economic system in order. I've brought back contract orders so you don't have to look for lower and higher prices on goods to make money. In turn, contract orders are provided with the needs of enterprises. The most important thing is that an enterprise is not necessarily some kind of factory for the production of goods, it can be the construction of a house in some city, and the house under construction itself can place a contract for the supply of goods for its construction. So far, the contract looks like the delivery of a certain amount of goods to the unloading site, within a certain period. Relatively speaking, to build a house, you need to bring 100 tons of cement within 1 game week. The contract will be considered completed when the player delivers these 100 tons of cement under the contract. Accordingly, the house will be completed. The contract system makes it possible to develop the game economy for a dynamically developing game world, you can build roads, road junctions, buildings, enterprises, or simply repair the road surface. 4) Physical model of the car. So far, a third-party solution is being used, but in the future, I think I will have to make my own system. The thing is that as an auto mechanic by education, I understand how a car works on a mechanical level and I don’t like the causality of third-party solutions. Clutch overheating problems, rear axle divider, pneumatic springs, power steering, engine cooling system, etc. All this requires certain knowledge and experience from the truck driver. I would like the player to be able to apply this knowledge in the game. But, until I got to that, so there is nothing to write here yet. 5) The life support system of the character. While in development, but the basis will be to justify consumer goods.
I also bought a new traffic system that in theory allows you to create a dense flow of cars. The first tests are encouraging. If everything is as the system developer claims, then it will be possible to increase the traffic density to the extent of road congestion and the formation of large congestion and traffic jams.
Also, at the moment, character development is poorly expressed, due to the lack of well-developed car models. At the moment there are three different trucks, but similar in purpose. I hope that we will not start cosplaying Fallout and by the time the global update is released, I will resolve this issue.
New development progress report.
Hello everyone. New development progress report. A training location of 2 * 2 kilometers in size was created in which the player can fully get used to the game. This is a hilly area that contains five production complexes, one city and a player's location. For some time, this location will be primary and play the role of the main one, while the main (or main locations, or one but very large - more than 20 * 20 kilometers) location will be assembled. Most likely, the main location will not exceed 20 * 20 kilometers, which is equivalent to an average travel time of about 20 minutes, at an average speed of 60 km / h. Also city buildings were replaced, traffic, weather system, post-effects, save system were redesigned. In general, the game is coming out at a much higher level of quality and soon you will be able to appreciate it.
Resumed work on the landscape
Hello! Resumed work on the creation of the landscape and relief. For some time now, Unity can have an almost unlimited size of the game world (of course, not in the literal sense), so I continue to work on creating a location outside the city. At the moment, the size limits are determined by the amount of memory on the hard disk and, in theory, can cover an area larger than our planet. It can be either a procedurally generated map, or based on satellite geodata. I do not think that someone will be ready to spend several years sitting at a computer to travel several hundred kilometers, but the potential for other types of transport is being created.
The news about the transition to another engine.
Hello. I apologize that since August I have not written anything new about the game, the fact is that I was very busy with the main work. At this point, I have two news, one bad, the other good. I'll start with the bad one, of course. I have to admit that the transition to another engine failed - unfortunately I faced insurmountable (to be precise, of course, difficult to overcome) difficulties in the Unigine functionality. Nevertheless, I will continue to follow it, some of the work has already been done and once the developers have sufficiently developed that engine, it will be possible to resume the transition. Nevertheless, this is the same news and good - I successfully ported the game to Unity 2020, which is now stable, so it will work faster, since I know Unity much better. In addition, all the main mechanics in Unity are already ready and I just need to refine them. There are also a number of other serious advantages, such as a large Asset Store where I can buy ready-made solutions, thereby significantly saving time. Now I bring new parts to the store and adjust what I have, since during the study of Unigine the second version of the car repair system was developed. It will take some time, since at the moment there are about 150 spare parts and this is not counting the model of a small truck with a carrying capacity of 1500 kg, which turned out to be very high polygonal (which is undoubtedly good, but it would be better if it did not need to be modified) and requires serious optimization in the 3d editor. I also received messages that some players cannot play the game, as I understand it, due to too long loading. Therefore, in parallel, I carry out the initial optimization, however, it must be understood that I will only do labor-intensive optimization work that does not have to be done again later, so problems may be observed on weak computers. I want to express my gratitude to the people who still fly off for the project and, despite the fact that they are in development, acquire it. It really encourages me to keep working on it.
Progress of the transition to the UNIGINE engine. Game store
Hey. Almost finished a game shop selling parts. At the moment, the game will have 4 cars of different power and sizes. A starting vehicle with a carrying capacity of 1 ton and further ascending. So, as before, you can assemble a car from purchased parts in a store and disassemble it. The screenshot shows three trucks assembled and completely disassembled trucks. There are slight difficulties when working with the interface, so at first it will not be very beautiful, to put it mildly.
If there are no force majeure circumstances, then you can try out the first version of the game on the new engine in October - November.
Progress on the transition to the UNIGINE engine
Hello. During the development of the game, the project’s weaknesses were identified, namely poor training. Therefore, I decided that I would single out a separate location for these purposes. It will also serve to demonstrate the capabilities of the game. I have a lot of experience developing games on other engines and I just need to understand the features of UNIGINE - in this location I will conduct testing. Thus, I will save a significant amount of time on the development of the engine and create a location that will go directly to the project. So, a location of 2 * 2 kilometers has been created in which there will be from 4 to 6 points of interest - a village, a power station, a factory, a place for oil production. Perhaps there will be a small town and something else - have not yet come up with. Everything will depend on whether I can find quality buildings. Also, I have already encountered some features of the engine. The engine was developed for large-scale simulators, so all of its tools are focused on huge locations that are quite suitable for airplane simulators. However, it is available in a version with an annual subscription of $ 6,000, so at the moment I have no way to master it. Nevertheless, I am sure that I will find a way to take advantage of the full capabilities of the engine, which means that I can accurately reproduce the real landscapes of the planet, right down to the exact layout of roads and buildings. Therefore, as a bonus to people who are not indifferent to the project, you can write in the comment under this news what location you would like to see in the game and I will create it first of all as soon as this opportunity appears (provided that detailed satellite channels are available for it height maps). What is still very important. Earlier this was said - I'm not sure that there are enthusiasts who will be ready to sit at the computer for a day to drive 1000 km to another city. I’m not even sure that there are enthusiasts who are ready to sit at the computer for two hours to drive 100 kilometers! Therefore, between locations that will be located at a considerable distance from each other there will be something like a teleport, since I still do not want to distort the real speed of the car as is done in other projects. Or it will look something different. Perhaps air transport will be introduced.
In the meantime, screenshots of progress.
Announcement of the transition to another engine.
Hi friends. More than a year has passed since the game was released in early access, and during this time a large amount of work was done. About 100,000 people visited our page in Steam and about 70 supported the project. More than 70 people were not indifferent to the project, supported us with money and trust us. And it is really inspiring! Of course, compared with large firms, the results are more than modest, but for us with an extremely limited budget and effort, this is still the result. A little upsetting is the fact that despite the fact that the game is marked as early access and has not yet been completed, negative comments continue to come in. It has not been completed yet with calls to not acquire the game and I can say that these people have made some progress. However, there are also people who support the project and are waiting for its final version. Due to the situation in the world, we also encountered certain difficulties, but I can assure you that development is ongoing. Unfortunately, funding is not enough to devote more time to the project than we would like, and development continues almost with bare enthusiasm. There is nothing scary about it, it just takes longer than originally planned. At the moment, one person is developing, who writes these lines. I want to assure you that the project is not forgotten, not abandoned, I continue to develop it as much as possible in the current conditions. Recently, the transition to a new version of the Unity 2019 engine was announced, but it turned out that this version is still not very stable. This adds complexity to the development and slows it down, so it was decided not to update the version of the engine. In addition, we were faced with the problem of the lack of suitable models in the Unity Asset Store, so we will either have to order them from artists or buy them on trading floors. All this leads to the fact that using the Unity engine in the current situation does not make sense, since its main strengths are precisely in a lot of content. Also, the UNIGINE engine, which supports large spaces and, which is very important, has a very decent graphic part, has recently been released for open access. Now it’s clear that we will have to create at least half of the world on our own, then we decided that if UNIGINE is really as good as it was when we first met, then there’s no point in continuing to develop on Unity and we’ll just switch to a new engine. Now this opportunity is being considered and if everything goes well, we can create a truly large and beautiful world.
In the meantime, here are the first results from the test scene. My opinion is that it’s not so bad.
Landscape experiments on the new version of Unity
There is no compatibility between the versions of Unity 2018 and 2019, and since we still switch to the beta version of the game, we decided to immediately switch to the latest version of the engine, so that in the future there would be no question about versions and compatibility. Now we are testing the creation of landscapes. Maps 2x2 km.
Project work
Hello friends. We recently released a new update that completes the introduction of basic mechanics in the game. And we want to inform that the moment has come when it is necessary to reduce these systems into one, for their stable operation. Just as we wrote earlier, we started work on the graphic part of the game. All this will lead to the fact that the next update the game will be transferred to the beta version and that is how it will look in the future. In the beta, we will polish existing basic mechanics. Also, new minor ones will be added - those that we disabled from the general version and those that we just planned to do. At the same time, bring the graphics to the proper level so that the game looks as natural as possible. Most likely, the current city will remain in the past and a city with a suburb, and possibly several small cities, will replace it. The key difference should be that the city will no longer lie on a plane, as is done now, but will repeat the terrain. This will need to be done to integrate the factories into the game location in a more ergonomic way and of course to make the city itself look more believable. All this will take some time during which our activity in the Steam store will decrease. We will be glad if the players who supported us in the Steam store leave their feedback about the game. This is really very important to us.
