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[BuckarooBadri]

OmniBus is a wacky physics based game, made to look like a classic 3D PS1 title. The core of the game is that OmniBus is a unstoppable force of nature, that cant stop or slowdown. The only way to lose is to flip over or fall off the map. (With some additional losing conditions in mission mode.)

The game has a story mode that features a bunch of weird missions. Like robbing a bank!


We also have some other bus types in the mission mode!

Take people on a tour without spilling!


Survive a rooftop demolition derby!


We also have a trick mode!


Currently our team consists of only two people. The game started as a fun little independent project, but after some guidance from a professor at DePaul University we decided to really crack down and make a full-fledged indie game. We're hoping to do weekly updates on here.

Our current goals:
[Local Multiplayer]
[More Levels]
[Over World Maps]
[More Bus Types]
[Greater Art Pass]

twitter.com/OmniBusGame
facebook.com/OmniBusGame

[BuckarooBadri]

Working a little bit more on our multiplayer mode. Heres a peek of two player demolition derby. We added little cue arrows above each players head to make them more visible from farther away. The only way to lose is to be knocked out of the arena or by getting flipped over.


We also got all our over-world assets wired together for the story mode!

[eyeliner]

Seems just the right amount of crazy and awesome!

[jiitype]

YES. The game looks fun and I love the PS1 look. Keep it up!

[Quicksand-T]

Recently I've been hoping for more PS1-looking 3D games, so that's pretty cool. The map doesn't really look like the same style, though. It might fit better if you took the same textures and stuck them on pre-rendered boxes, or simple polygons.

[Guildencrantz]

Gameplay seems like it'll be awesome fun, and I'm really digging the look too! The world needs more PS1 styled games for sure. Keep it up!

[Cranktrain]

The idea of an unstoppable bus in a world with physics simulation is a lovely one. I'm sure it's not going to be very difficult to come up with all sorts of absurd missions.

One thing I'd say though, is that the graphics don't actually remind me of the PS1. Because the land is just a flat plane, and most of the buildings are just cubes, it reminds me far more of a lot of these Minecraft-graphics-style games, many of which don't look great, in my opinion. I can see where you're going with the style, the texture of the bus itself looks quite good, but then the ground texture and the brick texture all looks a bit grey, brown and repetitive, stretched over the large flat surfaces. I'm assuming it's still early days in that department though.

[jctwood]

This looks really brilliant, reminds me so much of burnout revenge's crash mode. Good good good

[BuddyCrockett]

Howdy, I'm the programmer and only other person working on OmniBus! Boy I wouldn't have expected PC Gamer to already write about us - we've still got a ways to go!

Anyway we realize that saying PS1-style is more of a commitment than an excuse for cruddy graphics. It was a meaningful choice to us because we both are primarily sprite artists and having two people make a 3D game is challenging if you want detailed, pretty models. We turned to the lovingly hand-crafted look of Mega Man Legends for inspiration and it's our goal to more closely resemble it. We've got a long way to go yet, and the ground textures and underdressed environments are certainly on our to-do list to clean up and make nicer.

As far as the overworld map, we just needed to make a nice looking placeholder to test the functionality. I'd like to have it look more like Mario Party maps, with an outdated-looking 3d render is in the background and low-poly models and sprites are put over it, unless people really like the completely-sprites map more.

And finally here's a gif showing the vertex jitter shader I made to try to replicate that effect the PS1 has:

[Captain Uzi]

Oh man this is super cool. I'll definitely be following your dev logs, hope to be able to play this one day.

[BuddyCrockett]

Thought I'd preview world 1 a little, which is being made after world 2. The design going into it is more tutorial-oriented but we thought instead of forcing people to deal with some boring tutorial, they can learn through playing some easier levels that only introduce a few important concepts at a time. It's a lot shorter as well, but it will feature many secrets.



There's still a lot of environmental art to create for the sky world yet - we're hoping to make it look fully distinct from the city.

This level has you crashing through a bunch of OmniBucks. I tried emulating the look of jiggies and other reflective objects of the era using a low-res cubemap.

[EmilMeiton]

Looks realy nice!

You've probably read about it before but..., Affine texture mapping (or warping in this case) is something the ps1 did

Check out this unity shader example
http://burningnorth.com/unity/flashback94/

Just mentioning it because I'm quite fond of that "look" it gives.

[hexdie]

This looks very cool! I like the aesthetic a lot. You make a PS1 style game look good!

[cvasquez]

Bumpin for my homies, this game is going to be sick 

[Eniimal]

This game looks cool.

The destruction derby mode seems really fun.

[Rob Lach]

Dumb game quit working on it

[jctwood]

Dumb game quit working on it

Woah I for one would love to see this in a finished state.

[BuddyCrockett]

Dumb game quit working on it

See ya in August, buddy

You've probably read about it before but..., Affine texture mapping (or warping in this case) is something the ps1 did
...
Just mentioning it because I'm quite fond of that "look" it gives.

I didn't get around to coding in the affine texture mapping yet but I did want it there. The only reservation I have is how it sometimes looks a little too gnarly, especially on large tris.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Holy crap this looks so authentic! Definitely could be on a ps1 without a doubt! looks fun too haha

[BuddyCrockett]

We're still pumping out more OmniBus, but we've been pretty busy with a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff! Sorry for being quiet lately.

Here's a taste of a new level though: