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[pikkukatti]

I would definitely add some music, whether it's a tape for the car's player or a cd, but it's a crucial element for a road trip. Can't think of anything else right now.

EDIT: oh and maybe some trinket like fuzzy dice or a stuffed toy.

[MinskWorks]

New build!

So not much work done to the car this week. Instead time has been spent on blocking out the Berlin environment.

As this environment allows you to pick the starting items you'll take with you on your journey, it's going to be a fairy dense and populated environment. The ambition with the Berlin environment is to attempt to achieving what Warren Spectre describes in his "one city block" idea (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/10/31/will-we-ever-get-to-play-one-city-block/). Though how close I can get to that depends on time.

As it is now though, it's just a place that exists physically, and an ugly place at that. There is not detail, there is no lighting passes, no decals. It's a definite first pass.

Let me know any and all criticisms, and please do let me know about bugs, even at this early stage.

Latest Build (18/11/14):

PC : https://www.dropbox.com/s/rp5ocztez204rre/Build_011.rar?dl=0
Mac : coming soon...

Thanks again,
Greg

[nothke]

WHAT THE FUCK

No, seriously,

WHAT

THE

FUCK

(now pardon for the language, but..)

I am creating exactly the same game for about month and a half now!!! The radio, the doors, the buttons.. Come on.. It's impossibly similar. To just start talking about the rest, my game happens between mid 80s to mid 90s, in ex-Yugoslavia actually (brutalism included). I am also an ex racingsim developer (modder actually).. Using Unity too. Goddammit, this is not happening.. My game is though relaying on procedural generation (roguelike style) of things in game, rather than a story. Check out my progress at https://twitter.com/Nothke, but there are not much details, now I definitely have to make an entry on this forum.

Edit: I also went to a pixel art-very low poly style for the purpose of actually focusing on the functionality and being able to make new assets really quickly, contrary to my previous high poly work which I know takes time and eventually drains the motivation.

[MinskWorks]

Not to worry Nothke, as both games develop I'm sure all the differences will start surface. There's a lot of core mechanics not implemented yet. But even still, I can't wait to see how you are tackling similar challenges!

Also, I like to think that the value isn't in the idea of a thing, but in how it is executed.

Thanks,
Greg

[MinskWorks]

Chiming in for a weekly update.

No build this week, a mix of character animations and pathfinding mean that the build is really shakey, so I'm going to post-pone it this week till I have something a bit more stable.

Talking of character animations and pathfinding, that exactly what I've been implementing this week just gone:

This is you're grumpy uncle Lütfi. He's a small introverted fella, who's struggling to come to grips with the changing world. He can't read or write, or drive for that matter, so that's where you come in. Be mindful though if you plan on changing destination, he can still pick out a flag or two.

You can't really see it in those .gifs, but Lütfi has a nice shader applied to his jacket, giving it a similar aesthetic to that of Stan's from the Monkey Island series.

The core systems are coming together nicely, and with character animation and pathfinding, I've jumped one of the bigger hurdles that worried me.

Anyway, more work to be done. The best place to track development is still my dev log and twitter account.

Thanks again,
Greg

[MinskWorks]

New build available.

Build 012 (01/12/2014)
PC : Here
Mac : Here

What's new?

• AI Pathfinding & Basic Animations
• Non-UI based Inventory System
• Improved Item Holding System
• Improved Character Controller

Let me know all your thoughts, suggestions, complaints.

Cheers,
Greg

EDIT : Mac build now available

[pikkukatti]

Absolutely loving that poster!

I still haven't found the time to actually test the game, but I definitely like that it seems to be progressing really well and I can't wait to try it out during the holidays.

[MinskWorks]

Thanks Pikkukatti,

I based the promo work on classic Penguin book covers:



Which East Germany actually aped fairly closely themselves :



Original iterations on this style looked almost one for one copies. I tried out different colour combinations before deciding on the piece I ended up sharing.

The typeface is DIN 1451, which contradicts what the DDR (GDR) were using at the time, who decided that a condensed version of Gill Sans was more readable.

http://opentype.info/blog/2011/05/17/traffic-sign-typefaces-east-germany/
http://www.designdictator.com/publications/stbride04gcjy.pdf

Though shortly after the reunification, the Gills Sans was replaced with DIN, the timeline and locations of Hac covers enough none DDR (GDR) space/time that I'm allowing myself the use of DIN 1451. Now to remember to pay for the license of it.

Anyway, No new build this week. I've had a bit of a slow dev week due to attending various events and a funeral, but I did want to quickly share the trunk (or 'boot' for other brits) and basket inventories I've been working on.



They essentially function similarly to how the Diablo 'Loot-Tetris' works, albeit existing in 3D space. The boot inventory has specific spots for each core element, though you can still set off on your journey without enough food, utilities, spare parts, etc, but you won't be able to leave essentials behind such as the map, sleeping bags, you're uncle's suitcase.

Anyway, back to dev.
Thanks again to all those who are interested, it's absolutely invaluable for maintaining resolve.

[MinskWorks]

Hello,

Quick update regarding Route Generation in Hac.

So, in order to understand where the fun lies with Route Generating, I should probably explain the game loop a little better.

In Hac, the player is given a weeks time in which to deliver their ailing uncle into the holy land.

The game loop consists of leaving one destination and arriving at the other, with the aim to make the best distance possible in each day.

At the start of each day, the player must pack their bags, load the car and then select one of the generated routes they can take to their next destination. Some of these routes will have prerequisite conditions in order for them to be available (enough reserve fuel, food, tools, time).

Each route is then generated from pre-baked segments. Once the basic route is built - from departure to destination), each segment then begins to do some random dice rolls for the variables contained within the routes - what props should be placed, what sign-age should appear, what stop-off points should appear, etc.

The conflict in the game comes in the form of the stop-off points within each route. There should usually be 1-2 stop off points generated in each route. These stop off points, whilst consuming time as a resource, offer unique character interactions, supply collections, car upgrades, collectables and easter-egg opportunities.

I'm trying to catch that "far-out" sense of being on the road. Sort of like when some of the random encounters happened during Fallout 2.

Anyway, media below.

[CodeSquares]

Dropped in from RockPaperShotgun's "What's coming in 2015" feature and just wanted to say "Wow. Will absolutely play." Love the aesthetic and the Trabant, although mine was a kombi. :D

[MinskWorks]

Thanks CodeSquares, really appreciate you stopping by.

So after a slow period during the Christmas break, I think it's about time for a little update on progress.

So what have I been doing? Well, I've continued to work on the procedural route generation system, which is plodding content creation along nicely. To speed up this process, I've employed the use of a foliage placement tool, which essentially allows me to create a bunch of prefabs and then "paint" onto the grass terrain. This is a huge time saver and gives the added bonus of providing a more organic look and feel the the environments.

I was going the have the foliage animate in the wind, but this was leading me down a path that required redoing a lot of prefabs, and I felt the feature creep wasn't worth the added time required to implement it. I also had concerns over whether or not this would create motion sickness for certain players.

Additionally to that I've begun adding in street lighting which reacts to the dynamic time of day in the game.

The time of day in Hac is pretty important as it acts as a resource to your objective. In Hac you have 7 days and 7 nights to reach your destination. The question you should ask yourself as a player is, should I follow this objective and aim to reach my destination, or is there more benefit in exploring along the path less trodden?

Here are some examples of the day & night cycles in action :

Thanks again, Greg

[Alphaman]

I really like the whole setting of '90s Europe with all the Eastern-Bloc states still in existence, the art-style you've chosen and the general concept of the game.

Do you mind if I ask you about the title of the game and what is the significance of "Hac". I apologies if you have already mentioned it somewhere, I might have missed it.

Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to see how this project turns out.

[hogge]

I enjoy the Virtua Racing-esque graphics.
Is the game going to conain more cars? I'd love to use a Volvo 240 or Fiat 126P.

[MinskWorks]

I enjoy the Virtua Racing-esque graphics.
Is the game going to conain more cars? I'd love to use a Volvo 240 or Fiat 126P.

Thanks, it's a style that's coming together more as I work with it, especially with the environments. I'm drawing a lot of style from more recent games too, such as Killer 7, which uses gradient colouring to break up the white space present in such a low poly aesthetic.

As for being able to drive a Volve 240 or Fiat 126P, or any other vehicle in the game, as of right now it's just not in the scope for me to create another vehicle. While you'll likely see these models - or rather close, fictional, representations of these vehicles - in-game, setting them up to be drivable is a time consuming process. It's not just a matter of building the model and adjusting some of the handling parameters. The Trabant is a complex beast of reacting elements. Windows role up and down, you can fiddle with the sun guards, change wheels, swap out the battery, upgrade components - all these would need to be rebuilt around the style of the newly introduced car in order for them to be represented authentically.

Not only that, but the 3D inventory which is the boot (or trunk) of the car would need to contain the same real world space for each car, which could be done, just at a cost of how believable a car would look.

All that said, I could end up winning the lottery and working on this thing for longer than needed. Never say never, ey?

 

I really like the whole setting of '90s Europe with all the Eastern-Bloc states still in existence, the art-style you've chosen and the general concept of the game.

Do you mind if I ask you about the title of the game and what is the significance of "Hac". I apologies if you have already mentioned it somewhere, I might have missed it.

Keep up the good work and I'm looking forward to see how this project turns out.

Thanks for the support, it really is good to hear that this isn't just some vanity project for me, and that I don't need to butcher the whole project and turn it into yet another survival game with rogue-like tendencies in order for people to show interest.

The word 'Hac' is essentially Turkish for pilgrimage, or more specifically the Hajj, the fifth pillar of Islam.

At the moment, it's existing as a working title. It can be quite alienating for people, not only that it's more often pronounced as English phonetic alphabet would suggest ('c' in Turkish is pronounced as the English 'j' - making Hac pronounced similarly to the word it directly translates, Hajj), but also with the way the world is reacting to Islam at the moment, I think it might be best to have the religious themes as low key as possible.

I'm not trying to make a statement or comment on Islam with Hac, its more just an interesting objective for the characters to pursue whilst existing in a Marxist world. It's essentially there for answering the question, why are the characters embarking on this journey? Though I do believe living in a world where the media only shows a want to cover a side of Islam existed by the Boko Haram and ISIL of the world, it would be nice to just see the side where it's represented as nothing more than the personal belief's of your ailing Uncle.

I'm in Istanbul at the moment, so development is going to slow on this for the coming weeks, but the Route Generation stuff is in place, I'd like to get that posted up here for feedback as soon as I can. I've only the Germany environments built at the moment, but as a proof of concept it should be more than enough.

Any more questions, please fire away.

Many Thanks,
Greg

[eobet]

Also dropping in because I saw this on RPS and got some mad Interstate 76 vibes, which is all good.

Tried build 12 and first impressions are that the camera bouncing feels like the player is skipping along rather than walking. Also, the apartment is very nicely run down and irregular, which is then quite jarring when you step outside to everything feeling perfectly clean and perpendicular... yet it's probably not supposed to be that way (but work in progress, I know). Driving also felt very stiff (guess it's super early too). Invisible wall when I tried to drive outside, so I guess that's the extent of the progress so far.

It certainly has potential! I'm going to keep an eye on the thread to see how far it goes. 

Oh, and in that daylight cycle posted above, I don't at all like the way the lamps turn on, because all of that sudden shading in the otherwise flat lit world seem really out of place. How about a flat, maybe 2-color halo if you need them, and then just a transparent light cone down to the street?

[ted_dancin]

Beautiful work in Build 12! I'm very excited for route generation testing - I've been looking for game experiences that encourage a deep wander, and ETS 2 isn't quite doing it for me. I love the rolling countryside of Train Simulator, I resent being stuck on rails. This sounds lovely.

[MinskWorks]

Development Update
#1 - Dirt

So in an attempt to try to highlight which of my posts contain new info, I'm going to start using the above title layout.

So I've just come back from three weeks of not being able to work on this. So apologies for the lack of updates. I'm now back to working on this full-time again. anyway.

Time spent the last couple of days has been on:

• Dirt accumulation. Dirt now gathers on the car when driving through dirty zones
• New windscreen wipers. the windscreen wipers are now located on the wheel. Wipers require water to clean the windscreen.
• Car water. Located under the bonnet, at full the car holds 10 water charges. this can be refilled with water bottles.
• Sponge and bucket. Use the sponge and bucket to clean the car frame, tyres and windows.
• New interaction system. Inspired by the thought process that went into making the crowbar for the original half-life, interactions are now quick and more tactile, no longer working from a lock-and-key design which I had originally intended (more detail on this at a later date).
• Main menu and pause menu.
• Day and night cycle.

Sorry I haven't been able to answer many questions or implement some of your suggestions. They are all valid and helpful, I'm just trying to get a bit more content in before I start fixing up things like the handling and character bouncing.

The stuff I've got on my todo list next are things like stop off locations (part of the route generation, things like randomly placing a petrol/gas station along your route), scene transition stuff and if there's time fuel and re-fueling and pot-hole and tyre systems.

Anyway, more new media here: http://minskworks.tumblr.com/

Thanks again,
Greg

[CraigSnedeker]

This looks awesome! I've been following you on Tumblr for a while, but forgot all about it until today. (:

[sk2k]

Can you somehow magically add an option to invert the mouse y-axis? I'm a flightsim guy, please help. :D

[MinskWorks]

It's coming Sk2k...