Illegal street racing open-source game

[MirceaKitsune]

There are usually games of all genres and styles in the open-source world. But there's one style I've been a big fan of over the years, which is only found in the spectrum of commercial games so far: Illegal street racing. While there are a few circuit racing sims (Torcs, Speed Dreams, VDrift, StuntRally) there's nothing for us NFS fans who enjoy dynamic racing in cities. With customized vehicles and between traffic cars, plus a touch of police chases and various game types including free roam.

Obviously this style has been most represented by the Need for Speed series. There have been others too however, such as Street Racing Syndicate (a lot like NFS Underground) and Test Drive - Unlimited (focused more on nature roads but still with traffic and police). I've always wanted to see something of the theme and detail in NFS - Underground as an open-source project, but it seems no one was interested enough to do it yet.

Although I'm a low-end developer, I never found an engine I could understand enough to do it myself. I considered forking Torcs or VDrift, but the changes needed would be huge for someone as inexperienced as me. I considered doing it in Blender's game engine since I'm very familiar with it (apart from the scripting), but I'm not sure how far that can go in detail compared to an optimized engine.

FOSS racing sims already exist. But to achieve something like this, a lot of extra work would be needed. First of all, someone would need to model a huge city at acceptable ground level detail. That's probably the hardest part, if anyone would hope to achieve a city like that in NFS-U and not like the Carmageddon games in the 90's. After that, one would need to code the AI for traffic cars... which would have to respect lanes, stop lights, and more. After that we'd need police cars, though if their purpose is to ram into you that would be easier (and can be added later, Underground 1 & 2 were awesome enough without police). Maybe hardest of all would be car customization, without which this wouldn't have any taste IMO. Multiple spoiler / rim / body kit styles, ability to paint different parts of the car, ability to add vinyls (image files) to different locations on the body, and of course performance parts and tuning (with NOS and all the magic).

Still, I'm hoping someone else might like this style enough to consider such a project. Since I'm not that much of a developer yet when it comes to complex code, it's difficult to say where and if I could contribute or not. Still wanted to bring the idea up however... maybe there's some hope. What do you think?

[qubodup]

I would have assumed that SuperTuxKart might be a good match. It has good map making documentation and examples of city levels.
The engine also features powerups and nitro, which I assume is desired in illegal street racing.
The physics might be not what you have in mind...

Nevertheless, I assume the safest bet would be to prove that you're able to design a level that suits your game design desire in an existing foss racing game project. Which would developers allow to experience the 3d environment you want to work in and make specific suggestions on what you need to code or contribute code on their own.

As for open world levels, I don't see anything in FOSS space ready-to-use for this. Maybe http://gritengine.com , but I don't think there is any proof of concept regarding supporting city-style levels (at least telling from the screenshots).

[MirceaKitsune]

I would have assumed that SuperTuxKart might be a good match. It has good map making documentation and examples of city levels.
The engine also features powerups and nitro, which I assume is desired in illegal street racing.
The physics might be not what you have in mind...

Nevertheless, I assume the safest bet would be to prove that you're able to design a level that suits your game design desire in an existing foss racing game project. Which would developers allow to experience the 3d environment you want to work in and make specific suggestions on what you need to code or contribute code on their own.

As for open world levels, I don't see anything in FOSS space ready-to-use for this. Maybe http://gritengine.com , but I don't think there is any proof of concept regarding supporting city-style levels (at least telling from the screenshots).

SuperTuxKart is probably not the best candidate. Although the physics are appropriate, the detail and style are not realistic enough. I'm also not thinking of having powerups and launch pads in the middle of the street, since it's not meant to be a sci-fi or cartoon themed project. As an optional game setting perhaps, but not something I'm aiming at.

I know GRIT engine and am constantly curious to see how it's improving. GRIT is mostly meant to be a GTA clone however, and axed on being an RPG system where you can walk / drive / shoot people... so it's probably not good for a racing engine specifically. A NFS-like city racing game shouldn't have shootouts, people you can drive into, etc.

The city itself might be something I might get done in Blender (as a whole mesh), considering I'm able to find enough freely licensed models of buildings and roads, which I can combine together in a correct way. Could be useful for many projects to have such a thing, so I might get around to it sometime.

[Evropi]

I know GRIT engine and am constantly curious to see how it's improving. GRIT is mostly meant to be a GTA clone however, and axed on being an RPG system where you can walk / drive / shoot people... so it's probably not good for a racing engine specifically. A NFS-like city racing game shouldn't have shootouts, people you can drive into, etc.

Not to derail the conversation, but this also made me think of Rigs of Rods, where you can already walk around the world and have a killer physics engine. The physics engine is probably too simulation-y to scale up to GTA-like games and their chain-reactions of explosions, though. Still, it's only a matter of time before someone makes a GTA mod for it.

But as for people you can drive into... RoR and its soft body physics engine does seem ideal for that. Unless you don't want cars to be mangled realistically, of course. I personally prefer Need For Speed-like games to Burnout: Paradise, where if you drove against a car and all it did was change colour until it was spectacularly blown off the street.

So yeah, Rigs of Rods would probably be quite good for that. Especially if you want airplanes crashing down the cars rom the sky or trains blowing them off to the side.

[MirceaKitsune]

Not to derail the conversation, but this also made me think of Rigs of Rods, where you can already walk around the world and have a killer physics engine. The physics engine is probably too simulation-y to scale up to GTA-like games and their chain-reactions of explosions, though. Still, it's only a matter of time before someone makes a GTA mod for it.

But as for people you can drive into... RoR and its soft body physics engine does seem ideal for that. Unless you don't want cars to be mangled realistically, of course. I personally prefer Need For Speed-like games to Burnout: Paradise, where if you drove against a car and all it did was change colour until it was spectacularly blown off the street.

So yeah, Rigs of Rods would probably be quite good for that. Especially if you want airplanes crashing down the cars rom the sky or trains blowing them off to the side.

I didn't know about Rigs of Rods... nice! Totally a project I should look at. And yes, it does seem like a good candidate to start something like this from. But like I said, people to drive into is not something I'd want in this project... since I'm not hoping for a Carmageddon game And yes, Burnout Paradise is another great reference to the style.

[Julius]

I would have assumed that SuperTuxKart might be a good match. It has good map making documentation and examples of city levels.
The engine also features powerups and nitro, which I assume is desired in illegal street racing.

SuperTuxKart is probably not the best candidate. Although the physics are appropriate, the detail and style are not realistic enough. I'm also not thinking of having powerups and launch pads in the middle of the street, since it's not meant to be a sci-fi or cartoon themed project. As an optional game setting perhaps, but not something I'm aiming at.

Uhmm... obviously you would need to change the model graphics and level layouts, but the basic game mechanics and physics are there and well fitting and the graphics engine (I think Irrlicht if I am not completely mistaken) should be more than capable to rendering NFS style graphics.
I doubt you will find a better FOSS base to make such a game with, as all the other FOSS racing games have really heavy and over-engineered simulation engines behind them which will do more bad than good (See StuntRally).