"Decopolis"-Game Journal

I’ve started an exercise game, a sandbox, GTA style.The action it will be based in a city. There will be a main character “MR. X” controlled by the user.
The environment will consist of other AI (not controlled by the user) characters (civilians), cars, buildings, nature, animals, trams, trains (traffic simulator).
At first I’m developing 2 streets and an intersection.

I’ve already done path following for a vehicle (AI) (not controlled by the user) but:

1.The path following in BGE consists of a path and a target. There is any other possibility to use just the path without the target (in BGE) for the vehicle to do a circular continuous path following?

2.It was suggested to me to do the make an animation of a vehicle doing a loop, make the animation and action and use an action actuator. But if I do that can I interact with the vehicle, stop it if there is an object in front? The vehicle should have some AI.

Thank you for your help.

Hey Icra. I don’t know how long you’ve been using blender but I’d like to give fair warning you are not working on a noob project. A GTA style game is pretty intense and generally takes a large team of developers to work on. So at minimum don’t be discouraged about the difficulty that lies ahead.

Also I’m assuming English is not your first language so as a friendly reminder “journal” is spelled like such.

So as to your question. I would suggest using the BGE steering actuator and Python to set up different “nodes” around your map and have your vehicles either plan a route to each node or randomly pick which node they are going to. The animation suggestion sounds like a nightmare to monitor so I wouldn’t suggest it.

Best of luck! :slight_smile:

Hi Skormeus, thank you for your reply.
When you say “nodes” are you referring to checkpoints? Can you point me to a tutorial off what you have described?

Thank you.

In answer to your second question, yes, you can still interact with the car; you would just stop the animation if it detects something in front of it, and start the animation if it doesn’t detect anything in front of the car.

Skormeus’ suggestion was to use the steering actuator coupled with Python to select which waypoint for the car to drive to. You would use Python to select a node and set that to the steering actuator’s target, and put the car on a NavMesh. See the docs here. You should also be able to find video tutorials by just Googling it.

As a side note, assuming you want something rather complex for this, I would suggest learning the basics of Python, then coming back to this particular concept, or even project altogether later.

Yeah, like the others said, don’t attempt a magnum opus as your first project. If you have a project that you really want to make, keep it in mind, but do some other stuff first to get the hang of it and learn how to do it.

Thank you SolarLune and MichelleSea

I’ve done a blog to keep the project update. This thread and the blog will be updated in parallel.
There will be a version to download for each update.
There will be a roadmap for each version with the targets and a release date.
I’ll do a credits/inspiration reel in the game and also a page on the blog.
If anyone will like to join ongoing project they will be welcomed.

And a first update in game.

Game update character and airplane:

This is update #3. Character building exercise.

I’ve started to work on the map of the game.
The colored lines are tramway tracks.

Can someone recommend me some tutorials for the City-People AI?


Update traffic system.

good work : model it is good - lighting good :

yes it is good to start with this but don’t do large map i think small to be good - good luck

i think small to be good

I agree, your models don’t look all that low poly, and BGE isn’t all that great when it comes to running a complicated game at a decent frame rate. When you add more and more I don’t see it running well. Especially if it is a sandbox GTA game.

I encourage people to use a bad computer for development (at least for a while) so they learn how to sacrifice looks for frame rate.

Looks good, but you could work a bit more on human animation as it looks a bit strange- like he would be a bit paralized, heart attacked and peed in his pants at once:D Just a small problem. Otherwise looks very promising!:slight_smile:

Thank you all. The fps are a problem.

Update #6

Testing the fps in “Little Italy”.

The models are not my creation, I’ll do a credit screen ASAP.

The shaking camera hits a bit. You should check collisions- that would also improve FPS!

New traffic system test:

Update #8 Character animation test:

An update that I’ve done with the lowpoly character.

I’m intrigued that no one add any comment to my progress.
Anyway the video: