Work in progress screenshots 30: The city is back

I'm putting the city back together. I want to have a working demo with all that I've made so far, which was my original goal, and take some time apart from this project to learn some other things, like Unity, and/or make a shooter...

Main things I've yet to do to have what I want for the demo: integrate back the pedestrians, the HUD and the taxi missions into my new code; plus some other minor details.

Work in progress screenshots 29: Programming the menu's GUI

I've decided to program my own code for the main menu GUI, instead of using one of the libraries I've been testing. Buttons are mostly working, here's an image from a first test:

Work in progress screenshots 28: Art for the menu

I've been drawing some ideas for the game's menu background, using MyPaint (+ The Gimp and Inkscape for some final touches). Here's what I've ended up with (Update 2: I've made a new version, this one with a little more color):

Work in progress screenshots 27

I've found a couple of funny screenshots I made some time ago while I was programming some inverse kinematics code for the pedestrians (but hadn't got it quite right yet :D).

Work in progress screenshots 26

Five new screenshots (click to enlarge):

Work in progress screenshots 25: Pickup truck

I found some free models on the Unity3D forum created by the people from ilp3d.com who, very kindly, made them available to use 'in any way you like'. I don't use Unity3D but I've managed to extract the pickup truck model from the Unity package that can be downloaded from the forum, made some modifications to adapt it to my needs, and loaded it in my game:

Work in progress screenshots 24

Just a quick update, I haven't made much interesting progress lately. I'm reorganizing some things in the code and thinking about modeling a few more buildings. Maybe I'll start making low poly versions so I have some variety quickly and then create more detailed versions... or the other way around, I'm not sure yet.

Work in progress screenshots 23

I've started working on the sound for the game. I was thinking about using OpenAL but, given I'm already tied to DirectX, I'm going to use DirectSound, at least for now, to program the sound manager for the game.

Also, I need to create some sounds so I've been playing a little with Audacity and some free sounds I found at Freesound.org. The most difficult to create will probably be a good car engine sound loop (to generate the sound for the cars my plan is to loop a running engine sound, and change its frequency as a function of the car's speed... we'll see if that makes a believable sound).

I've never done 3D sound programming or sound editing, so it will take me some time :)

Work in progress screenshots 22

Working on a new type of mission for the game and modifying some of the car models:

Work in progress screenshots 21: Heightmaps

I haven't made much progress lately. I've been researching about heightmaps and making some tests, and I think I may use them in the future to make a bigger map, with non-populated islands/areas outside the city or just to give more variety to the ground... I'm not sure if I'll dedicate more time to this right now or I'll put it on hold till I finish the list of things I had planned to do at this moment.

Work in progress screenshots 20

This days, I've been programming some code I will need to create and manage the missions (I'm not finished yet). Also, I've been testing and improving the triggers that I'll use as mission starting points and checkpoints.

Work in progress screenshots 19

I've been out of town for a few days so I haven't made much progress. Right now, I'm extending the city with a new area that has a couple of longer slopes that will make it quite entertaining to drive through at high speeds:

Work in progress screenshots 18

Still working on the new design for the city:

Work in progress screenshots 17: More buildings

I bought a pack of three buildings so I have less things to model myself. I'm losing more time than I wanted to modifying them to repair some errors and adapt them to my needs, but they were quite cheap and I think they look good among the ones I already had in the game and the ones I haven't modeled yet.

Work in progress screenshots 16: New road tiles

I've made some new road tiles. No more right angle corners :)

Work in progress screenshots 15: Modeling new buildings (II)

Same building as yesterday but with some changes and more details:

Work in progress screenshots 14: Modeling new buildings (I)

I'm going to model some more buildings for the city. Here are some screenshots of an early version of the first one I've created. It still needs more details, specially at the sides and back, but it's a start.

Work in progress screenshots 13

Working on the code for the pedestrians. Here are some screenshots:

Work in progress screenshots 12

I'm using traffic cones to check if the algorithms I'm now creating are placing the path nodes for the vehicles at the right places. So far so good.

Work in progress screenshots 11: Fog

I've resumed working on the game after a little break. Just added some fog that increases with the distance so things are less clear the farther they are: