2d Gta Style Game (any Ver./map)


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My idea is to use aerial photos for the map details. Any other ideas?

This hasn't been discussed in a long while, and new things have come along like Fenix, which is probably good enough to do GTA in, I mean if the NES can do it, why can't we.

I know the reason...Its a lot of work. But getting the engine together would be simple enough, and the community can make the maps and other media.

The real reason is...I'm bored :)
 
Would be nice if someone would give it a try. ;)

I wouldn't use "real" images for the map because the images that I saw didn't look really nice... It also would be easier to have more structure in the map. I could try to make the artwork although I'm not really good at pixelart yet.

But: I don't think it would be nice to just copy gta1/2, there should be really new ideas otherwise we could just play gta1/2 through a emulator. ;)
 
gta 1/2.
playing with.
emulators.

what would you use? the almost-2-fps-playstation-emulator?
apart from that, the sheer size of game data does just not fit on a 128MB SMC
would be nice, but seems impossible.

but lets collect some ideas:
mhh...none coming out of my mind. at least nothing that wasnt in any gta (including 3d parts)
sad ]=
 
Digitalrat posted on Feb 22 2005 at 03:31 AM said:
Would be nice if someone would give it a try. ;)

I wouldn't use "real" images for the map because the images that I saw didn't look really nice... It also would be easier to have more structure in the map. I could try to make the artwork although I'm not really good at pixelart yet.

But: I don't think it would be nice to just copy gta1/2, there should be really new ideas otherwise we could just play gta1/2 through a emulator. ;)

What are you talking about? They aren't low quality. You can get public domain images of entire major cities free from USGS and they're this good:
aerial3zt.jpg

I think that's good enough to make a game off of. Just download enough images of the same city for a sizeable enough map, airbrush out the people's cars, map the collision detection (not too hard if you don't get too fancy) and its ready.

EDIT: BTW, That pic is from Los Angeles. I just typed in a random large city into M$ Terraserver (terraserver.microsoft.com). They get all their pics from USGS, meaning they are public domain (unlike everything else M$ has). And I chose a large city because, although they have practically every little town in the US in their database, only the largest towns have color images...the rest are monochrome.
 
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Well, there is something similar of all german citys and the quality wasn't as good as this.

But there are other reasons:

- What to make with the end of the streets? Players would believe that it goes further there and would drive against a virtual and invisible wall. ;) Also I think a hole city would be too much for a simple game, so there will be more and more "ends of streets".

- Look at this circle of the street on the right: It wouldn't be easy to program this. That's what I wanted to express with "structure".

- The trees: Would you let the cars drive on them? If you want to write that you could cut them out then look at the shadows from them. ;)
 
It would be very easy to photoshop the image so that streets connect up to other streets. The map doesn't have to BE the actual city, it could be based on aerial photographs of a city edited together so its a decent size and then 'doctored' so that the streets join up.

I like the idea, would it be possible to keep trees and bridges and stuff so that sprites pass underneath them?

I also like the idea of a community project, people submit stuff (ideas, images, music, etc.)
 
would it be possible to keep trees and bridges and stuff so that sprites pass underneath them?
- The trees: Would you let the cars drive on them? If you want to write that you could cut them out then look at the shadows from them
Yeah, you could make it where you can drive under them, but thats more work than simply airbrushing them out. And we want to minimize work.

- Look at this circle of the street on the right: It wouldn't be easy to program this. That's what I wanted to express with "structure".
Yeah, I would use different pictures instead of one like this one, but my point was the level of qaulity. There are probably many pictures that would go together real nice and be easier on the programming. But my point was the general picture quality. Imagine what a 320x240 area of that pic looks like. Actually I've tried it and its acceptable.
 
Figured out how to do the collison detection and trees. Masks are the answer. I made a mask of the road of the sample image and a mask of the trees using The Gimp. The road was made by simply tracing it with the brush. The trees mask was made by isolating the green part of the colors and turning it black, whilst turning the rest white.

Roads Mask



Trees Mask



Aerial with Roads Mask applied



Aerial with Trees Mask applied



Aerial with Both applied

 
Haven't really started yet, these pics are just proof of concept. But the cool part is that masks can be used for anything, even items,objects,events, people, and cars!

I'm still pretty crappy at C and I think Fenix isn't good enough for this (well maybe in 8bpp, but I want 16bpp), and I don't know any Fenix. So theres no release date since I haven't started, right now its still in planning stage. But who knows. :)

EDIT: About music, maps and etc. What I would do is make it like GpFinalWar, where I make a few levels, and then leave the rest up to you all. There would probably be no map/scenario editer, instead that would be done by editing pictures and text files with standard software like notepad and The Gimp.

The music would probably be MOD, although I would try for better things like MP3, but I think that GTA would be too much of a memory hog for that. Levels would come with "radio station" folders, plus you get a "personal music player" folder for your own music, possibly with playlist support.

But I already had planned a music player/text viewer as a starter (code as you learn) project, so this GTA like thing may have to take the back burner.

EDIT2: You realize, you won't really see the masks in a actual game. The masks are for what you don't see ;) , for instance, the trees mask is so it doesn't draw sprites on top of trees and the like, and the roads mask is so you cannot go off the road.
 
if you want to have street masks made, send me the pics (or links)...
I have way too much free time....need to do something.....but I'll fly to london for a week next week, and working the week after...so these two weeks are not free time (indeed the first is, but i wont be able to do anything)
after this I'll go to school again so i have much free time again [=
 
Wouldn't it be a little bit more computationally cheap to just build a collision map out of triangles rather than use a mask?

I'd do it with some cheap flat file format containing vertices, and write a quick editor to lay down the collision triangles for grass, road, buildings, etc.
 
Not only intesive to compute, GP32 may be able to handle that, but rather memory consuming.
Every mask takes a portion of the memory.
Lets say we work in the 8bit mode. Count with me:
Each screen takes 320 x 240 bytes = 76800 bytes. A small city could be about 3 x 3 screens (yes a really small one), which is 76800 x 9 = 691200 bytes = 675kB.
This is only the gfx. Now you say you want masks. If you use 2bit masks, i.e. every pixel is either on or off, it wont be big, but probably a bit slow.
If you use 1 pixel = 1 byte masks, it will be faster but every mask will take another 675kB. And that is only the background gfx, no sprites, no sounds...

I would probably opt for a tile engine, which need much less memory.

And forget playing MP3 in the background, maybe if the game ran at 166MHz+

But I dont want to take you the wind from your sails, it IS possible, I just like talking about programming concepts :)

EDIT: On the other hand masks ARE useful, I once made a simple jetski style game for PC, one screen only, small boats and even bubbles behind the boats ;) Only one mask there though.
 
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