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Graphics Software Entertainment Games

Moody Non-Photo-Realistic Driving 479

Posted by timothy from the this-looks-fun dept.
An anonymous reader points out a project called Drivey, which he describes as "a dark and fascinating example of 2.xD [not quite 3d] graphical rendering. This tiny, free [as in beer] demo gives you an amazingly compelling driving experience. To quote the author, 'It was conceived as a driving simulator for old farts like myself, who are kind of nostalgic for the "old days" [ca. 1985] but are not so thick as to believe that the games from the 80s were actually in any way superior to the games we play today.' Even works fine under WINE!"
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Moody Non-Photo-Realistic Driving More

Moody Non-Photo-Realistic Driving

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  • I cannae see shit, cap'n! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Willeh ( 768540 ) * <rwillem@xs4all.nl> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:40AM (#13284857)
    That looks really amazing...All it needs now is for the Queens of the Stone Age song "Go with the Flow" to repeat in the background. Like alot of (OSS included) projects of this type though, it stands the risk of just being abandoned for one reason or the other (probably because it's just a hobby project in this case), which would be a shame, since this is a nice case study for simplicity and would be nice to make a game of some sort with. Burnout in the dark maybe?

    • One of the best projects I did at school was a networked tank game in my computer graphics class, on (now quite ancient) IRIX workstations. Battlezone kind of game, very simple, but lots of fun to play -- especially when the professor was manning one of the tanks :-)

      Simplicity is a virtue, and not just in coding. Now take this project and combine it with Google Maps and it could be very interesting...

      Eric
      See what your browser's sending with the HTTP header viewer [ericgiguere.com]

    • I am amazed by it. By the way my recommendations for background music are as follows:

      Highway Star - Deep Purple
      Born to Run - Suzi Quatro
      Highway to Hell - AC/DC
      Stop the Rock - Apollo Four Forty
      Roll All Day - Ice Cube

      I want this as a screensaver
      • Also, this reminds me of that show they used to have on CITY-TV where they'd take cameras through the streets (and the underground walkways) of Toronto late at night, all set to jazz music. It was simple yet mesmerizing... people would literally watch it for hours.
        • Now that's got me thinking.



          I might get the roof-bars fitted to my Mondeo tonight and strap a webcam to them.. all I'd need is my laptop set to record straight to mpeg...
        • I am quite certain that the show in question was on Global TV, not CITY-TV. There was also a 'night drives' show, where the camera was on a car that would drive through the streets of Toronto late at night.

          And - because the entire production, crew, station, not to mention the music and the performers, were all Canadian, Global racked up serious CanCon points for that show!

          This is not off topic - this really does look like that show!!

  • Trojan? (Score:3, Funny)

    by p0 ( 740290 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:42AM (#13284861)
    .exe? Is this an attempt to takeover the entire slashdot community? or... none of them for that matter? :S

  • Well, gee whiz (Score:4, Insightful)

    by katana ( 122232 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:45AM (#13284880) Homepage
    Hold on while I just go ahead and download an executable called Drivey through a link that was submitted by an anonymous author. What could possibly go wrong?

    • heh, having read the website I really want to try the demo.

      At home I may well. Heck, I can rebuild my home PC.

      At work, where I am now? Not a hope. I'd have to sack myself, let alone wait for the InfoSec team to come around..

      The technology choice and the write-up don't go together. The screenshots are all very nice, but you can get the non-photo-realistic look easily enough using the latest hardware and 3D APIs, so why constrain yourself?

      So while it's great that he's enjoying making it all happen, it could
    • That wouldn't be a problem, if not that the fact that it refuses to run under XP's reduced privellage mode.
    • What could possibly go wrong?

      You forget to wear your tinfoil hat ?

    • Run Linux you noob

    • why ? it works on Wine... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:00AM (#13285103) Homepage Journal
      Try running a virus on Wine ..

      You'll realize that all the "standard" offsets most viruses use for exploiting buffer overflows are almost always not valid in Wine.

      Also this has been featured on tucows.com .. this is indeed an excellent demo - I wonder if I can run it using libaa :)

      • Uh, what? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Corngood ( 736783 )
        They don't need to exploit a buffer overflow to execute their code if you execute it for them.
        • They don't need to exploit a buffer overflow to execute their code if you execute it for them.

          Hell, even Mitnick showed that the front door is usually easier to get through than the back door. Never understimate the power of some good, old fashioned social engineering. Also really gullible people.

    • Re:Well, gee whiz (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OpCode42 ( 253084 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:29AM (#13285199) Homepage
      Exactly the same risks as downloading a tarball of sourcecode and compiling it. Oh, you read every line of source you download? Including the configure script, which may well contain a trojan? Ignore me then!
      • Exactly the same risks as downloading a tarball of sourcecode and compiling it. Oh, you read every line of source you download? Including the configure script, which may well contain a trojan? Ignore me then!

        Well, except that almost every program on windows expects to be run with elevated priveleges, to the point that it's about impossible to install any program otherwise. So if a user is duped, your machine is rooted. Not true of unix, unless you're installing it as root, which you probably shouldn't d

  • Any screenshots?

  • MTV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:49AM (#13284891)
    Some clever hack needs to add a sountrack to this thing.
    • While I don't want to be an ass and say "Just listen to whatever you want" it would be nice if you could point it to a directory and if you turn on the "Radio" it would pick a random MP3 file from that directory. If you "change" the station, you hear some static fiddling, then it plays a different file (or folder?). (This was done, to some extent, in the Sims).

      Otherwise, to keep the executable small, we'd be stuck with a few MIDIs and I think I am one of 7 people in the whole world who would be OK with that

  • Style (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CleverNickedName ( 644160 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:50AM (#13284893) Journal
    here [tucows.com] is a quick pic.

    Simple cell-shading done with style. This is what's missing from most games. Real style.

    If I wanted photo-realism, I'd get up from my PC and head out the front door. Games such as WoW, Rez, Killer 7 and Ico have shown that a little creativity in the design can go a long way. It can also be easy on the gpu.
    • "Drivey Test"... That looks familiar [vgmuseum.com]...

  • Drivey Crashes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Dread Pirate Rob ( 75666 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:52AM (#13284894) Homepage
    After reading the web page and seeing there's not much in the way of collision detection built in just yet, I was expecting crashes.

    Problem is I get crashes before it even starts.

    It appears Drivey does not like my Dual Screens.

    It flashes some kind of grahics test across both monitors and then exits.

    Durn.

  • Pretty good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:52AM (#13284895) Homepage
    The "action" goes smooth under wine, just had problems to find a way out of the demo again (used a root shell to kill wine, read manual before running the demo might help). Just to add a bit of light effects from the lightposts will make it really great.

    Nice project, now lets back to Gran Turismo and see what still needs to be done (-:
    • The "action" goes smooth under wine, just had problems to find a way out of the demo again

      The esc key.

      (used a root shell to kill wine

      Root shell? Regular user shell will work, unless you're running it as root (why would you do that?)

      • Here (SuSE 8.2) wine does not want to react on ESC or F1.

        Run as root: Because I can!

        Anyway: I think the correct term for the root shell should be console. to access the running shells in KDE also did not work.
    • if you bothered to read anything he wrote you would notice he is not tring to achieve anything like gran turismo.
      • Read it, but still lighting is on his list, see reflecting car lights on the road effect, so if you do that, add the rest of the lighting too to make the demo complete.

  • Howto Make it a Screensaver in Windows (Score:5, Informative)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:54AM (#13284901)
    Rename the ".exe" to ".scr", right click on the file and select "Intall". You now have a Drivey screensaver;)

  • tried it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Keruo ( 771880 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:56AM (#13284907)
    I just tried the game and it looks pretty amazing considering the lo-fi approach.

    Most games overdo stuff with graphics when they could focus on content.

    Now all we need is some cows, logs, perhaps some water, dual player, 2x tac2 and rear view of a mockup car with lotus logo.
    • Most games overdo stuff with graphics when they could focus on content.

      Yah--it's like TV. The problem with my TV can't be solved with a Wide Screen, HD Plasma Monitor, it can only by solved by the producers hiring some writers.

  • 2.5D graphics rendering (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:57AM (#13284909)
    Towards the bottom of the page, the author says this about a screenshot:

    Interesting thing here is the big black blob in the top left, which is the bottom end of a light pole. Why is it floating in the air? Because extruded objects can't currently be drawn correctly unless one end is visible to the observer. The reason for this is remarkably interesting, specific to the weird 2-and-a-half-D rendering system, and pretty much impossible to explain to anyone without a strong background in both 2D and 3D graphics. *sigh* oh well, I find it interesting anyway.

    It sounds interesting to me... but I don't have a background in both 2D and 3D graphics. Would someone care to explain it?

    • Re:2.5D graphics rendering (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:05AM (#13284929)
      If you have driven halfway through a lightpole so that you can't see the top or the bottom, where would you draw it? Where you last saw it? When would you stop drawing it?

      The problem is that it's trying to show 3 dimensions with only 2 dimensional objects. Here's another problem with a similar issue. Imagine a very flat wall. Take a large light source like the sun and bring it to a position above and behind the wall, now the wall face is dark and a long shadow is cast. Now move the light source to the front of the wall. The wall is lit up and no shadow is cast by the wall. Now slowly move the light source up directly over the edge of the wall. Get to the point just before a shadow would appear. Should the wall be lit? Should it be dark? Should half of it be lit?

  • it's only a demo but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by netean ( 549800 ) <email&iainalexander,com> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @05:59AM (#13284914) Homepage
    it has real style and is smooth. I'm píssed off with photo realism and píssed off at games that have great graphics but suck to play. I end up playing simpler games with crapper graphics to enjoy their better gameplay (Sensible soccer, pacman) spring to mind. Even though it's only a demo, ideas like this show what's missing in modern games too often... style.
  • Thursday, February 10, 2005

    1300 downloads, averaging around 30 per day right now.

    ---

    Wednesday, August 10, 2005?

  • I found a rather obvious bug... (Score:5, Funny)

    by _Shorty-dammit ( 555739 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:02AM (#13284918)
    Dude's driving on the wrong side of the road.
    • No, he's not. Look where the steering wheel is.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:28AM (#13285000)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I presumed this programmer was American and though "why is he driving on the left?". Then I noticed all (baar one) of his turns were left and figured he was driving on an oval.

  • Bonus Code Fu Courtesy of Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:04AM (#13284925)
    This [drivey.com] is supposed to be the last software professionally written by Bill Gates.

    Even though probably no one much ever played this primitive bit of DOS/BASIC demo software [purportedly the last piece of professional software ever written by Bill Gates!]

    Good to see he ended on such a high note.

  • Confirmed, it does not work with crossover office :(

  • Fatal error: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ceriel Nosforit ( 682174 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:22AM (#13284987)
    Fatal Error: Driving on the wrong side of the damn road.

    Frivolties aside, if realism isn't the goal, why stick to our boring terran transportation? I think the game would be really cool if some ideas were stolen^W^W^W inspiration was taken from Wipeout, letting some big air jumps enter the game. Why not take a little from Tribes aswell and add the jet boost-thing?
    Mix well and the result is a toe curling orgasm^W^W^W hit for sure.

  • Waiting... (Score:4, Funny)

    by vurg ( 639307 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:39AM (#13285033)
    So when will the hot coffee mod come out?
  • Please don't tell me you just linked to an exe on the front page of Slashdot! Jesus H. Christ. Don't give the hackers, virus and worm writers, or spyware makers a challenge will ya?

  • Stunts.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SammysIsland ( 705274 )
    It reminds me of that old driving game Stunts. I can remember playing that during many HS study halls. Any other fans?

  • And dont forget to.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by skochak ( 723803 ) <sarvagyak@yahDEBIANoo.com minus distro> on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @06:41AM (#13285040)
    Watch the screencast...

    http://intepid.com/2005-05-08/13.49/ [intepid.com]

    It is really good!

  • loaded it into cedega 4.4, and I can do everything but steer the car apparently. I keep veering off to the left no matter what. anybody?

  • Way, way too unrealistic... (Score:4, Funny)

    by TintinX ( 569362 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:03AM (#13285111) Homepage
    I mean, come on. Pedestrian crossings on such a major road? I think not!

  • Bunch of different keyboard commands, too (Score:3, Informative)

    by loggia ( 309962 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @07:33AM (#13285214)
    Try hitting different keys and numbers... lots of different variations built into his demo...
  • Here's a link [intepid.com] to the creator's blog where he performs a screencast [wikipedia.org] of him playing Drivey.

  • Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 )
    Coral cache: http://drivey.com.nyud.net:8090/ [nyud.net]

  • Body roll physics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by itomato ( 91092 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @09:55AM (#13286192)
    I drove Drivey after an hour long commute in my BMW.

    Know what?

    I prefer the BMW! #1 reason: Predictable body roll physics. I turn the wheel left, and the car follows. Not so in Drivey, where I turn the car right, and the horizon tips over to the opposite side. Does Drivey think it's a boat?

    Drivey has fine acceleration however, and I dig the everlasting twilight/dawn.

    It reminds me a lot of the Ford Simulator [dosgamesarchive.com] that existed in the oldenne days (1987). Not as much instrumentation, but who really needs a tach or speedo anyway?

  • Easter Eggs! (Score:3, Informative)

    by zipzap54 ( 787214 ) on Wednesday August 10, 2005 @10:08AM (#13286295) Homepage
    So it's pretty inherintly obvious to find, but there are many different key commands to change the look and feel of the "game". Listed Below
    • Left, Right, Up, Down: Steer & Accelerate/Brake
    • A, D, W, S: Same as above, respectively
    • T: Toggle Info
    • G: Grey Scale
    • H: display random palette
    • K: palette cycle (Pretty cool)
    • C: adds Other Cars (8 at a time)
      Note: you can seriously slow down the game by hitting C a whole bunch of times.
    • N/M: Zoom in/out
    • F1: Shows all key functions on Screen
    • F2: Toggle WireFrame
    • F3: Toggle Dashboard
    • F4: Show Rear View
    • F5: Toggle Manual Control
    • F6: Toggle Sound
    • F7: Change Sky Gradient
    • F11: Toggle Full Screen
    Play around with it!

    • Re:Easter Eggs! (Score:3, Informative)

      by zipzap54 ( 787214 )
      Almost Forgot.

      Num Keys 1-4 Change the Scenery.

      • 1: Sparce Road
      • 2: Tunnel
      • 3: City
      • 4: Industrial
      numbers 5-9 just change it back to "very sparce road". The game defaults to 4: Industrial

    • Re:Easter Eggs! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jacius ( 701825 )
      Try this one: hold down B to brighten the palette. The blacks stay black, but the road lines, sky, and steering wheel highlights get brighter (and easier to see).

      If you hold it down for a while, it'll get to a stark black and white—very artsy :)

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