3D Car racing game?

[InCreator]

Have anyone ever tried to make a 3D car game?
I have a superb idea and few possible professional modellers in my team, but really low on programming the whole car/physics part - there's no way for us to implement whole engine from scratch or even build one onto some graphics engine, such as OGRE.

The game itsself could be on simpler engine (bumpmaps & other hi-tech stuff isn't that important) and in city environment, but engine should support some basic car physics, atleast at GTA3/Vice City level... Same standard goes to engine possibilities on graphics.

Can someone give link to any resources, like an opensource engine/specific tool or simply very good editable template for some known engine (Torque, etc), which doesn't need complete rescripting/programming to get some cars driving?

Anything?
Anyone?

[R4L]

The only way I see of doing that would be some hard-time coding or AGS 3D if you could. You could always use a 3D sprite and make a mario kart like game (like the SNES version).

[fred]

I think there's been plenty of threads recommending 3d-engines, but yes, I once scripted a *very*simple car game in python using the panda3d engine. It supports your own scripted physics and/or ai with a set of base classes that make it a lot easier than starting from scratch. As far as i remember the panda3d engine was pretty buggy and un-documented, but there's probably a new version out by now, and hopefully some better documentation.

I uploaded a zip of the final 'game' (more of a coding course than a game design course) if you wanna check it the scripts used. I don't remember if you actually need python and panda3d installed to play it, but it'll give you a good laugh at my bad coding ;-) The file "RACE.bat" should start the race if everything is set up right.

Disclaimer: This is not a full game, it's a university assignment handed in to prove that we could grasp scripting physics and ai for a car game. No real gameplay - nothing.

file is here: (2.68 Mb) CarGame

Edit (1-18-07): I removed the file from the server, since I've been using up my disk quota. PM me, if you need it.

[skw]

@ fred: Doesn't work without that Python. Where I can d/l it?

Hmm, some time ago I had an idea of making a racing game in vein of the older Lotus series or SNES' Street Racer (sprite-based). Anyway, I think e. g. MMF can handle this type of game better than AGS, although I've never made any.

At last AGS is an ADVENTURE game studio, but since they made a racing game at the Quake engine (Quake Rally), I think everything is possible.

[fred]

Provided that the game is still compatible with the newest version of python, there are downloadable python installers for those at the official python site:
http://www.python.org/

If this doesn't work, you can get a copy of python (the right version I hope) with the panda3d download:
http://panda3d.org/download.php

If you try it, and it still doesn't work (there's a real chance - it's been a while since I made the game)Ã,  please post about it so people don't get mad at me for wasting their time with a pointless download...Ã, 

[Hammerite]

At last AGS is an ADVENTURE game studio, but since they made a racing game at the Quake engine (Quake Rally), I think everything is possible.

not to mention all those other non-adventure games made in AGS (like most of Yahtzee's later stuff)

[skw]

@ fred: Doesn't work. I've placed all the game files into my Python directory, even changed the command line for all available executables and still nothing, only some lines with an error raport.

@ Hammerite: Right. I'm really impressed by people who like to make their lifes harder.

[m0ds]

We tried to make a 3D car game in QBasic many years ago, but that was a miserable disaster! Then, I planned an entire 3D car game for Games Factory, only to find out it was a platformer creator. Gah!

If you do find the right tool let us know, I'd love to have a play with one.

[InCreator]

Hm. My intentions were lot more ambitious than AGS or something sprite-based could do. As I said, atleast something comparable with cars and scenery in GTA3/+ games.

I just don't know any suitable tools for this. Ages ago, I recall having some kind of modifyable cargame, nicely 3D and with 3ds max track and car model templates included to make your own. Unfortunately, I can't rememeber what that was.

I have access to Blitz3D and Torque full versions engines, but never seen a tutorial/template good enough to make a cargame with these either. There's racing example with Torque, but Torque unfortunatley has very weak support for premade buildings & stuff, and Quark isn't something I'd like to use for this either (Torque uses Quark). Also, Torque's racing example has only a buggy-type car, with totally different handling and system that I would need for urban race game.'

There's a very nice game made onto 3D Gamestudio, called Fahrschule (Driving School) 3D, but 3DGCS is... extremely ugly! Also, the scripting is so incredibly painful that I'm not even dreaming about trying this.

Blitz3D plus physics plus nice template/example with car could make my day. Unfortunately, I haven't found any things like this.

Damn.

[fred]

If you buy the Half-Life 2 - Game of the year edition, you can download the Source engine for free. Im pretty sure it comes with the buggy and perhaps other vehicle models from the game, and nice physics. Of course you would then be making a mod and not a game from scratch. But if you want a driving/urban setting game with as little scripting as possible, you have to base it on as finished an engine as possible, so a mod is probably a good idea. The Far Cry engine is probably also good for this, since there's a lot of driving and sailing in the game. Engine comes with the game. Alternatively, I heard physics are pretty easy in Blender...

[MrColossal]

You can also use an old version of Hammer with Torque. You can't really do much with it though, it's mostly for building brush based geometry and texturing it, you can't place decals or overlays or anything like that. Just brushes and lights and camera paths.

Personally I find Hammer easier to use than QuArK

[HeirOfNorton]

Not sure if it's complete enough, but have you looked at Yake? It's an engine built on top of OGRE, and it has a couple of different physics plugins, and a vehicle abstraction class.

HoN