2D Vehicles

When mentioning foundational 2d driving models one simply can't omit Marco Monster (2003) [1].Also Physics for Game Developers (2001) had a hilarious chapter dedicated to car racing simulation. Most of the chapter is dedicated building the scene in a minute detail - for instance pointing out that the center of gravity of the car will change during the course due to fuel consumption - only to simplify and cancel out most things at the end to leave the reader with just a handful of variables.[1] https://www.asawicki.info/Mirror/Car%20Physics%20for%20Games... reply: Let's not forget Dr. Brian Beckman's The Physics of Racing Series, at the time he was a researcher working at Microsoft on the Forza video game series.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8GQCZgCNw8I built an OpenGL car physics simulation as an undergrad as a project (pre-Claude). It was very fun.

I'm sorry, I really want to like and understand this, but the diagrams are worthless and mostly incomprehensible.I would've liked to understand more about why it works the way it does, how it achieved the correct feel etc, not just regurgitate whatever the code does.I would've liked to know more about how the author achieved what they did, not a blog post anyone with an llm could've written. reply: The diagrams seem to have been written (or generated[1]) while looking at the project source code, and use the sort of bass-ackwards approach to code documentation of giving a “post-hoc summation” that only makes sense when you’ve already read the code, rather than serving as an introduction to the code for someone who hasn’t read it yet.That being said, AFAICT, the diagrams are also basically irrelevant to the article in its capacity as a high-level overview of the project. You can just ignore them for the purpose of reading the article.It’s when digging into the project source code that you should look at those diagrams, and then feel frustrated by how much they suck....

GTA I and II had really fun car physics. Just driving around and evading police was fun, in a way the later 3d games in the series didn't quite capture for me reply: I still remember GTA 2 had the best radioLaughing vampires dance!

It still feels great to play! I love the history too, it's actually a great example of why prototyping "toys" is so important in product development. It allows you to play with isolated concepts without baggage or the expectation to make things production grade. Just getting straight to the point.Great story, programming and mechanics. reply: Thanks. I'm glad you got something out of it.

no dynamics model (uses bicycle model) but i built a solver for parkinghttp://truckslop.joshu.dev/ reply: The visualization of potential results is quite mesmerizing.

This is what taught me how to do handbrake turns.And shortly after I learned how expensive tyres were, I stopped doing handbrake turns. reply: GTA didn't exist back then, so I had to learn them from the lore.And shortly afterwards, in addition to all the different physics-in-action experience, I learned about how car insurance excess works.

I have been trying on and off to achieve this for years and what really bothered me was at slow speeds (reversing into a parking space), my vehicle would move laterally to the wheel direction. I could never solve that issue without hacking it which really annoyed me. Last time I tried was during covid. I picked up "The Multibody Systems Approach to Vehicle Dynamics - 2004" for 99p in a local charity shop. Far, far too advanced for me but I did manage to simplify it with google and some questions on stack to get nice handling. Alas that slow speed lateral motion, just knowing it was there made me shelf it again.I am determined not to use a LLM or even this article to solve it at some point in my life.Thanks for sharing. reply: That's an interesting problem, and I can't immediately see why you would keep getting a side-effect like that.Good luck with figuring it out!

This is really cool. A few months back I wanted to re-create the gta feeling in 2d myself with claude - I have no idea how to write games.. After about a few weeks it ended up in 3d, and completely different, and nowhere near as fun.https://2e7b8cb5.city-driver.pages.dev - remember to do ignition, and start the car

I think this is just Autodesk Vehicle Tracking

To the creator, thank you. I spent many years almost 2 decades alter playing multiplayer gta2 with my good friend during late night sessions.Thank you for a great little physics engine

I built a 2d iOS game using this concept a while ago. It was built using SpriteKit: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drift-mania-infinite-car-racer...

Interesting that he namechecks Thrust from 1986, an absolutely amazing game for the BBC Model B, and I guess the first 'physics' game I ever encountered. The 'towing' physics were amazing.https://youtu.be/Dt44PEIWBRg?is=CbVTRyDfo8Nt56fHThrust was by Jeremy C. Smith who went on to work on Exile with Peter Irvin

Hello. I am the Pat Kerr in question.

Oh how I loved driving around in GTA 2!Thank you for your great work there and for sharing how you did it. I felt nostalgic playing with the model.

I speak for an entire generation of people when I say thanks, nice job with this

Can you please add a "parking simulator" mode? Iam not joking, my SO wants a simple way to train parking and I think that could work very well. Or maybe just let one draw obstacles.

This feels incredible to play, even with the simple graphics. Wow. Top class

Nostalgic!It'd be amazing to hook is up with the engine sound simulator: https://github.com/ange-yaghi/engine-sim

If you accelerate the Car, then switch the configuration from Car to Brick, the brick won't slow down. Not sure whether is it intended but it feels wrong.

This is painfully awful Claudeslop. They didn't even bother changing the default style.

Even that little simulation is really fun. I’d like to play a little 2D game with this mechanic.

Really nice. GTA 1 & 2 were really amazing. I had a lot of good times with them.

d doesn't turn right for me, but shift+d does. Arrow keys do work though.

GFA Basic !… So many memories are coming back to me.

Feels like the original, just need some thing to run over.

no clutch = no clutch kick drifting

It's an interesting project, although not a physics expert I am so curious what the original version looked like!

I liked your idea. It was really cool.