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Cart #trafficworld-3 | 2018-12-10 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Controls: Left, Right

Get past the traffic herd to escape and win!

Hit z/x/c to restart after win/loss

Taffic World!!! Evade the cops and escape!

This is a simple but playable prototype of an idea I had about crashes and traffic management. I started it in the recent ludum dare but didn't have enough free time over the weekend to get something done so I figured I'd just finish it up through the week.

Basically, crash other cars, cause pileups, and stall the cops until you can get through the gridlock. There's only one level and it's very simple right now... if there's enough interest I may expand on it.

Possible full-fledged game of this would be something like infinity lanes rather than just 15 and various driving floats and food trucks and such that you can visit somehow. Basically a literal traffic world made of only lanes and driving endlessly in some one direction. Not sure how it would work exactly but I figured this simple first stab gives an idea of some of the mechanics around causing accidents.

Source - https://github.com/jcwilk/traffic_world

Changes:
v0.4

  • Make the cops not start flooding in until after your first accident
  • Increase number of max cops from 35 to 40 since the beginning is much easier now

v0.3

  • Make all cars use turn animations

v0.2

  • Made colors less pretty but easier to read
  • Made cops brighter and more noticeable
  • Made player car bright red with a stripe
  • Made turning and loss of traction animations
  • Slight screenshake on loss of traction
  • Slowed down shifting traffic lanes a little (aka "linkers")
  • Slowed down new approaching traffic (aka "joiners")

Old versions:


Cart #trafficworld-2 | 2018-12-09 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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v0.3

Cart #trafficworld-1 | 2018-12-09 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
1


v0.2

Cart #trafficworld-0 | 2018-12-09 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
1


First release, v0.1

P#59847 2018-12-09 02:23 ( Edited 2018-12-10 11:54)

I like this concept, but it's really hard to discern whether you can change lanes or not; is it if you line up with the car next to you? Something else?

The other part I think adds unintentionally to difficulty level is the cops are very hard to see. I'm not exactly sure the best way to deal with that problem other than maybe have all of the traffic look identical so visually you can see the cops coming easier. A couple of games, I didn't even realize I was near a cop.

And I played about 15 or 16 games and couldn't clear the level, if there is an end. But the concept itself is pretty interesting and I can see with some fleshing out it could be really fun.

P#59848 2018-12-09 04:53

@hseiken Thank you for your feedback! I addressed some of these issues in my changes, do feel free to take another look :)

P#59855 2018-12-09 12:01

I tried again, much easier on the eyes, for sure. I still couldn't clear the stage, though, it's pretty hard. My guess is once you crash all the starting cops you clear the stage?

P#59865 2018-12-10 07:13 ( Edited 2018-12-10 07:13)

@hseiken - yeah it's pretty tough, after playing it many times i can beat it maybe 10-20% of the time but i know how the lanes shift back and forth and such so im not sure if anyone else has beaten it xD I generally like games to be hard though so I'm okay with this.

The herd only lasts for a certain amount of distance, currently there's only 40 cars per lane, once you get past the herd then you escape and win. It's a good point though that the objective is entirely unclear, trying to crash as many cops as possible is a totally reasonable assumed objective given the gameplay. But no, cops keep coming.

Currently it's set so that every frame it spawns another cop until there are 35 living cops. I found that number to be a pretty useful sliding scale for difficulty, 35 for me was a good level that made it so that i really had to fight to get there but wasn't suffocating. A fun twist on the game would be to make it lower the number every time they lost and raise it every time they won.

Your idea of simply taking out all the cops isn't bad also, but as-is it's too trivial to take out all the cops.. you just have to sweep across and you'd win right away. With them respawning it means if you sweep across it gives you some breathing room but it also opens the field way up for all those respawning cops to come and get right up in your business right away. If you do one or two lanes at a time then you have more places to run and hide.

An interesting thing about the cops is that they actually have zero AI at all and follow the same dumb logic that the neutral cars do... whenever there's an open lane and no joiners coming (cars that are racing up to join the line) then it starts pulling cars in from adjacent lanes whether they're cops or neutral or whatever and you lose when a car that's next to you/in front of you/behind you happens to be a cop car. But still, even with no desire to get near you it's extremely difficult to not get passed by a cop because everything you do makes a least-path-of-resistance opening for more cars to come flooding towards you.

There's often a point in the game where if you stay still then you're perfectly safe and only in causing crashes do you open yourself up to danger from the cops. I guess that's mildly game breaking but it's also kinda cool, i guess it's kind of like waiting on a tucked away platform in a platformer so whatever.

Anyways, has been a good experience having people try it and got some good feedback from people on facebook too. Thanks to all who tried it!

P#59867 2018-12-10 11:42

Oh and re: intense difficulty, I'd probably make it so that the cops don't roll in until you cause your first accident so you have a moment to acquaint yourself but I'll just keep tweaking this endlessly if I don't stop myself xD

Ugh okay fine I'll do that one thing when I have a chance haha I feel like it'd be a lot better.

P#59868 2018-12-10 11:44

Ok that was a lot easier than I thought haha, cops now wait for you to commit a crime before hassling you. You're free to wait in line until the end of time if you want xD

P#59869 2018-12-10 11:57

In terms of staying in a single lane being safe, it's not really. The traffic flow changes keeps me, at least, always looking for the lanes that are near and moving faster, else a cop will get me!

P#59942 2018-12-12 22:59

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