Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator News

[h2]Hello drivers! [/h2]

It’s been a while buy we’re finally back with another Developer Blog for Taxi Life! With Gamescom in early September as well as the release of our other game Train Life, it’s been hectic! But we’re getting back in the flow of things with keeping you guys updated on the development process of Taxi Life.

The last Developer Blog we sent was way back in July! With the name change of the game already in full swing, we have a lot to talk about in todays blog regarding updates and changes to the current build for Taxi Life. So, lets get into it!

[h3]Shake, shake, shake that camera! [/h3]

Now, every time you crash into something, the camera will shake, giving you that feeling that you hit something. When you damage your vehicle, you should experience some wobbles when your in FPP mode in the cabin of the car notifying you that you should probably start thinking about visiting a repair shop.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]3 new camera modes[/h3]

We added 3 new camera modes to our new vehicle models and that’s in FPP (dashboard), FPP (Hood) as well as a complete FPP where you are on the bumper of the car. This should give players some good options to explore the streets of Barcelona in which ever perspective they want.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Random Events[/h3]

We added random events into the streets that will have impact on your gameplay. For example, there could be a car that is broken down on the side of the road and this causes the traffic to become heavier. Better make sure you don’t pick up a passenger that’s in a rush!

Unfortunately, we don’t have any footage of this saved, but when I dig around, I will be sure to show you guys on our socials and Discord!

[h3]2 New unlicensed vehicles [/h3]

Over the past 2 months or so, we added 2 new unlicensed vehicles. The van is going to be electric, where you will have to go to a charging station instead of a gas station. Looks futuristic, don’t ya think? Which one is your favorite?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]The Pedestrians, they can cross the street now! [/h3]

So, for a long time, the pedestrians in Taxi Life didn’t know how to cross the street. Maybe it was because they were scared or didn’t have a hand to hold on to. But now, after lots of therapy and the pedestrians will now cross the street impacting the gameplay of the player. No, you can’t run them over. Yes, you need to wait for them to cross if you don’t want to get a penalty.

https://youtu.be/6Ujf1F0pUDI

[h3]That’s all we got, for now… [/h3]

We hoped you enjoyed this edition of our Developer Blog and make sure to follow us in all the places and deepest crevices of social media as well as join our official Discord channel!

Until next time!

Mike
Simteract Community Manager

Hello everyone!

With Gamescom coming up, we have some major changes coming to Urban Venture that we are proud to announce. From today, Urban Venture will now be called Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator!

The reason for this change is because we have signed a deal with our publisher Nacon to publish the game under their current "Life" series of games, which you can find here.

We go a little bit more in depth about the change in a press release, which you can find here as well.

We will have more news to share during Gamescom as well as on our social media.

We hope you all are just as excited as we are about this partnership, and looking forward we know we're going to be able to bring you a driving simulation game never before seen.

See you in Barceona!

Mike
Simteract Community Manager

[h2]Hello Drivers,[/h2]

Welcome to the 5th Dev Blog for Urban Venture. Time flies, doesn’t it? But this won’t stop us from keeping you guys up to date on the latest news from our development process. Today is going to be quite a short one to be honest, as during the past month we have been working on 2 major concepts that we brought to realization in our recent build. And that is new Police mechanics and a new vehicle model.

Keep in mind, everything that you see in this Dev Blog is subject to change or get iterated upon in the future. Nothing is final. With that out of the way, let's get into it!

[h2]Law and Rewards[/h2]



Police in Urban Venture have made their way into the city of Barcelona. Now, you will be under the watchful eye of the law. But don’t worry, you have nothing to hide, right? There is a new system we implemented that will give you bonus XP after a certain time of following the rules of the road. If you break the law in front of a Police Vehicle, the siren will turn on, the player will get a ticket and pay some money from your funds. In case you’re thinking if you will be able to participate in a police chase, then no, you won’t. Remember this isn’t GTA!

[h2]New Vehicle Model
[/h2]

We’re going to keep this one short and sweet. We added a new “luxury” vehicle into the game. This car is better in every way that the first vehicle you guys are familiar with. Currently, we are only able to view the car in TPP mode and are still working out some kinks with the cabin and FPP. We will share more info on that once its ready.




That’s all for now!

Thanks for taking the time to read some small updates from our side. As usual, we will keep you guys updated on our socials with news and behind the scenes’ stuff from Urban Venture. Next Monday July 25th 2022 @ 7PM CEST we’re going to be doing another livestream with our producer Alex! Don’t forget to check out some gameplay we have to share on our Twitch channel! Until then, we hope you have a great weekend!

[h2]Hello drivers! [/h2]

Welcome to our fourth blog post for Urban Venture! Once again, we are happy to show our community some of the things we've added and have been working on since our last update. Today, we’re going to be talking about the in-game garage, new features for TrafficAI, as well as a new and improved night mode!

Before we get into the blog post, I wanted to remind everyone that everything you’re about to read/see is subject to change. Game development is a process, and everything can be changed or iterated upon at a moments notice.

With that in mind: I know you are all excited to see what we got in store this time around, so without further adieu, let's get into it!


[h2]The Garage[/h2]

The garage is going to be one of the central gameplay features of Urban Venture. Everyone likes pictures or videos of WIP stuff in game development, right? So, take a gander at this beauty:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The main purpose of the garage will be for players to customize, repair, refuel and browse their fleet of vehicles. Car parameters such as your vehicles' endurance levels, tire pressure, and engine durability will factor into its performance. You will also be able to buy and sell your cars from here, as well other functions we are still working on. The placement of the garage is still something that we are figuring out where to put in the game, currently what you see in the video is a placeholder location for now.

Once we have some more progress made on the garage, we will share more, so stay tuned!


[h2]TrafficAI Features[/h2]

TrafficAI™ is a term that we have thrown around in previous blog posts here and there - and it’s something that we think people will be excited over when they get a chance to play the game! When the game has driving at its core, we think players will really notice and appreciate our dedication to our traffic models to help with proper immersion.

For those that are reading this article for the first time, let me explain what TrafficAI™ is. TrafficAI™ is a technology that we developed in-house to teach real-life autonomous vehicles to learn how to drive. So, we figured, hell, why don’t we put that in our next game, and that’s exactly what we did. We even made some improvements...

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• AI’s stopped honking on red lights (believe us, this was a huge problem when all you could hear is honking throughout the entire game)
  
  
• Honking is now based by the AI driver’s frustration.
  
  
• Honking is now activated once AI is emergency braking.
  
  
• The AI are now acting slower on the arcs – no more traffic jams at roundabouts and turns! (This is something that we noticed was a problem when the AI drivers were making moves at roundabouts. The cars would basically get stuck causing humongous traffic jams. Now this shouldn’t be an issue)
  
  
• AI density reacts to the day cycle – there are more traffic jams in the morning and afternoon, much less during the nights
  

For us, the last point is all about player immersion once again. We want the player to experience full day and night cycles on the roads in the game, as you would in real life. The same goes with our dynamic weather system which will influence to how the world around the player reacts. When it rains, there will be less people on the street and braking distance is increased, cars might drive slower and so on.

[h2]Nighttime Improvement[/h2]


Nighttime in Urban Venture is a tricky topic. When we started implementing a day/night cycle, we had the challenge of illuminating the roads with streetlights. At first, it was very dark, like too dark! We also had to adjust the traffic flow at night so there could be less cars.

In the pictures below, you can see some before and after examples of light density on the streets. Nighttime driving can bring its own set of challenges in any video game, but in Urban Venture, we wanted to bring as close to an authentic experience as driving in real-life nighttime as possible.



[h2]THANK YOU!
[/h2]

That’s about all from our side! We hope you’re enjoying our monthly Dev Blog updates and if you have any feedback to give about how we’re running things here please don’t hesitate to leave a comment under the post!

Make sure to join our official Discord channel, and follow the development process on socials!

See you all in the next one!

Hasta La Próxima,

Mike
Simteract Community Manager

We’re back with another edition of our developer blog! We hope you have been enjoying the things we have been talking about up until this point and we will have much more to share in the future. If you’re new here, don’t forget to join our Discord channel to stay up to date with the latest news from our team regarding Urban Venture as well as our other projects!

As a note, everything mentioned in this blog is subject to change as the game is still a work-in-progress. That means anything we share is not set in stone, and later down the line it could get iterated upon, removed, or changed completely!

With that in mind, let’s get into it.



As you know, creating a city at a 1:1 scale can be challenging as everything must be as it would be in the real-world. This means buildings, streets and landmarks as you would find them in real-life Barcelona must also exist in the game. As some of you may have already spotted, you can already find the La Sagrada Familia on the horizon when cruising the streets. We have also added in some new stuff like the Parc De la Ciutadella and Hivernacle del Parc de la Ciutadella, check it out:





In addition, we’ve managed to set up a couple of POIs (Points of Interest) on the map, which directs our engine to adjust traffic, and then allows us to witness denser traffic in these areas at any given time. For example, there will be many more cars around the office districts during rush hour.



Environmental destruction is a thing now in Urban Venture. For example, your vehicle can now knock down the bollards on the streets. While before they were made of solid steel… Now, you can simply run them over. Sadly, we don't have a video to show of this, due to some bugs on-going with the car, but we will share some imagery of this soon!



This is something that a lot of people from the community have been asking about and we’re happy to say that we have implemented the first iteration of a Day/Night cycle in Urban Venture. There is not much more to say besides the fact that we will continue to make it better throughout the development process, like the time of day affecting traffic. In the meantime, see the outcome for yourself:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



Since we started the development of Urban Venture we have been focused on creating the world of Barcelona on a 1:1 scale. This was a huge undertaking and now that we have generated most of the world, it’s time for us to start focusing on actual gameplay. One of the first gameplay mechanics we have added to Urban Venture is the gas station!





The player will be able to pull up to a pump, and fill gas up manually depending on the amount of money the player wants to spend, or you can automatically fill up the entire tank at once! At this moment, there are three gas stations you can find in Barcelona. In the future, we will be talking about charging your vehicles as we also want to add electric cars to the game as well!



We’re also super excited to share with you all some of the in-car features that we have been teasing since the announcement of Urban Venture. We’ve talked about how the player will have full control of the vehicle's cabin as you would in real life, and here, you can finally see the progress we made. You can even roll the window down now with the press of a button! The navigation system has also been added and improved in the cabin.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Of course there is still some more functionality to be added to the button cabins and we will for sure share more details on that in the future!



We can’t thank the community enough for showing support for our games. We have been to SXSW (South By Southwest) and PAX East in the last few months and it was really great to see people's reactions when we showed what Urban Venture was about. The reaction online was also fantastic to experience.

We will keep you guys updated as time goes on and we will have another Dev Blog planned for you all soon! Make sure to follow us on all social media channels which you can find here, and make sure to join our Discord channel to chat with the developers!


Hasta La Próxima,

Aleksandra
Urban Venture Producer